Gold mine may leave people homeless in Cambodia

via Khmer NZ News Media

June 20, 2010

PHNOM PENH (Commodity Online): The high prices of gold is threatening several families in a different way.

According to reports, the Cambodian government has threatened to burn homes of almost 100 families who are living at the site of a gold deposit recently discovered by an Australian mining company.

The gold deposit that both exploration company OzMinerals and the Cambodian government are excited about lies in the remote Mondulkiri province, 500 km from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh.

After 17 years of exploration the government believes this could be the biggest find so far in Cambodia, yielding at least 600,000 ounces of gold.

The project is in its infancy and will not be viable as a mine unless OzMinerals can do more small scale drilling and sampling to see if it can yield more than two million ounces of gold.

The company says the local people do not have to move for the continuing exploration to take place, but as part of a larger government plan to clean up illegal mining, logging and poaching they have been told to go.

The government says most of those living in the area do not deserve help because they are opportunists who have moved into the area to mine illegally and they are not locals.

The government says the residents have deliberately built their homes on land owned by OzMinerals and will not be compensated, and if they do not move the government will burn their homes or bulldoze them.

The Cambodian government is notorious for forcibly evicting residents to make way for development. The United Nations has repeatedly raised concerns about tens of thousands of people who have been evicted in recent years with lack of due process, inadequate compensation and the excessive use of force.