By Prak Chan Thul and Erik Wasson
THE CAMBODIA DAILY
In a massive deployment of force, several hundred police and military police officers armed with tear gas, batons and some assault rifles surrounded Phnom Penh's Tonle Bassac commune's Village 14 on Tuesday morning and carried out City Hall's promise to evict the last remaining residents.
Carrying riot shields and wearing military-style tin helmets, the first wave of police entered the camp at 6 am sharp, confronting several hundred families camped in squalid conditions beneath bamboo-framed homes and tarpaulin roofs.
The hundreds of occupants of the muddy village, mostly women and scruffy children, made no effort to resist the eviction, which was carried out peacefully, or their later removal to three hectares of land in Dangkao district's Kouk Roka commune.
There, on Tuesday afternoon, municipal officials allowed the families to construct small dwellings and gave each a piece of tarpaulin, 10 kg of rice and a bottle of soy sauce.
Hak Sok Makara, director of Dangkao's department of land management, said the site is to be the new permanent home for the families, though authorities had not yet determined how many families would be allowed to live there and had not installed water or electricity for the new residents.
"How could there be water and electricity here when they just arrived?" Hak Sok Makara said.
"If we follow the city's development, here is like the middle of the city already," he said of the site, which is located about 20 km from the center of town.
Residents will be issued land titles after five years of residence, he added. "If we gave them ownership too fast, they might sell and go back to the old place."
In a statement, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights called the eviction "inhumane."
"The deportation of these villagers is the next step in the misdirected process of development in the Tonle Bassac area," the statement reads.
"CCHR urges the City Hall of Phnom Penh to stop the inhumane treatment of the Sambok Chap villagers immediately and to provide them with sufficient infrastructures for living in dignity and creating incomes for themselves." Village 14 is also known as Sambok Chap, or "bird's nest."
The Asian Human Rights Commission called for concerned people to write to Prime Minister Hun Sen calling for a halt to the eviction, and to send copies to Minister of Justice Ang Vong Vathana, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong and UNDP Resident Representative Douglas Gardner. "That the authorities justify their actions by stating that the beautification of their city is more important that the lives of these people is entirely unacceptable," the AHRC wrote.
The Sam Rainsy Party condemned the expulsion and accused the government of punishing the poor in a new experiment with "social apartheid."
"Following the dramatic boom in land prices over the last few years, the current government's policy consists in expelling the poor from Phnom Penh so as to reserve the capital city for the rich," the SRP said in a statement
Tuesday's early morning police operation was tightly planned. Police forces deployed at 4 am in formation in front of Village 14 near the new National Assembly building as units cordoned off roads leading to the village, blocking entry to human rights workers and journalists. Police ordered reporters to delete photographs of the eviction from their cameras.
Inside the besieged village, despite dire predictions by the residents themselves in recent days, the eviction was forced but peaceful. Trucks moved into the village as women fed and bathed their small children, washed dishes and slowly packed their cooking equipment.
Riot police with megaphones told the crowd they had an hour to pack up. "Go back to the districts you came from," a police official ordered through a megaphone. "You have an hour to leave, after that you will be in defiance and will be responsible."
By 7 am, a team of young men dressed in red T-shirts and baseball hats moved in to dismantle those few tents that remained.
By mid-morning, Village 14 was an empty, debris-strewn field. The eviction also included a dozen wooden homes located on the Tonle Bassac that commune officials did not recognize as legitimate.
Rights workers waiting outside the village estimated that nine villagers had been taken away in handcuffs. Phnom Penh Police Commissioner Touch Naruth said last week that 10 villagers would be prosecuted for inciting a brief riot at the site on May 31. He could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema said he had no comment about Village 14's eviction.
"It is like they just dumped us," villager Em Sochan, 27, said as her children shielded themselves from the sun under the shadow of a family motorbike at their new home in Dangkao district.
"They have not told us which plot is ours.... I don't know where to go and I don't know where the water is," she said.
Villager Roeun Rany, 32, said she was concerned about earning a living 20 km from the city center. "I am a gardener working in front of the Royal Palace," she said. "I am worried now...I don't have a single riel."
Some, however, were happy to have at least a plot to call their own.
"We were afraid they would not give us any land," said villager Nhen Sreynhep, 21.
Carrying riot shields and wearing military-style tin helmets, the first wave of police entered the camp at 6 am sharp, confronting several hundred families camped in squalid conditions beneath bamboo-framed homes and tarpaulin roofs.
The hundreds of occupants of the muddy village, mostly women and scruffy children, made no effort to resist the eviction, which was carried out peacefully, or their later removal to three hectares of land in Dangkao district's Kouk Roka commune.
There, on Tuesday afternoon, municipal officials allowed the families to construct small dwellings and gave each a piece of tarpaulin, 10 kg of rice and a bottle of soy sauce.
Hak Sok Makara, director of Dangkao's department of land management, said the site is to be the new permanent home for the families, though authorities had not yet determined how many families would be allowed to live there and had not installed water or electricity for the new residents.
"How could there be water and electricity here when they just arrived?" Hak Sok Makara said.
"If we follow the city's development, here is like the middle of the city already," he said of the site, which is located about 20 km from the center of town.
Residents will be issued land titles after five years of residence, he added. "If we gave them ownership too fast, they might sell and go back to the old place."
In a statement, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights called the eviction "inhumane."
"The deportation of these villagers is the next step in the misdirected process of development in the Tonle Bassac area," the statement reads.
"CCHR urges the City Hall of Phnom Penh to stop the inhumane treatment of the Sambok Chap villagers immediately and to provide them with sufficient infrastructures for living in dignity and creating incomes for themselves." Village 14 is also known as Sambok Chap, or "bird's nest."
The Asian Human Rights Commission called for concerned people to write to Prime Minister Hun Sen calling for a halt to the eviction, and to send copies to Minister of Justice Ang Vong Vathana, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong and UNDP Resident Representative Douglas Gardner. "That the authorities justify their actions by stating that the beautification of their city is more important that the lives of these people is entirely unacceptable," the AHRC wrote.
The Sam Rainsy Party condemned the expulsion and accused the government of punishing the poor in a new experiment with "social apartheid."
"Following the dramatic boom in land prices over the last few years, the current government's policy consists in expelling the poor from Phnom Penh so as to reserve the capital city for the rich," the SRP said in a statement
Tuesday's early morning police operation was tightly planned. Police forces deployed at 4 am in formation in front of Village 14 near the new National Assembly building as units cordoned off roads leading to the village, blocking entry to human rights workers and journalists. Police ordered reporters to delete photographs of the eviction from their cameras.
Inside the besieged village, despite dire predictions by the residents themselves in recent days, the eviction was forced but peaceful. Trucks moved into the village as women fed and bathed their small children, washed dishes and slowly packed their cooking equipment.
Riot police with megaphones told the crowd they had an hour to pack up. "Go back to the districts you came from," a police official ordered through a megaphone. "You have an hour to leave, after that you will be in defiance and will be responsible."
By 7 am, a team of young men dressed in red T-shirts and baseball hats moved in to dismantle those few tents that remained.
By mid-morning, Village 14 was an empty, debris-strewn field. The eviction also included a dozen wooden homes located on the Tonle Bassac that commune officials did not recognize as legitimate.
Rights workers waiting outside the village estimated that nine villagers had been taken away in handcuffs. Phnom Penh Police Commissioner Touch Naruth said last week that 10 villagers would be prosecuted for inciting a brief riot at the site on May 31. He could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema said he had no comment about Village 14's eviction.
"It is like they just dumped us," villager Em Sochan, 27, said as her children shielded themselves from the sun under the shadow of a family motorbike at their new home in Dangkao district.
"They have not told us which plot is ours.... I don't know where to go and I don't know where the water is," she said.
Villager Roeun Rany, 32, said she was concerned about earning a living 20 km from the city center. "I am a gardener working in front of the Royal Palace," she said. "I am worried now...I don't have a single riel."
Some, however, were happy to have at least a plot to call their own.
"We were afraid they would not give us any land," said villager Nhen Sreynhep, 21.
1 comment:
There goes Sambok Chab and Phnom Wai Chab rings the history.
Hun Sen time is arriving, first border marker be Sihanouk's and the final one be Hun Sen's grave.
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