Protest against land grabbing in Sambok Chab village located in Phnom Penh. (Photo: Koh Santepheap, a pro-government newspaper)Cambodia - The Great Land Scam
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Imagine how you’d feel if you woke up one day to find out the land you thought you owned had been sold to someone else while you slept.
That’s what’s happening right now to hundreds of thousands of Cambodians.
Reporter Eric Campbell investigates the great Cambodian land scam – the wholesale selling off of huge parcels of valuable land, much of it waterfront, by corrupt government officials to private property developers.
As Eric finds out, for the most part, there’s nothing the ripped off residents can do about it.
“It’s just like in Pol Pot’s time,” says one woman facing eviction from the home she’s lived in for ten years. “This is a war about land.”
Last year Australian government bought a block of prime land right next door to one of the slum villages facing eviction, as the site for a new embassy. The vendor was a wealthy Australian Cambodian who has in the past been involved in significant evictions with the assistance of police and security officials.
Human rights groups are angry that the Australian government has not publicly condemned the evictions, particularly in light of Australia’s considerable financial support for Cambodia.
The US is more outspoken, with the American Ambassador in Phnom Penh, Joseph Mussomeli telling Foreign Correspondent: “There’s too many land disputes, too many rich people, greedy companies. Property is really the key to prosperity and freedom and once people are not secure in what they own, everything else falls apart.”
Cambodians are too frightened to say it publicly, but the extended family of the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, and a network of his close associates, are said to be some of the prime beneficiaries of the land grabs.
That’s what’s happening right now to hundreds of thousands of Cambodians.
Reporter Eric Campbell investigates the great Cambodian land scam – the wholesale selling off of huge parcels of valuable land, much of it waterfront, by corrupt government officials to private property developers.
As Eric finds out, for the most part, there’s nothing the ripped off residents can do about it.
“It’s just like in Pol Pot’s time,” says one woman facing eviction from the home she’s lived in for ten years. “This is a war about land.”
Last year Australian government bought a block of prime land right next door to one of the slum villages facing eviction, as the site for a new embassy. The vendor was a wealthy Australian Cambodian who has in the past been involved in significant evictions with the assistance of police and security officials.
Human rights groups are angry that the Australian government has not publicly condemned the evictions, particularly in light of Australia’s considerable financial support for Cambodia.
The US is more outspoken, with the American Ambassador in Phnom Penh, Joseph Mussomeli telling Foreign Correspondent: “There’s too many land disputes, too many rich people, greedy companies. Property is really the key to prosperity and freedom and once people are not secure in what they own, everything else falls apart.”
Cambodians are too frightened to say it publicly, but the extended family of the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, and a network of his close associates, are said to be some of the prime beneficiaries of the land grabs.
4 comments:
It is nice to know a new Australian embassy in Cambodia is to be built on blood and tears of the evicted.
SiS
When did Hun Sen get his real estate liscene? and does he already have his broker liscene too? Cambodia is a big real estate.
Oh my poor Khmer people! When will you be released from the bondage of AH HUN SEN?
Let my people go now!
He get his licent from UNTAC,Funcipec, and Sihanouk!
So thatis Ok he can sell cambodia!
It may be from you too! if you are not boycut the election!
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