Children sit around old petroleum barrels that are used to catch rain water in Cambodia's Trapeang Krasaing village, 05 June 2007. A year after one of the largest evictions from Phnom Penh since the Khmer Rouge evacuated the city in 1975, villagers banished to this shantytown, located 22 kms outside the capital, say life is increasingly miserable, as a development boom pushes more poor from their land.(AFP/File/Seth Meixner)
You Kong(L) spends her morning in the open with family members in Cambodia's Trapeang Krasaing village, 05 June 2007. A year after one of the largest evictions from Phnom Penh since the Khmer Rouge evacuated the city in 1975, villagers banished to this shantytown, located 22 kms outside the capital, say life is increasingly miserable, as a development boom pushes more poor from their land.(AFP/Seth Meixner)
A graphic map of Cambodian land concessions (AFP Graphic)Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Within sight of concrete watchtowers guarding the edge of the Royal Cambodia Phnom Penh country club, the Trapeang Krasaing shantytown rises out of a barren rice field. Hundreds of thatch and wood shacks sit amid crumbling paddy dams and grazing cattle.
TRAPEANG KRASAING, Cambodia (AFP) - Small ponds of trash-choked water, left over from near daily rains, flood the low-lying ground, putrefying in the heat underneath homes that resemble refugee hovels more than a permanent village.
One year ago authorities in the capital Phnom Penh pushed thousands from city slumland that had been earmarked for multi-million dollar developments.
The pre-dawn eviction to this remote site 22 kilometres (13 miles) away was one of the largest single forced moves from Phnom Penh since the Khmer Rouge evacuated the capital's population to the countryside after seizing power in 1975.
Many of those uprooted last June thought at the time that they had reached their lowest point in this new journey and that life would again settle into a hardscrabble, but comfortable routine.
However, broken promises of infrastructure and services have only heightened their sense of abandonment, some residents say.
"It's getting worse, the government has not helped us. There's no electric power, no drainage, no clean water -- people are getting sick," said Chan Bory, a 51-year-old tailor standing in what little shade her doorway had to offer.
On a small raised platform nailed to the side of her shack a mid-day meal of porridge and canned fish was cooking, its aroma mixing with the smell of oil and sewage creeping up from a black puddle underneath.
"Living here is a misery," she said.
Across Cambodia land values have tripled in little more than two years, and Phnom Penh's poor are being pushed by the thousands onto miserable settlements far outside the city.
The problem begins, rights groups say, when government officials sell off vast swathes of property to a growing host of private companies promising to develop the land.
Ironically, the roadside leading out to Trapeang Krasaing is lined with billboards advertising yet-to-be-built apartment blocks, condominiums or planned communities of tidy single-family homes.
"There is all of this luxury development going on and the poor people are being discarded," said one land rights advocate.
Many of those displaced -- refugees of one calamity or another, from fires to flood, drought or civil strife -- have lived for years on previously worthless real estate.
But the same land can now fetch millions.
Those legally entitled to their property are rarely fairly compensated, and there are very few avenues to fighting land grabs.
"There are lots of problems with how a community can challenge a (land) taking, lots of problems with compensation," said the rights advocate, who did not want to be named.
At the time of last year's eviction, government officials held Trapeang Krasaing up as a model of orderly relocation.
Those living in slums would be moved to spacious settlements and given a plot of land; schools would be built and life would improve away from the squalor.
That scheme fell apart almost immediately as people first refused to move, locked into a sometimes violent standoff with authorities.
When they were finally rousted, those who actually resettled were confronted with desolation, joblessness and corruption.
"There is nothing to do here. We do not have motorbikes, we are living far away from the workplace," said 46-year-old You Kong, who was sitting listlessly in the heat on a bamboo platform with several other women.
Of the more than 1,700 families originally living in Trapeang Krasaing, only some 400 remain, she said. Bare wood house frames sit sagging on water-logged squares of land that had been abandoned out of desperation and anger.
"Some people have sold their pieces of land and left the area because we cannot make business here," explained Chan Bory, the tailor, adding that many had simply returned to Phnom Penh and were homeless, sleeping in temples at night.
Rather than join this exodus, Chan Bory said she leveraged her land for a loan to buy food and other goods.
"We have no livelihood, there are no customers," she said, gesturing towards her unused sowing machine.
TRAPEANG KRASAING, Cambodia (AFP) - Small ponds of trash-choked water, left over from near daily rains, flood the low-lying ground, putrefying in the heat underneath homes that resemble refugee hovels more than a permanent village.
One year ago authorities in the capital Phnom Penh pushed thousands from city slumland that had been earmarked for multi-million dollar developments.
The pre-dawn eviction to this remote site 22 kilometres (13 miles) away was one of the largest single forced moves from Phnom Penh since the Khmer Rouge evacuated the capital's population to the countryside after seizing power in 1975.
Many of those uprooted last June thought at the time that they had reached their lowest point in this new journey and that life would again settle into a hardscrabble, but comfortable routine.
However, broken promises of infrastructure and services have only heightened their sense of abandonment, some residents say.
"It's getting worse, the government has not helped us. There's no electric power, no drainage, no clean water -- people are getting sick," said Chan Bory, a 51-year-old tailor standing in what little shade her doorway had to offer.
On a small raised platform nailed to the side of her shack a mid-day meal of porridge and canned fish was cooking, its aroma mixing with the smell of oil and sewage creeping up from a black puddle underneath.
"Living here is a misery," she said.
Across Cambodia land values have tripled in little more than two years, and Phnom Penh's poor are being pushed by the thousands onto miserable settlements far outside the city.
The problem begins, rights groups say, when government officials sell off vast swathes of property to a growing host of private companies promising to develop the land.
Ironically, the roadside leading out to Trapeang Krasaing is lined with billboards advertising yet-to-be-built apartment blocks, condominiums or planned communities of tidy single-family homes.
"There is all of this luxury development going on and the poor people are being discarded," said one land rights advocate.
Many of those displaced -- refugees of one calamity or another, from fires to flood, drought or civil strife -- have lived for years on previously worthless real estate.
But the same land can now fetch millions.
Those legally entitled to their property are rarely fairly compensated, and there are very few avenues to fighting land grabs.
"There are lots of problems with how a community can challenge a (land) taking, lots of problems with compensation," said the rights advocate, who did not want to be named.
At the time of last year's eviction, government officials held Trapeang Krasaing up as a model of orderly relocation.
Those living in slums would be moved to spacious settlements and given a plot of land; schools would be built and life would improve away from the squalor.
That scheme fell apart almost immediately as people first refused to move, locked into a sometimes violent standoff with authorities.
When they were finally rousted, those who actually resettled were confronted with desolation, joblessness and corruption.
"There is nothing to do here. We do not have motorbikes, we are living far away from the workplace," said 46-year-old You Kong, who was sitting listlessly in the heat on a bamboo platform with several other women.
Of the more than 1,700 families originally living in Trapeang Krasaing, only some 400 remain, she said. Bare wood house frames sit sagging on water-logged squares of land that had been abandoned out of desperation and anger.
"Some people have sold their pieces of land and left the area because we cannot make business here," explained Chan Bory, the tailor, adding that many had simply returned to Phnom Penh and were homeless, sleeping in temples at night.
Rather than join this exodus, Chan Bory said she leveraged her land for a loan to buy food and other goods.
"We have no livelihood, there are no customers," she said, gesturing towards her unused sowing machine.
2 comments:
We need to concede more lands for
development, and we must clear
all trees as required now, not
10-20 years from now.
11:30AM...go to work as your usual job SLAVE...dnt bark here
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