Land Robbery in Disguise: More Than 20 Families Forced From Homes

Friday, February 22, 2008
Editorial by Khmerization
Originally posted at http://khmerization.blogspot.com/

"Prime Minister Hun Sen has publicly declared that his government has genuine political will to lift the living standard of the Khmer people and to alleviate, and possibly eliminate, poverty, but developments in a fashion of “robbing from the poor to give to the rich” will cause the El Nino Effect- creating more poverty. Mr Hun Sen would like to think that he is the Robin Hood of Cambodia, but the fact is that he is the “Robber Hood” of Cambodia."

I am baffled with the fact that the Hun Sen government, in the name of development, has continued to forcibly evict people from their homes without adequately compensating them (click here to read the article). Using development as a pretext, the authorities with vested interests, often working for powerful people and corrupt companies, have carried out numerous brutal and inhuman evictions of the powerless and the defenceless people. I have said before that if a member of parliament (Son Chhay) can be forced to sell his land at peanut price, what chance do the poor and the defenceless has to defend their lands?

Time and again, it has been proven that the authorities, without regard for human rights and human dignity, continued the evictions regardless of the outcry from the international human rights groups such as Amnesty International. Evictions and land confiscations, often carried out due to the connivance between corrupt officials and greedy developers, are in fact land robbery in disguise. Often, the confiscated lands are re-sold to developers and those corrupt officials, not the state treasury, would pocket the proceeds. Land confiscations were often carried out at the order of government officials at the highest level of the Cambodian leadership. Using the name of rich and powerful businesspeople such as the Phanpimex company, Yeay Phu and Sok Kong, as a front many corrupt leaders the like of Sok An, and possibly Hun Sen himself, owned large vast areas of high prime real estate concessions in the capital Phnom Penh, Angkor-Siem Reap, Sihanoukville and Bokor. These kinds of corrupt actions and behaviours must stop.

I believe, and many of my Khmer compatriots would have agreed with me, that Cambodia needs development and it needed it badly. But development must go hand in hand with regard to the respect for human rights and human dignity. The process of development must be transparent and the poor and the needy must reap real benefits, not the corrupt officials and the developers.

What we are seeing today is that developments, carried out under the auspicious of Mr Hun Sen’s government, have been used as a front for land robbery and proceeded with no sight of real benefits being passed on to the poor and the needy. Instead they have become the victims of these sham developments, as many of them have been brutally forced out of their lands. These kinds of developments, not only that they didn’t help the poor and the needy but instead, would push them deep further and further into poverty.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has publicly declared that his government has genuine political will to lift the living standard of the Khmer people and to alleviate, and possibly eliminate, poverty, but developments in a fashion of “robbing from the poor to give to the rich” will cause the El Nino Effect- creating more poverty. Mr Hun Sen would like to think that he is the Robin Hood of Cambodia, but the fact is that he is the “Robber Hood” of Cambodia.