By JOEL BRINKLEY
McClatchy-Tribune News Service (USA)
Well past the city limits, beyond the sign that says "Bon Voyage; See You Again," after the paved roads end, down a rutted dirt track, Un Thea sits in the mud outside her shanty house, peeling bamboo shoots - and seething.
Two years ago, soldiers and police showed up in the middle of the night to throw her family and more than 1,000 others out of their homes on a plot in central Phnom Penh. The soldiers torched the crude houses before Un and the others had time even to retrieve their meager belongings. Then all of the residents were herded onto buses and ferried out here, about 15 miles away, and dumped in a rice paddy without so much as a bottle of water or a tarp for cover.
Then the soldiers left - though a few stayed behind to turn away the aid groups that came out to drop off emergency rations. Un's case is among several thousands more or less similar land seizures across Cambodia in the last three years.
"Out here, it is hard making business," Un complains with considerable understatement. She is 25 but already looks decades older. "They dumped us here and gave us no money, no land title. Nothing."
Cambodia is a democracy. The modern state grew out of a U.N. peace conference in 1991 intended to create a free nation from the rubble the Khmer Rouge left behind. Since then, the government has purported to manage the country according to the rule of law.
Every democratic country, including the United States, fails at times to live up to its democratic ideals. But the cruelty the Cambodian government visits upon its weakest citizens can be breathtaking. You expect this in North Korea, or Zimbabwe. But Cambodia? In late July Cambodians voted in national elections that were generally peaceful with scattered complaints. Government leaders tolerate human rights groups that regularly castigate them and, within limits, critical stories in the news media.
Still, stories like Un's can overwhelm the positive developments here.
Chum Bon Rong is secretary of state in the National Land Authority, which is supposed to arbitrate land disputes like the Andoung case. Last week he told me that his agency has received more than 3,000 land-seizure appeals in the last two and one-half years. Of those, he acknowledged, only about 50 have been judged in favor of plaintiffs, the impoverished people whose land was seized. Even among those 50, he acknowledged with a rueful grin, "sometimes the cases disappear" after referral to another agency that is supposed to implement the Land Authority's findings.
In 2001, under pressure from the West, Cambodia enacted a Land Law that was supposed to set clear rules for property disputes. Seven years later, the government has yet to write the regulations implementing that law. Meantime, the seizures continue unabated. Phnom Penh is booming, and when a developer spots a choice piece of land, he simply pays off the proper official to win a newly minted land title. All that's left is rid the property of its pesky residents - almost always poor, uneducated people like Un.
Once the residents have been disposed of, they are forgotten. Licadho, a local human rights group, noted in a new report that Un and the others dumped out here suffer from "malnutrition, typhoid, dengue fever, hepatitis A or B, hypertension, respiratory tract infections, gastro-intestinal illnesses including stress-related ulcers, depression," and last in this litany, "anger management problems." Um and her husband built a one-room shelter on stilts from scrap wood, bamboo matting and plastic tarps. Ten people now live in and under the house. She has no electricity or running water. No one in this community has a phone; there's not a single toilet.
"We have to buy water from the water seller," she says, nodding toward an earthen cistern beside the house. Mosquito larvae seem to roil the water surface. Tacked to her shelter's front wall, a poster warns of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne illness.
Um says she can make about 5,000 riel selling her peeled bamboo shoots at market. That's $1.22. She sends her young sons into Phnom Penh "to shine shoes for the people. They go and stay for a month."
A few months ago, the United Nations issued a report saying the government here always "tilts in favor of businesses" that want to develop land, "pitting poor farmers against developers." Even though his own agency's numbers show the very same thing, Chum says complaints like that from abroad are "a case of propaganda."
Two years ago, soldiers and police showed up in the middle of the night to throw her family and more than 1,000 others out of their homes on a plot in central Phnom Penh. The soldiers torched the crude houses before Un and the others had time even to retrieve their meager belongings. Then all of the residents were herded onto buses and ferried out here, about 15 miles away, and dumped in a rice paddy without so much as a bottle of water or a tarp for cover.
Then the soldiers left - though a few stayed behind to turn away the aid groups that came out to drop off emergency rations. Un's case is among several thousands more or less similar land seizures across Cambodia in the last three years.
"Out here, it is hard making business," Un complains with considerable understatement. She is 25 but already looks decades older. "They dumped us here and gave us no money, no land title. Nothing."
Cambodia is a democracy. The modern state grew out of a U.N. peace conference in 1991 intended to create a free nation from the rubble the Khmer Rouge left behind. Since then, the government has purported to manage the country according to the rule of law.
Every democratic country, including the United States, fails at times to live up to its democratic ideals. But the cruelty the Cambodian government visits upon its weakest citizens can be breathtaking. You expect this in North Korea, or Zimbabwe. But Cambodia? In late July Cambodians voted in national elections that were generally peaceful with scattered complaints. Government leaders tolerate human rights groups that regularly castigate them and, within limits, critical stories in the news media.
Still, stories like Un's can overwhelm the positive developments here.
Chum Bon Rong is secretary of state in the National Land Authority, which is supposed to arbitrate land disputes like the Andoung case. Last week he told me that his agency has received more than 3,000 land-seizure appeals in the last two and one-half years. Of those, he acknowledged, only about 50 have been judged in favor of plaintiffs, the impoverished people whose land was seized. Even among those 50, he acknowledged with a rueful grin, "sometimes the cases disappear" after referral to another agency that is supposed to implement the Land Authority's findings.
In 2001, under pressure from the West, Cambodia enacted a Land Law that was supposed to set clear rules for property disputes. Seven years later, the government has yet to write the regulations implementing that law. Meantime, the seizures continue unabated. Phnom Penh is booming, and when a developer spots a choice piece of land, he simply pays off the proper official to win a newly minted land title. All that's left is rid the property of its pesky residents - almost always poor, uneducated people like Un.
Once the residents have been disposed of, they are forgotten. Licadho, a local human rights group, noted in a new report that Un and the others dumped out here suffer from "malnutrition, typhoid, dengue fever, hepatitis A or B, hypertension, respiratory tract infections, gastro-intestinal illnesses including stress-related ulcers, depression," and last in this litany, "anger management problems." Um and her husband built a one-room shelter on stilts from scrap wood, bamboo matting and plastic tarps. Ten people now live in and under the house. She has no electricity or running water. No one in this community has a phone; there's not a single toilet.
"We have to buy water from the water seller," she says, nodding toward an earthen cistern beside the house. Mosquito larvae seem to roil the water surface. Tacked to her shelter's front wall, a poster warns of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne illness.
Um says she can make about 5,000 riel selling her peeled bamboo shoots at market. That's $1.22. She sends her young sons into Phnom Penh "to shine shoes for the people. They go and stay for a month."
A few months ago, the United Nations issued a report saying the government here always "tilts in favor of businesses" that want to develop land, "pitting poor farmers against developers." Even though his own agency's numbers show the very same thing, Chum says complaints like that from abroad are "a case of propaganda."
10 comments:
It would be nice to read this reports without the highlights put in by whoever posted it. Let readers form their own opinion.
I remember this vividly when the Khmer Rouge blind folded my whole family, put us in a truck and dumped us in the rice field.
This evictions is the same tactic that the Khmer Rouge use during their era.
Does this government plan to push its own people up the hills like when the Thais and the Laos pushed the Hmong up the highlands?
There is not enough hills in Cambodia to shelter these poor folks, then will they have to climb and live on trees?
So what is their option?
well you got to understand if these evicted people and the Cambodian people want to help stop these evictions they can but they have chosen it...to live this way, they voted for the party of the evictors-CPP....they asked for it...it's about time that these people stop crying.....
These people who have been crying did not have time to go vote. They were busy making money, working on the farm or finding food for children. I was there during the election.
Most people who went to vote had some food to eat (even they are still poor.) or they are belong to CPP. If people like these in the article went to vote, they voted for SRP or HRP.
No matter what, the CPP win the election anyway.
You know.
those who vote for cpp are vietmanmese or cambodian with youn brain only.
Yes someone here is absolutely correct about the root of the problem - the way Khmer people select their leadership.
Khmer people have not shaken loose from the centuries-old belief of "good karma" vs. "bad karma", and continue to accept the status quo, and leave their liberty into the hands of whoever happens to be at the control.
The challenge for all Khmers is how do we instill in our people's mind and soul the value of individual rights and liberty!
You are SOLD based on several basis:
-Your leaders have sold you and your nation to linger to the power no matter how consequences the leaders will bring: Like the matter of Preah Vihear, the leaders sold the Nation for winning the election and the leaders are of no suspicion SELL THE TEMPLE TO SIAM FOR THEIR POWER. Joint Venture recently proposed by Cambodian government is manifest enough to prove that the current leaders SOLD THE NATION TO SIAM TO HAVE A LANDSLIDE VICTORY OVER THE ELECTION, YET GIVING CONCESSION TO SIAM. IT'S THE ACT OF TREASON, NO DOUBT ABOUT IT!!!
-Not only the temple has been sold, but Khmer will have to LOSE MORE AND MORE LAND regarding the declaring the disputed areas with Siam or YOUN the "white-zone"or "NO-man zone". You see the incident with the military standoff between Siam. It's the clearly proven example already. And when the leaders like leaders nowaday,least-concerned not committed, too-high self-pride and short-sighted vision of leadership, care least about setting up clean and healthy foundation for the nation; and least responsible and disciplined then the neighboring countries will never give up their evil plans and intention to SWALLOW THIS POOR NATION!!!!!!
WHAT CAN CAMBODIA SAY AND DO????
Bandit A Char Knoy
Guess any SRP leaders helped them to settle down???? Sometimes because there has had no strong, committed opposition party, USUALLY FLIP FLOP LIKE THE CIPIPI, so people see no advantages whether someone else can do or will do any better, BUT TO DEAL WITH THEIR EMPTY STOMACH. TO SOLVE: One must stay by their side, say not by financial all the time but the spirit(NOT FLIP FLOP SPIRTI) and the assistance on healthcare, perhaps sometimes providing food and consistent manner DO THE BEST YOU CAN TO DISTINGUISH YOURSELF FROM THE CIPIPI AND LET THE PEOPLE FEEL THE EFFORT AND CARE YOU OFFER THEM!!!!
AGAIN NOT FLIP FLOP METHODS. CONSISTENCE AND GOOD WILL WILL SHED LIGHT AND BRING ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES!!!!!
Khmer
Post a Comment