Be it ever so humble (Photo: Reuters)Jan 29th 2009
PHNOM PENH
The Economist
THE fading colonial charm of the French-built Renakse Hotel in Phnom Penh has faded for good. The last guests have been pushed out and the windows boarded up. A property boom in the Cambodian capital has brought a whirl of demolition of old buildings, plans for new high-rise developments, and speculative investment in satellite towns.
The victims of this have been Phnom Penh’s poor. Last week police and private security guards roughly evicted 120 families from Dey Krahorm, a slum in the centre of the city, on the orders of Phnom Penh’s governor. The firm developing the area, 7NG, is linked to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, the CPP, led by Hun Sen, the prime minister. The company plans to turn the site into an upmarket retail park. Nearby, a famous park area known as the Boeung Kak lake is also to be developed, bringing the eviction of 4,500 residents. Many had been living around the lake for 20 years. They have been offered only paltry compensation, and have been relocated to the city’s outskirts with no amenities or obvious way of making a living.
The controversial plans involve filling in 90% of the lake. The CPP has ditched past commitments to conservation and environmental protection, as the boom has driven prime-land prices in Phnom Penh up tenfold in two years, to $5,000 per square metre. The municipal government has granted a 99-year lease on 133 hectares (330 acres) of the Boeung Kak site to a CPP senator, Lao Meng Khin, who is also a director of a company called Shukaku, for a mere $79m—a fraction of its estimated true market value. In April 2008 Mr Khin signed a deal with a Chinese company to turn the lake area into a posh residential and recreation development, to be dubbed the “New City of the East”. A Korean company is building a similar city, known as CamKo, on Phnom Penh’s outskirts.
Critics say the Boeung Kak deal is illegal. Cambodia’s 2001 land law declares all lakes public property that cannot be leased for more than 15 years. The authorities say the deal was legalised by a 2008 decree from Mr Hun Sen’s cabinet, reclassifying “state-public land” as “state-private land”.
Mok Mareth, the environment minister, initially raised concerns that filling in the lake would do serious damage to Phnom Penh’s drainage system. This, he argued, would violate a 1996 law ordaining that Cambodia’s natural resources should be conserved, developed, managed and used in a rational and sustainable manner.
Indeed, since August 2008 when developers started filling the lake in, some houses have already started sinking. An independent report released earlier this month by an Australian assessment team gave a strong warning against the project. It concluded it would lead to an increase in flooding, and would endanger water quality and public health.
Two decades ago, children paddled boats on the lake, families enjoyed picnics, and Mr Hun Sen used to entertain foreign visitors at a modest but picturesque bamboo restaurant. But today, as the bulldozers are poised to raze old Phnom Penh and plug its favourite lake, the urban poor are starting to feel nostalgic for a time when a park really was a park and not a so-called “state-private development zone”.
The victims of this have been Phnom Penh’s poor. Last week police and private security guards roughly evicted 120 families from Dey Krahorm, a slum in the centre of the city, on the orders of Phnom Penh’s governor. The firm developing the area, 7NG, is linked to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, the CPP, led by Hun Sen, the prime minister. The company plans to turn the site into an upmarket retail park. Nearby, a famous park area known as the Boeung Kak lake is also to be developed, bringing the eviction of 4,500 residents. Many had been living around the lake for 20 years. They have been offered only paltry compensation, and have been relocated to the city’s outskirts with no amenities or obvious way of making a living.
The controversial plans involve filling in 90% of the lake. The CPP has ditched past commitments to conservation and environmental protection, as the boom has driven prime-land prices in Phnom Penh up tenfold in two years, to $5,000 per square metre. The municipal government has granted a 99-year lease on 133 hectares (330 acres) of the Boeung Kak site to a CPP senator, Lao Meng Khin, who is also a director of a company called Shukaku, for a mere $79m—a fraction of its estimated true market value. In April 2008 Mr Khin signed a deal with a Chinese company to turn the lake area into a posh residential and recreation development, to be dubbed the “New City of the East”. A Korean company is building a similar city, known as CamKo, on Phnom Penh’s outskirts.
Critics say the Boeung Kak deal is illegal. Cambodia’s 2001 land law declares all lakes public property that cannot be leased for more than 15 years. The authorities say the deal was legalised by a 2008 decree from Mr Hun Sen’s cabinet, reclassifying “state-public land” as “state-private land”.
Mok Mareth, the environment minister, initially raised concerns that filling in the lake would do serious damage to Phnom Penh’s drainage system. This, he argued, would violate a 1996 law ordaining that Cambodia’s natural resources should be conserved, developed, managed and used in a rational and sustainable manner.
Indeed, since August 2008 when developers started filling the lake in, some houses have already started sinking. An independent report released earlier this month by an Australian assessment team gave a strong warning against the project. It concluded it would lead to an increase in flooding, and would endanger water quality and public health.
Two decades ago, children paddled boats on the lake, families enjoyed picnics, and Mr Hun Sen used to entertain foreign visitors at a modest but picturesque bamboo restaurant. But today, as the bulldozers are poised to raze old Phnom Penh and plug its favourite lake, the urban poor are starting to feel nostalgic for a time when a park really was a park and not a so-called “state-private development zone”.
13 comments:
What did they (Dey Krahorm) think who they are?
These are all the consequences that the resident had been belived a bunch of prick that promise to help them, to get more compensation, to get them live in better life, to live like ****shit, to live like what called a hopelessness.
It's not their fault. Otherwise, a bunch of fucking prick who they were depended on.
Those pricks are fucking liars.
Those pricks have used the resident as political experiment.
All of them voted for the CPP, according to the radio I listened.
I can't blame the CPP and their gangsters-turned-Okhnas for this.
Now these people are crying at Mam Sonando's door begging for rice. Then when comes another election, they will vote for the CPP again. There are two types of people: People who love pain and people who hate pain. And Khmer is race of pain lovers. Yet, they think they are so smart now, no politicians or leaders, can ever trick them again.
This is one of the reasons that they, the government pretending to be blind about education. They don’t want to promote education.
They’re not that of a different from Sihanouk, don’t want anyone above them. They want to make sure people are totally under their grips.
People will stand up, revolt then threatening their power if they understand more about democracy and corrupt systems.
Education is a big gap in Cambodia which lack of further vision for democracy. It seems like a frog in a deep fountain that can’t see far-way.
Prince Monireth once said: I don't want people to be too educated because if they were it'd be so hard to control them.
It was the educated class who dumped him eventually. So, Monireth was not wrong.
I meant It was the educated class who dumped Sihanouk.
Hun Sen is a rice paddy nigger
Property Boom? What is Ah Jkout (Heng Soy) talking about? Just look at the picture? Would you buy a house in an area that look like that?
yes, i would buy the land at 200k each family. if not for the boom, why did 7ng want to ripp them off in the first place ?
people vote 90 seats for CPP. Pls let everything go smooth. People enjoy selling of land, inflation more than 20% and GDP more than 10%.
Ye,Ye
7:05, 7NG got the know-how to make it boom. It doesn't happened by itself.
Since the new beginning, even the poorest and most stupid Cambodian could easily recognize that the land value of Dey krahom would be astronomically high in the future. That is why those POOR and LAZY people went over and illegal occupied the land. The government was wrong to tolerate those people in the first place. Right now, I am happy that the governemnt has gotten rid of those people and reclaimed the land for better use.
actually 70% of people in the tonle bassac area (Dey Krahorm) were wiped from the electoral register 'by accident' by NEC (who are owned by govt) along with another 60,000 Khmers who were thought to be CPP opposition so Dey Krahorm never voted CPP. I was election monitor. The govt keep the good people down in Cambodia.I
Who care? even if we give you 200,000 credit, you still lost by light years.
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