Chum Savoeun lives in a squatters shack in Anlong Kro Ngyan, outside the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. She is among the tens of thousands of poor residents forced out of the city by urban development. (Michael Sullivan/NPR)
In Phnom Penh's center, Boeng Kak Lake is being filled in to create a commercial and residential complex. Some boys use the site as a temporary soccer field near the Canadia Bank Tower, the city's tallest building. (Michael Sullivan/NPR)
A boy sits atop pipes that will be used to pump sand into the lake. (Michael Sullivan/NPR)February 22, 2009
By Michael Sullivan
National Public Radio (USA)
All Things Considered, February 21, 2009 · The tiny Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia is trying to put its grim, war-torn past behind it and — economically, at least — it's succeeding so far.
The economy grew at a record 9 percent in 2007 and would have done almost as well last year had the global financial slowdown not hit.
That growth has brought big changes to the capital, Phnom Penh.
Two years ago, there were just two cell-phone providers; now there are six. And the streets of the capital are now surprisingly clean, after the city hired a Canadian firm to keep them that way. There's a fresh coat of paint on Wat Phnom, in the heart of the city. And the steep stairs to the pagoda at the top have been repaired, too.
Most of the vendors and beggars have been removed from the park below Wat Phnom, but people can still buy a songbird to take up the stairs to release, for luck, if they make it to the top.
Across the street from Wat Phnom, there's a new playground that would look at home anywhere in the United States.
And while there's no Starbucks — not yet anyway — the Kentucky colonel has continued his march across Southeast Asia. Cambodia is the latest domino to fall; a gleaming new KFC has landed on Monivong Boulevard, just around the corner from the art deco central market. The market, too, is getting a makeover.
Phnom Penh has its first serious skyscraper, too: the 27-story Canadia Bank Tower. Workers are scrambling to finish the health club and restaurant on the 25th floor in time for a scheduled May opening.
"Every day," says architect and project manager Chea Vuthy, "we come to work and have the cleanest air. And nicest view in the city."
Below, the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Bassac rivers spread out to the east and the iconic Boeng Kak Lake to the west.
Chea Vuthy says it's a good thing for the city to have skyscrapers like this one, to help illustrate the pace of Cambodia's development. Ground has been broken on two more buildings that will be even taller.
But all this development comes at a price. Boeng Kak Lake, for example, is being filled in with sand to make way for a new, high-end commercial complex.
Be Pharon belongs to one of 4,000 families being evicted from their homes on the lake to allow for this new development. She says the $8,000 developers are offering for her one-room house won't even begin to pay for something comparable elsewhere in the city, where residential property can go for as much as $3,000 a square meter.
"Nobody wants to leave here," she says. "It's close to the school and the hospital. And if we accept the developer's offer and move, we'll have to go far away — farther from work, farther from school, farther from everything."
Choung Choug Ngy is the lawyer for the families being forced out. In Phnom Penh, he says, development is a synonym for eviction. He says the project planned doesn't benefit anyone but the investors.
He says he'll keep fighting until the families get a better settlement. But that's a risky proposition in a country where the rule of law often takes a back seat to the desires of those with power.
"Basically, the mindset is, they want to move these people out and they're going to do it any way they can do it — and if people don't accept the packages, they could find themselves with nothing," says Sara Colm, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Phnom Penh.
She says tens of thousands of urban poor have been forced out of town in the past five years, and that makes life very difficult for them.
Anlong Kro Ngyan is one of those faraway places outside the city limits. It's a place where there's no electricity and no running water.
But it's a place Chum Savoeun calls home. She and her neighbors were among the first batch of squatters forced from the city center a few years back after a suspicious fire gutted their homes. Bulldozers moved in a few days later to clear the land for development.
Chum Savoeun and her neighbors were brought to Anlong Kro Ngyan and given small plots of land to build on.
"Things quickly turned bad," she says, after her husband got sick with HIV. She was forced to sell their small plot to pay his hospital bill. He died not long ago, and now she finds herself a squatter among former squatters – and HIV positive herself, with three small children to feed. She supports the family by picking morning glory — a kind of water spinach — from a nearby lake and selling it to her neighbors, for about a dollar a day.
Chum Savoeun's biggest fear, she says, is getting kicked out again and forced to move even farther out — as the city continues to expand. Things will be much harder then, she says, but there's nothing she can do but wait.
The economy grew at a record 9 percent in 2007 and would have done almost as well last year had the global financial slowdown not hit.
That growth has brought big changes to the capital, Phnom Penh.
Two years ago, there were just two cell-phone providers; now there are six. And the streets of the capital are now surprisingly clean, after the city hired a Canadian firm to keep them that way. There's a fresh coat of paint on Wat Phnom, in the heart of the city. And the steep stairs to the pagoda at the top have been repaired, too.
Most of the vendors and beggars have been removed from the park below Wat Phnom, but people can still buy a songbird to take up the stairs to release, for luck, if they make it to the top.
Across the street from Wat Phnom, there's a new playground that would look at home anywhere in the United States.
And while there's no Starbucks — not yet anyway — the Kentucky colonel has continued his march across Southeast Asia. Cambodia is the latest domino to fall; a gleaming new KFC has landed on Monivong Boulevard, just around the corner from the art deco central market. The market, too, is getting a makeover.
Phnom Penh has its first serious skyscraper, too: the 27-story Canadia Bank Tower. Workers are scrambling to finish the health club and restaurant on the 25th floor in time for a scheduled May opening.
"Every day," says architect and project manager Chea Vuthy, "we come to work and have the cleanest air. And nicest view in the city."
Below, the Mekong, Tonle Sap and Bassac rivers spread out to the east and the iconic Boeng Kak Lake to the west.
Chea Vuthy says it's a good thing for the city to have skyscrapers like this one, to help illustrate the pace of Cambodia's development. Ground has been broken on two more buildings that will be even taller.
But all this development comes at a price. Boeng Kak Lake, for example, is being filled in with sand to make way for a new, high-end commercial complex.
Be Pharon belongs to one of 4,000 families being evicted from their homes on the lake to allow for this new development. She says the $8,000 developers are offering for her one-room house won't even begin to pay for something comparable elsewhere in the city, where residential property can go for as much as $3,000 a square meter.
"Nobody wants to leave here," she says. "It's close to the school and the hospital. And if we accept the developer's offer and move, we'll have to go far away — farther from work, farther from school, farther from everything."
Choung Choug Ngy is the lawyer for the families being forced out. In Phnom Penh, he says, development is a synonym for eviction. He says the project planned doesn't benefit anyone but the investors.
He says he'll keep fighting until the families get a better settlement. But that's a risky proposition in a country where the rule of law often takes a back seat to the desires of those with power.
"Basically, the mindset is, they want to move these people out and they're going to do it any way they can do it — and if people don't accept the packages, they could find themselves with nothing," says Sara Colm, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Phnom Penh.
She says tens of thousands of urban poor have been forced out of town in the past five years, and that makes life very difficult for them.
Anlong Kro Ngyan is one of those faraway places outside the city limits. It's a place where there's no electricity and no running water.
But it's a place Chum Savoeun calls home. She and her neighbors were among the first batch of squatters forced from the city center a few years back after a suspicious fire gutted their homes. Bulldozers moved in a few days later to clear the land for development.
Chum Savoeun and her neighbors were brought to Anlong Kro Ngyan and given small plots of land to build on.
"Things quickly turned bad," she says, after her husband got sick with HIV. She was forced to sell their small plot to pay his hospital bill. He died not long ago, and now she finds herself a squatter among former squatters – and HIV positive herself, with three small children to feed. She supports the family by picking morning glory — a kind of water spinach — from a nearby lake and selling it to her neighbors, for about a dollar a day.
Chum Savoeun's biggest fear, she says, is getting kicked out again and forced to move even farther out — as the city continues to expand. Things will be much harder then, she says, but there's nothing she can do but wait.
4 comments:
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL, Feb 23 (Reuters) - North Korea, which has warned the Korean peninsula is on the brink of war, has deployed new missiles to hit more parts of Asia and improved its ability to attack the South, a South Korean defence paper said on Monday.
The isolated North could also test-fire by the end of this month its longest-range missile, which is designed to strike U.S. territory but has never successfully flown, a leading defence analyst said at the weekend.
South Korea's Defence White Paper said the North had deployed a new mid-range missile that can travel up to 3,000 km (1,865 miles) to hit all of its rival Japan and threaten U.S. military bases in Guam.
The North already has hundreds of rudimentary ballistic missiles that could hit all of South Korea and most of Japan, the Seoul government has said. [ID:nSEO315320]
"North Korea's conventional force, its development and reinforcement of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons and missiles, and the forward deployment of its troops are a direct and serious threat to our security," the paper said.
The biannual paper said the North, which has 1.19 million troops, had increased the number of its special warfare soldiers by 60,000 to now total 180,000 while modernising its light infantry to improve its strike force pointed at the South.
The paper said the reclusive state had produced about 40 kg (88 lb) of plutonium. Experts said that would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons.
Proliferation experts have said the North, which tested a nuclear device in 2006, does not have the technology to make a nuclear weapon small enough to mount as a warhead.
South Korean officials have said they were worried the North may also try to escalate tension by firing short-range missiles towards a disputed Yellow Sea border with the South off the west coast of the peninsula that has been the scene of deadly naval conflicts between the rival Koreas.
SOUTH KOREA ALSO HEAVILY ARMED
Analysts do not think the impoverished North will risk a larger conflict because its antiquated but massive military would be no match for South Korea with 670,000 troops and its powerful U.S. ally, which positions about 28,000 soldiers in the South.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned the prickly North during a visit to Seoul last Friday not to make any provocative moves, to stop taunting its southern neighbour and return to sputtering international nuclear disarmament talks.
But on Monday, the North's official media unleashed more insults by calling South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's government a group of "political charlatans" and warned again that war was imminent.
Analysts have said the North, which for years has used its military threat to squeeze concessions out of global powers, may feel it can improve its bargaining position over the long term with the new U.S. government by making provocative moves early in its term.
In a news release at the weekend, Joseph Bermudez, a leading analyst with Jane's Defence Weekly, said recent satellite imagery showed North Korea could be ready for the launch of its longest-range missile within a matter of days.
If the launch is successful, North Korea will have a missile with a maximum estimated range of 6,700 km (4,200 miles), designed to carry a nuclear warhead that could hit U.S. territory, although not the contiguous 48 states.
This would, for the first time, pose a direct security threat by the North to the United States.
(Additional reporting by Kim Junghyun; Editing by Nick Macfie and Dean Yates)
why are people from the countryside keep moving to phnom penh, then demand compensation for their relocation? these aren't original phnom penh people. they look like they just came from the provinces. hello!
www.khmer-heroes.blogspot.com/
YOUN burn khmer alive...
If you voted for CPP (Cambodian People's Party):
Also known as:
Communist People's Party
Khmer Rouge People's Party
Khmer Krorhorm People's Party
You're support the killing of 1.7 million Khmer peoples.
You're support the killing of innocent men, women and children in Cambodia on March 30, 1997.
You're support murder of Piseth Pilika.
You're support assassination of journalists in Cambodia.
You're support political assassination and killing.
You're support attemted assassination and murder of leader of the free trade union in Cambodia.
You're support corruption in Cambodia.
You're support Hun Sen Regime burn poor people's house down to the ground and leave them homeless.
These are the Trade Mark of Hun Sen Regime.
Hun Sen, Chea Sim and Heng Samrin are Khmer Rouge commanders.
When is the ECCC going to bring these three criminals to U.N. Khmer Rouge Trail?
Khmer Rouge Regime is a genocide organization.
Hun Sen Regime is a terrorist organization.
Hun Sen Bodyguards is a terrorist organization.
Hun Sen Death Squad is a terrorist organization.
Cambodian People's Party is a terrorist organization.
I have declare the current Cambodian government which is lead by the Cambodian People's Party as a terrorist organization.
Whoever associate with the current Cambodian government are associate with a terrorist organization.
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