Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Boeung Kak residents alarmed by newspaper calling their houses “ghost houses”, demand correction

Boeung Kak Lake residents protesting at Freedom Park (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)
26 Jan 2011
By S. Botum
The Free Press Magazine
Translated from Khmer by Soch
Click here to read the article in Khmer

At 8:20AM on Wednesday, about 70 residents of the Boeung Kak community, who are now involved in a land dispute with the Shukaku Inc. Co. belonging to CPP tycoon Lao Meng Khin, have gathered to protest in front of the pro-government newspaper Koh Santepheap. The residents demanded a correction by the newspaper which labeled their houses as “ghost houses without people living inside.”

A representative of the residents told The Free Press Magazine over the phone that: “Right now, we are standing in front of the office of Koh Santepheap newspaper, next to the Russian Hospital. We do not agree with the newspaper’s publication on Tuesday, reporting that all the houses in Boeung Kak area have been evacuated and the houses there are ‘ghost houses’ and ‘air houses.’ We disagree and we want a correction, these are not ‘ghost houses’, they are houses that people still live inside. They made mistakes upon mistakes, we demanded that they made a correction, but they kept on making additional mistakes instead.”


The land dispute between residents of the Boeung Kak community and the Shukaku Inc. – belonging to CPP Senator-Tycoon Lao Meng Khin – had dragged on for a long time, and the protesting residents have been met by confrontations with the company’s representatives and the government cops. Sometimes, the protesting residents are met with violent confrontation with armed cops, and some ended being arrested and jailed in order to discourage the other protesters. This matter is very sensitive and unfair. Pro-government newspapers provide only scant coverage of this issue, and they all blame the victimized residents by masquerading the truth.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The article was unprofessional written and it was intended to smear BeungKok's resident. The article should be retract and apologize should be made to the resident.

Anonymous said...

It's very sad to see the quality of newspaper wrote in Cambodia. Let alone from the correct information and facts, the spelling to vocabulary and grammar, are generally incorrectly used. Formal and informal, speaking and written Khmer language are very poorly expressed. Many new terms borrow from Pol pot era... They don't use the good style writing but repeating three or four times with an event.

So irresponsible and unethical conduct.

Anonymous said...

Why dose Dr. Hun Sen not afraid of killing ten thousands khmer lifes during K5, 1997 events and so on? but he does scare of Thai and viet. Can KI explain that please?

Why dose bad thing always happen to good people? But good things happen to bad people as Dr. Hun Sen families keep richer and more power and more girls. Why does God has not fair at all? Why, God? Why? Or is this God way?

Anonymous said...

Hun Sen is a political tool of Indochina Fediration to put Lao and Khmer under yuon yoke.

Anonymous said...

IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR CAMBODIAN TO STAND UP. USE THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE. WAKE UP KHMER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO LIVE UNDER ONE REGIME AND UNDER DICTATORSHIP HUN SEN.