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| Children of the jailed 15 (14 of them are women) residents of Boeung Kak Lake squatter settlement in Phnom Penh, protest in front of the Ministry of Justice on June 31. The placards held by the children call for the release eof their mothers and grandmothers. |
Thursday, June 7, 2012
This article and petition was prepared by a group of young Cambodian women activists.
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Evictions and forcible confiscations of land ranks as one of Cambodia's most pervasive human rights problems, and in fact is growing worse. Such actions, coupled with total impunity and a lack of the rule of law, are leading to violence fuelled by deep dissatisfaction over existing resettlement schemes. This in turn leads to violent responses by companies, the authorities and the law enforcement agencies.
Without going back through the decades of land conflict history, this year alone marks a very worrying trend of worsening human rights violations associated with land conflicts, of which the following are some prominent examples:
* On January 3, many families still residing in Borei Keila were forcibly evicted from their homes by a combined force of more than 100 police officials, military police, company employees and security guards. More than 200 homes were demolished.
The combined force also clashed violently with members of the community. Some police and community members were reportedly injured, while some residents were later arrested and detained by the police.
Sadly, On May 14, a nine-month-old baby died in Kuntha Bopha hospital, where he had been taken after suffering from diarrhoea and fever since his family was forcibly evicted from Borei Keila. The boy, Chan Samnang, fell ill as a direct result of wretched living conditions -- including a lack of appropriate shelter, food and services in the Srah Po resettlement site.
