Court Detains Two More Land Activists

Yorm Bopha (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

Tim Sakmony (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

Protesters from both neighborhoods gathered in front of the Phnom Penh court on Wednesday to demand the release of the three.

06 September 2012

Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer

PHNOM PENH - Phnom Penh Municipal Court is holding two more land protesters, following the detention of one woman on Tuesday.

The two activists, from the Borei Keila neighborhood, were detained after they appeared for questioning at the court Wednesday.

Am Sam Ath, lead investigator for the rights group Licadho, said the courts detained Tim Sak Mony, an activist from the neighborhood, and Top Kim Hong, the former village chief of Borei Keila.

Tim Sak Mony is being held for allegedly inciting violence during a protest, and Top Kim Hong is being held on charges related to corruption.

Am Sam Ath said the arrests appeared to be “unfair” and aimed at reducing protests against the development company, Phanimex.

Broken promise spurs protest

Thirty-seven-year old Borei Keila resident Kin Thyda, who has already received replacement housing, yesterday visits members of her family who have not received compensation or a unit in one of the eight apartment buildings constructed by the Phanimex company. Photo by: Heng Chivoan

Saor Sreypav, 36, a Borei Keila resident who is still awaiting replacement housing, looks out over the community yesterday. Photo by: Heng Chivoan

Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Mom Kunthear
The Phnom Penh Post

Another chapter in the long-running land dispute between development firm Phanimex Company and the Borei Keila community unfolded yesterday as 70 residents once again called on the district governor and Prime Minister Hun Sen to intervene on their behalf.

At the heart of the dispute is a broken promise that has left 384 families without a home. In 2003, Phanimex told villagers being displaced by their development site that they would build 10 apartment buildings to house them on two hectares in Borei Keila. Eight years later, residents are still waiting on the final two buildings.

“The residents protest to demand only the houses that the company promised to give us, but if the company does not give us homes, we will develop on the site. Don’t kick us out from this place,” said community resident Sor Sorn. “We are so scared that we will be moved to another place that is far from the capital.”

Cambodia’s AIDS colony

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
By Mong Palatino
Global Voices Online

Various human rights groups have accused the Cambodian government of setting up a de facto AIDS colony when it resettled 40 families with HIV and AIDS to a village 25 kilometers outside Phnom Penh City.

The families were from Borei Keila in Phnom Penh. They were evicted from their homes to make way for an urban development plan of the government. The families are now living in Tuol Sambo village.

The families are complaining of their situation in the “AIDS village”:

With inadequate sanitation and no running water, the area is not a health sanctuary for HIV-infected patients, who require personal attention and care.

HIV-infected people living in the village say they have not received any official recognition of ownership rights nor government compensation for their old homes.

Details are Sketchy wants to find out the responsible authority for this drastic move:

Who is responsible for this decision? The media should find out. And prosecutors should start preparing a case. Because it’s all but certain that at least one of those 40 HIV-positive people will die as a result of the move. That’s negligent homicide, at least, if not outright premeditated murder.

The Global Network of People living with HIV is urging the Cambodian government to address the humanitarian concerns of the evicted families:

• Cease moving HIV-affected families to the Tuol Sambo site;
• Improve conditions at Tuol Sambo to meet minimum standards for adequate shelter, sanitation, and clean water;
• Ensure full access to quality medical services, including antiretroviral treatment, treatment of opportunistic infections, primary health care and home-based care;
• Work with relevant agencies and consult with the families already at Tuol Sambo to address immediate and long-term concerns regarding housing, health, safety, and employment, and reintegration into society in a manner that protects their rights and livelihoods; and
• Employ a transparent and fair screening process to determine eligibility for on-site housing at Borei Keila, and allow eligible families to move in immediately. For those found ineligible, authorities should provide other adequate housing.

Writing for Global Health, Alanna Shaikh reacts:

To me, this looks like a classic example of treating people living with AIDS as though they are disposable. They're going to die anyway, goes the logic, so there is no reason to treat them well. But people with AIDS are still human beings, with rights and skills and the ability to live full lives. Treating as less than human benefits no one.

More than 100 international and local groups wrote Prime Minister Hun Sen and Health Minister Mam Bunheng urging the latter to provide a better treatment to the evicted families:

The housing conditions at Tuol Sambo are grossly inadequate in terms of size, fire safety, and sanitation. Residents are crowded into poorly ventilated metal sheds that are baking hot in the daytime. There are no kitchens and no running water in the sheds, which are flanked by open sewers, and only one public well to service the evicted families.

While other homeless people from Phnom Penh are slated for relocation to brick houses at an adjacent site at Tuol Sambo, the HIV-affected families from Borei Keila have been placed in a separate settlement with inferior housing, distinguished by green corrugated metal roofing and walls. Even before the evictees were resettled there, local people referred to the green sheds as “the AIDS village.”

The living conditions at Tuol Sambo pose serious health risks, particularly to people with compromised immune systems. The risk to those people living with HIV can be life threatening. Residents report that the heat in the poorly ventilated metal sheds is so intense that they are usually unable to remain in their rooms during the afternoon and they are afraid that their ARV medication will deteriorate in the heat.

The situation of the evicted families in their former homes in Borei Keila was not also good as shown by this video by licadho [above], which was uploaded on The Hub.

Cambodia Pushes AIDS 'Colony' Far From City

August 16, 2009
National Public Radio (USA)
Weekend Edition Sunday

Click here to listen to the Story

Until recently, 40 Cambodian families with HIV and AIDS were living in the center of the country's capital, Phnom Penh. Then the government moved them to a site 15 miles outside the city. As NPR's Doualy Xaykaothao reports, the resettlement is viewed by many as a forced eviction, creating what some are calling an AIDS colony.

Cambodian HIV Villages Draws Controversy

2009-8-13
New Tang Dynasty Television

Click here to watch the video in English

25 kilometers outside of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, lies a village built by the government for HIV-infected patients and their families.

Come to be known as the "AIDS colony", in the past two months the government has relocated 47 families to live in its metal and wooden sheds.

With inadequate sanitation and no running water, the area is not a health sanctuary for HIV-infected patients, who require personal attention and care.

The government maintains it is taking care of patients by building new homes and offering healthcare and ownership rights previously unavailable.

But HIV-infected people living in the village say they have not received any official recognition of ownership rights nor government compensation for their old homes.

40-year-old HIV patient Chheang Toma says even with free medical treatment, he has no real means of earning a living in the colony.

[Chheang Toma, HIV Patient]:
"I feel sluggish in my arms and on my legs everyday and I cannot walk well. I will hang on, until the day I need to go to sleep in the hospital. I wanted to go now, but I have no money to spend for food, although they give treatment free of charge."

With little prospect of work in the area due to the distance from the city, people say they must survive largely on donations from the government and NGOs.

[Suon Davy, HIV Patient]:
"I face great difficulty for my family day to day, because we live far away from the hospital, far from any job opportunities and it is very hot here."

Local human rights activist Dr. Kek Galabru says the government actions are discriminatory while the conditions could pose health risks to already vulnerable patients.

[Dr. Kek Galabru, President, Lacadho NGO]:
"It's regretful that city hall sent 40 families to Tuol Sambo village. This is a discriminatory act because by putting them together like this, everyone will know this is an AIDS community."

The "AIDS colony" is one of a number of forced evictions in Cambodia, where the government has faced escalating criticism about its mandatory relocations.

Many HIV-infected people living in Tuol Sambo previously resided in squatter areas in the Borei Keila area of the capital, forced out as the government took over the land to build high-rise buildings.

Last month, the World Bank urged Cambodia to halt the forced evictions from disputed land, saying it threatened the livelihoods of thousands of urban dwellers.

Evictees cry foul over homes

Borei Keila resident Horm Oun checks out the homes at Tuol Sambo, to which she could be relocated this week. (Photo by: CHRISTOPHER SHAY)

Monday, 15 June 2009
Written by CHRISTOPHER SHAY AND KHOUTH SOPHAK CHAKRYA
The Phnom Penh Post

District officials deceived the HIV community of Borei Keila into thumbprinting an agreement to vacate homes, residents claim

MEMBERS of the Borei Keila community, where more than 30 families with HIV-positive members are facing eviction, say they were duped by district authorities Friday into agreeing to leave their neighbourhood near Olympic Stadium in exchange for larger homes at a relocation site outside the city.

"The authorities are cheating. When we agreed to thumbprint, the authorities told us they would remove the dividers to make two houses into one house," said resident Sok Sinethe.

But Horm Oun, another Borei Keila resident, said, "Lim Seda [the deputy chief of Prampi Makara district] told us after we gave our thumbprints we cannot make two houses into one".

"I felt hopeless when I heard this," she said.

The chief officer of the district's development programme, Sok Ath, said the Borei Keila residents were mistaken.

"We did not make promises or threaten them for their thumbprints. We only agreed to take their request for larger homes to City Hall for a decision," he said, adding that they would also ask City Hall that instead of buying two tuk-tuks to ferry people into the city for work, that it give each family US$250.

Sao Vanna, the chief of the HIV community, who does not live with the families facing eviction, said 20 families will be moved to Tuol Sambo perhaps as early as today.

Sao Vanna, who will set up an office at Tuol Sambo, blamed NGOs for the conditions at the relocation site.

"Before, City Hall had plans to construct 4-metre-by-12-metre homes and called upon the NGOs to fund the construction and infrastructure, but without NGO funding ... City Hall did not have enough money," he said.

But on Sunday during a visit to Tuol Sambo - about an hour's tuk-tuk ride away from Borei Keila - residents said that it was clear the municipality could do more to support them.

Ten paces from the green metal shelters that will house the families, workers are building brick homes for families from Russey Keo who lost their houses after a riverbank collapse. According to a construction worker, the Russey Keo homes will be 4 metres by 8 metres, almost double the floor space of the HIV community's homes, which are 3.5 metres by 4.8 metres.

"Why does the municipality make small houses for us and big homes for others?" Sok Sineth asked.

Residents also fear that their community, which is already known as "the AIDS village", will face discrimination.

Resident Touch Chhay Ran said when she visited Tuol Sambo last month she overheard local villagers insulting the Borei Keila community, giving her fears that she will need to endure discrimination on a daily basis.

"They said they were afraid that their community would catch AIDS from us, turning all of Tuol Sambo into ‘the AIDS village'," she said.