Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 19, September 21 - October 4, 2007
The quiet fishing community of Spean Ches located on an idyllic beach front eight kilometers from the center of Sihanoukville until recently was home to more than 100 families.
The quiet was disrupted abruptly in September 2006 when the residents, many of whom lived in Spean Ches since the 1980s, received an eviction notice. In April, soldiers and police arrived to drive out 105 families who watched helplessly as authorities demolished 26 of their homes, burned down 86 others, and destroyed their personal belongings.
A year later the families live under tarpaulins beside the land where the homes once stood. The land is now a heavily guarded empty plot. Their right to ownership has never been conclusively dealt with in court and they received no compensation for their losses.
From Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, villages like Spean Ches are undergoing demolition as swaths of land are expropriated for redevelopment. As Cambodia's land values soar, commercial interests have become more powerful, making forced and often violent evictions resulting in injury or deaths all too common.
Cambodia has no national legal framework addressing the rights of evictees in an involuntary resettlement.
"We have always simply used the policy of resettlement from the donor agency funding the development project," said Sam Nang, deputy director of the resettlement unit, Ministry of Economy and Finance.
A new project - technical assistance to the Kingdom of Cambodia for enhancing the resettlement legal framework and institutional capacity - supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is in the forefront of efforts to develop such a law. The proposed legislation in the form of a subdecree is currently in draft form. The first draft of the subdecree was made public in May of this year, and a workshop was held in June at which civil society members were invited to offer comments on the draft. A revised version of the sub-decree was expected in July, but has not yet been released.
"The acquisition of land is going to take place," said Arjun Goswami, country director of the ADB. "The question is what protections can you install to help affected people."
He said a shift from relying on the resettlement policies of individual donors - to a national standard is a major step forward.
However the draft "sub-decree on the socio economic impacts of development projects" has generated widespread criticism from human rights groups and NGO officials who say it is not up to international standards and in fact would just give more credibility and power to do forced evictions.
The Housing Rights Task Force, a coalition of local and international housing rights NGOs, said in a statement that the legislation will "legitimize forced evictions."
"The sub-decree licenses the use of force to take any land if a government agency decides the land is being taken for a purpose in the general public or national interest," said David Pred, country director of rights NGO Bridges Across Borders (BAB).
Others said although the draft states that "replacement cost" compensation must be provided, it has no teeth to make it happen.
"There is no accountability mechanism to make sure this is fair," said Mike Bernstein, legal advisor at the Cambodian Legal Education Center (CLEC). "The government sets the price. The body that evaluates what land is worth is the Ministry of Finance, not an independent body."
The lack of clear rules about valuation has come up in the case of the current stand off between residents of Phnom Penh's Group 78 and City Hall. The community's 45-by-200 meters strip of land on the Tonle Bassac is worth about $550 per square meter on the open real estate market, according to a Bunna Realty survey.
City Hall has offered each of the 146 Group 78 families $500 - plus a 5-by-12-meter plot of land at an unspecified resettlement site outside of Phnom Penh. According to Meng Kheang, Group 78 community representative, fair and just compensation would actually equal more than $4.8 million.
"You have to be realistic," said Goswami. "There is no point in having Rolls Royce standards and then breaking them all the time," he said. "A sub-decree can't roll back constitutional protections. Can a constitution be abridged by a sub-decree on resettlement policy? It is simply not possible."
He said that land value issues are often very complex and not all countries have official valuation methods. "It is a question of building in safeguards and making sure these valuations are made with the best standards, not having many conflicting valuations," he said.
The sub decree is limited to land acquired by the government for development projects in the public interest. But many are concerned that the definition of "public interest" is overly broad.
The dispute comes at a crucial juncture in Cambodia's land crisis where a surge in highly visible mass evictions has attracted the attention of nearly everyone, including the diplomatic community.
"The British Embassy remains interested in and concerned about the cases of forced eviction that do not appear to follow due process, and where community and families livelihoods are placed at risk," said a British Embassy spokesperson.
"We believe that it is important that Cambodia has a full legal framework governing re-settlement policies and that this is properly implemented."
Manfred Hornung, legal advisor at local rights NGO Licadho, said violent raids on communities undergoing forced eviction are taking place in an environment of complete impunity in terms of illegal acts committed by security forces.
"None of the officials involved in the burning of houses, beating of villagers and destruction of private property in Spean Ches has ever been subjected to criminal or disciplinary proceedings," he said.
In fact the opposite happened. A two day trial in Sihanoukville Municipal Court resulted in the convictions of nine of the villagers on charges of battery with injury and destruction of property during the evictions. Five others were acquitted. There was been no investigation into the lawfulness of the actions by members of the security forces who performed the evictions. Goswami, meanwhile, said the sub-decree is no "magic panacea."
"This sub-decree can't solve all of the land problems in Cambodia," he said.
The quiet was disrupted abruptly in September 2006 when the residents, many of whom lived in Spean Ches since the 1980s, received an eviction notice. In April, soldiers and police arrived to drive out 105 families who watched helplessly as authorities demolished 26 of their homes, burned down 86 others, and destroyed their personal belongings.
A year later the families live under tarpaulins beside the land where the homes once stood. The land is now a heavily guarded empty plot. Their right to ownership has never been conclusively dealt with in court and they received no compensation for their losses.
From Siem Reap to Sihanoukville, villages like Spean Ches are undergoing demolition as swaths of land are expropriated for redevelopment. As Cambodia's land values soar, commercial interests have become more powerful, making forced and often violent evictions resulting in injury or deaths all too common.
Cambodia has no national legal framework addressing the rights of evictees in an involuntary resettlement.
"We have always simply used the policy of resettlement from the donor agency funding the development project," said Sam Nang, deputy director of the resettlement unit, Ministry of Economy and Finance.
A new project - technical assistance to the Kingdom of Cambodia for enhancing the resettlement legal framework and institutional capacity - supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is in the forefront of efforts to develop such a law. The proposed legislation in the form of a subdecree is currently in draft form. The first draft of the subdecree was made public in May of this year, and a workshop was held in June at which civil society members were invited to offer comments on the draft. A revised version of the sub-decree was expected in July, but has not yet been released.
"The acquisition of land is going to take place," said Arjun Goswami, country director of the ADB. "The question is what protections can you install to help affected people."
He said a shift from relying on the resettlement policies of individual donors - to a national standard is a major step forward.
However the draft "sub-decree on the socio economic impacts of development projects" has generated widespread criticism from human rights groups and NGO officials who say it is not up to international standards and in fact would just give more credibility and power to do forced evictions.
The Housing Rights Task Force, a coalition of local and international housing rights NGOs, said in a statement that the legislation will "legitimize forced evictions."
"The sub-decree licenses the use of force to take any land if a government agency decides the land is being taken for a purpose in the general public or national interest," said David Pred, country director of rights NGO Bridges Across Borders (BAB).
Others said although the draft states that "replacement cost" compensation must be provided, it has no teeth to make it happen.
"There is no accountability mechanism to make sure this is fair," said Mike Bernstein, legal advisor at the Cambodian Legal Education Center (CLEC). "The government sets the price. The body that evaluates what land is worth is the Ministry of Finance, not an independent body."
The lack of clear rules about valuation has come up in the case of the current stand off between residents of Phnom Penh's Group 78 and City Hall. The community's 45-by-200 meters strip of land on the Tonle Bassac is worth about $550 per square meter on the open real estate market, according to a Bunna Realty survey.
City Hall has offered each of the 146 Group 78 families $500 - plus a 5-by-12-meter plot of land at an unspecified resettlement site outside of Phnom Penh. According to Meng Kheang, Group 78 community representative, fair and just compensation would actually equal more than $4.8 million.
"You have to be realistic," said Goswami. "There is no point in having Rolls Royce standards and then breaking them all the time," he said. "A sub-decree can't roll back constitutional protections. Can a constitution be abridged by a sub-decree on resettlement policy? It is simply not possible."
He said that land value issues are often very complex and not all countries have official valuation methods. "It is a question of building in safeguards and making sure these valuations are made with the best standards, not having many conflicting valuations," he said.
The sub decree is limited to land acquired by the government for development projects in the public interest. But many are concerned that the definition of "public interest" is overly broad.
The dispute comes at a crucial juncture in Cambodia's land crisis where a surge in highly visible mass evictions has attracted the attention of nearly everyone, including the diplomatic community.
"The British Embassy remains interested in and concerned about the cases of forced eviction that do not appear to follow due process, and where community and families livelihoods are placed at risk," said a British Embassy spokesperson.
"We believe that it is important that Cambodia has a full legal framework governing re-settlement policies and that this is properly implemented."
Manfred Hornung, legal advisor at local rights NGO Licadho, said violent raids on communities undergoing forced eviction are taking place in an environment of complete impunity in terms of illegal acts committed by security forces.
"None of the officials involved in the burning of houses, beating of villagers and destruction of private property in Spean Ches has ever been subjected to criminal or disciplinary proceedings," he said.
In fact the opposite happened. A two day trial in Sihanoukville Municipal Court resulted in the convictions of nine of the villagers on charges of battery with injury and destruction of property during the evictions. Five others were acquitted. There was been no investigation into the lawfulness of the actions by members of the security forces who performed the evictions. Goswami, meanwhile, said the sub-decree is no "magic panacea."
"This sub-decree can't solve all of the land problems in Cambodia," he said.
3 comments:
It should a lucrative (fat or klanh)place for corrupt officials -I mean the resettlement unit.
Hope for new recruitments open and everyone will pay more to be shortlisted like people did with custom department.
AH HUN SEN Vietcong puppet government treated Cambodian people as commodity that can be tradable, exchangeable, and expendable!
It's always sad to see that it is the outsider (world bank) who wants to pass a decree to protect evicted khmer. Foreigners trying to help khmer from the evil of their "own government". HUN SEN is slowly ruining CAmbodia.
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