Background on Boeung Kak case and forced evictions in Cambodia

Source: Cohre.org

Spanning 90 hectares in central north Phnom Penh, Boeung Kak lake is one of the only large open spaces left in Cambodia’s capital city. Prior to the recent evictions, approximately 4000 families lived on and around the lake with many depending on the lake for their livelihood. Families have been living around the lake since the early 1980s when they returned to the city following the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Most of these families have legal rights to their land under Cambodia’s 2001 Land Law.

Despite the legitimate claims to the land of many of the residents around Boeung Kak, when the LMAP titling teams adjudicated the area in early 2007, the residents were denied title en masse. In the same month, the Cambodian government entered into a 99-year lease agreement with a private developer, Shukaku Inc., over 133 hectares including the lake and surrounding areas. Shukaku Inc. is headed by Lao Meng Khin, a Senator and major donor to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, who is also director of the controversial logging company Pheapimex.

Families living in the development zone began facing pressure and intimidation to leave the area in August 2008, when the developer commenced filling in the lake as part of its development plans. While few details about the development have been made public, it is estimated that approximately 20,000 people will be displaced. Included in this figure are the more than 900 families that have already been evicted without their land rights being properly adjudicated and acknowledged. In the absence of any legal protections, these families accepted woefully inadequate compensation under conditions of duress.

Evictions and forcible confiscation of land continue to rank as one of Cambodia's most pervasive human rights problems. In Phnom Penh alone, approximately 133,000 residents, or 10% of the city’s population of over 1.3 million have been evicted since 1990. While precise nationwide figures are difficult to ascertain, the rate of forced evictions appear to have increased in conjunction with, amongst other things, the granting of concessions over vast tracts of land to private investors. Meanwhile, rural landlessness has skyrocketed from around 13% in 1997 to as high as 25% in 2007.

Coupled with the absence of tenure security, rapidly increasing land values have led to rampant land grabbing by powerful and wealthy elites, to the severe detriment of local communities. The pretext of development is used to justify the forced relocation of low-income households to remote and desolate resettlement sites. However, frequently the projects driving this displacement are beset with corruption and unjust practices, perpetuating a development model that favours powerful interests at the expense of deeper poverty and increased hardship for the most vulnerable. The impending Boeung Kak Lake development is the largest and most visible of these development projects.
•••••••••••
Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia (BABSEA) is an international grassroots organization working to bring people together to overcome poverty, injustice and inequity in the Southeast Asia region. BABSEA has offices in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Chiang Mai, Thailand and works in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) is an international human rights non-governmental organization that works to promote and protect the right to adequate housing. COHRE is based in Geneva, Switzerland, with offices throughout the world, and has consultative status with the United Nations.