Cambodian troops seal off village after land clashes

Human rights workers denied entry after 15-year-old girl dies in latest confrontation over land development

Associated Press in Phnom Penh
guardian.co.uk, May 17, 2012

Rice farmers near Phnom Penh: Cambodia’s system of commercial 
land concessions has been criticised as corrupt and prompted a UN inquiry. 
Photograph: Heng Sinith/AP

Security forces have sealed off a village in eastern Cambodia and denied entry to human rights workers after the fatal shooting of a teenager in the latest violent eviction aimed at clearing land for development.

Soldiers said they needed to secure the area around Proma village, in eastern Kratie province, to continue the search for five accused ringleaders involved in a clash with security forces a day earlier, said Chan Soveth, a prominent investigator with Cambodian human rights group Adhoc.

He said journalists and human rights activists were initially moved to an area half a mile (1km) from the village but then pushed farther back, raising concerns about the soldiers' conduct and the safety of the villagers.

The interior ministry, meanwhile, issued a statement alleging the protesters were an "anarchic group" trying to set up a self-governing zone outside the law. It accused demonstrators of abducting two soldiers and seizing their weapons.

Cambodia's system of commercial land concessions, decried by activists as opaque and corrupt, has become a volatile issue nationwide and prompted a UN inquiry. Last month, a high-profile activist was shot dead by a military police officer after investigating illegal logging in a forest concession.

On Wednesday, hundreds of police and soldiers raided the settlement in Kratie province after community leaders rejected demands to vacate their farmland, officials said. Security forces clashed with about 200 villagers armed with axes, crossbows and sticks. A 15-year-old girl was critically wounded in the confrontation and later died at a hospital, said the provincial governor, Sar Chamrong.

"The soldiers told us we were not allowed to go inside to see the situation, "Chan Soveth said on Thursday. "We don't know what is happening inside. We are concerned for the safety of the villagers."

He said villagers who left the security perimeter were searched before being allowed to return home.

Authorities say the land is owned by the government, but the activists claim the previously state-owned land already has been awarded to a Russian company to be developed as a plantation. Villagers who have been farming the land for years say they have nowhere else to go.

The incident is the latest fallout from widespread evictions and land grabs that have sparked unrest nationwide, with deadly force sometimes employed by both public and private security forces.

The Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, issued a directive last week suspending new land concessions to private companies and ordering a review of existing deals. The move was announced during a visit by a UN human rights envoy who warned that land disputes in Cambodia must be resolved fairly and peacefully.

Stop Eviction

Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. Buddhism

A Cambodian girl holds a banner next to a boy as former residents of the Dey Krahorm community gather in front of the site where they used to live before being evicted by government forces in Phnom Penh January 24, 2012. Source: VOA

Lynn family in fight to save home

The Ouk Family at their 11 Rockaway Ave., Lynn home on Wednesday. Pictured clockwise from bottom left are Cynthia Chan, Serey Ouk, Chrean Ouk, Chivy Chum, Arryanna Chan and Chantrea Ouk. Item Photo / Reba M. Saldanha

Friday, October 22, 2010
By Jeff McMenemy
The Daily Item

LYNN - Serey Ouk will soon be the first member of her family to graduate from an American high school.

But while many students her age are focusing solely on their studies, Serey Ouk has also been at the center of her family's fight to stay in their rental home as banking giant Deutsche Bank - until they abruptly reached a tentative agreement this week to sell the property to a Boston non-profit - attempted to kick her family out.

Because her parents speak little English and her older sister's English is somewhat limited, she has been the family's chief translator and the person who has answered the "rude" phone calls at all hours of the day and the knocks on the door at night from strangers demanding they be out of their house in 24 hours.

"It's aggravating, it's really aggravating," she said, surrounded by three generations of family members in their neatly kept home on Rockaway Street.

The worst incident occurred when a stranger showed up one day and handed a summons to her 7-year-old niece, Arryana Chan.

"She wouldn't play outside after that," Ouk said. Even as it appears their fight to stay in their home might soon be over, Ouk remains perplexed about why the bank tried to evict them for about a year in the first place.

"I just feel like why are they doing this?" she said.

The Lynn English High School senior acknowledges the struggle has been stressful for both her family and her.

"They were pounding on the door or calling on the phone," she said. "I had to take the SATs and I didn't know if we were going to have to go somewhere else to live."

Her parents came to America from Cambodia to give their children the freedom they had lost in their native country, Ouk said.

"They came here from a refugee camp," she said. "They came here to live."

Translating for her father, Chrean Ouk, Serey Ouk said her family came to the United States for the same reason many immigrants do.

"So they could have their freedoms and their rights and their kids could have a good education," Serey Ouk said.

And the family also brought some of their homeland to America, creating an oasis of agriculture in the city's asphalt core.

Chrean Ouk proudly showed a visitor the numerous plants that surround their home, from beets to pear and peach trees, where you can grab fruit right off the branch. Chrean Ouk pointed to a series of buckets the family uses to collect rain water to use on the plants.

"The one (garden) he had at home when he was a child was bigger. It was acres," Serey Ouk said. "It reminds him of his farm in Cambodia."

Serey Ouk pointed to a plant with white flowers and said, "The more flowers on there the more money you're supposed to have. It's supposed to be a good luck plant."

The family also helped create the community garden at the Robert L. Ford School, where Chantrea Ouk's two daughters, Arryana Chan, 7, and Cynthia Chan, 5, attend. Chantrea Ouk, Serey's older sister who works full-time, has also been instrumental in keeping her family in the home that their brother used to own before he lost his job and was foreclosed on.

And the family - who has always paid the rent - was determined not to leave their home of five years and go back to the type of housing they used to live in.

"We used to live in an apartment," Serey Ouk said, shaking her head at the memory. "There was smoking and people partying and fighting and the cops would come. My mom has health issues, she has asthma. Here she can go outside whenever she wants and it's peaceful."

Serey Ouk said her family didn't want to leave their house because her nieces would have to leave the Ford School, which they love and she also attended. It would also have an impact on her parents.

"My parents have been kicked out of their country, it's not right for them to be kicked out of their home," she said.

Fortunately, about a year ago, the family started attending meetings of Lynn United for Change, a volunteer community organization dedicated to helping families stay in their homes, not only because it helps the families, but because it helps the city's neighborhoods.

"It provides a solution for the family who gets to stay in their home and the school system who doesn't have to deal with the situation of taking young kids out of one school and moving them to another," said Isaac Simon Hodes, a spokesman for the group. "And the neighborhood doesn't have to see a vacant house that got foreclosed on by the bank and is now empty and boarded up."

The organization has worked with the family throughout their struggle to keep the home and also helped connect them with Boston Community Capital, a branch of which ultimately reached the tentative deal to buy the house from Deutsche Bank.

"They helped us all along," Serey Ouk said about the group as she stood in her family's side yard.

Lynn United For Change also helped the family organize a vigil that was held Wednesday night.

More than 70 people attended the event.

But for the first time in more than a year, many family members hope they will have soon found a permanent home.

Patricia Hanratty, the president of the SUN (Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods) Initiative, a branch of Boston Community Capital, told The Daily Item late Wednesday that her organization had brokered a deal with Deutsche Bank to buy the Rockaway Street property.

"We're working on the paperwork now," she said.

Boston Community Capital takes money that they receive from private foundations or private individuals and then uses it to buy properties in urban neighborhoods - so far it's been mostly in Boston - and then gives low-interest mortgages to the tenants or homeowners who are going through a foreclosure.

"Both from the individual family level and the community level it's fundamental for all of us as human beings to have housing ... With this program, we're making sure we have a long-term, sustainable solution. It's not a short-term solution," Hanratty said.

"We evaluate the current residents to see if they have the capacity to support housing payments to buy or rent the house," Hanratty said.

The non-profit lender recently received a $5.5 million Wachovia Wells Fargo NEXT award so they can expand their efforts to reach more communities outside of Boston.

Pascale Desir, a staff attorney for Neighborhood Legal Services in Lynn, who represented Serey Ouk and her family, said their office has been "flooded with post foreclosure evictions."

The Legislature recently enacted a law that offers more protection for renters who have paid their rent even while their landlord lost their home to eviction, but Deutsche Bank's efforts to evict Serey Ouk and her family started before the new law took effect.

Attorney Lawson Williams of Chelmsford, who is representing Deutsche Bank, could not be reached for comment.

But in this case, Desir says the bank clearly has a family that was worth working with.

"They want to do what's right. This is very important in a city that's been ravaged by foreclosure to keep families in their homes," Desir said. "No one wants to live in a community where doors are covered with plywood."

That worry may be coming to an end for Serey Ouk and her family.

"I'm still nervous," she said when asked about the pending deal. "But I'm hopeful."

(Thor Jourgensen also contributed to this report)

"Plov Daek Thmei" (New Rail Road) a Poem in Khmer by Sam Vichea

Beijing's Olympic building boom becomes a bust

A construction worker walks on an overpass in front of high-rise commercial buildings in the Central Business District of Beijing. Some experts estimate that more than 100 million square feet of office space is vacant in the city. (Michael Reynold / EPA)

Many buildings in the city's impressive skyline are empty.

February 22, 2009
By Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Beijing -- "Empty," says Jack Rodman, an expert in distressed real estate, as he points from the window of his 40th-floor office toward a silver-skinned prism rising out of the Beijing skyline.

"Beautiful building, but not a single tenant.

"Completely empty.

"Empty."

So goes the refrain as his finger skips from building to building, each flashier than the next, and few of them more than barely occupied.

Beijing went through a building boom before the 2008 Summer Olympics that filled a staid communist capital with angular architectural feats that grace the covers of glossy design magazines.

Now, six months after the Games ended, the city continues to dazzle by night, with neon and floodlights dancing across the skyline. By day, though, it is obvious that many are "see-through" buildings, to use the term coined during the Texas real estate bust of the 1980s.

By Rodman's calculations, 500 million square feet of commercial real estate has been developed in Beijing since 2006, more than all the office space in Manhattan. And that doesn't include huge projects developed by the government. He says 100 million square feet of office space is vacant -- a 14-year supply if it filled up at the same rate as in the best years, 2004 through '06, when about 7 million square feet a year was leased.

"The scale of development was unprecedented anywhere in the world," said Rodman, a Los Angeles native who lives in Beijing, running a firm called Global Distressed Solutions. "It defied logic. It just doesn't make sense."

Construction cranes jut into the skyline, but increasingly they are fixed in place, awaiting fresh financing before work resumes.

Boarded fences advertise coming attractions -- "an iconic landmark" or "international wonderland" -- that are in varying states of half-completion. A retail strip in one development advertised as "La Vibrant shopping street" is empty.

In a country where protests are rare, migrant workers stand in front of several construction projects, voicing their grievances.

"Our boss ran away with the money and he is nowhere to be found," said Li Zirong, a migrant worker from Shaanxi province, who was a supervisor on a stunning building with windows shaped like portholes.

What makes this boom-and-bust cycle different from those in the West is that there is no private ownership of land in China, making local governments de facto partners in the real estate industry, which earn huge fees from leasing and transferring land.

Huang Yasheng, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, traces the blame for the bust to the Chinese Communist Party and its reluctance to allow a true market economy.

"The lack of land reform fed into the real estate bubble and now it's coming back to haunt them," said Huang, author of "Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics," published last year. "There should have been more checks and balances on the ability of the government to acquire land."

The government spent $43 billion for the Olympics, nearly three times as much as any other host city. But many of the venues proved too big, too expensive and more photogenic than practical.

The National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, has only one event scheduled for this year: a performance of the opera "Turandot" on Aug. 8, the one-year anniversary of the Olympic opening ceremony. China's leading soccer club backed out of a deal to play there, saying it would be an embarrassment to use a 91,000-seat stadium for games that ordinarily attract only 10,000 spectators.

The venue, which costs $9 million a year to maintain, is expected to be turned into a shopping mall in several years, its owners announced last month.

A baseball stadium that opened last spring with an exhibition game between the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, is being demolished. Its owner says it also will use the land for a shopping mall.

Among the major Olympic venues, only the National Aquatics Center, nicknamed the Water Cube, has had a productive afterlife. It's used for sound-and-light shows, with dancing fountains in the swimming lanes where Michael Phelps won his gold medals.

All around the Olympic complex, there are cavernous empty buildings, such as the main press center for the Games, that still await tenants.

A shopping arcade that stretches for a quarter of a mile across the street from the complex is empty, the storefronts papered over with signs reading "famous stores corridor."

"They wanted to build 'the world's biggest this' and 'the world's biggest that,' but these buildings have almost zero long-term economic benefit," economist Huang said.

Moreover, the makeover of Beijing for the Olympics led to an estimated 1.5 million residents being evicted from their homes, according to the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions.

In this vibrant capital city of 17 million, there is an insatiable demand for housing, yet prices remain far out of reach of most residents. American-style free-standing homes are being advertised for more than $1 million in gated communities with names like Versailles, Provence, Arcadia and Riviera. Within the Fourth Ring Road, a beltway that defines the central part of the city, two- and three-bedroom apartments are offered for $800,000 in compounds named Central Park and Riverside.

"These are like New York prices, but we are Chinese. We don't have that kind of money," said Zhang Huizhan, a 55-year-old businessman who owns a Chinese furniture factory. He has been looking for five years for an apartment for him and his wife within their budget of $150,000.

The average salary in Beijing is less than $6,000 a year.

Louis Kuijs, a senior economist at the World Bank in Beijing, said a lack of government supervision of the real estate industry tempted developers to build only for the luxury market and to ignore the mass market.

"If you think demand is endless for anything you build and you have just 200 square meters of land, you will build high-end apartments to make the highest profit," Kuijs said.

To its credit, the government recognized in 2007 that the real estate market was headed toward a bubble, economists say. In an attempt to make real estate more affordable, restrictions were introduced on ownership of second homes and on foreign home buyers. But the measures came too late, accelerating the crash of an already weakening market.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics reported this month that housing sales in the city dropped 40% last year. Chinese economists have predicted that housing prices will drop 15% to 20% in Beijing this year. Shanghai has experienced a similar decline.

"You can look at this perhaps as a healthy correction in the market," Kuijs said.

In the longer term, he said, "China's urbanization and overall development is going to lead to a very large additional demand for housing in the city."

Before that happens, the situation could get worse. Most of the real estate has been financed by Chinese banks, which have avoided writing down the loans. Eventually, they will be forced to, and that probably will have a ripple effect throughout the economy.

"At the end, somebody is going to have to pay the piper," real estate expert Rodman said.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Nicole Liu and Eliot Gao of The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

Lake Developers Want ‘Safety’ [-Is terrorism the new catchword to evict people from their homes?]

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh
15 April 2008

The fear of terrorism and the ineffective control of foreign tourists, as well as internal migrants, are all driving the development of the Boeung Kak lake area, officials said recently.

The Cambodian government hopes to bring modern development to the area, to prevent chaotic settlement in the capital, officials said.

“We need to strengthen the security issue and develop modernization construction in Boeung Kak for easily monitoring security,” Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Pa Socheathvong told VOA Khmer. “There are many complicated security problems for those coming in and those going out, without good security control.”

Phnom Penh has leased the land to developer Shukaku, Inc., in a $79 million deal, but residents say they are not being paid a fair price to leave the lake homes.

“We knew terrorists have easily hidden in there, like CFF and JI terrorist leader Hambali,” he said, referring the Cambodian Freedom fighters and the leader of the Southeast Asian group Jemaah Islamiyah. “If we cannot properly control this area, it will create a security problem for Phnom Penh in the future.”

Members of the CFF came from the area to attack government forces in Phnom Penh in November 2000, and Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, reportedly stayed in the area prior to his arrest in Bangkok in 2003, following the 2002 Bali bombings carried out by JI.

Critics say city government and developers are neglecting the interests of Boeung Kak villagers as they move to clear the area of the makeshift homes jutting over the lake.

“Safety and people’s living are very important issues, but Boeung Kak development must provide for the very important interests of Boeung Kak villagers, or the people’s interest will be lost,” said Keo Remy, vice president of the Human Rights Party, which is competing in July’s general elections.

Be Pharum, Boeung Kak villager, said residents supported development.

“But we request that the government find a proper resolution for Boeung Kak villagers, to avoid the suffering with the development like people in Sambok Chap, Koh Pich…in Phnom Penh.”

Phan Sithan, coordinator of NGO Forum on Cambodia, acknowledged that the area was important for security.

“But the people’s living is also an important part of development,” he said.

The government must “seriously consider” the relationship between security and people’s livelihoods, he said.

AI: The behaviour of the Cambodian authorities is nothing short of sickening

A monk shows the grave of the woman killed during the violent clash in Preah Vihear province (Photo: Sav Yuth, RFA)

Cambodia: mother of four killed trying to protect children as security forces forcibly evict villagers

23 November 2007
Amnesty International

Two shot dead, 12 arrested and 317 families evicted in brutal crackdown

Cambodian security forces killed two - including a 29-year-old mother of four - arrested 12 and evicted 317 families last week as they cleared a commune in the remote northern province of Preah Vihear, Amnesty International learnt today.

Toeun Chheng was shot in the chest at point blank range as she attempted to protect her children during the forced eviction. The other casualty, 31-year-old Oeun Eng, was shot while trying to resist the security forces.

The 317 impoverished families had recently settled on unused land near the village of Sra Em. The community's leaders had negotiated a written agreement with the local authorities allowing them to stay put until a suitable alternative location had been found.

However, on 15 November, the authorities sent in 200 armed police, military police and soldiers, to forcibly evict the community, destroying homes and belongings in the process.

Eyewitnesses told local human rights workers that the security forces had not issued any warnings before opening fire. Accounts suggest that at least six other evictees were injured, five by gun shots, and one who was beaten. Two are seriously injured and are being treated at the provincial hospital.

Of the 317 families evicted, around 40 families who lost most of their belongings have been stranded on a roadside near their village, with no shelter, food or water. Twelve people were arrested during the eviction and are being detained in the capital, Phnom Penh, some 400 kilometres away from the village. It is not known what charges they face.

Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director, Tim Hancock, said:

'The behaviour of the Cambodian authorities is nothing short of sickening.

'Sadly this is not a one off, only two weeks before 132 families were forcibly evicted from a village on the eastern outskirts of the capital.

'Amnesty International is calling on its members worldwide to write to the country's deputy prime minister to express their concerns about Cambodia's outrageous policy of forced evictions.'

Background:

· International human rights law requires that evictions be carried out only as a last resort, and following adequate notice and consultation with those affected. In this case, the eviction reportedly took place in breach of a written agreement between local authorities and the community, which stated that the families could remain on the land on a temporary basis until a suitable resolution had been found.

· This agreement had been reached following a stand-off between the villagers and the authorities on 9 November, when police had moved in at night in an attempt to arrest two community leaders.

· On 11 November, the local district governor had offered two vaguely described alternative locations for resettlement, but community leaders declined to move until they had more information on these areas, including the precise geographic location of the land and assurances that the area has access to water, schooling for the children and other basic infrastructure.

· Four days later and without any prior notification, security forces showed an announcement from the provincial administration, stating the community had to leave. The implementation of the eviction notice by security forces followed immediately.

· On 2 November 2007, 300 members of the security forces were deployed around the village of Chong Chruoy on the eastern outskirts of Phnom Penh. Within hours they had forcibly evicted the 132 families who had been living there.

· The villagers were forcibly relocated to a resettlement site at Trapeang Anchanh village in Dangkor district where they currently lack adequate shelter, food, and clean water.

Cambodia: collecting donations to help the poor and needy is a No No

Makeshift living conditions in Andoung Thmei village (Photo: SMD)

SMD students conducting a survey on people evicted from Sambok Chap (Photo: SMD)

SMD students collecting donations in Phnom Penh (Photo: SMD)

Students collection donations to help people evicted from Sambok Chap

02 July 2007
By Uk Sav Bory
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

A group of students who went into Phnom Penh markets to collect donations to help poor people evicted from Sambok Chap, were prevented to do so by the market authorities.

Ken Sara, the vice-president of the Students’ Movement for Democracy (SMD), said that about 30 volunteer students coming from various high schools and universities went into Phnom Penh markets on Monday 02 July morning, to collect donations to help several hundreds of poor families evicted from Sambok Chap area who currently lack shelters, lost their jobs, lack foods, lack clean waters, lack electricity, and who need urgent help since they were evicted from Phnom Penh and sent to live in Andoung Thmei and Trapeang Krasaing villages, Dankao district.

Ken Sara said that prior to entering the markets, SMD sent letter asking for authorizations from the market authorities and the Phnom Penh municipal authority, nevertheless, in some markets, they were still prevented to get in. “They said that the entry to each market must receive the authorization from the district office first, then they will allow us to enter,” Ken Sara said of the local market authority prevention.

Freshman students from the Phnom Penh Royal University said that the students divide themselves into four groups, and went into four different Phnom Penh markets: Phsar Thmei, Olympic, O’Russei, and Kab Ko, to ask for donations to help poor needy people evicted from Sambok Chap area. The collection of donations were stopped by the Phsar Thmei an Olympic markets security officers. Nevertheless, some generous donors still hand in their donations.

A female student said: “We cannot get inside the market, but our group was able to collect 640,000 riels (~$160).”

A psychology-major student from the Phnom Penh Royal University said that a group of students went to study the living conditions of the people evicted from Sambok Chap, they noted that these people lack everything, and the government should provide help to them. But, to the contrary, the government ignored these people, left them to live on unsanitary waters, without proper shelters, that were the reasons why the students decided to collect donations from markets to help these needy people.

The same psychology-major student said: “I visited the area myself with 10 other students. We observed that they have a lot of difficulties, they lack everything, no food, no water, no electricity, and even their tents are all torn up, and their shelters are very small.”

A security official from Phsar Thmei said that these students did not have an authorization letter to collect donations in the market.

Dr Pung Chiv Kek, President of Licadho human rights organization, said that the prevention by the market authority is a violation of the students’ rights, as these students want to show their solidarity in helping the poor people of their country.

1,367 families were evicted from Phnom Penh Sambok Chap area, and they were sent to live in Andoung Thmei and Trapeang Krasaing villages in Dangkao district, on 06 June 2006. Besides these families, another 488 families of renters are currently living in makeshift tents and no lands were provided to them. In the Andoung Thmei village, more than 1,000 families are living in mud during this rainy season, and several children and adults died of disease they contracted in this new area.

For further information about SMD or to help SMD, please click here.

According to the US, Cambodia is no better than North Korea or Cuba

Assistant Secretary of State Barry Lowenkron, holds the disc, containing the 2006 country reports on human rights practices, during its release at the State Department in Washington

US: Cambodia Rights Record Remains Poor

Khemara Sok
VOA Khmer
Washington
06/03/2007

Cambodia's human rights record is still poor, and its government shows no political will to change that, according to an annual human rights report issued Tuesday by the US State Department.

Cambodia, which warranted 50 pages in the report, fell into the same category as North Korea, Cuba, China and Afghanistan. Worse countries were Burma, Iran and Laos.

"The government's human rights record remained poor," the report says of Cambodia. "Government agents committed extrajudicial killings, and security forces acted with impunity. There was little political will to address the failure by government authorities to adhere to the rule of law."

Cambodian embassy officials in Washington, DC, could not be reached for comment.

Cambodia was praised for its release of five human rights activists jailed in 2005; restoring parliamentary immunity to opposition leader Sam Rainsy; and decriminalizing defamation, among other examples.

Kem Sokha, director of the Cambodia Center for Human Rights, who was among those activists arrested in 2005 and released in 2006, mostly welcomed the report, saying Cambodia's human rights situation has not changed.

"The key matters especially remain," he said, "such as blocking peaceful demonstrations, such as those in land disputes where protesters have been threatened with arrest."

"The matter of judicial reform is still difficult," he said, citing as well corruption and forced evictions.

Relations between Cambodia and the US have thawed recently, with the US restoring direct aid to the country just last month.

"That is a political issue," Kem Sokha said. But "even if they have a close relationship, [the US] never forgets to talk about human rights issues."

Sam Rainsy's Visit to Boeng Kak Lake

February 18, 2007

Boeng Kak Lake, Phnom Penh - Sam Rainsy visits people living around Boeng Kak lake in Phnom Penh who are facing eviction from their homes because of land grabbing. The Government plans to fill in most of Boeng Kak lake for a controversial city development project.