| Stop Evictions Campaign | |||||||||||||||||||||
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The Stop Evictions campaign has been established in response to the recurrent problem of government-sanctioned forced evictions in Cambodia and the continuing absence of secure land tenure for the poor. While Cambodia has had impressive economic gains since the civil war ended in the early 1990s, rural landlessness is skyrocketing and many of the essential ingredients for the realisation of the right to adequate housing remain absent. Without adequate safeguards in place, market liberalisation and economic growth have failed to reduce poverty but have instead led to increases in inequality most starkly seen through landlessness and housing conditions for the poor. Evictions and forcible confiscation of land continue to rank as one of Cambodia's most pervasive human rights problems. Security of tenure is weak or absent for both urban and rural poor communities. Despite progressive developments in the legislative framework, wide-scale flouting of land laws prevails. Spiralling land speculation has resulted in ever-increasing demand for land in prime urban and rural areas. As a consequence, land grabbing by a powerful and wealthy elite - to the severe detriment of local communities - has reached epidemic proportions.
What are Housing Rights? Housing rights are all those human rights that help people live in a decent and secure home. The most important housing right is the right to adequate housing. It is the right of everyone to live in their home in security, peace and dignity. Therefore, access to adequate housing should not just be determined by a person's social or economic status. Forced eviction is the removal of someone from his/her home or land against his/her will and without the appropriate protections being given. These protections were authoritatively defined in General Comment 7, the Right to Adequate Housing, of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has said that “…the practice of forced evictions constitutes a gross violation of human rights, in particular the right to adequate housing.” Local governments must ensure that its officials, as well as other actors in the municipality, do not carry out forced evictions. Can people living informally on land be evicted? In many of the world's developing countries, urban centers include large informal settlements where the residents and/or their landlords do not have legal title to be on the land. Although people living in these informal settlements are often the poorest residents in such a locality, they contribute significantly to the economy, for example through providing casual labor and running small businesses. However, since the government has failed to ensure that sufficient affordable land and housing is available for low-income communities are often forced to live in informal settlements. What does ‘adequate resettlement' mean? Principles for adequate resettlement can be found in a number of documents. One of them is the UN Comprehensive Human Rights Guidelines on Development-Based Displacement, which is relevant because development projects often lead to evictions. Eviction WatchIn the early hours of Saturday 24th January 2009, the Dey Krahorm community lost their three-year long struggle to keep their land and save their homes when they were forcibly evicted. January 25, 2009
Mittapheap 4, Sihanoukville
Link to Press Release (May 18, 2008)
Mittapheap 4 eviction gallery
Sambok Chap, Phnom Penh
Andoung Relocation Site Photo Gallery
Latest Press Release (Nov 2, 2007)
In 2004, Commune authorities in Kong Yu Commune, Ratanakiri province repeatedly asked local Jarai indigenous people to sell their land on behalf of Keat Kolney, the sister of the Senior Minister of the Ministry of Economics and Finance and the wife of the Undersecretary of State for Land Management. They refused. The authorities then lied to the villagers informing them that they had no right to the land because it was the property of the state and its expropriation was necessary to provide land to demobilized soldiers. After agreeing to donate 50 hectares for the soldiers, a celebration was held in which the authorities procured large amounts of alcohol and had people thumbprint a paper listing the names of the villagers. Villagers later learned that this deal gave the well-known individual the land, not demobilized soldiers, and the transaction involved 500 hectares of communal land, not the previously “agreed” 50 hectares. Moreover, these contracts signed were back-dated to before the passage of the 2001 Land Law. Keat Kolney has cleared the forest on the land and begun planting rubber trees.
Please join the campaign to Save Boeung Kak from Forced Eviction.
Click here to add your name to the Petition
Land and Life Song & Music Video
To see the music video, click here To see the acoustic version, featuring Kong Nai, click here
Here are some organizations and their websites that may be useful if you want more information on Cambodia and housing rights: |
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Forty one impoverished urban communities around Phnom Penh's Boeung Kok lake face mass-displacement as Municipal authorities and a local private developer sign a 99 year lease over the land where they reside. This contract appears to be the next in a series of recent illegal, forced evictions that have removed the capitol's poor communities that are residing on increasingly valuable land. Threatening to evict over 25,000 people, this project may constitute the largest forced resettlement of Cambodians since the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh in 1975. As one of the organizations working to improve living conditions and provide educational opportunities in the Boeung Kok area, Bridges Across Borders urges the Cambodian authorities to reject forced evictions as a policy option and ensure that development projects such as this tangibly benefit the poor and not just displace them. 
On April 20, 2007, more than 100 families were violently evicted from their village at Mittapheap 4 village, Sihanoukville Municipality. Early in the morning, roughly 150 police, military police and RCAF soldiers armed with AK-47s, shot guns, electric batons, wooden sticks and shields surrounded the village. They came to forcibly remove the villagers from their land and homes on behalf of Mrs. Peng Ravy, the wife of a senior advisor to Senate President Chea Sim.
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In June 2006 the Municipality of Phnom Penh in conjunction with the Sour Srun Enterprise company authorized the hurried relocation of more than 1,000 families from their city center homes ('Sambok Chap'). Approximately one thousand police and military police forces gathered in Sambok Chap village heavily armed with rifles, electric batons, tear gas and riot gear. They threatened human rights monitors and local and international journalists, and then confiscated their cameras and prevented them from recording police actions.
Another 146 families living in the Bassac area of Phnom Penh across from where the Sambok Chap community was evicted have been living under the threat of forced eviction since 2006. This community, known as Group 78, faces the threat of forced eviction despite the fact that households have produced documentation that supports their possession and occupation of the land since the early 1980s. The government has refused to issue them land titles, even though they are entitled to them based on the Land Law. The community has established small businesses, built houses on the land, and used the land as collateral for loans. Yet in 2006 eviction notices were issued to the community, so that the land can be used for ‘beautification' of the area and to build a road. The Municipality of Phnom Penh offered the 146 land owning families 5 by 12 meter plots of land at a relocation site about 20 k outside the city and $500. The community did not accept the offer. They asked for the fair market value of their land, which they estimated at $700 per square meter. The Group 78 community has thus far resisted eviction. 
As part of our campaign to end forced evictions and land-grabbing in Cambodia, Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia (BABSEA) recently teamed up with an all-female a capella group called the Messenger Band, award-winning director David Eberhardt, and the legendary Kong Nai to produce a soul-stirring music video inspired by the resistance struggle from local residents fighting to protect their land and livelihood.