The Boeung Kak community and a land rights NGO yesterday released a proposed demarcation plan they say could solve the long-standing land dispute.
In a map presented yesterday, villagers said they had agreed on a land division that would make room for 70 families locked out of a plot created by the government and set aside for hundreds of families. …
Phnom Penh, a city once fabled for its stately colonial buildings and boulevards, and its serene riverside setting, is becoming a city of glaring contrasts.
An economy left in ruins by the years of war and violent revolution in the 1970s and 80s grew at a rate of almost 10% a year from 1998 to 2008. Cheap land, cheap labour and rich natural resources have attracted big inflows of foreign investment, especially from Asian neighbours like China, Vietnam and Thailand. That has ignited a property boom.
For the first time in its history Phnom Penh’s skyline is being pierced by modern high-rise towers, offering new office space and luxury apartments. Land prices are soaring, and developers are constantly seeking out new possibilities for construction.
One area they targeted was the city’s largest lake, Boeng Kak. A company owned by a senator from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, Shukaku, was given a 99-year lease to drain and build on the lake in 2007.
Another was the centre city neighbourhood of Borei Keila, which another politically-connected company, Phanimex, was given the right to develop in 2003. …
At least six people were seriously injured Wednesday in clashes between about 100 villagers demanding land compensation and 300 security personnel in front of the home of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, activists said.
According to villager representative Tep Vanny, the evictees from Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak lake community had earlier protested in front of the Ministry of Justice over the dispute and called for the release of a jailed fellow activist. …
When the mostly-female villagers tried to enter Hun Sen’s residence to confront the prime minister, “around 300 [security personnel] surrounded the villagers and detained at least three of them,” she said.
The action by Phnom Penh municipal police and Daun Penh district security guards, who were armed with riot shields and batons, led to a confrontation between the two sides that quickly escalated into violence, activists said. …
Protests over Boeung Kak Lake evictions have been ongoing since 2008, when the Chinese-Cambodian Shukaku Inc. began draining the lake to make way for a luxury residential development, drawing international attention to the country’s land development policies. …
According to Licadho, the government has given away nearly 4 million hectares (15,000 square miles), or 22 percent of the country’s land area, in mining or economic land concessions, in some cases pitting residents against developers and sparking protests. …
About 100 women forcibly evicted from Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak neighbourhood protested outside City Hall yesterday asking for upgrades to the compensation they accepted under duress to give up their homes.
The women said they were representing 739 of the more than 3,000 families forced out of their Boeung Kak homes since City Hall leased the area in 2007 to Shukaku Inc., the private firm owned by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin and his wife Choeung Sopheap, with plans to turn the area into an upscale satellite city.
Under the threat of having their modest, untitled homes demolished with nothing in return, they took what they could get: $8, 500 cash, ill-equipped housing on the outskirts of town or an empty plot of land outside the city. …
About 20 women still living at Boeung Kak protested in front of a metal building Shukaku has started building among their homes. Little more than a tall metal roof at the moment, the building sits inside a 12.44 hectare area Mr. Hun Sen himself cut out of Shukaku’s project in 2001 so that the 600-plus families still living there could receive land titles and keep their homes.
It is also the first thing Shukaku has built since stopping work about a year ago, only months after breaking ground. …
Nean Narin, a humble man and father of three children, says his family is going hungry. Narin lives in the village of Boeung Kak, situated on the edge of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. For years, he and other villagers relied on the Boeung Kak Lake for fish and plants, which they would eat and sell.
But in mid-2008, construction workers began pumping sand into the lake “in preparation for the development of a 133-hectare commercial and housing project” sponsored by Shukaku, Inc. — a Cambodian firm owned by a Senator of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party – and leased to the Chinese-owned Erdos Hong Jun Investment Co., Ltd.
Over the next four years, the project would displace over 3,000 families. …
But a sugar plantation tycoon has since claimed that land, and the family now faces eviction for the second time, she told IPS. All the fruit trees Vanny’s parents relied on for food have been cut down, and no compensation offered. …
The market-driven economy – launched in 1989 and opened to foreign investors in 1993 – fuelled a rapid increase in FDI, from practically nothing in 1990 to 800 million dollars in 2008, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. …
While investments initially went straight into sectors like tourism (53 percent), infrastructure (21 percent) and the garments industry (20 percent), the past half-decade has seen a steady rise in land investments. …
Land investments are also characterised by a lack of data. The last report released by the ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries was in 2006. In that year, 30 land concessions were granted to foreign companies: about half were Chinese while the rest were Vietnamese, Thai, South Korean and from the U.S.
Not only is FDI displacing farmers but the beneficial trade ranking the European Union (EU) afforded Cambodia as an LDC — known as the Everything But Arms (EBA) agreement—has also taken a toll. The scheme allows duty-free exports of agricultural products to the EU and has sparked an upsurge of land grabs for sugar cane plantations.
These acquisitions have displaced over 1,500 families in the Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Oddar Meanchey provinces. …
… Among thousands of residents in the Boeung Kak Lake district of the capital whose land has been targeted for redevelopment by a Chinese-financed real estate company, Tep Vanny carried a letter explaining the “sadness and suffering” caused by the project — which has turned Phnom Penh’s biggest lake into a barren, arid expanse of sand — and begging the Chinese leader to “intervene for a fair resolution of our land dispute problems.” …
China professes a policy of never interfering in the internal affairs of foreign lands. But in Cambodia, growing public fury over land grabs to make way for development projects involving Chinese investors has pushed Beijing to the center of one of this Southeast Asian nation’s most sensitive social and political issues. …
Chinese companies, meanwhile, have invested nearly $9 billion in Cambodia since 1994, according to official Chinese reports — compared with just $77.8 million in American investment registered over the same period. …
Under the terms of a 99-year lease granted in Feb 2007 by Phnom Penh Municipality, a Cambodian company called Shukaku gained the right to turn the lake and a swath of surrounding land into a new residential and business district. Shukaku agreed to pay $79 million for 328 acres of prime real estate, far less than the market value of such a large piece of land in the center of the capital. …
The future of the project, meanwhile, is mired in uncertainty. A high concrete wall has been erected around the sand-filled lake, but there is no sign of construction work. The sand is too soft to build on and could take up to a decade to settle sufficiently. Residents complain that draining of the lake has caused flooding during the rainy season and led to sewage leaking. …
Resident of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood burned straw effigies symbolizing corrupt government officials yesterday to make the one-year anniversary of demolition of eight homes at the contest site.
Roughly 100 protesters gathered at the site of the demolitions and set fire to eight scarecrow-like effigies one for each home demolished by excavators in a violent eviction in September 2011. The scarecrows were dress in black shirts and trousers and blue karma scarves to make them look like Khmer Rouge soldiers. …
The eight homeowners are among nearly 100 families who believe they were unfairly excluded from a government plan to give Boeng Kak resident land titles following an initiative launched in August 2011 in the hope of settling the community’s years-long land ownership dispute with Shukaku Inc., a private development firm belonging to CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin. …
Residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood burned straw effigies symbolizing corrupt government officials yesterday to mark the one-year anniversary of the demolition of eight homes at the contested site.
Roughly 100 protesters gathered at the site of the demolitions and set fire to eight scarecrow-like effigies- one for each home demolished by excavators in a violent eviction in September 2011. The scarecrows were dressed in black shirts and trousers and blue krama scarves to make them look like Khmer Rouge soldiers. …
In October, the families filed a lawsuit with the Phnom Penh Municipal Court blaming the demolitions of the homes on four individuals: Daun Penh District Deputy Governor Sok Penhvuth, Phnom Penh riot police Lieutenant General Phorn Sophen, Phnom Penh riot police Major Roth Korsal, and private contractor Sok Hong, who was hired by Shukaku to fill Boeng Kak lake with sand. …
Police and court officials yesterday questioned, charged and imprisoned elderly woman involved in the long-running land dispute at the Borei Keila community in Phnom Penh, a day after an anti-eviction protester from Boeng Kak community met a similar fate.
In both cases, police and court officials would not explain the charges against the women, who have been protesting against their evictions at the hands of two well-connected property firms: the Phanimex firm at Borei Keila and the Shukaku firm at Boeng Kak. …
Dozens of Boeng Kak residents were aong the 180-strong crowd that protested outside the municipal court yesterday and moved on to the gates of Prey Sar, where the two women are jailed ahead of trial. …
Two months after their release from Prey Sar prison, members of the so-called Boeung Kak 13 were yesterday at the forefront of more calls for authorities to mark out land promised to their community.
About 50 Boeung Kak women and children gathered outside
to urge authorities to demarcate 12.44 hectares of land that Prime Minister Hun Sen pledged to them just over one year ago. …
Land at Boeung Kak was granted to Shukaku, a company owned by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin, in 2007 for a US$79 million development. Thousands of families have since been evicted from the site. …
The protesters also submitted a letter to the Council of Ministers yesterday pleading for intervention to end the long-running dispute. …
The 13 Boeung Kak women imprisoned after a three-hour trial last month will be released today, the Court of Appeal announced after a hearing this morning.
A panel of three judges upheld the two charges against the women, declaring they were still guilty of occupying state land and obstructing public officials in aggravating circumstances, but reduced their sentences from two and a half years to one month and three days – the length of time they have already served in Prey Sar prison.
Scenes of jubilation followed as supporters of the 13 women danced and sang in the streets; however, police clashed with supporters outside the court during the trial…
Thirteen Boeung Kak lake women who were sentenced to two and a half years in jail on Thursday following a lawyer-free trial that lasted just three hours will appeal their convictions, their distraught supporters said yesterday.
As the reality of the trial, which rights groups have condemned as illegal, set in, families and friends of the women gathered at the home of imprisoned representative Tep Vanny in village 22, vowing to fight for the women’s freedom. …
Human rights group Adhoc criticised over the weekend what it said was hypocrisy. …
“Whereas companies continue to abuse the Land Law and Sub-Decree No. 146 on Economic Land Concessions – razing people’s land before official licence is granted, neglecting to carry out required impact assessments and disregarding calls for compensation – citizens who exert their right to peaceful protest are met with violence and judicial harassment.”
Development firm Shukaku, which is headed by Cambodian People’s Party Senator Lao Meng Khin, was awarded Boeung Kak lake in 2007. …
The filling of Boeng Kak lake and the eviction of thousands of residents was necessary to root out the “prostitutes and terrorists” that were drawn to the area’s once-popular tourist zone, the Phnom Penh Municipality said in a statement yesterday.
In a statement posted to its website, the municipality listed legal, social, economic and environmental “aspects” to argue that city officials had no choice but to fill in the lake and hand it over to Shukaku Inc. – the private firm owned by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin.
“Because there was an uncontrollable mixed renting by all kinds of people, this area turned to be an insecure place, shelter for criminals, gangsters, drug dealers, prostitutes and terrorists,” the municipality said.
Boeng Kak had, as a result, suffered from a “disappearance of national customs, traditions and Khmer culture.” …
The municipality also accused the area’s former residents, thousands of whom were evicted under duress, of having encroached on state land by building homes over the water. And while many of the evicted families complain of financial hardship since their eviction, the municipality said that the poor, dirty and cramped conditions at Boeng Kak gave residents no chance to make better lives for themselves. The statement also controversially claims that the 104-hectare lake played no role in the city’s natural drainage of rainwater, rendering it wholly expendable in terms of flood management in Phnom Penh.
To make the case, the municipality cites an undated French study that found Boeng Kak played no part in the city’s drainage and another decade-old study by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that simply makes no mention of the lake.
The municipality, however, failed to include more recent evidence showing that Boeng Kak in fact has a key role in absorbing seasonal rains, including an independent 2008 study by Australian hydrologists who called the anticipated flooding from the filling of Boeng Kak lake “unacceptable,” and urged the government to reconsider.
Last month, the country’s preeminent architect, Vann Molyvann, also weighed in, calling the lake’s disappearance “dangerous” for water drainage management in the capital. Mr. Molyvann said studies urging the government to not fill in the lake were actually around since the early 1990s. Seng Solady, a program officer for JICA, which has spent tens of millions of dollars on alleviating flooding in city streets, also said last month that multiple studies pointed to the benefits of preserving Boeng Kak. …
Sao Saroeun, a Phnom Penh resident arrested last month for demonstrating against CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin’s Boeng Kak real estate project and released on bail last week, urged the courts to release
13 women still being detained at Prey Sar prison yesterday.
The 13 women were sentenced to two-and-a-half-year jail terms by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court after a summary trial on May 24 widely condemned by rights groups. Mr. Saroeun, 73, and Ly Channary, 40, were arrested outside the trial and held in pre-trial detention until their surprise release Friday on bail. …
The 13 women were convicted on the same charges with which Mr. Saroeun and Ms. Channary weren’t convicted and have a hearing at the Appeal Court scheduled for June 27. The women accuse Mr. Meng Khin’s finn, Shukaku Inc., of stealing their land and illegally evicting thousands of families.
One of the two Boeung Kak lake residents released on bail from Prey Sar prison on Friday is prepared to be a witness in the appeal trial of the 13 women convicted and sent to jail last month – but only if he is invited to be, he said yesterday.
Sao Sareoun, 71, and Ly Channary were released on the condition they report to police every two weeks and do not change their addresses.
Sao Sareoun, who was arrested outside the 13 women’s trial on May 24 as he tried to give evidence, said he was willing to testify in next Wednesday’s hearing at the Appeal Court, but did not want to find himself in more trouble by doing so. …
… Shukaku, a company owned by a CPP Senator was given a 99-year lease to to the area in 2007. Immediately, the company started filling in the lake with sand and began kicking out thousands of families in what is one of the most notorious evictions in modern history.
Shukaku had a different vision for what would stand on the drained and filled in lake; the firm would build hundreds of high-end residential units surrounded by large mixed-use power blocks. Despite an elaborate ceremonial groundbreaking last year attended by senior government officials, Shukaku’s vision appears to have stalled.
Now with 90-hectares of empty land in the heart of an increasingly congested captial city, residents shared their visions of how Boeng Kak could be put to better use for the people, and the prestige, of Phnom Penh. ….
The 13 Boeung Kak lake women imprisoned after a three-hour trial on May 24 were tried unjustly on charges that had no basis, according to a Cambodian Center for Human Rights report released yesterday. …
Ou Virak said the women’s sentencing, which came two days after their arrest and hours after they were charged with disputing authorities and occupying land awarded to developer Shukaku, was a “gross miscarriage of justice”. …
Thirteen women protesters from Boeung Kak lake were yesterday sentenced to two and a half years in prison after a three-hour trial that was widely condemned as illegal – and which prompted SRP lawmaker Mu Sochua to urge the international community to suspend aid to Cambodia.
The women, who were arrested as a family tried to rebuild its home during a demonstration at Boeung Kak on Tuesday, stood trial at 2pm – without a lawyer – after court prosecutors spent the morning interviewing them.
The women spent two nights at Phnom Penh municipal police headquarters and had not been charged until yesterday, when the court tried them for cursing public authority and encroaching upon the land of a public figure – Cambodian People’s Party Senator Lao Meng Khin, the owner of Shukaku.
Little more than three hours after their trial began, the women were being transported to overcrowded Prey Sar prison. …
When Chhin Theang picked up the long-awaited title to her Boeung Kak home during a low-key ceremony at the Daun Penh district office on Monday, the moment was bittersweet. “We always had hope because we protested. We had to get land titles,” Ms. Theang said yesterday.
Ms. Theang and 39 others were the last of the 638 Boeung Kak area families officially elegible for land titles under a plan approved by Prime Minister Hun Sen in August. The granting of the land titles came only after years of protest against a CPP Senator’s real estate project in Boeung Kak that had been threatening families with eviction since City Hall approved the deal in 2007. Three thousand other families accepted their eviction in exchange for modest compensation from the firm. …
Another 100 families who held out against the evictions just like Ms. Theang were cut out of the Prime Minister’s plan. …
Over three years after Shukaku Inc started filling Boeung Kak lake with sand to make way for a CPP Senator’s massive real estate project, Google Maps has now completely erased the image of the lake, which the municipality’s year-end report says is now 95 percent full of sand.
It was not clear yesterday when or why the image was altered, but as of October 2011, the Google Map of the area still depicted the entire lake. Google did not respond to a request for comment.
“The young generation will not know Boeung Kak,” said community representative Tol Sreypeou, whose family was one of about 500 families that have received a land title at the site.
Council of Ministers spokesman Ek Tha said the was being filled to beautify the city. “What Google is doing concerning this issue, that’s Google’s business,” Mr. Tha said. …
