Few Cambodians have land titles and tens of thousands have been forcibly evicted from their homes
BANGKOK (TrustLaw) – Cambodian women are increasingly at the forefront of the fight against forced evictions, putting themselves at risk of abuse, threats and imprisonment, a report by Amnesty International said.
In a country where few have land titles, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly evicted from their homes and land. Many victims are not consulted prior to their loss and receive inadequate compensation. The authorities have systematically failed to protect them, the report said.
“Government authorities often actively assist forced evictions or fail to act when laws are applied selectively or ignored altogether,” it added.
Eviction and resistance in Cambodia: Five women tell their stories, released Thursday, is about the struggles of Hong, Mai, Sophal, Heap and Vanny who have faced or are facing forced eviction.
Forced evictions have specific impacts on women, the report said. They lead to the breakdown of the community networks women rely on, affect their access to essential services such as health, and disrupt children’s education.
Evictees are often resettled in remote areas far from work opportunities, leaving wives to cope while husbands spend long periods of time away seeking work.
“The Cambodian authorities must bring about an end to the practice of forced evictions, which contravene international human rights treaties and tear families apart,” Donna Guest, Amnesty’s Asia Pacific deputy director, said in a statement.
THREATENED, JAILED AND MADE HOMELESS
Mai was five months pregnant when her home and 118 other houses in her village were bulldozed and burnt to the ground in October 2009 by police, forestry officials and others believed to be working for a company which was granted a concession to build an agro-industrial sugar plantation in the area.
“My house, possessions, identity cards, clothes, photos all went up in smoke,” she told Amnesty. “Nothing was left.”
The police aimed their guns at anyone trying to defend their houses and possessions, she said.
A few days later, she travelled more than 250 kilometres from her homeland – a remote province called Oddar Meanchey – to Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh, to complain to the prime minister about the eviction. Instead she was thrown in jail for eight months for violating forestry laws.
“I was sick and bleeding and I was in so much pain. No one looked after me. My children had no money to come to visit me,” Mai, now 48, recalled her time in prison.
The mother of eight was freed in June 2010 but only after signing an agreement to withdraw all claims to her land and accept replacement land. She still has not received the replacement.
LAND OWNERSHIP PROBLEMS
Land ownership is problematic in Cambodia where legal documents were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s when private property was abolished as part of its drive for a communist agrarian utopia.
An estimated 85 percent of households in Cambodia today do not have land titles, leaving them vulnerable to land grabbing, rights groups say. They estimate about 30,000 Cambodians are forcibly evicted from their homes each year.
One of the biggest sources of contention is the economic land concessions (ELCs) which many of the villages featured in the report are facing. Under ELCs, the government grants massive tracts of land to private companies for large-scale agriculture and infrastructure projects.
Hong, who is one of the indigenous Kuy people, said Prey Lang forest provides her people with both home and daily necessities but is threatened by companies who have been granted concessions for plantations and mining.
Now a community leader fighting the destruction of the forest, Hong told Amnesty: “Development can provide money for spending for just a short period of time…once the money has gone, the villagers have already lost the land, the (natural) wealth.”
As of 2010, at least 27 economic land concessions and mining licences were known to have been awarded over parts of the greater Prey Lang area, the report said.
(Editing by Alex Whiting)
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