The Dispossessed

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia, after years of fighting and US bombing. One of their first acts was to evacuate the entire population of Phnom Penh. Forced into the countryside, this was the beginning of the horror of the Killing Fields. Around 20 per cent of the country's population died in that carnage, while the Khmer Rouge also abolished private property, destroying land titles and records. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Many Cambodians fled to neighbouring Thailand, with conflict then continuing into the 1990s. This left an enormous displaced population. In 2001, the Cambodian government issued a new land law recognising the problem of land title. If you could show you had lived in a place for five years continuously, and there were no challenges, you could apply for a title.

As Cambodia's economy booms, land is becoming more valuable, particularly in the capital, Phnom Penh.
"Cambodia has so much land available for concessions," says Ngnon Meng, the director-general of the Cambodian chamber of commerce. "The government is very willing to do things for foreign investors too … when they come in they don't want to leave."

The economy grew by 5.5 per cent last year, according to government figures, with last year seeing a new law allowing foreign ownership of property. It also saw another new law allowing the government to expropriate land for developments it deems to be in the public interest. The Cambodian ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries says that the government granted more than 1.38 million hectares of land in concessions to 142 different private companies between 1993 and June 2010.

20,000 people who have been evicted from their homes either on or around the historic, 90-hectare Boueng Kak Lake during the last few months. According to Surya P Subedi, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, what is happening is "representative of the problems of this nature that exist in the country. Land grabbing by the rich and powerful is a major problem in Cambodia today".
Cambodian rights group Adhoc says that last year alone, 12,389 families in the country became the victims of forced evictions. Another rights group, housing advocates STT, estimates that around 10 per cent of the population of Phnom Penh has faced eviction in the last decade.


The Cambodian Human Rights Foundation director Naly Pilorge says that in their survey of half the country's provinces "between 2005 and 2009 some 250,000 people were evicted. Last year alone we dealt with 94 new cases of land grabbing involving approximately 49,280 people. And the problem is escalating," she adds.

The Socialist Party