Standing knee-deep in dirty water, 60-year-old Men Chhoeuy uses a crowbar to dismantle his small wooden house on the edge of a lake in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
He is the latest resident to give up the fight against a private company accused of spewing sand into lakeside homes as it fills in the 130 hectare site to make way for high-rise buildings and shopping centers.
“Many neighbors have already left,” Men Chhoeuy said, as he continued his demolition work on the northern edge of Boeung Kak Lake, one of the last large open spaces left in Phnom Penh and once home to about 4,000 families.
The sand-pumping has increased significantly in recent weeks and a number of homes were fully immersed in a matter of days, leaving only the tips of roofs sticking out as startled families scrambled to save what belongings they could.
“The message that is being sent to the remaining residents at the lake is that they should accept the compensation being offered to them or else their houses too will be buried in mud,” said David Pred, executive director of Bridges Across Borders Cambodia, a non-governmental organization.
The government leased the area three years ago to Shukaku, a private developer headed by a ruling party politician, ignoring residents’ existing land claims.
Filling the lake with sand has caused water levels to rise, flooding local dwellings with slurry and -creating unsanitary conditions, according to residents and rights groups.
“Shukaku Inc is forcibly evicting lake residents by pumping sand and mud into their homes,” said Rolando Modina, regional director of the international pressure group Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.
Land disputes are a major problem in Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge abolished land ownership during its 1975 to 1979 rule, and many legal documents were lost during that time and in the years of civil war that followed.
Last year, the government approved a new law allowing it to seize private property for public development projects, to the dismay of activists.
“Land-grabbing is a cancer that is eating up Cambodia,” Pred said.
“Forced evictions are being driven by rapid speculative investment in the Cambodian real estate market, coupled with endemic corruption and the absence of rule of law,” he added. “The urban poor are being driven from their homes in Phnom Penh, which is becoming an exclusive domain of the wealthy.”
The capital is undergoing heavy development after projects stalled during the global financial crisis.
In the countryside, meanwhile, farming land has been confiscated on numerous occasions and granted to large developers such as sugar and rubber companies.
Last year alone, at least 26 cases of mass evictions displaced approximately 27,000 people across the country, according to a UN report released in September.
“The manner in which land is managed and used by the government for various purposes continues to be a major problem. Land--grabbing by people in positions of power seems to be a common occurrence,” it said.
Shukaku has offered some lake dwellers, though not all, financial compensation of US$1,500 to US$8,500 for vacating the site, but critics say the money is not enough.
“I have to accept this money because my home is flooding,” Men Chhoeuy said of the US$8,000 he will split with the three other families who shared his home. “I don’t know where to go now. With this money we can’t do anything.”
People are leaving the lake every day, but Pred estimates there are still about 1,500 to 2,000 families remaining, many of whom are poor and have nowhere else to go.
Shukaku, which was granted a 99-year lease for the development project, declined to comment.
Sok Sambath, the governor of the city’s Daunh Penh district, which includes the lake, described the development as “a good thing” for the area and said residents were accepting compensation.
Many of the people living on and around the lake settled or returned there in the 1980s after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.
Under Cambodian law, a person who has lived somewhere for five years or more without dispute has rights to that land, “but there have been problems in implementing this law properly,” the UN report said.
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