CAMBODIA: Forced eviction of 229 families in Sihanoukville

[NOTICE: The AHRC have developed a new automatic letter-sending system using the “button” below. However, in this appeal, we could not include e-mail addresses of some of the Cambodian authorities. We encourage you to send your appeal letters via fax or post to those people. Fax numbers and postal addresses of the Cambodian authorities are attached below with this appeal. Thank you.]

 

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has learned that on December 17, 2006, Say Hak, governor of the seaport municipality of Sihanoukville led a mixed police force of about 70 men armed with pistols, assault rifles and electric batons, together with a bulldozer, to evict 229 families from their homes and land of altogether 28 hectares in village No.1, commune No.1, Mittapheap district, Sihanoukville. About 300 villagers resisted the eviction and barred the entrance to their village. Say Hak allegedly ordered the police to forcibly evict the people who were on their way and the police beat many of villagers with electric batons and wooden sticks. It has been reported that there are more than 20 villagers who suffered from injures made by police assaults.

CASE DETAILS:

According to the information we have received, the governor of the seaport municipality of Sihanoukville had ordered police force of about 70 armed men with pistols, assault rifles and electric batons and a bulldozer to evict 229 families who reside in about 28 hectares of land in village No.1, commune No.1, Mittapheap district in Sihanoukville on December 17, 2006. The governor Say Hak allegedly ordered the police to force their way in, exhorting the driver of the bulldozer to crush those who tried to prevent them by saying, “Crush 2 or 3 of those who are in the way”. This comment was heard by a 48-year old woman villager, Khat Thol, who was barred to enter into the village on that day.

The police forged ahead beating villagers who were in their way with electric batons and wooden sticks. One military officer repeatedly beat Hem Narin’s wife on her left arm causing serious injuries when she tried to protect her husband who had already fallen to the ground when shocked by an electric baton and from receiving blows of a wooden stick. Another officer punched a 40-yeard old woman named Meas Neam in the temple three times. Four other officers assaulted a 57-year old woman named Sou Sarin. Three other villagers were also injured due to electric shocks. According to a human rights monitor over 20 villagers suffered various degrees of injuries in the police assault. Three of the injured needed hospital treatment.

Once the resistance had been broken the bulldozer set out to open a path leading to the land. Then on the following days the same bulldozer cleared the land around the villagers’ houses and destroyed their fruit trees while their owners were urged to dismantle their houses. As of December 22, seven houses were demolished and flattened, and the clearance continued while the owners looked on, powerless, facing the armed police guarding the demolition site.

On December 20, 60 of the villagers, among them were 40 women, went to the Parliament in Phnom Penh, over 200 kilometers away from their village, to protest against this forced eviction and seek intervention from MPs, the Prime Minister and  other relevant authorities to stop the eviction and let them live on their land in peace.

As a matter of fact, villagers have asserted that in 1986/87 they went to live on that land then uninhabited and owned by nobody when a communist regime still ruled Cambodia. They started to work their respective land as orchards. In 1988 the Sihanoukville municipality asked them to give their land to it for planting rubber. This plantation project ran into financial difficulties and the municipality could not pay the salaries of workers. In 1991 these workers then sold the respective plots of land they had planted rubber trees on to a private businessman named Sou Chong Hour in 1991. Realising that the land was no longer a public land as agreed upon when they have given it to the municipality, the original owners protested against Sou Chong Hour. This businessman did not take long to give up the ownership of it. The original owners then gave that land once again a public land to the municipality to plant acacia trees in 1993. But in 1995 and 1996 the chief of the commune cleared the young acacia plants and sold the land. The original owners protested against that sale and started to reoccupy their land and build houses on it in 1996 and 1997, despite the commune chief’s objection.

There was then tension between those villagers and the commune chief. In 1998 at the instigation of this chief four of the villagers, Phan Chantha, 48, Pol Pong, 49, Phok Sophea, 24 and Net Marn. 50, were charged with causing damage to other people’s property. The charge was apparently meant to put pressure on those villagers to vacate the land as the court offered to drop the charge against the four men if they agreed to leave the contested land. Two yielded to this coercion, but the other two defied the court and, thanks to their fellow villagers’ protection, escaped the arrest and went into hiding.

In the same year those villagers took their case to the Parliament. They then secured a promise from the ministry of justice to look into their case. It took that ministry until 2000 before it could send a letter urging the court in Sihanoukville to hear their case. However, since then, their case has never been heard by that court.

The AHRC has learned that Sihanoukville governor Say Hak had neither had recourse to any due process of law and secured any eviction order from the court, nor served any eviction notice to those 229 families although he had previously had several meetings with them. He simply issued an administrative order since, he has claim, those families are living on public land. The AHRC has further learned that he took that land to give to 560 families who had been previously evicted from a land claimed by Tycoon Senator Kong Triv in the same city. He reportedly offered each of the 229 families an 8 meter X 20 meter plot of land which is simply a fraction of their respective current holdings and which is unacceptable to them.

The AHRC therefore urges the Cambodian government and Sihanoukville governor Say Hak to immediately stop the forced eviction of the 229 families and give them back their land. It is utterly unjust to force these families to bear the burden of housing the families who have been forcibly evicted to liberate land for Tycoon Senator Kong Triv.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:

The AHRC had reported numbers of cases of forced land eviction by state and local authorities occurring in throughout the whole country of Cambodia (for more details, please see UA-409-2006; UA-411-2006; UA-001-2007). In some of the cases, several villagers had been falsely charged by courts. And in the others, many of the villagers had been injured and not received any compensation for justice. The AHRC is deeply concerning about such practices conducted by state officials and urge that the cases should be resolved in accordance with law and justice.

SUGESTED ACTION:
Please write to the authorities listed below to immediately stop that forced eviction and return the land to those 229 families.

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER