Who will pay most for Cambodia’s development?

Released on 22/08/2008

As investors moved in, the poor were evicted from their lands, their houses were burnt down and the owners arrested and jailed.

As investors poise to spend billions making Cambodia’s undeveloped coast the next hotspot for sunseekers, human rights groups fear that violent and illegal mass evictions will increase to make way for the resorts and supporting infrastructure.

(PHOTOGRAPH: Villagers’ houses burn during the forced eviction of approximately 105 families at Pram Muoy Village, Mittapheap 4, near Sihanoukville, April 2007. Photograph by David Pred.)

Land-grabbing is reportedly rife in a country still recovering from the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime and conflict with neighbouring Vietnam. In February this year Amnesty International estimated that 150,000 people around the country were at risk of forcible eviction as a result of land disputes, seizures and new development projects.

As investors prepare to turn Cambodia’s undeveloped coastline into the next big Asian holiday destination, civil society organisations say the housing and land rights of residents are being trampled on.

The plans for development are significant. A recent example came to light on August 17 when Cambodian conglomerate Royal Group told the Financial Times newspaper it was raising US$2 billion from private investors, together with Hong Kong-based Millennium Group, to develop Koh Rong, an island nearly the size of Hong Kong off the coastal municipality of Sihanoukville.

At nearly 8000 hectares and largely forested, the scope of the development would be huge and would likely require an airport. According to one press report the Cambodian government will not release figures of how many people live on the island, though it has conducted a census there.

The Financial Times also reported that MPDI, a subsidiary of Seng Enterprise, one of Cambodia’s leading construction companies, is working on another US$2bn project with unnamed US, Japanese and Middle Eastern investors to triple the size of Kep, a neglected former French colonial resort. The paper reported that land along a 6km stretch of coastline will be reclaimed and luxury towers and bungalows will house about 10,000 families.

Dan Nicholson, Asia Pacific coordinator for the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), told iCON his organization had “grave fears” about the rights of people living in areas pegged for development.

“We hear many reports about proposed tourist developments around the coastline. Some estimates are that 45% of the country has been sold off in various forms to developers, mainly coastal areas and islands.

“Evictions in Cambodia are frequently carried out violently, with no regard to the human rights of those affected, and in violation of Cambodian law. Military police are often used, even though this is illegal. Very often those evicted in fact have legal rights to the land, under the 2001 Land Law, but this is ignored by a corrupt judiciary and government.”

In one case in April last year soldiers and police armed with guns and electric batons violently evicted approximately 105 families from Pram Muoy Village near Sihanoukville to back a claim of ownership by the wife of a local high-ranking official. Houses were burnt to the ground and 18 villagers and two police were injured.

“More than a year later,” Nicholson said, “the community is living along the road, adjacent to their old land, under tarpaulins in conditions resembling an IDP (internally displaced person) camp. The land has been fenced off but remains unused.”

The issue of land ownership in Cambodia is murky at best. Rhodri Williams, an international expert on housing rights, notes that traditionally in Cambodia title was established through cultivating the land, and lost when it fell into disuse. The French, who colonized Cambodia in the mid-1800s, tried to move from use-based to title-based ownership but this didn’t take root much outside the cities.

In 1975 any question of who owned what became academic when the Khmer Rouge launched a programme of wholesale agrarian collectivization that emptied the cities and forced the population to work on farms. The Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 but it wasn’t until the mid 1980s that the government de-collectivised land and property. It then began granting concessions to private companies to exploit natural resources, but it fell to local authorities to administer this process and corruption was rife.

Cambodia’s 300-mile coastline has never been heavily populated but after the mass uprootings during the Khmer Rouge era, in which an estimated fifth of the population was killed, people began settling there because their own towns and villages had been destroyed. They supported themselves by fishing, subsistence farming or running small businesses.

In the 90s the central government in Phnom Penh designated the entire coast and its islands as State Public Land that could not be bartered or developed.

According to an article in the Guardian newspaper (See “Country for sale”, 26th April 2008), by 2006 these coastal communities had schools, political representation, and many householders even had papers, stamped by the Sihanoukville governor, Say Hak, which guaranteed them the permanent right to stay under the 2001 Land Law.

But in July 2007, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, of the Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP), changed the designation of the southern islands so they could be sold.

“By March this year,” wrote the authors of the Guardian article, “virtually all Cambodia's accessible and sandy coast was in private hands, either Cambodian or foreign. Those who lived or worked there were turfed out - some jailed, others beaten, virtually all denied meaningful compensation. The deals went unannounced; no tenders or plans were ever officially published. All that was known was that more than £1,000m in foreign finance found its way into the country in 2007, a 1,500% increase over the previous four years.”

Dan Nicholson of COHRE told iCON that under international law, evictions should only be carried out in exceptional circumstances, and when all feasible alternatives have been explored with the communities. He said that where evictions are justified there must be adequate consultation and notice and the evictions must be humane. Evicted communities should be compensated for their losses, and provided with adequate alternative housing.

“Although Cambodia has ratified the major international human rights treaties, there is currently no law regulating eviction here,” he said. “Domestic laws are in any case frequently ignored by government, police and courts to push through development projects, including tourist development.

“Everyone can see the potential for Cambodia to develop a stronger tourist industry. However, it is essential that this doesn't happen at the expense of the housing and land rights of local communities. Current signs are not good.”

Cambodia lost no time issuing an official response to both the Guardian article and the Amnesty International report. In a letter to the Guardian, Cambodia’s ambassador to the UK, Hor Nambora, accused the paper of trying to discredit the ruling CPP in the run-up to July’s general election, in which Prime Minister Hun Sen was returned to office.

The ambassador (see www.cambodianembassy.org.uk) did not refute the article’s specific assertions but recalled the country’s difficult past and said the government doesn’t ignore “the tactics used by some foreign companies”. He went on to claim that “All applications to buy land are carefully scrutinised by the Cambodian Investment Board which is committed to ensuring that the rights of the Cambodian people are not infringed.”

To Amnesty International, Hor Nambora wrote countering that the government planned to distribute concession land to some 10,000 poor families in the provinces and cities as part of a Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development (LASED) Project for 2008.

He also said Cambodia is committed to improving governance and is working with the World Bank, the EU, UK and Japan, who together provided US$70m to help reform public financial management, private sector development, natural resource and land management from 2007 to 2010.

However expert Rhodri Williams told iCON that this may be just a smokescreen.

“The problem,” he said, “is that the international cooperation tends to focus on lengthy drafting processes for laws and by-laws and programs, et cetera, that are so rarely implemented on the ground that it is hard to avoid the inference that they are little more than a diversion.

“Meanwhile, development is clearly going on, but taking place in a manner that tends to be to the detriment of all but the rich and connected.”

He added: “The World Bank has pointed out that other countries in the region (such as Vietnam) have managed to achieve equitable growth in a manner that benefits society as a whole and contributes to a far more sustainable form of stability than the CPP’s mix of repressive political tactics and short-sighted economic rapaciousness.”