Phnom Penh residents battle eviction

Updated May 5, 2009

A community of around 70 families in Phnom Penh face eviction today as the deadline expires for them to leave a strip of land next to the new Australian Embassy which is under construction.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Lim Ly Kien, Village representative; Amnesty's country specialist Brittis Edman; Daniel King, a lawyer working on behalf of the G78 community

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CARMICHAEL: I'm standing at G78, a small strip of mainly low-income housing in what has become valuable real estate in Phnom Penh. On one side of a beaten earth road are several dozen homes that make up the community known as G78. Most homes here are built of corrugated iron, some are of wood. On the other side of the road is a high white fence, boarding off the Australian Embassy building that is under construction. The Embassy isn't yet finished, but it is taking shape. The palm trees are planted. Even the flagpoles are up.

But G78's residents are no longer welcome here. The municipality wants their land, and has said they will be evicted today - May 5th. But because it has offered very low compensation, the residents decided to hold out. Illegal evictions are a too-common tale in Cambodia - the weak being ridden roughshod over by the powerful. So although many of G78's residents have lived here more than a decade and have legal rights under local and international law, there is a good chance that by the time you hear this they will have been driven away by armed police, and their homes demolished.

Amnesty International has been watching the G78 case. Amnesty's country specialist Brittis Edman says the residents want to be treated fairly.

EDMAN: They would be prepared to leave - if they have to - should they be provided with adequate alternative housing and/or compensation which is fair and just and paid in advance.

CARMICHAEL: Three hundred metres down the road - past food-stalls, homes and small shops - is the house of village representative, 66-year-old Lim Ly Kien. Lim Ly Kien bought the land and built his house in 1996. It is a fine house - a double-storey wooden home on stilts, with the dark wooden planks sanded and polished. He says residents wrote a letter to the Australian government last year asking that it intervene with the municipality to work out an agreement.

KIEN: They said they would keep an eye on what the government and the Phnom Penh municipality are doing with regards to G78. And they told us they would intervene on the issue and try to do everything they could for G78 according to the law.

CARMICHAEL: Australia has been heavily involved in promoting good governance and the rule of law in Cambodia. So its previous responses to G78 - that it would not get involved in breaches of local and international law in individual cases, particularly one that is literally on its own doorstep - were widely criticized. Lim Ly Kien says that Australia - as a party to the 1991 Paris Accords that ended the war in Cambodia - is in a good position to remind Phnom Penh of its human rights obligations.

The Australian embassy declined a face-to-face meeting to discuss G78. In an emailed statement the deputy head of mission, Fiona Cochaud, says the embassy understood that the UN felt some residents had legitimate claims to their land.

Ms Cochaud wrote that due process, transparency and just compensation are all essential to the resettlement process. But she refused to comment specifically on G78 saying it was 'not appropriate'. She did not respond to questions emailed in response to her statement.

Daniel King is an Australian lawyer who works on behalf of the G78 residents. He says they have clear possessory rights to their land and homes. King says they have for years tried to get land title - the physical document that the government issues to people as the final step in the land ownership process - but the authorities had repeatedly rejected them.

KING: The reasons that the authorities have given for refusing title have been inconsistent and different. They have been issued with six eviction notices, the first one being for city beautification. But reasons have ranged from a road to a bridge. And now the latest eviction notice is that it is private company land and state land for roads. So there is not a clear reason why these people have been denied legal title.

CARMICHAEL: King says that an independent land appraisal carried out in March valued the site at fifteen million US dollars.

KING: The combined compensation policy of City Hall is less than 500,000 dollars.

CARMICHAEL: So the difference is fourteen and a half million dollars - where's that going?

KING: That's a good question - you should ask City Hall.

CARMICHAEL: We tried to do that, but neither the governor nor his deputy were available. Back at G78, Lim Ly Kien tells me his daughter married an Australian and has lived there since 2004. They've just had their first child. Lim Ly Kien and his wife travelled to Australia in 2005 for the wedding and spent two months there. And what does he think his house and land are worth? He says the wood alone cost ten thousand US dollars. And his piece of land is worth more than three hundred thousand dollars at the independent valuation.

His question by return: How would anyone feel about being offered six thousand US dollars compensation for something with a market value more than fifty times greater?

KIEN: If I were staying on land that belonged to the company, then I would not take one penny in compensation and I would leave. But the land belongs to me - I bought it according to the law.

CARMICHAEL: It remains to be seen what Lim Ly Kien's legal position or that of his neighbours is worth. What will become clear is whether the municipality uses different tactics to the head-cracking and intimidation that have characterised previous evictions in Phnom Penh.