Relocated Cambodians, affected with HIV, carry a huge jar to fill up water at Tuol Sambo village in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, July 17, 2009. Cambodian authorities, June 18, 2009, evicted 20 families afflicted with HIV from their homes in the capital, forcing them to move to a tiny settlement on its outskirts in an action critics called discriminatory.
(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The World Bank has urged Cambodia's government to halt forced evictions from disputed land, which it said was threatening the livelihoods of thousands of urban dwellers.
About 150 families were evicted on Thursday and Friday by 70 armed police and dozens of demolition workers from a site along the Mekong river in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
In a statement, the World Bank said a fair and transparent mechanism for resolving land disputes needed to be established.
"This has become a major problem in Phnom Penh and other fast growing cities in Cambodia -- creating uncertainty for, and putting at risk the livelihoods of, thousands of poor people."
Donors have in recent years injected up to $1 billion a year to fight poverty in Cambodia, where 35 percent of the country's 14 million people are living below the poverty line.
The World Bank said the authorities had failed to go through the proper process of negotiation with residents, which violated international norms and breached human rights laws.
Cambodia's government, which has been desperately wooing foreign investment and needs the donors at a time when its economy is shrinking, rejected the report and said those evicted had been offered adequate compensation.
"The government always has relocation and social safety networks in place ahead of removing the squatters," said government spokesman Khieu Kanharith.
"But these land-grab opportunists created these problems in the first place," he added.Amnesty International has also pressed for an end to the evictions, saying families had rejected the state's compensation packages because they were deemed "unfair and inadequate".
Roeun Sareth, 49, who was evicted early on Friday, said his home was torn down after residents asked for more money.
"They turned us down when we negotiated for fair compensation," he said.
2 comments:
HAHAHA!!! Cambodians need to go far away from Cambodia or go to paradise as soon as possible becuase I need your Khmer land for my new upcoming Vietnamese. Right now, my new citizen of Vietnamese are making their family books for living in Cambodia legally. And we wish to give birth for my new generations in Cambodia to get rid off Cambodia and inclease the number of my Vietnamese throghout Indochia. Then we all will become a nation and altogether live in the same house and let's love each other as a family, not to fight each other any more. Your Khmer Krom is not enough for me to share and eat, now I am hungry again. I need your help to bring me some of Cambodia. Quick !Quick !Quick ! I am so thirsty, quoted as saying in a joint Khmer and Vietnamese meeting in Hanoi.
R
I doubt you are a Viet. I think you are a Khmer pretending to be Viet. But if you are a real Viet, your writing above shows that you and your Viet race is a bunch of robbers and thieves. Shame on you.
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