Photo: by Heng Reaksmey Police began pushing, hitting and kicking the demonstrators, eye witnesses and rights workers said after they failed to disperse after the demonstration, on Wednesday January 11, 2012.Thursday, 12 January 2012
Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
“Human rights NGOs have previously reported that detainees there have been subjected to abuses including rape, murder, and threats of violence.”
Amnesty International on Thursday called for the immediate release of nearly 40 demonstrators who are being held in a facility the group called “an extra-judiciary detention facility.”
The demonstrators were seized outside City Hall on Wednesday, where they had demanded the courts release eight representatives arrested earlier this month during violent clashes with police in a forced eviction at the Borei Keila neighborhood in central Phnom Penh.
The 38 people, including 24 women and six children, are still being “unlawfully detained” at the Prey Speu Social Affairs Center, Amnesty said, adding that no human rights monitors have been allowed to visit the facility.
“The center is used by the authorities to arbitrarily detain homeless people, drug users and sex workers rounded up from the streets,” Amnesty said. “Human rights NGOs have previously reported that detainees there have been subjected to abuses including rape, murder, and threats of violence.”
City officials declined to comment on the statement.
In a joint statement, Cambodian rights groups also condemned the detention. “We also call for the permanent closure of the Prey Speu center, which has been proven time and again to be nothing more than an extra-judicial detention facility,” the groups said.
The detentions follow a violent forced eviction of the Borei Keila neighborhood earlier this month, wherein some 300 families lost their homes to a development plan that was supposed to provide housing for the people it would displace. Rights groups say the company failed to provide enough housing, and residents resisted the eviction by throwing rocks and bottles at police during the Jan. 3 eviction.
Eight people were arrested in that clash, leading to Wednesday’s gathering before City Hall.
Amnesty called for the release of the original eight as well as the 38 detained on Wednesday, “pending further investigations and for members of the security forces found to be responsible for excessive use of force to be suspended and prosecuted.”
Lao Monghay, an independent political analyst, said the government needs to find a way to resolve the problem, comparing such forced evictions to the Khmer Rouge evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975.
“It is just a smaller evacuation than 1975,” he said. But “the evictions in Cambodia seem extremely cruel.”
The 38 people, including 24 women and six children, are still being “unlawfully detained” at the Prey Speu Social Affairs Center, Amnesty said, adding that no human rights monitors have been allowed to visit the facility.
“The center is used by the authorities to arbitrarily detain homeless people, drug users and sex workers rounded up from the streets,” Amnesty said. “Human rights NGOs have previously reported that detainees there have been subjected to abuses including rape, murder, and threats of violence.”
City officials declined to comment on the statement.
In a joint statement, Cambodian rights groups also condemned the detention. “We also call for the permanent closure of the Prey Speu center, which has been proven time and again to be nothing more than an extra-judicial detention facility,” the groups said.
The detentions follow a violent forced eviction of the Borei Keila neighborhood earlier this month, wherein some 300 families lost their homes to a development plan that was supposed to provide housing for the people it would displace. Rights groups say the company failed to provide enough housing, and residents resisted the eviction by throwing rocks and bottles at police during the Jan. 3 eviction.
Eight people were arrested in that clash, leading to Wednesday’s gathering before City Hall.
Amnesty called for the release of the original eight as well as the 38 detained on Wednesday, “pending further investigations and for members of the security forces found to be responsible for excessive use of force to be suspended and prosecuted.”
Lao Monghay, an independent political analyst, said the government needs to find a way to resolve the problem, comparing such forced evictions to the Khmer Rouge evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975.
“It is just a smaller evacuation than 1975,” he said. But “the evictions in Cambodia seem extremely cruel.”
4 comments:
Police just doing their duty...people should understood!
Govt trying clean up all slum's living and cleaning up all drug user, gangbang, hookers, gay, all diseased are high in this slum's area...Why people so stubborn?? take the offer and relocate!!
As sad as it may appears, it is necessary to clean up the eyesore of the city. Ghetto and slums breed crime, drug, and other unnecessary social headache. If Phnom Penh is to progress, something has to give. As always in any big city, it's the poors that must give up their spaces for development. I assume these people are giving some financial help in relocation. You cannot have a cheeseburger without killing a cow. On the othe hand, in the country side, if villagers have been living in the land they inherited from their family many generations before and was being driven out, then it is the government to blame.
The government needs land to develop the city but the people need to be compensated properly, at the market price, not being robbed for peanuts. In many cases in Cambodia, it seem the government, or the corrupt officials to be exact, robbed from the poor to give to the rich. People have lived in the area for many, many years, some lived in the place since 1979 after the Khmer Rouge ousted. This means that they owned the place. The people in Borei Keila or Boeung Kak Lake had been robbed badly and as people can see in the pictures they were dumped in isolated area, no houses, no roads, no water and no market place where they can make a living. This is similar to the evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1979 by the Khmer Rouge.
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