21 Families Faced Forced Eviction in Mean Chey

Some 20 families in Group 28, Tanou village, Chak Angre Leu commune, Mean Chey district, Phnom Penh have faced forced eviction from their own communal chief, asking them to dismantle their homes and moved to live in an area close to river cliff, of which they thought, was very danger when there was huge water during rainy season. The cliff normally falls down into water. Therefore most of the families have still refused to leave.

According to Seav Chea, an Economy and Law University student, previously the communal chief and clerk had invited each 2-3 families separately to Communal Office to ask them to move out of the area and accept the compensation of 500 to 1,000 USD to resettle at the above-mentioned site.

Seav Chea also reported that on March 27, 2010 communal chief Keo Sareoun, communal clerk led a group of 10 military police to the villagers’ location and threatened them to have been out by Sunday, March 28; otherwise the authority would dismantle their homes without compensation and the villagers had to be responsible for the expense of that dismantle.

For this reason a villager, who requested not to name him, asserted he did not want to comment on this issue because he had already agreed to move. However, he claimed that up to that moment 3 families had left because they scared and did not want to confront with the authority. Then there were only 18 families left, who had been demanding to live there.

It has been seen that the above act of those communal authority totally violated basic rights of those local villagers, which the Cambodian Constitution guarantees in Article 32, “Every Khmer citizen shall have the right to life, personal freedom, and security.” In addition, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 1945, which also says, “ Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social service…”

This also breached the 2001 Land Law. Article 5 of the law writes, “No person may be deprived of his ownership, unless it is in the public interest. An ownership deprivation shall be carried out in accordance with the forms and procedures provided by law and regulations and after the payment of fair and just compensation in advance.”