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Phnom Penh’s Group 78 Community Loses Battle to Save Homes
Group 78 residents, who lived along a strip just adjacent to the new Australian embassy, had well-documented land rights dating back to the early 1980s and attempted to secure them through an ongoing domestic legal battle and an international advocacy campaign for onsite upgrading or fair and just compensation, to which they are entitled under Cambodian law.
BABSEA calls on Cambodia’s donor community to make its bi-lateral funding commitments conditional on the Cambodian government fulfilling its international human rights obligations, including the prohibition of forced evictions.
Read Public Statement of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights View Photos |
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Another forced eviction rocked Cambodia’s capital city Phnom Penh on Friday, July 15th, when the city-center “Group 78” community was demolished by City Hall after a 3 years-long campaign of coercion to leave their homes and land. Over the years, Group 78 families received 6 eviction notices by local authorities, each claiming different and sometimes conflicting reasons why their relocation was necessary. During this time, residents also witnessed two violent forced evictions of neighboring communities Sambok Chap and Dey Krahorm.
At 4am on July 15th, dozens of armed police took up positions around the community in order to enforce a municipal order that they dismantle their homes or be forcibly removed at dawn. The police escorted truckloads of demolition workers, who proceeded to tear apart the homes of residents who had lived in the area for 25 years as they stood by and watched in tears. A day earlier, 53 of the remaining families submitted to City Hall’s offer of $8,000 compensation out of fear that, if they did not agree, their homes would be forcibly destroyed and they could get nothing. Negotiations with the remaining 7 families who had not “agreed” the day before led to final offers to them of between $10,000 and $20,000 in compensation. Only one family did not accept the final offer and they were punished for standing on principle by having their home demolished without being paid any compensation at all. 
The Group 78 community consisted of 146 households in 2006, when they received their first eviction notice claiming that their land was needed to build a road and “beautify” the city. With support from their legal team at the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC), Group 78 has compiled reams of documentation that supports their legal possession of the land since the early 1980s. The government has refused to issue them land titles, even though they are clearly entitled to them under the Land Law. Originally, the Municipality of Phnom Penh offered the 146 land-owning families 5 x 12 meter plots of land at relocation sites about 20 k outside the city and $500. The community did not accept the offer. As an alternative to eviction, the community put forward a land-sharing and upgrading plan, which would have built a new, improved housing development for the families on land behind the road that the Municipality proposed to build. If this alternative was not acceptable to City Hall, the residents demanded the fair market value of their land. 
“It is significant that many of Cambodia's donors in the land sector have publicly acknowledged that the current systems of dispute resolution and land tilting that they have supported for more than seven years are not fair and transparent and fail to uphold the equal rights of Cambodian citizens,” said BABSEA Director David Pred. But their words will ring hollow, as they have so many times in the past, unless they are backed up by real consequences.”