Then one morning in 2005 workers came, and in three days they had torn down the ministry’s building. Local reporters rushed to the site thinking this was an illegal demolition of one of the city’s historic villas. Not so. The destruction was legal. The reporters were told that the government had given the property to a new Cambodian development company in exchange for a nondescript new building on Street Number 73 in a nondescript neighborhood. No money was exchanged for the villa or the land that was worth millions. The company did pass out $100,000 to divide among the employees of the Ministry of Tourism to thank them for accepting the deal. The developer, in turn, built a hotel on that prime property.
The Ministry of Tourism was unhappy with the building on Street Number 73 and set its eyes on land in the central district of Phnom Penh known as Borei Keila. It was home to some of the city’s poorest residents, including a high concentration of people suffering from AIDS. The area was declared an “economic concession” and the families were evicted from there. The government then sold the land to private developers who promised to replace the hovels with clean modern apartments for the poor. That didn’t happen. The dispossessed were never given market value in return for their land and only half received new apartments. A Cambodian nonprofit organization trying to help the evicted said it was difficult to find any proof that money made from the sale ended up in the national treasury.
The Life and Threat of Forced Eviction
In 2009 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights called for a moratorium on further evictions and said it was “gravely concerned over reports that since the year 2000, over 100,000 people were evicted in Phnom Penh alone; that at least 150,000 Cambodians continue to live under threat of forced eviction; and that authorities of the State party are actively involved in land-grabbing. . . . ”
Global Witness, the nonprofit British advocacy group, has documented how 45 percent of the country’s land has been deeded to private interests through these land grabs. (Land is also grabbed to sell to agribusinesses as plantations, to mining companies, to logging firms and, recently, to oil and gas companies.)
Land for the Cambodian tourism industry was opened up in 2005 when Prime Minister Hun Sen said he was resuming his land concession program despite earlier pledges to wait until those already evicted could be resettled.
“I have to make a decision for my country’s development,” he told a group at the Government Private Sector Forum in Phnom Penh, a government group that coordinates private investment, especially foreign investment. “I can’t wait. So I have gone ahead to provide concession land to investors. This is a necessary way to attract investment.”
The Lax Enforcement of Money-laundering Laws
Adding to the insult, the government sold the land at bargain prices and gave foreign investors extraordinary financial enticements, including nine-year tax holidays. The country already had a reputation for lax enforcement of money-laundering laws, and it allows holding companies in Cambodia to be 100 percent foreign-owned.
Within three years the entire coastline and most of the islands were privately owned, and resorts for tourism were under construction everywhere. Cambodia’s natural heritage of coral reefs, endless stretches of empty, palm-fringed beaches, and sapphire-blue waters had been sold off.
This noncompetitive sale of public property for private gain was being duplicated around the country. The government has orchestrated the sale of state assets to new private business ventures that had close ties to top officials and their families. The government used the same dictatorial powers to declare privately held lands part of new “development zones” to sell those, in turn, to business ventures tied to the government. This was all done behind closed doors with no competitive bidding, public hearings or judicial review.
The Ministry of Tourism was unhappy with the building on Street Number 73 and set its eyes on land in the central district of Phnom Penh known as Borei Keila. It was home to some of the city’s poorest residents, including a high concentration of people suffering from AIDS. The area was declared an “economic concession” and the families were evicted from there. The government then sold the land to private developers who promised to replace the hovels with clean modern apartments for the poor. That didn’t happen. The dispossessed were never given market value in return for their land and only half received new apartments. A Cambodian nonprofit organization trying to help the evicted said it was difficult to find any proof that money made from the sale ended up in the national treasury.
The Life and Threat of Forced Eviction
In 2009 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights called for a moratorium on further evictions and said it was “gravely concerned over reports that since the year 2000, over 100,000 people were evicted in Phnom Penh alone; that at least 150,000 Cambodians continue to live under threat of forced eviction; and that authorities of the State party are actively involved in land-grabbing. . . . ”
Global Witness, the nonprofit British advocacy group, has documented how 45 percent of the country’s land has been deeded to private interests through these land grabs. (Land is also grabbed to sell to agribusinesses as plantations, to mining companies, to logging firms and, recently, to oil and gas companies.)
Land for the Cambodian tourism industry was opened up in 2005 when Prime Minister Hun Sen said he was resuming his land concession program despite earlier pledges to wait until those already evicted could be resettled.
“I have to make a decision for my country’s development,” he told a group at the Government Private Sector Forum in Phnom Penh, a government group that coordinates private investment, especially foreign investment. “I can’t wait. So I have gone ahead to provide concession land to investors. This is a necessary way to attract investment.”
The Lax Enforcement of Money-laundering Laws
Adding to the insult, the government sold the land at bargain prices and gave foreign investors extraordinary financial enticements, including nine-year tax holidays. The country already had a reputation for lax enforcement of money-laundering laws, and it allows holding companies in Cambodia to be 100 percent foreign-owned.
Within three years the entire coastline and most of the islands were privately owned, and resorts for tourism were under construction everywhere. Cambodia’s natural heritage of coral reefs, endless stretches of empty, palm-fringed beaches, and sapphire-blue waters had been sold off.
The human cost was enormous. Whole communities were summarily evicted despite a 2001 law that requires due process and full compensation in these cases. Farmers and fishermen fought back as police and the army burned down their villages on government orders, bulldozing fields and orchards and tearing down docks.
Those villages and wild open spaces were replaced by a mix of seedy hotels, private luxury resorts, and rampant sex tourism. Coastal resorts from Sihanoukville, the largest and the least attractive, to Kep and Koh Kong, exploded with tension as the new private owners took control of the land. Stories of evictions and clashes over ownership are commonplace. More than 100 families fought eviction from the homes overlooking Serendipity Beach and lost. Now that beach is famous among the Lonely Planet crowd as the Waikiki of Cambodia.
- Elizabeth Becker, Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism, 2013.
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