Cambodia’s ‘forced evictions’ raise concern

Meager living awaits those moved out of Angkor temple zone

RUN TA EK, Cambodia — It’s been more than a year since Yem Srey Pin moved with her family from the village where she was born on Cambodia’s Angkor UNESCO World Heritage site to Run Ta Ek, a dusty new settlement about 15 miles away.

A tattered Cambodian flag flaps gently in the scorching midday sun on her corner lot, its depiction of the Angkor Wat temple barely still visible, while her brother scoops water from a clay cistern onto a neighbor’s cow that he tends during the day.

Hers is one of about 5,000 families relocated from the sprawling archaeological site, one of Southeast Asia’s top tourist draws, by Cambodian authorities in an ongoing program that Amnesty International has condemned as a “gross violation of international human rights law.”

Another 5,000 families are still due to be moved.

The allegations have drawn strong expressions of concern from UNESCO and a spirited rebuttal from Cambodian authorities, who say they’re doing nothing more than protecting the heritage land from illegal squatters.

Yem Srey Pin’s singleroom home, its reused corrugated steel siding perforated by rust and old nail holes, is a far cry better than the makeshift tent she lived in with her husband and five children when they first arrived, which did little to protect from the monsoon rains and blew down in the winds.

And their 6,500-squarefoot property is significantly bigger than the 1,000-square-foot plot they occupied illegally in the village of Khvean on the Angkor site.

But the 35-year-old is also in debt from building the new house. Her husband finds less construction work nearby and his wages are lower, and there are no wild fruits or vegetables she can forage, nor rice paddies where she can collect crabs to sell at her mother’s stand.

“After more than a year here I haven’t been able to save any money, and I haven’t earned anything,” she said, as her 12-year-old son rocked her 8-month-old daughter in a hammock in front of a fan to take the edge off midday heat topping 100 degrees.

“Living here is just hand to mouth because the income we do have goes to pay for the rice, food and my children’s school.”

The Angkor site is one of the largest archaeological sites in the world, spread across some 155 square miles in northwestern Cambodia. It contains the ruins of Khmer Empire capitals from the 9th to 15th centuries, including the temple of Angkor Wat, featured on several Cambodian banknotes, such as the 2,000 riel note depicting rice farmers working fields around the temple, as well as the country’s flag.

UNESCO calls it one of the most important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia, and it is crucial to Cambodia’s tourism industry.

When it was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1992, it was named a “living heritage site” whose local population observed ancestral traditions and cultural practices that have disappeared elsewhere.

Still, UNESCO at the time noted that Angkor was under “dual pressures” from some 100,000 inhabitants in 112 historic settlements who “constantly try to expand their dwelling areas,” and from encroachment from the nearby town of Siem Reap.

Cambodia’s answer was a plan to entice the 10,000 families illegally squatting in the area to resettle at Run Ta Ek and another site, as well as to encourage some from the 112 historic settlements to relocate as their families grow in size.

“People got married, they had children, so the number of people were on the rise, including those coming illegally,” said Long Kosal, deputy director general and spokesperson for the Cambodian agency known as APSARA that’s responsible for managing the Angkor site.

“What we did was that we provided an option.”

Cambodia began moving people to Run Ta Ek in 2022, giving those who volunteered to leave their homes in the Angkor area plots of land, a two-month supply of canned food and rice, a tarp and 30 sheets of corrugated metal to use to build a home. Benefits also included a Poor Card, essentially a state welfare program giving them about $75 monthly for 10 years.

In a November report, Amnesty questioned how voluntary the relocations actually were, saying many people they interviewed were threatened or coerced into moving and that the relocations were more “forced evictions in disguise.”

The rights group cited a speech from former Prime Minister Hun Sen in which he said people “must either leave the Angkor site soon and receive some form of compensation or be evicted at a later time and receive nothing.”

Amnesty also noted Hun Sen’s track record, saying that under his longtime rule Cambodian authorities had been responsible for several forced evictions elsewhere that it alleged “constituted gross violations of human rights.” It said Run Ta Ek — with dirt roads, insufficient drainage, poor sanitation and other issues — did not fulfill international obligations under human rights treaties to provide people adequate housing.

That has now changed: Homes with outhouses have been built, roads paved, and sewers installed. Primitive hand pumps made of blue PVC piping provide water, and electricity has been run in.

There’s a school, a health center, a temple; bus routes were added, and a market area was built but is not yet operating, Long Kosal said.

Hun Sen’s successor, his son Hun Manet, traveled to Run Ta Ek in December to meet with residents and highlight infrastructure improvements in an attempt to allay the growing international concerns surrounding Cambodia’s most important tourist site.

He reiterated his father’s contention that if the squatters are not removed, the site risks being delisted by UNESCO — something UNESCO has never threatened.

Amnesty concedes life has gotten better for the residents of Run Ta Ek, but maintains there are major concerns. Families have had to take on heavy debt to build even their basic houses, there is little work to be found, and the village — without any significant tree cover — is swelteringly hot during the day and has little shelter from winds or monsoon rains, said Montse Ferrer, the head of Amnesty’s research team investigating the Angkor Wat resettlements.

“People no longer have income,” she said in an interview in Geneva. “They had a clear source of income at the time — tourism — but also other sources of income linked to the location at Angkor. They are now at least 30 minutes away from the site and can no longer access these sources.”

Yem Srey Pin said even though Run Ta Ek has slowly improved since she arrived in February 2023, and her new home will be paid off fairly soon, she’d rather return to her village if it were possible.

HENG SINITH/AP Children of Yem Srey Pin, who moved from their village in Cambodia’s Angkor temple complex, sit April 2 on the dirt floor of their home in Run Ta Ek in Siem Reap province. Their mother says she would rather move back to their original village.