In January 2012, with the approval of the Cambodian Government, a team of over 100 police and security guards from the development company Phan Imex demolished more than 200 homes in Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community in a brazen act of land grabbing.
Despite failing to fulfill a 2003 agreement to provide sufficient alternative housing for the residents, the company then forcibly moved them to Phnom Bat, Oudong, some 45 kilometres away from the city. Tears erupted when they arrived to discover that they were being dumped on a patch of land with no clean water, electricity or sanitation. Back in Phnom Penh, policemen used tear gas and rocks to quell residents who managed to stay behind to protest. Thirty-eight people were ultimately locked up in unlawful detention.
On the same day that the Borei Keila residents were unceremoniously trucked in and dumped at Oudong to fend for themselves, an enterprising local family set up a stall on the site to sell supplies to the newly homeless. I wonder when our appetite for profiteering from the vulnerable will be sated.
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