Losing Ground - Human Rights Party.

Losing Ground
Coastal Eviction
Preah Sihanouk
Former residents of Burnt Bridge village have been living in a ditch behind a popular tourist beach in Preah Sihanouk province since being violently evicted
from their land more than two years ago. Health workers have documented a severe decline in the health of the former residents, especially children, of what had
been a self-sustaining village. They were promised new land before the national election in July 2008, but after the election the pledge was "forgotten," they say.
The Case: Spean Ches village, Mittapheap district*
• Violent eviction of more than 100 families on the morning
of April 20, 2007 by a mixed group of about 150 soldiers,
military police and municipal police.
• Eviction notice signed by then governor without an
appropriate court decision.
• Homes demolished or torched, crops and fruit trees
destroyed, numerous residents, two police officers and one
military police officer injured.
• Thirteen residents, including a 16-year-old boy, arrested
and sent to pre-trial detention that afternoon.
• Two years later residents are still awaiting compensation or
new land.
• Their health has severely declined. Many remain severely
traumatized, have no reliable source of income and are
becoming increasingly desperate. They live in unhygienic
conditions in makeshift shacks in a ditch near the land they
began clearing in 1987.
• The land they were evicted from remains vacant.
* Village name translates as Burnt Bridge.
Forced Evictions and Intimidation in Cambodia
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