A riot broke out among the ruins of Tonle Bassac commune’s Village 14 on Wednesday morning, as hundreds of club-wielding villagers pursued a private security guard, torched the deputy village chief’s house, tore down the village office and battered a half-kilometer-long metal Suor Srun company fence to pieces.
Police rescued the security guard but otherwise kept a low profile, and quietly dismantled their main tent at the gate of Village 14 while residents attacked and later pilfered a sheet metal fence erected around the contested land by the Suor Srun company.
Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema said later that those who incited the riot will be prosecuted, and that to avoid a confrontation police reinforcements were not deployed to support dozens of police officers on site, whose numbers dwindled as the riot developed.
The incident began shortly before 9 am when hundreds of homeless residents at the recently evicted Village 14 began to build shelters on drier ground at the site after heavy rain on Tuesday soaked the land where they had erected tents.
Those remaining at Village 14 have been told that they did not qualify for plots of land at the relocation site 22 km outside Phnom Penh, which was provided by the Suor Srun company.
At around 10 am, according to witnesses, a private security guard attempted to dismantle one of the newly constructed huts and an 11-year-old girl, En Limseng, was reportedly knocked unconscious by a falling beam.
She was later taken to the Kantha Bopha Hospital by local rights group Licadho and was recovering late Wednesday.
But a rumor spread that she had died.
Almost immediately, a mob assembled. Adults and children armed with axes, knives and tree branches chased the guard toward the bank of the Bassac river where he disappeared. Military police said later that the guard was unharmed and had been rescued.
Shouting “Destroy All! What Do You Keep It For?” residents attacked the empty village office and began to smash it at about 10:20 am.
Several villagers climbed onto the roof of the empty deputy village chief’s house, stomping up and down to break it, while another group started to attack the green zinc fence Sour Srun had erected around the village. A Sour Srun official said the fence cost $10,000.
Shortly before 11 am, the deputy village chief’s house was torched.
Villager Vin Khear, 32, said the rioters had little to lose.
“How could the villagers not stage a riot?” he said. “They said they would solve this since May 18, and again on May 28, but they let the people sleep like this in the rain,” he said.
“We sleep in the mud. Why would we be afraid of police?”
Meas Saroeun, 30, watched the fire as other villagers destroyed the former deputy chief’s mattress and a pair of bongo drums they found in his house.
“We burned the deputy village chief’s house because the order came from here to remove villager’s huts,” he said. “They always lie, they say there is no land to give people to live on.”
Kep Chuktema said it would be easy for the municipality to find those who incited the destruction.
“Doing what they did is not legal, so we must respond according to the law,” he said.
The municipality has prepared 200 plots of land at the relocation site for the renters who had lived without documentation in Village 14 before the eviction, he said, but added that the village’s population has mushroomed to 600 families.
“You should go and see if they sleep there at night,” he said.
More than 1,000 families have relocated from Village 14 to the relocation site so that it can be handed over to Sour Srun, which may use the land to build a shopping mall.
Huy Chhor, a representative of the firm, said 300 plots have been prepared for families still living at Village 14, but they rioters would have to be punished for destroying his company’s property.
“The law must be applied,” he said.
The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, a group of 21 local NGOs, and the Housing Rights Task Force issued a statement of concern about the violence.
The task force, which was set up by the UN center for human rights, was established to prevent forced evictions.
“While CHRAC and HRTF do not condone the use of violence and regrets the actions of the community members, we would like to stress the precipitating conditions and actions that led to this violence,” the statement reads.
“Since [May 3] the renters have been living in squalid conditions, forced by authorities into close quarters with minimal shelter and no water supply, electricity or bathroom facilities. The onset of [the] rainy season in Cambodia has further deteriorated the situation, creating serious health risks.”
UN Special Rapporteur on Housing Miloon Kothari and the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders Hina Jilani issued a call on Tuesday to halt evictions like the Tonle Bassac relocation.
“The eviction process will further intensify the poverty and inequalities the Bassac communities are facing,” the UN officials said in a statement.
They also called on the government to conduct consultations with those being evicted and ensure that no one is made homeless by the process.
