| The Court of Appeal will issue its ruling on the Boeung Kak complaint on Thurday December 25th. Families living in and around the lake are trying to stop a large development project which means the forced departure of more than 4,000 of them. In 2007, over 130 hectares in the area were granted to private company Shukaku as a 99-year concession by the Municipality of Phnom Penh. The company began filling in the lake in August 2008 and houses have started sinking inexorably into the water. Some families have already accepted compensations offered by the company – either cash or relocation outside of the city. But the majority of them consider these offers to be insufficient and are continuing their fight.
Choung Chou Ngy, the lawyer for the residents, has plenty of legal arguments and made them public in the CLEC (Community Legal Education Center) offices on December 23rd. The aim is to halt the filling of the lake so that negotiations can be held between the residents, the Municipality of Phnom Penh and developer Shukaku in order to reach a settlement that is acceptable for all. The attorney carefully listed the numerous violations which he says the company and the Municipality are responsible for. These include violations of Article 44 of the Cambodian Constitution, which protects legal private ownership, Article 58 of the Land Law, whereby a land concession may only be granted on State private property, and Articles 16 and 18 of a Sub-decree dated November 27th 2006, according to which the lease of State public property may not damage the said property or change its public service function. He also recalled the regulating role played by Boeung Kak lake, which protects the city from flooding by absorbing rainwater. The attorney openly questioned the legality of this concession and wondered if the Municipality of Phnom Penh had truly acted in the public interest by granting a concession over the Boeung Kak lake to a private company for a development project.
A Boeung Kak community representative, Mr. Ros Sen, also spoke to stress that the authorities had never informed the residents that their occupation was illegal until the beginning of 2007 and that the development project had been forced upon them without any prior consultation. And yet, some families have been living in the area since the early 1980s. He also denounced an intimidation campaign carried out by the company to force the residents to leave.
“First, I wanted to file a complaint against the Municipality of Phnom Penh and the company [Shukaku] with the Municipal Court. But the Court asked us to pay a staggering sum of money, so we had to renounce. I made another attempt and this time, I asked for the halt of the filling of the lake. Yet again, we were asked to pay a significant amount of money, which my clients do not have! That's why I have turned to the Court of Appeal”, Attorney Choung Chou Ngy explains. But the lawyer is not very hopeful about Thursday's court ruling. “We do not have any other options”, he notes while calling lawmakers and the Cambodian government to give their full attention to the situation in Boeung Kak.
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By Doris
By John Vink
By Doris