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Imagine how you’d feel if you woke up one day to find out the land you thought you owned had been sold to someone else while you slept.

That’s what’s happening right now to hundreds of thousands of Cambodians.

Reporter Eric Campbell investigates the great Cambodian land scam – the wholesale selling off of huge parcels of valuable land, much of it waterfront, by corrupt government officials to private property developers.

As Campbell finds out, for the most part, there’s nothing the ripped off residents can do about it.

“It’s just like in Pol Pot’s time,” says one woman facing eviction from the home she’s lived in for ten years. “This is a war about land.”

Last year Australian government bought a block of prime land right next door to one of the slum villages facing eviction, as the site for a new embassy. The vendor was a wealthy Australian Cambodian who has in the past been involved in significant evictions with the assistance of police and security officials

Human rights groups are angry that the Australian government has not publicly condemned the evictions, particularly in light of Australia’s considerable financial support for Cambodia.

The US is more outspoken, with the American Ambassador in Phnom Penh, Joseph Mussomeli telling Foreign Correspondent: “There’s too many land disputes, too many rich people, greedy companies. Property is really the key to prosperity and freedom and once people are not secure in what they own, everything else falls apart.”

Cambodians are too frightened to say it publicly, but the extended family of the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, and a network of his close associates, are said to be some of the prime beneficiaries of the land grabs.

Workmen hammer in posts. Women protest

Music

00:00

CAMPBELL: It’s a home invasion as you’ve never seen before. These residents are fighting to protect their properties from their own government. Officials sold their land behind their backs to a rich developer. Now they’re fencing it off in preparation to throw them out.

00:11

WOMAN IN CROWD: Someone must have ordered this!

OU VIRAK: The district police chief

00:36

ordered them to fence the area and this is actually -- the main complaint is that the people in there will be blocked off from any access to the road, or access to information for outsiders to monitor.

00:41

Virak with women

CAMPBELL: Ou Virak is a Cambodian activist trying to help people fight illegal evictions.

OU VIRAK: I was told by most of the villagers here, that they were forced to an agreement that they don’t agree.

00:54

Virak. Super: Ou Virak Cambodian Centre for Human Rights

and they say if they don’t agree they will be forced out or they will be thrown in gaol or anything like that nature.

01:04

Women protest

CAMPBELL: All over the country people are finding that land they thought they owned has been sold to someone else. Hundreds of thousands are now in jeopardy of losing their homes and livelihoods and western governments that have invested billions in stabilising Cambodia are getting nervous.

01:13

JOSEPH MUSSOMELI: Property is really the key to prosperity and to freedom.

01:34

Mussomeli. Super:

Joseph Mussomeli

US Ambassador, Cambodia

Once people are not secure in what they own, then everything else falls apart.

01:38

Boats on river

CAMPBELL: On a scale of one to ten, how serious is this problem in Cambodia, for the future of Cambodia?

01:47

JOSEPH MUSSOMELI: I guess I would give it about a nine.

01:51

CAMPBELL: The land dispute is a direct result of the chaos caused by the Khmer Rouge.

01:55

Men on bikes/ Villages

Thirty years ago, they abolished land title forcing people to work on rural communes. A quarter of the population died from execution, starvation and civil war. In 1992, the new government passed a law to give survivors secure land title. Anyone who occupied land legally for five years was suppose to become its owner. But as land values rise, the government’s ignoring its own law.

02:04

EM SINNA: Now they are forcing us to go again. This is a war about land. It makes it hard for people to find a place to live - just like in Pol Pot’s time

02:45

Em

when there were no proper houses and no way to make a living.

02:57

Em shows Campbell through house

CAMPBELL: Em Sinna and her family have been ordered to leave the home they built in Phnom Penh ten years ago.

03:12

EM SINNA: This is where my children study… and this is my bedroom.

03:19

CAMPBELL: They bought the land in an urban slum and with the prosaic name of Group 78, for a thousand US dollars.

03:26

Photo. Em and Meas

Her husband, Meas Nath, has documents to prove they’ve stayed here long enough to qualify for land title.

MEAS NATH: This is my family card.

03:34

Documents

CAMPBELL: Carnet of residence, registered with the police, stamped by the city government, proving you lived here.

03:42

But the government has simply seized the area for itself.

03:51

Bulldozers on adjoining land

It’s offered families barren land outside town and a token six hundred dollars in compensation, even though the land right next door just sold for sixty times that much.

03:56

Child in English lesson

CHILD: [English lesson] Please come in. Would you like a cup of coffee?

04:09

CAMPBELL: The very future of these families is at stake. This area has a nearby school, hospital and market and access to services like private English lessons.

04:19

Family grocery store

The Nath family runs a grocery store from their porch and with wages from Meas Nath’s office job, they can make enough money to get by and plan for the future.

04:33

Em

EM SINNA: Living here isn’t easy, but it’s not that hard either, because it’s close to the city and we can make a living.

04:46

Family house

CAMPBELL: The Nath family’s house doesn’t look like much but they’ve got running water, electricity, proper shelter for their family – it’s their home and the plot of land it sits on is their only real asset. Now if they lose it, the place they’ll be sent to, makes the hardship of this village look like paradise.

04:59

Relocation camp

Music

05:23

CAMPBELL: This is where they’re supposed to come to join thousands of other evicted families - an open field without water or power – 25 kilometres from the city. When it’s dry it’s a dustbowl, when it rains it turns into a swamp.

05:25

Music

05:45

CAMPBELL: Evicted families are given twelve by five metre plots of land to make up for the homes they lost but it’s too far from the city for anyone to make a living or for the children to go to school. The authorities haven’t even provided tents. Families have had to buy sheets of plastic for shelter. Disease is rampant.

05:53

Man standing in pouring rain

EVICTED CAMBODIAN MAN: You see, there’s nothing to eat. They threw us here. I’m over 50. It’s heartbreaking – they’ve left us here for more than three months. I’m so hurt and suffering.

06:23

Relocation camp

CAMPBELL: They are scenes Ou Virak never expected to see in the new, democratic Cambodia.

06:56

Virak family photo

His father was executed by the Khmer Rouge before he was born and he grew up in a refugee camp in Thailand with his four brothers. In the 1980s, his family was given asylum in the US.

07:08

OU VIRAK: I got my Master degree in Economics and I came back about two and a half years ago wanting to work as a lecturer and I joined the movement

07:25

Virak. Super: Ou Virak Cambodian Centre for Human Rights

as a human activist about a year and a half ago because I felt that there’s gross violations of human rights in this country and there must be someone who could do something about it.

07:35

Virak at camp

CAMPBELL: Virak is now trying to teach Cambodians, like these residents of Group 78, how to fight the illegal evictions.

07:47

OU VIRAK: [To residents] In this booklet there are some laws – and it also explains your rights.

07:55

CAMPBELL: But in a system where judge’s verdicts are often for sale, money is proving far stronger than law.

08:02

JOSEPH MUSSOMELI: The prices of land I think have increased by sevenfold over the last five or six years and that’s an enormous increase.

08:11

Mussomeli. Super:

Joseph Mussomeli

US Ambassador, Cambodia

So the temptations are enormous and that means the injustices also potentially can be very enormous.

08:22

Phnom Penh

CAMPBELL: It’s unclear who’s making money out of all this because the government sells the land in secret. But critics believe corrupt officials are making millions, selling land at a massive profit and paying peanuts in compensation.

08:28

When people moved here in the 1980s, it was just worthless marshland, but as the city has grown, it’s become some of the most sought after real estate in the capital. And the villages behind there have already been cleared out for commercial development, and the city governor wants to build a road through Group 78 and between the village and the site of the new national parliament, is the site for the new Australian Embassy, cheek by jowl for now with one of Phnom Penh’s poorest slums.

08:45

Embassy land/Kith Meng

The embassy bought the land from a powerful Australian-Cambodian businessman who’s also an advisor to the Prime Minister. A former refugee in Australia, thirty six year old Kith Meng now owns a pro-government TV station, the main mobile phone company, a betting agency and a half share in ANZ’s Cambodian banking interest.

09:18

While there’s no suggestion illegal evictions happened on the embassy site, residents have been forcibly evicted from other land that Kith Meng has acquired. It’s common for city police to act as muscle for property developers.

09:42

Virak and woman in house

OU VIRAK: [To lady in house] I just want to see what’s at the back.

10:01

CAMBODIAN LADY: They already kicked people out. The land is empty. [Showing Virak through a window]

10:06

OU VIRAK: And what did they put there?

10:10

CAMBODIAN LADY: The police are guarding it.

10:12

Security guards on building site

CAMPBELL: On the other side of Group 78 from the Australian Embassy site, uniformed police were working as security guards for the new owners of yet more land ready for development.

10:16

Virak looking at site

OU VIRAK: All of them were forced to sell their property. Really they had no choice. As you can see this is actually a huge island that’s empty now and it’s all owned by companies closely linked to the Prime Minister.

10:28

CAMPBELL: As a US citizen, Virak is one of the few Cambodians brave enough to speak out publicly about what many complain of privately

10:42

Hun Sen and entourage

– the enormous wealth and power of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his network of friends and associates.

10:52

OU VIRAK: Certainly he’s one of the rich men in Cambodia and probably one of the richest men in the world. There’s always cases where him or his relatives or his in-laws,

11:01

Virak

end up being the owner of some land concessions by the government.

11:13

Hun Sen in chopper

CAMPBELL: The Prime Minister is a former Khmer Rouge commander who wields near absolute power.

11:21

Slums

So, human rights groups have urged western powers to protest about the land grabs. Foreign donors provide half of Cambodia’s national budget and Australia gives almost fifty million dollars a year through its aid agency AUSAID.

11:27

Building site

HENRY HWANG: This building right here is the new national assembly building that they’re putting up.

11:50

Hwang shows embassy land

Directly across this road here, you’ll see the land allotted for the new Australian embassy.

11:56

CAMPBELL: But Henry Hwang, a US lawyer representing evicted landholders, says the Australian embassy has refused to speak out.

12:01

HENRY HWANG: What’s disturbing about this, I would say are two things. First, is that AUSAID actually is a very generous donor to the development of Cambodia and

12:10

Hwang. Super: Henry Hwang Community Legal Education Centre

two of their three priority areas are strengthening the rule of law, and the second is reducing vulnerability of the poor. Now here you have the poorest of the poor and here you have the new Australian embassy slated to be built right in the heart of this and yet they haven’t said a thing about this issue.

12:20

Australian embassy

CAMPBELL: Embassy staff declined to be interviewed, issuing a statement that they had no responsibility for any land around the site. US Ambassador, Joseph Mussomeli, is far more outspoken.

12:39

JOSEPH MUSSOMELI: There’s too many land disputes, there’s too many rich people, greedy people, greedy companies. This is something that goes to the livelihood of millions of Cambodians and if they want to maintain political stability here,

12:55

Mussomeli. Super:

Joseph Mussomeli

US Ambassador, Cambodia

the political parties, especially the parties in control right now, have to do more to redress this issue.

13:11

Village

CAMPBELL: The land grabs are even more serious in poor rural communities where three quarters of the population survives on subsistence farming. In some places officials have given private companies land grants of up to three hundred thousand hectares, thirty times more than the law allows.

13:22

OU VIRAK: If you stop by a village anywhere in the country, you’re probably going to discover, by talking to the villagers, that the village will be affected by land grabbing.

13:47

Ta Pom

CAMPBELL: Ta Pom is a typical village, carved out of the jungle in the 1980s by survivors of the Khmer Rouge. Two years ago, the government gave their land, along with ten other villages, to a nearby state rubber plantation in partnership with a private company. A village councillor told us the rubber company’s president and his deputy had close links to Cambodia’s first family.

14:01

OU VIRAK: The current owner is the in-laws of the Hun Sen family as well and also the Vice President is married to the niece of Hun Sen.

14:30

Virak questions village chief

CAMPBELL: The village chief, like most other people with any power in Cambodia, is a member of Hun Sen’s Party, the CPP, and wasn’t keen on helping us with our enquiries.

14:43

Campbell: What do you think of the situation here where people’s land is being taken by the rubber plantation?

14:54

VILLAGE CHIEF: That is the company’s concern. That has to be resolved.

14:58

CAMPBELL: But isn’t it the people’s land?

OU VIRAK: [Translating to the chief] Doesn’t this land belong to the people?

15:06

VILLAGE CHIEF: This is the company’s land.

15:10

OU VIRAK: [To the chief] But the people have been living here since 1982.

15:11

VILLAGE CHIEF: In fact it’s 1979.

15:14

OU VIRAK: [To chief] If they’ve been living here since ’79 then according to the land law anyone who occupies the land for five years becomes the owner. Isn’t that right? How come they aren’t the owners if they’ve been living here since ’79?

15:16

Campbell questions chief

CAMPBELL: Is it true that Hun Sen’s family has taken the land?

15:32

OU VIRAK: [Translating to the chief] Does the company’s owner have any relationship with the Hun Sen? Is it an in-law, or any relation?

15:35

VILLAGE CHIEF: I don’t know. That’s their business. [Takes off on a motor bike]

15:43

Village chief departs on motor bike

15:47

Campbell visits rubber plantation

CAMPBELL: We headed off to the plantation headquarters, only to find it guarded by no less a figure than the local police chief.

16:05

Is it unusual for police to be guarding private companies like this?

16:12

VIRAK: No this is not unusual. In fact,

16:16

Virak. Super: Ou Virak Cambodian Centre for Human Rights

certain companies like Phanimex use the military police officers to evict people. He did confirm that the Vice President is the nephew or the nephew-in-law, he’s married to the niece of the Prime Minister.

16:18

CAMPBELL: And Hun Sen’s brother is also the governor of this province?

16:32

OU VIRAK: Right, right Hun Sen’s brother is the governor of this province.

16:35

CAMPBELL: So, keeping it all in the family.

16:38

OU VIRAK: (smiles) I guess that’s what happened.

16:40

Governor’s residence

Music

16:42

CAMPBELL: We did manage to track down the provincial governor Hun Neng. He’s Hun Sen’s older brother. He denies the plantation is getting any special favours.

16:44

Hun Neng

HUN NENG: I don’t have any relatives there. It doesn’t matter even if you are a son or a daughter or any type of relative the law has to be followed.

16:57

CAMPBELL: But some people say you’re family, Hun Sen’s family, has much too much power, too many positions in government, too many controls of business, too many associates who control business as well.

17:09

Hun Neng. Super: Hun Neng Governor, Kompong Cham Province

HUN NENG: Hun Sen has only six siblings. The first one is me – I am the older brother – and then him, and then all the sisters who are working normally, just like you and the others. And we don’t have as much property and assets as people claim.

17:21

JOSEPH MUSSOMELI: Corruption is central to everything, at all levels.

17:54

Mussomeli

I don’t know of any case of where a corrupt official has really gone to gaol here – certainly not from the ruling party.

18:00

Rainsy arriving at village

CAMPBELL: The scale of land grabs has been a fillip for Cambodia’s weak and divided opposition.

18:07

CAMBODIAN MAN: [In crowd] Justice must win! Corruption must be defeated!

18:16

CAMPBELL: Sam Rainsy heads the biggest opposition party and has been able to project himself as the people’s saviour.

18:20

SAM RAINSY: Their home has been dismantled. They have no roof over their head, including the small children.

18:27

Rainsy addresses villagers

[To crowd on megaphone] In Cambodia, just like in other countries all over the world, there are people who love justice – who sympathise with the victims and who protect you people here so that they cannot kick you all out!

18:39

CAMPBELL: This community next to Group 78 is the latest in the firing line.

19:07

Rainsy. Super: Sam Rainsy Sam Rainsy Party

SAM RAINSY: He was beaten. He was forced to sell his land for five hundred dollars.

19:12

CAMPBELL: And how is he now?

19:20

SAM RAINSY: [Translating for man] His head is still hurting him.

19:28

CAMPBELL: And there’s no way to go to court to defend their rights? There’s no justice for them?

19:31

SAM RAINSY: The court is very corrupt here. If you have money to bribe the judge then you will win but if you don’t have money to bribe the judge you will lose and all these people are poor people. They cannot afford to bribe the judges, therefore they will always lose in the court.

19:36

CAMPBELL: This is supposed to be a democracy. What is happening to democracy in Cambodia?

19:58

SAM RAINSY: No this is a fake democracy. We have only a façade of democracy but we don’t have any democracy in substance. It is like the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge they expel the people from the cities, but now they do with some discrimination. The rich people can stay. Only the poor are expelled from the city.

20:02

Villagers

CAMPBELL: As soon as any leave, their homes are demolished. People renting are even worse off than owners. They receive no compensation at all if the landlords accept the offer. As the land is immediately ringed with barbwire, they have nowhere to sleep but the street.

20:36

Night time in village

Hundreds of families here have held out for months despite constant intimidation but two nights later, police moved in, in force. We arrived just moments after a pregnant woman had been beaten.

21:02

Campbell: Can you just explain to us what’s happened tonight?

21:21

Woman

WOMAN AT THE SITE: She was not willing to leave the site. They want to relocate the population, the people today and the police grabbed her and beat her and she is six months pregnant.

21:23

Villagers gather against police

CAMPBELL: Well this is the moment the people here have been dreading for months. It’s just on ten o’clock and an hour ago, a contingent of police arrived and ordered everyone to leave. They’ve refused to go so the police are now regrouping just beyond the village. They’re expected back in force at two a.m.

21:40

The residents brace themselves for attack, some erecting barricades on the street.

21:59

Village in morning

Dawn came with no more police raids but everyone here knows their homes and land will soon be gone.

22:20

Cambodians are once again at the mercy of a regime that treats them like cattle, but this time, some are prepared to risk all to fight.

22:31

Virak in village

OU VIRAK: Looking back at our family history, my dad was killed by the Khmer Rouge,

22:46

Virak

I think the Cambodian people have suffered enough and I think we must do something to stop this.

22:52

CAMPBELL: Their hope is that those who support Cambodia’s rulers will also support its people.

23:00

Credits:

Reporter: Eric Campbell

Producer: Marianne Leitch

Camera: David Leland

Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen

Research: Anna Bracks

23:11