They’re known as the BK13 and they’re not prepared to let greedy developers take the very, very little they have. They’re thirteen women – mothers & grandmothers - who live around what used to be Boeung Kak Lake – not far from the centre of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. The lake has been filled in and many of their neighbours have been moved on - their houses flattened - but the BK13 aren’t going anywhere. They’re going to defend their homes with every ounce of energy they can muster. They’ll need to.

"Every time we leave our home is the same as a soldier going to fight on the battlefield. Every time we leave we face arrest and they beat us. We don’t know if they will use violence against us or if we will lose our lives." Tep Vanny – BK13

Phnom Penh is growing fast as Cambodia races to join Asia’s development frenzy and busily renovates itself as a competitive, commercial destination. But as the capital expands, thousands of lives are being crushed. Beyond the city many more developments are pushing people from their homes. A half a million residents have been forcibly evicted in recent years.

Indeed when Foreign Correspondent first threw the spotlight on this issue in 2006 we visited a community of people who’d been marched from their shacks into a shanty of tents and plastic sheeting as the monsoonal rain threatened to wash it all away. We found a shirtless man wailing and railing at the injustice.

"We’re all human beings! Why have they done this to us? It’s so painful. It would be better if they killed me!" he yells, soaking wet. Six years later, as we return to Cambodia to re-examine the issue, South East Asia Correspondent Zoe Daniel sets off to discover what happened to him. She finds him in appalling conditions. A motley shack the size of a garden shed with half the roof missing and mosquito larvae writhing in the shower recess. Like many evictees Chan Meng has found himself in temporary accommodation and could be moved on again at any time.

"They want to move us around like cats and dogs!" Chan Meng Evictee

Zoe discovers that the issue of forced evictions has worsened over time. The BK13 may have become a cause celebre among Cambodia’s poor and dispossessed and an inspiration to the powerless but they are feeling the pressure. They’ve been dragged into police vans, subjected to cursory court hearings, summary justice and jailed. Only international pressure brought their release.

And in the thick of the melee over land tenure and home ownership we meet Australian lawyer Matt Rendall, instrumental in drafting new land laws that are supposed to protect otherwise powerless occupants. Cambodia’s land ownership was thrown into chaos when Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge extinguished private title. Rendall admits money and corruption are playing havoc with the new arrangements.

Phnom Penh general views

Music

00:00

DANIEL: Phnom Penh is a city with big ideas. The Cambodian capital is being shaped as an assertive, bold centrepiece of national growth and modernisation, and for that, Phnom Penh needs elbow room – and plenty of it.

00:11

Lake site development. Houses being demolished. Police move in on residents

This is development Cambodian style. Stand in the way and you’re likely to get bashed, crushed or even gaoled.

00:29

The Boeung Kak Lake site is a ten minute drive from the city centre and one of thousands of neighbourhoods around the country taken by authorities for development. In recent years, almost half a million residents have been forcibly evicted nationally. In the thick of this melee, Tep Vanny who’s lived here for twenty years.

TEP VANNY: They were so violent that some women had miscarriages. Those people should go to jail, not us. That’s how I feel.

00:50

Tep Vanny

I was shocked when I was put in jail. It’s a society that is full of darkness and no justice.

01:28

Neth Khun being dragged into police van

DANIEL: The elderly woman being bundled into a police van is grandmother Neth Khun.

NETH KHUN: Before they arrested me, four police came to drag me out,

01:34

Neth Khun

I tried to resist but they pushed me and they carried me by my arms and legs. They carried me away.

01:52

Neth Khun being dragged into police van and driven away

They threw me in the truck – I was shaking all over. They treated me like I was a traitor.

02:03

Protestors confront police

DANIEL: Two women from a brave band of 13 who’ve come to symbolise the struggle against rampant land seizures and evictions, by a government favouring developers and cronies. A company owned by a ruling party senator is planning an $80 million development of Boeung Kak Lake. The BK13 refused to go.

02:17

BK13 walk around filled in lake

The BK13 have been to hell and back in their battle to save their homes. Much of their neighbourhood may have been razed, the lake filled in, but there’s still plenty of fight.

02:57

Vanny at home serving food to family

Vanny’s home now doubles as campaign headquarters.

TEP VANNY: In the development of Boeung Kak Lake many people lost their houses and their businesses. They once lived in safety but now they have no security, no happiness and no future. More than 3000 families were forced to move because of fear so they feel they have failed in life.

03:09

Vanny

There are 794 families remaining; we are not going anywhere.

03:44

Neth Khun at home

DANIEL: For Neth Khun, forced eviction brings back painful memories of Cambodia’s darkest days. She’s been forced from home before, when the Khmer Rouge controlled the country. She was sent to work on the land.

03:51

NETH KHUN: If I don’t protest for my house and land I’ll have to move and I will face difficulties like Pol Pot’s time again. I faced difficulties during Pol Pot’s time.

04:11

Neth Khun

I do not want it like that again. I protest for my right to the house and the shelter so that I can own the land and the house. This is for my children - if I die I will not regret it.

04:22

Archival. Khmer Rouge footage.

Music

04:35

DANIEL: The current drama over land ownership has its origins in that period of Pol Pot’s rule. His Khmer Rouge killed millions of Cambodians and in pursuit of their Year Zero doctrine, they also eradicated the notion of private property – land title was extinguished. It’s been a test of Cambodia’s leadership since to restore a viable system of ownership.

04:45

Rendall in car

05:24

Australian Matt Rendall has been drawn into a fierce national feud. He knows Cambodia’s new land laws intimately. He helped draft them.

05:30

MATT RENDALL: I’m in the legal game, I mean we’re at the top of that profession. Yeah, we help draft laws, you know, we mix with the very highest level of government.

05:41

Rendall. Super:
Matt Rendall
Lawyer

The advice we gave, the concerns we expressed, on the whole were dealt with, I think, in the law. We were satisfied with the law when it came out and we’re still satisfied with the law.

05:49

Rendall in car

It’s the implementation of the law, you know, that people have concerns with.

05:59

Village

DANIEL: Under the new law, people who can prove they’ve occupied land for at least five years before the law was passed have ownership rights, but proving that is difficult and without documents, people occupying valuable land have little power against wealthy and well-connected developers.

06:07

MATT RENDALL: You could get a situation where somebody’s land’s become valuable, if somebody decides they want it, and sort of ignore the fact that there are people on that land. And they try to use the fact that they don’t have proper paperwork or use these situations to their advantage.

06:29

Rendall

Whether you do or don’t win a court case I think it’s fairly well known in Cambodia that oftentimes it will depend upon, you know, issues other than law – whether it’s political influence or whether it’s money. You , again the judges are not paid that well, so you know, money talks.

06:44

Phnom Penh

So if you’re a wealthy business person, you’ve got that advantage. The people being kicked off the land don’t have the financial wherewithal to be able to make these payments.

06:58

Rendall

I think it’s no secret that, you know -- and in these countries, in this one included, the courts will respond to payments of money.

07:09

Evicted people in makeshift tents. Super:
Foreign Correspondent 2006

DANIEL: In 2006, when the spate of evictions was just beginning in Cambodia, Foreign Correspondent visited people who were being forced from their homes in Phnom Penh to a site about twenty five kilometres from the city centre. With just a few hundred dollars in compensation,

07:19

2006 archive footage of Chan standing in the rain

they were sent to open field to fend for themselves.

CHAN MENG:  You see there’s nothing to eat. They just threw us here. I’m fifty eight years old. What’s going to happen? There’s so much suffering – it hurts so much. We’re all human beings, why have they done this to us? It’s so painful. It would be better if they killed me.

07:44

Zoe walking with man  to Andong Village to find Chan

DANIEL: We don’t know his name or his fate but six years later we set out to find the man yelling in the rain appalled by his treatment. We start our search at the place we last saw him. The re-settlement site has become Andong Village, made up mostly of a motley collection of corrugated iron shacks.

(to man in village) So where

08:28

do we go? Up this way?

08:58

Village man gives directions

MAN IN ANDONG VILLAGE: Turn right just there.

09:17

Daniel approaches Chan

DANIEL: He’s now sixty-four and we find him squatting in the doorway of his meagre house.

[to Chan]  Hello.

09:31

Daniel shows archive footage on phone to Chan

How are you? Is this you?

CHAN MENG: Yes that’s my picture. Ok. That’s my picture from the first time I arrived from Phnom Penh.

DANIEL: His name is Chan Meng and he remembers his eviction like it was yesterday.

09:40

CHAN MENG: “I had to set the tent up in the pouring rain. That’s why I was angry”.

DANIEL: In the years since, not much has improved for him.

10:05

Inside Chan’s home

He still doesn’t have running water or power and despite assurances, he hasn’t been given land of his own by the government. He has temporary shelter but he could be moved on at any time.

CHAN MENG: “Yes I am angry. If I had a gun I would shoot them right away.

10:14

Daniel with Chan

They want to move us around like cats and dogs”.

10:34

Chan shows Daniel house

DANIEL: His house belongs to a Christian charity but it’s a stretch to call it a home. It’s seriously dilapidated and certainly not weatherproof.

10:48

CHAN MENG: It’s all rotten. If there is a strong wind it will fall down.

10:59

DANIEL: Even worse, it’s a putrid health trap, stagnant water crawling with larvae, like something from a horror film.

11:06

Daniel with Chan

[to Chan] You are very strong. You’re tough.

CHAN MENG: Yes, I have quite good health.

11:16

Chan walking on street

In the morning I exercise, then I go home and sleep.

11:22

Resettlement site. Daniel walking along pipe

DANIEL: Chan Meng’s shack is part of a resettlement site that’s now one of the country’s biggest slums, home to about two thousand families. Many of them live on top of what’s effectively an open sewer.

11:36

Noun Tom with children

All of the women who live on this row are widows or single mothers. Noun Tom tells me that life has been a struggle since she was moved here six years ago.

11:52

Noun Tom

NOUN TOM: When I came here I had to sleep in the rain because I didn’t have a house. Now I have a house to live in but it’s in the mud and it stinks.

12:05

Resettlement site

DANIEL: She has five children now and believe it or not, they’re all about to be evicted again. This row of houses is to be demolished for a new road and sewer. Certainly better for those who stay but diabolical for those moving on. It’s unclear if the families uprooted again will get compensation or where they’ll be relocated to.

12:19

Noun Tom

NOUN TOM: I want to say to them that if they’re asking all of us to move there must be a trade.

12:48

Noun Tom preparing food

There must be a fair trade and a place for us to live. If it is too far we can’t move there. I am afraid that there will be no hospital. I have problems because I have many young children.

12:54

Daniel walking/Embassy site

DANIEL: There’s another cruel twist to this story. When Foreign Correspondent was here in 2006 we filmed Noun Tom and Chan Meng’s old homes at the site next to the proposed new Australian Embassy. The Embassy is now complete but it appears the people next door were moved merely for the sake of land speculation.

This is the place

13:16

Daniel  to camera beside vacant land

where the residents of Andong lived before they were forcibly evicted, but the urgency to remove and relocate the residents now seems misplaced. Where their houses once stood, six years later remains vacant land and prime real estate.

13:45

High rise developments

14:02

MADAME KEK:  Since 2003 we can see that the land conflict is worse than before. Why? Because the government now gives to private companies the economic land concessions

14:08

Madame Kek. Super:
Madame Kek
Human rights activist

and this land is given to the private companies for a lease of sometimes 90 years. So it is like giving to the company and what happened to the people that live in that place? They were simply evicted, violently most of the time, without or with very few compensation.

14:32

Daniel with Madame Kek at computer

DANIEL: Madame Kek has long been a champion for Cambodia’s poorest people. She shows me a map marking land concessions granted in Cambodia over the last few years. 99 year government leases for mining and agriculture now cover 2.1 million hectares, about two thirds of the country’s fertile land.

14:57

Aerials. Phnom Penh

In the last year investment in construction in Cambodia has also risen by a record 80% to around 1.8 billion US dollars. Development is needed, but it’s the poorest communities that are paying the price for progress.

[to Madame Kek] How would you describe the way that the government and the authorities, the security forces, treat people

15:24

Daniel with Madame Kek

when they’re evicting them and relocating them?

15:54

Madame Kek

MADAME KEK: We found that unacceptable. They come, they use force to evict them. They didn’t commit a crime. They are ordinary people.

15:56

Borei Kelia relocation. Police evict residents and destroy buildings

Music

16:07

DANIEL: Some evictees are lured from their homes with the promise of another – perhaps even better than the old one. But rampant corruption within layers of officialdom means those promises are often not kept.

16:12

Chay Kim Horn

CHAY KIM HORN: On January 3rd, my children and the residents’ children saw the house demolished. They didn’t want to go to school any more as they’d lost their house.

16:35

Crying child

When we lost the house I wanted to die, but no one will take care of my children.

16:45

Borei Kelia/Low income housing development

DANIEL: Chay Kim Horn and other families who’ve lived here at Borei Kelia – another urban settlement – were supposed to move into apartments in these buildings for low income people but bribes sealed the properties for others. Now they’re living in the rubble of their old houses, rubbish raining on them thrown from the apartments above.

16:57

Daniel walks with Chay Kim Horn at Borei Kelia

CHAY KIM HORN: We are really suffering. There is no solution.

17:21

There’s only violation and destruction. They said we exaggerated but we want them to come and see this with their own eyes. We are living in great hardship - life is difficult. Our lives are getting worse and worse.

17:34

Police evict residents

DANIEL: Attempts by Cambodia’s media to highlight the plight of its citizens have met with intimidation and violence.

MADAME KEK: We notice that in the past some journalists that criticise the government were assassinated, so from 1994 until 2008 - the last one was killed in 2008. They were

18:05

Madame Kek. Super:
Madame Kek
Human rights activist

killed in the day time like mafia style and no perpetrator was brought to justice. And now we can see that the government change the strategy. Instead of killing people, they use the court to arrest them, accuse groundless accusation and put them in gaol.

18:38

Mam Sonando at rally

DANIEL: The case of radio announcer Mam Sonando is a standout example of the Government’s intolerance of dissent. He was accused of using his broadcasts to mobilise a group of rural villagers, to try to secede and form their own state.

19:00

Series of stills. Mam Sonando/Development/ Government forces/Dead girl

The farmers had been opposing a land development nearby. When government forces stormed the village and forcibly evicted them, a 14 year old girl was shot dead in the melee.

19:25

Mam Sonando at rally/Arrest of Mam Sonando

Mam Sonando has never even visited the area but he was convicted of inciting a rebellion and gaoled for twenty years.

19:40

Dinn Phannara

DINN PHANNARA: He fights for justice, for freedom of speech and he wants to strengthen democracy in Cambodia.

19:57

Beehive Radio

DANIEL: Mam Sonando’s Beehive Radio station is now run by his wife Dinn Phannara who continues to protest her husband’s innocence. At 71, he may die in gaol.

20:07

DIN PHANNARA: People love him. He is very popular because he helps people.

20:23

Dinn Phannara

He explained to people about the laws, he helped them with everything. That’s why people love him and trust him so much.

20:32

Support rally for Mam Sonando

These factors made the government worried.

20:42

Khieu Khanarith was at temple

DANIEL: Khieu Khanarith was gaoled in the ‘90s on suspicion of dissident activities. Now the former newspaper editor is Cambodia’s Information Minister and he makes no apology for the gaoling of Mam Sonando.

20:58

Khieu Khanarith interview

What is the underlying threat here? Explain it…

KHIEU KHANARITH: Because the law says if you create

21:19

secession it’s a crime punished by law.

21:23

DANIEL: But what do you fear that that will lead to?

21:26

KHIEU KHANARITH: No, because you know well that if you create secession it is not a problem of a small secession, but this will create a snowball okay, because at that time we had a lot of problems of land.

21:29

DANIEL: The Minister acknowledges his government has to address the concerns of evictees as an election looms next year.

21:40

Do you see this as an election issue?

21:49

KHIEU KHANARITH: Yeah, sure.

21:52

DANIEL: So how do you propose to address it?

21:54

KHIEU KHANARITH: That’s why we distribute the land to the people -- we organise their living conditions and we improve the infrastructure for them to live in a new place.

21:56

Rendall family by pool

DANIEL: Matt Rendall, the Australian instrumental in the new land laws, should have a keen sense of the vexed relationship between Cambodia’s authorities and its people.

22:10

Archival. Sapor in detention

His wife Sapor fled a brutal civil law and wound up in an Australian detention centre seeking asylum.

22:30

Photo. Rendall as young man

It’s where she met a young advocate who fought a four year case and won.

22:41

Home video. Rendall makes speech at wedding

MATT RENDALL: The Cambodians say a man without a wife is like a fish without a tail.

DANIEL: The pair fell in love and are now making their life back in what should be a very different Cambodia to the one she fled.

22:46

Rendall family around table

MATT RENDALL: You should never have forced evictions. I think everybody agrees with that. In all those circumstances where there’s an argument that those people have a right to the land, be it right or wrong, you know, that’s got to be assessed first

23:01

Rendall. Super:
Matt Rendall
Lawyer

before you come in and you physically remove those people. I think every sort of right minded person would think that way anyway because that’s not allowed under the law.

23:17

BK13 confront police

Music

23:27

DANIEL: The BK13 have become an inspiration for Cambodia’s dispossessed but they’ve been sorely tested by a long ordeal.

23:32

Women’s trial

After their arrest earlier this year and a trial lasting just a few hours, Vanny, Neth Khun and the other Boeung Kak Lake women were sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

23:44

Children at rally

When they were sent to gaol, children campaigned for the release of their mothers, along with other members of the community.

MADAME KEK: Children outside... they demonstrate... they have a lot of imagination you know, they put on their head the photo of their mother, they cry,

23:57

Madame Kek

they touched the heart of a lot of people and we hope that the heart of our leader will be touched like ours.

24:22

Release of BK13 members

Music

24:30

DANIEL: The women were released after more than a month in gaol, partly due to the intervention of the United States and as Cambodia prepared to host the ASEAN summit.

24:43

Tep Vanny after being released from gaol

TEP VANNY:  Justice prevails for the fighters.

24:55

Women’s release from gaol

DANIEL: But while the government had allocated around twelve hectares of land it refuses to release details, and they’re still battling intimidation and risking rearrest.

24:57

Tep Vanny

TEP VANNY: Yes, I always think about that every time I step out of the house. I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to return home or not because every time we leave home, it’s the same as a soldier going to fight on the battlefield. Every time we leave we face arrest and they beat us. We don’t know if they’ll use violence against us, or if we will lose our lives.

25:16

Phnom Penh

Music

25:38

DANIEL: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has been in power for more than ten thousand days. Human rights groups accuse Hun Sen and his cronies of a massive land grab engineered through violence, fear and corruption.

25:45

Protest rally

Protestors who try to draw attention to the eviction issue before the ASEAN summit were arrested.

26:02

Women at rally

Music

26:08

Phnom Penh may have grand designs on a future as a vibrant Asian capital, but one real measure of Cambodia’s place in the region and the world will be how it accommodates its poor who have no power.

26:15

Music

26:31

Reporter: Zoe Daniel

Camera: David Leland

Editor: Nick Brenner

Research: Nina Teggarty

Producer: Ian Altschwager

26:49