Cambodian authorities have evicted 40,000 people from the famed Angkor temple complex since 2022, citing the need to protect the sprawling UNESCO World Heritage site, according to a report from Amnesty International released on Tuesday.
Even though the evictions have been characterized as voluntary by Cambodian officials, Amnesty said residents described “being evicted or pressured to leave Angkor following intimidation, harassment, threats and acts of violence from Cambodian authorities,” the report said.
“Cambodian authorities cruelly uprooted families who have lived in Angkor for several generations, forcing them to live hand to mouth at ill-prepared relocation sites,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty’s interim deputy regional director for research.
“They must immediately cease forcibly evicting people and violating international human rights law,” she said.
The London-based organization interviewed more than 100 people who had been forced out of the area between March and July 2023. Researchers made nine in-person visits to the Angkor temple park complex and to two resettlement sites.
At the main resettlement site, known as Run Ta Ek, researchers found families living under tarps and lacking access to adequate sanitation.
“Many families also complained about losing their jobs and the lack of employment opportunities at the site, which is a 45-minute drive from Siem Reap town,” the report said. “To cover building and living costs families had to pawn items given as part of the relocation program and took on debt.”
The children of Angkor
Soon after Angkor was named a World Heritage site in 1992, UNESCO stated that “habitation in the core restricted areas [of Angkor] was inappropriate to the preservation and presentation of major archaeological sites.”
A UNESCO report at the time found that some people living in traditional villages had the right to stay in and around Angkor Wat, while new settlers did not.
But since then, UNESCO’s recommendations and Cambodia’s national law haven’t made clear which settlements were traditional villages, according to Amnesty’s report.
“This lack of clarity has persisted,” the Amnesty report said, citing interviews with families who were facing eviction who identified themselves as being indigenous to Angkor.
“Some even described themselves as Angkorians or the children of Angkor,” the report said.
Then-Prime Minister Hun Sen angrily warned those who refused to leave their homes at Angkor during an October 2022 speech, saying that those who stay risk getting no compensation from the government.
“Now, the government is taking a soft stance on you, and is building infrastructure for you,” he said. “But when the time comes, we would rather remove these families than let the Angkor temples be removed from the World Heritage list.”
He added that many of the homes and settlements in Angkor were on “undocumented property.”
“Have you been living there before 1979? No, you all have been living there since after 1979,” he said, referring to the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, when many Cambodians resettled after years of turmoil and civil war.
‘It’s miserable’
A resident of Run Ta Ek told Radio Free Asia that at his old village – just north of Angkor Wat – many of his neighbors worked at the temples as cleaners and conservationists. Additionally, there was enough land nearby to grow rice, he said.
“There is a lot of migration now,” he said. “We had land, we had villages, we had trees, we had forests. But they used the word ‘UNESCO’ to evict us.”
Run Ta Ek has no streams, creeks or ponds, which means that fishing or growing vegetables isn’t possible, said Muth Khon, a 50-year-old military veteran.
Everything has to be bought, but the residents of the new village now have to do it on a lower income, he told RFA.
“I don’t understand why they allow us to live like this,” he said. “It’s miserable.”
Ferrer called on UNESCO to condemn the forced evictions and use its influence to demand that the Cambodian government stop them.
“Unless there is serious pushback from UNESCO, conservation efforts may increasingly be weaponized by states to their own ends, at the expense of human rights,” she said.
RFA Khmer contributed to this report. Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Mike Firn.