The Aziza Schoolhouse Part I: A Description of Dey Krahom

About two months ago Shanti and I started volunteering at an organization called Aziza, a schoolhouse located in the slums of Dey Krahom (Red Earth). The slums start just after you peel off of Sothearos south of Sihanouk - they're visible from my comfy, air-conditioned office. There is an incredibly long row, perhaps a third of a mile, of bland, austere, dilapidated Soviet style "apartments." A jumbled mess of electric wires and plastic plumbing pipes connect various apartment to one another as they intermingle with plants and drying laundry. Once cement-colored, the outside of the apartments are now dark gray or black and, in some places green and covered in mold where pipes leak. Beside the apartment building is a cobbled together shanty town, with homes made from either whatever was available or affordable - tin, thin strips of wood or bamboo, plastic tarps, etc. Among the shanty dwellings the stench of garbage and sewage is strong and there is rubble everywhere. When Shanti and I bike in, we pedal over garbage, broken bricks, and slabs of cement. Each time we wonder if we'll pop a tire.

Within the last few years, the value of land in Cambodia, and Phnom Penh in particular, has skyrocketed. In the last seven years, one square meter of land has gone from $500 to $3,000. The result is that the powerful and politically connected use their might to acquire valuable land in an unwholesome and unsavory manner, paying off government officials, obtaining "legal" land titles, or simply by evicting residents through brute force and intimidation.

Enter Dey Krahom, in the heart of Phnom Penh's boom and with a prime location literally across the street from the National Assembly. Three years ago, a supposed spokesman for the residents of Dey Krahom - who didn't have the authority to be such a spokesman - agreed to a deal with construction company 7NG to vacate the Dey Krahom area in exchange for land twenty kilometers from the city and a few thousand dollars, a raw deal for residents sitting on land worth an estimated $44 million. Since then, there have been a number of incidents involving 7NG officials in collaboration with the police, resulting in injuries to residents and further intimidation. Some think the effort to provoke the residents of Dey Krahom is a pretense to have them arrested and thus, evicted. In the past several months a number of structures have been destroyed at random, including, in November 2007 (before Shanti and I started volunteering), the schoolhouse originally occupied by Aziza. The destruction of the remaining shanty homes and the apartment buildings, and the souls that occupy them, seems imminent, especially now that the construction company has legal title to at least some of the land in Dey Krahom. For more information on the case, a local human rights NGO, LICADHO, recently issued a very interesting and troubling report.

Unfortunately, Dey Krahom is by no means an isolated case. All across Cambodia and especially in rapidly developing and resource-rich areas, such as Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville (on the beach), and Rattanakiri and Mondulkiri in the northeast, poor and vulnerable villagers are at risk of losing their lands and livelihoods. It is one of the most pressing issues facing Cambodia today and the only resolution in sight for those facing eviction is just that.