City Hall hands out Boeng Kak land titles

Marking another milestone in the years-long struggle between the government and the families of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake community, Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema handed out 254 land titles to lakeside residents at City Hall on Saturday. But with the government shrouding the titling process in mystery, and nearly 100 families still contesting a decision to cut them out of the process altogether, the moment was bittersweet… The families have been crying foul ever since City Hall awarded a 99-year lease for the area to CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin and his Shukaku Inc real estate firm in 2007. NGOs say the deal was illegal because it denied the 4,000 families already living there the chance to lay legal claim to the land themselves. But faced with the threat of being forced out empty-handed, most of those families eventually took the modest compensation on offer and left. By the time Prime Minister Hun Sen intervened in August with an order that 12.44 hectares be cut out of the project and the families inside be given land titles so they could stay, fewer than 1,000 of them were left…