Anti-Eviction Protesters Clash With Security Forces
Protesters, including a band of angry monks, clashed with military and riot police on Thursday in Phnom Penh as authorities tried to prevent a local housing rights group from carrying out a rally against forced evictions. Housing Rights Task Force (HRTF), a coalition of five local rights NGOs, had announced plans to march from Wat Phnom to nearby City Hall on Monivong Boulevard to deliver a petition against forced evictions but were told on Wednesday by the municipality that they would not be allowed to do so. … Starting at about 8 a.m., a stream of evictees from 50 communities in Phnom Penh and from as far away as Oddar Meanchey province took to the plaza in front of Wat Phnom to mark World Habitat Day and to call for solutions for victims of forced evictions. “City Hall removed us and forced us to live outside Phnom Penh—we lost our businesses and schools, and today we are still suffering,” Sea Nareth, a 56-year-old evictee from the Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak Lake community, told the crowd of more than 600 through a loudspeaker. … Around 10 a.m., after a brief scuffle broke out when a human rights observer from a local NGO accused a police officer of attempting to break her camera by punching it, rally organizers lifted a 2-meter-long wooden house above their shoulders and began their march to deliver it and their petition to City Hall on Monivong Boulevard. … Ten minutes after protesters had departed Wat Phnom, a final wave of military police overran rally leaders in front of City Hall on Monivong Boulevard, wrestling their wooden house to the ground twice and tearing it apart in an unwittingly symbolic act of destruction during a tussle that took place in the middle of the road. Military police closed off the boulevard for the next half hour, cornering the protesters in front of City Hall as municipal authorities negotiated the handing over of the petition from the rally leaders, while other protesters and military police traded low-flying water bottles across a tense police line. …
Alex Willemyns and Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/anti-eviction-protesters-clash-with-security-forces-44882/
