Housing Activist in Washington To Push for Cambodian Policy Reforms

Cambodian housing rights activist Tep Vanny is in Washington this week, seeking to increase international pressure on Cambodian authorities to end forced evictions and find resolutions to longstanding land disputes. Tep Vanny, a housewife who has emerged as a leader for Cambodian victims of forced evictions, will meet with World Bank officials and others as she seeks to change Cambodia’s development policies. She told VOA Khmer in an interview last week that a crackdown on a group of hunger strikers by young men in plainclothes was done under “collaboration among authorities, top to bottom.” … An internal review at the World Bank in 2011 showed the bank’s local Phnom Penh office had not done enough to protect land of people living in Boeung Kak, which could have prevented at least some of the current disputes. The bank subsequently froze funding to Cambodia. “What we really want the World Bank to do is help end the dispute in Boeung Kak through immediate negotiation with the government, because we can hardly continue to live in the current situation,” she said. “Nowadays, due to our protests, the government sees us as their enemy and keeps making attempts on our lives, which really worries us.” …

 Men Kimseng
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/housing-activist-in-washington-to-push-for-cambodian-policy-reforms/1760036.html