Amnesty International Aotearoa NZ
Media release
For immediate release
14 October 2009

Students slum it on High Street this Friday

Last year an estimated 23,000 Cambodians were forcibly evicted from the land they occupied.

Today, at least 150,000 Cambodians face the same fate.

This Friday, (October 16) on the eve of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand and AUT students will be recreating a Cambodian slum community in central Auckland. The slums, which will be assembled in Freyburg Place between 11am and 1.30pm, aim to highlight the human rights violations taking place in Cambodia.

“We are urging New Zealanders to take action on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians at risk of forced evictions,” said Patrick Holmes, CEO of Amnesty International Aotearoa NZ.

“With land grabbing and commercial development projects threatening slums and other informal settlements in Cambodia, it is vital that the voice of the people who live in these communities is heard. New Zealanders are in a position to use their influence to put pressure on Cambodian authorities.”

The public will have the opportunity to sign petition postcards and write messages on the cardboard walls of the slums. The postcards and slum walls will be sent to the Cambodian Prime Minister to represent New Zealand’s support for change.

Forced evictions occur when families are removed from their homes, primarily to make way for real estate developments and landfill sites. Evicted communities are resettled in even more deprived slums in rural areas where they are hidden from the public eye.

Health problems in these new settlements are widespread, especially among children. Illnesses such as dengue fever, diarrhoea and malnutrition are common. Due to a lack of basic healthcare, children often die as a result of these easily curable diseases.

The Cambodian authorities show a lack of compassion for Cambodian people living and dying in slums. Governor of the Municipality of Phnom Penh, Kep Chuktema, told journalists that informal settlements “pollute our city’s beauty”. He expressed no concern for the repercussions of forcibly uprooting thousands of people from their homes.

In most cases, people receive no consultation or warning before their relocation. It is not unusual for bulldozers and excavators to turn up unannounced on the morning of the evictions.

“The situation at that time was out of control so I just followed what they told me to do,” an evicted young mother told Amnesty International. “They told me they would find a job for me and give me land. They would build factories, hospitals, schools and more. But when I arrived, everything was empty. The land was flooded, and I felt hopeless.”

Over one billion people live without proper housing across the globe. Not only are they denied the right to adequate shelter, but they are excluded from basic services such as safe water, sanitation, health and education.

Amnesty International is calling on Cambodian authorities to end all forced evictions; ensure that all past victims of forced evictions receive access to justice and adequate compensation; and ensure that all people who may be affected by land development are accorded the legal protections to which they are entitled. For more information on Amnesty’s work to end forced evictions in Cambodia, please see www.amnesty.org.nz/files/Cambodia-Slum-Digest.pdf

Note to editors

Amnesty International’s work to end forced evictions in Cambodia is part of the organisation’s newly launched Demand Dignity campaign. The campaign aims to position poverty as a human rights issue and calls for an end to the human rights violations that drive and deepen poverty. The Demand Dignity campaign mobilises people across the world to demand that governments and corporations listen to the voices of those living in poverty and respect their rights. For more information about the Demand Dignity campaign, please visit www.demanddignity.org.nz

Amnesty International Aotearoa NZ is part of the global movement of 2.2 million people in more than 150 countries who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights. For more information, please visit www.amnesty.org.nz

ENDS

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