Heritage For Who? Thousands Evicted From Homes Near Famous Cambodian Temple Complex

Last month, the human rights group Amnesty International published a report documenting the Cambodian government’s recent eviction of thousands of families from around the famous Angkor temple complex. 

The report, which was based on interviews with more than 100 people, claims that the Cambodian authorities have forced an estimated 10,000 families to move to ill-equipped relocation sites since late 2022, in the name of protecting the UNESCO World Heritage-listed monuments.

The London-based organization claims that few of those forced to move have done so voluntarily, and that they received little or no compensation. The government’s two main resettlement sites are inadequate, Amnesty claims, lacking proper roads, sanitation, and clean water and electricity supplies.

Amnesty also said that UNESCO had “fallen short of its responsibility to uphold and promote human rights,” arguing that the United Nations’ cultural body was made aware of alleged human rights abuses for months but did not investigate or acknowledge them.

“Cambodian authorities cruelly uprooted families who have lived in Angkor for several generations, forcing them to live hand to mouth at ill-prepared relocation sites,” Montse Ferrer, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for research, said in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “They must immediately cease forcibly evicting people and violating international human rights law.”

The Angkor Archaeological Park, which sprawls in a lush expanse to the north of the town of Siem Reap in northern Cambodia, is dotted with around 1,000 monuments built by the Angkorian rulers between the ninth and the 15th centuries.. Chief among them is the temple city of Angkor Wat, built in the early 12th century, its six towers crowning one of the wonders of the premodern world.

Crafted from sandstone and honeycombed volcanic rock, the Angkor temples are of supreme importance to Cambodia, in cultural, political, and economic terms. They form the core of Cambodian national identity – the outline of Angkor Wat has appeared on the flag of every Cambodian government since independence, including that of the communist Khmer Rouge – and are the country’s primary source of tourism revenue.

Moreover, Angkor has been inhabited nearly continuously since its construction. In a written response to the Amnesty report published on its website, UNESCO described Angkor as a “living site” and said that the presence of a “population was integral to the decision to include the site on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992.” This population has grown in size as the local tourist industry has grown over the past three decades, bringing economic opportunity to Siem Reap, one of Cambodia’s poorest provinces.

In the past, UNESCO has expressed concerns about the population living within the temple park. In 1992, at the time of Angkor’s initial listing as a World Heritage Site, UNESCO commissioned a report that found that “habitation in the core restricted areas [of Angkor] was inappropriate to the preservation and presentation of major archaeological sites and will be prohibited.” It recommended that people living in traditional villages within the temple complex should be able to stay, while new settlers would not. 

However, Amnesty’s report claims that the issue was never dealt with adequately by the Cambodian government, creating confusion as to which settlements were new and which were “traditional villages.”

Instead, after years of inaction, the Cambodian government has pressed ahead with relocations, disregarding people’s origins entirely, with government officials claiming the need to protect Angkor’s UNESCO World Heritage status. While evictions have been happening on a small scale since 2005, they ramped up last year. Cambodian authorities have since evicted a reported 10,000 people from within the temple park, moving them to two relocation sites in the nearby countryside. 

In October of last year, as the evictions were getting underway, then-Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a speech that the inhabitants needed to be moved due to “pressure from UNESCO.” He said that families who refused to accept government compensation to leave the Angkor temple park and tried to bargain for higher compensation would be forcibly evicted. “When the time comes, not even a single cent will be given,” Hun Sen said.

Yet the Cambodian authorities claim that the villagers are moving to relocation sites voluntarily. “Don’t say the word ‘evict,’ the people volunteered to change their homes,” Long Kosal, the spokesperson of the Apsara Authority, which manages the temples, told the local Voice of Democracy news site in September 2022. “The use of the word ‘evict’ is not right.”

More importantly, Amnesty claims Cambodian authorities have failed to adequately inform people or engage in genuine consultations with them prior to the evictions – an issue familiar from the many other cases of forced evictions and land grabs in Cambodia over the past two decades. Its interviews found that “almost all” of those removed “described being evicted or pressured to leave Angkor following intimidation, harassment, threats, and acts of violence from Cambodian authorities.”

At the primary resettlement site of Run Ta Ek, a sun-baked lot just outside the eastern limits of the Angkor park, “families who had moved were allocated empty plots of land,” the report stated. “They were expected to construct their own houses, including bathrooms and toilets, which has left many families in debt.”

The relocation site was also quite far from Siem Reap – around an hour by motorbike – which complicates life for residents who previously earned an income by selling goods or providing services to tourists visiting Angkor. Others who engaged in farming told Amnesty that their new location has not been prepared for that activity.

According to Amnesty, Cambodia “is obligated under seven major human rights treaties to respect, protect and fulfill the right to adequate housing.” More than that, precisely because Cambodian government used Angkor’s World Heritage listing as the pretext for the evictions, Amnesty also accused UNESCO of failing to challenge them, despite have knowledge of “the circumstances surrounding the evictions.”

“If UNESCO is committed to putting human rights at the heart of all its actions,” Ferrer said, “then it should unequivocally condemn forced evictions as a tool for the management of a World Heritage Site, use its influence to demand that Cambodia’s government stop them, and push for a public and independent inquiry.” 

In comments provide to Amnesty in response to a draft of its report, UNESCO stated it has “never called for population displacements in Angkor.”

The U.N. body said that it is “not in a position to impose measures on Member States and its site managers,” as “the conservation and management of the property in a manner that is inclusive and sustainable is under the sole authority of the State Party” – i.e. the Cambodian government.

Whether and how people should be allowed to live within the Angkor Archaeological Park is a question for conservation experts. Eminent domain – the compulsory acquisition of land for public works – is practiced in most countries, and requiring people to move need not be a violation of their rights, if the land is acquired transparently and adequate compensation paid. 

Even if Cambodia had such laws, however, there is the question of implementation, which always seems to fall most heavily on ordinary people. In this case, the government appears to view the Angkor populations as an afterthought – a hindrance to the smooth functioning of the temple park as a revenue-generating cultural attraction.

In the report, Amnesty quoted a woman who said she had lived at Angkor for more than 70 years. Researchers asked whether she had volunteered to leave her village near the temples. 

“Nobody wants to leave their home,” she responded. “There are hundreds like me.”