Phnom Penh – Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet vowed Friday to continue relocating thousands of families from the Angkor Wat temple complex, despite growing international condemnation from rights groups.
Officials have long maintained that about 10,000 families have willingly agreed to leave the sprawling UNESCO World Heritage site for Run Ta Ek, a new community about 25 kilometers away built on former paddy fields.
Amnesty International accused Cambodia last month of breaking international law through the “forced evictions” from the country’s top tourist attraction, and called for an immediate halt.
But Hun Manet on Friday said the relocations would continue so that Angkor Wat — the “soul of our nation” — could be protected, and urged more villagers to take part.
“We in the 21st century must unite to preserve and take actions so that this soul will remain vivid for thousands more years,” he said.
“This is the first step. We will continue,” he said, ordering authorities to prevent people from settling inside the site.
The PM did acknowledge it was “not easy to move from a place to another” during a ceremony to present land titles to nearly 5,000 families.
He pledged to build much-needed infrastructure at Run Ta Ek, as well as provide 10 free daily shuttle buses between the new and old sites.
Hun Manet said the relocations were because of “some conditions” from UNESCO — without specifying details — in order for Angkor Wat to remain a World Heritage Site.
Amnesty alleges that officials from the Apsara National Authority — the body which manages the site — and the land ministry are using UNESCO to justify the relocations.
In November UNESCO said they were “deeply concerned” over the relocations, adding they had “never requested, nor supported, nor was a party to this programme”.
The popular temple complex dates back to the ninth century, and pre-pandemic it drew more than two million foreign visitors annually.
The tourists spawned a micro-economy of stallholders, food and souvenir sellers — as well as beggars — and the local population exploded from an estimated 20,000 in the early 1990s to about 120,000 by 2013.
Cambodian authorities say the informal settlements damage the local environment by producing rubbish and overusing water resources. AFP