Developer of controversial Cambodian canal comes with baggage
A close friend to the Hun family, OCIC has been embroiled in numerous land disputes.
By RFA Khmer 2024.08.13 -- When Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet broke ground last Tuesday on a controversial, $1.7 billion canal that will eventually link the capital to the coast, he proudly announced that the investment for the first portion of the canal was "100 percent Cambodian."
Once completed, the 180 km-long (110 miles) Funan Techo canal will allow ships to move from Phnom Penh to the Gulf of Thailand, bypassing the need to go through Vietnam and lowering transport costs — though experts have warned the environmental costs are steep.
Despite the ambition of the project, which was first publicized barely a year ago, scant information exists on the funding. Hun Manet's comments represented a rare official statement regarding the investors behind the first part, a 20 kilometer stretch that will link the Mekong and Tonle Bassac rivers.
As the prime minister explained, 51% of the capital would be provided by the state-owned Sihanoukville Autonomous Port and Phnom Penh Autonomous Port. The rest would come from a single private company called the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation, or OCIC.
Owned by a powerful and well-connected tycoon, Pung Kheav Se, OCIC in recent years has become Cambodia's developer of choice.
The company is the primary funder of the Techo International Airport, a 2600-hectare, $1.5 billion airport on the outskirts of Phnom Penh expected to open next year and replace the capital's current airport.
In the mid-2000s, OCIC turned Koh Pich, or Diamond Island, from a sparsely populated sandbar into one of Phnom Penh's most valuable parcels of real estate. Four years ago, the company broke ground on another landfill project: a $2.5 billion satellite city just across from Koh Pich.
But if such projects have been lucrative for OCIC's shareholders, they've been devastating for many Cambodians who happened to be living on the coveted land. Collectively, the projects have resulted in at least hundreds of evictions and numerous land disputes — many of them lasting years and some turning violent. Those living along the canal's purported path are now bracing themselves for what may soon come.
Less than 20 miles from central Phnom Penh, Chey Udom village in Kandal's Kien Svay district looks like most of Cambodia's countryside, with dirt roads leading toward sprawling paddy fields. Though the ground-breaking was barely a kilometer away — so close that the sounds of the ceremony could be heard during interviews here — the estimated 100 people in this village who will have to move have yet to be given any notice about compensation, resident Heng Chong Yan told Radio Free Asia.
"It takes a long time for us as farmers to build a house because we do not have a large income like others," he said. "People's concerns are common and everyone's concerns need to be heard. We urge the government to provide adequate compensation in exchange for a suitable place to live."
A new airport raises concerns
On June 20, 2021, a small group of residents in Kandal province's Boeng Khyang commune held a ceremony to curse the developer that was pushing them from their land, VOD news agency reported at the time.
Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that OCIC was sinking into its airport project, residents had been offered just $8 per square meter in compensation for their land — about one-tenth of market rate, according to villagers.
Years of negotiations and protests had yielded scant progress and frequent arrests by police. And so residents asked instead for the developers to suffer like they had.
"If you come on the road, the car will overturn in a traffic accident," VOD quoted a curser. "If you come through the air, the plane will crash and disappear. If you come on the waterway, the ship will disappear."
Years on, OCIC's airport, roads and waterways are moving ahead as smoothly as ever. The villagers pushed out or still threatened the Techo International Airport (named, like the canal, for an honorific used by former Prime Minister Hun Sen) remain as cursed as ever.
One day after construction on the canal launched, Sun Sambo explained how years of fighting OCIC for proper compensation had exhausted him and those living in five villages affected by the project. An estimated 500 families were affected by the project, with an unknown number of holdouts still locked in compensation disputes.
As he waits for compensation that would be enough for him to buy land elsewhere in proximity to Phnom Penh, Sun Sambo tries to get on with his life, though he knows he will likely be forced to leave soon enough.
"We are not allowed to build on our land or fix our houses, so even if we have dilapidated houses we want to repair we cannot. The airport security company has the authority to prohibit us," he Sambo told RFA.
He said he feared those living along the would-be canal would soon face the same situation as he.
"Some are poor and when it comes to problems, they are getting poorer. So I want a solution, people do not object or oppose the [development] but want a good solution for us," he said.
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