‘Halt forced evictions at Angkor Wat’

Sacred site: An aerial view of the Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap province. While the government says people are moving voluntarily, Amnesty claims its research found that villagers faced ‘implicit threats if they did not move’.— AFP

Rights group Amnesty International urged Cambodia to immediately stop the ongoing “mass forced evictions” of 10,000 families from the Angkor Wat temple complex.

The Cambodian government late last year ramped up the relocation of families living within the sprawling Unesco world heritage site to a new community being built on former rice paddies 25km away.