Cambodia for Sale - Stop the Evictions
Movie screening from 7:30pm
Wednesday March 24 2010
Black Rose 22 Enmore Rd
Newtown (100m from the station)

Imagine this: You and your family are asleep in the safety of your home, when the door is smashed in without warning. Armed thugs hustle you from your house without allowing you to take any belongings. The streets are swarming with armed police, and you watch as your home is bulldozed to the ground. The same thing is happening to your neighbours, and within a short space of time, the community in which you once lived is a wasteland. You receive no compensation for your loss, nor any offer of relocation to another site, and you cannot take your case to court, as the entire exercise has been sanctioned by government.

Scenes such as these are occuring every day in Cambodia. This is the brutal reality of forced eviction – an act that destroys the hopes and homes of millions of people every year.

More than 150,000 people live under threat of eviction in Cambodia, including approximately 80,000 in the capital Phnom Penh. Cambodia for Sale, filmed between 2006 and 2008 by Nana Yuriko, tells the story of some of these communities, through the eyes of the communities themselves, and the Cambodian and international activists working to support them.

It is situations such as these which create extreme poverty and homelessness. Poverty as we well know leads to an increase in petty and social crimes. Unable to buy their way out of prison like many of the wealthy committing similar or worse crimes, these people’s health, and mental well being deteoriates in prison. Suffering daily abuse, malnutrition and isolation , no existing education system or access to health services - life is unkind to a Cambodian prisoner.

This film is being shown as a fundraiser for a prisoner support project in Cambodia. This organisation acts as an advocate for prisoners rights, and works particularly with the families and children of the prisoners who are some of the most vulnerable within this system.