Cambodia defends family relocations around the famous Angkor Wat temple complex

The U.N. cultural agency had demanded a response from Cambodian authorities in November after a scathing report from Amnesty International claimed that thousands of families, some that had lived in the area for “several generations,” were being forcibly evicted from around the World Heritage Site as Cambodia seeks to develop the area for tourism.

Cambodia is rejecting allegations it violated international law by evicting people living around its famous Angkor Wat temple complex, saying in a report to UNESCO released Monday that it was only relocating squatters and not residents of more than 100 traditional villages.

The U.N. cultural agency had demanded a response from Cambodian authorities in November after a scathing report from Amnesty International claimed that thousands of families, some that had lived in the area for “several generations," were being forcibly evicted from around the World Heritage Site as Cambodia seeks to develop the area for tourism.

Amnesty questioned Cambodia's assertion that the families were being voluntarily relocated, citing interviews with people who said they had been forced out, while maintaining that resettlement sites lacked adequate water, sanitation and other facilities, and criticizing UNESCO for failing to challenge Cambodian authorities.

Paris-based UNESCO responded that it was “deeply concerned about the allegations" and ordered Cambodia to report on the state of conservation at the Angkor site about a year earlier than previously planned, while urging “them to ensure that any relocation is voluntary.”

The Angkor site sprawls across some 400 square kilometers (155 square miles), containing the ruins of Khmer Empire capitals from the 9th to the 15th centuries, including the temple of Angkor Wat. UNESCO calls it one of the most important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia, and it is critical to Cambodia’s tourism industry.

In its report to UNESCO, Cambodia argued it was only moving people involved in the “illegal occupation of heritage land,” and not those identified by UNESCO as inhabitants of traditional villages shortly after the Angkor complex's inscription in 1992 as a World Heritage Site.

“At the Angkor heritage site there are 112 villages where people have been living for generations, but there are squatters who have been coming in, and these squatters are the people who are being relocated, not the people living in the traditional villages,” Long Kosal, spokesperson for the Cambodian government body in charge of the Angkor Wat site, told The Associated Press by telephone.