Retro Trends We Didn’t Expect to See Make a Comeback: The Leper Colony

by Michael Bear

category: Humanitarian Relief

Published August 05, 2009 @ 10:32AM PT

This post was written by Kate Cronin-Furman, co-writer of one of my favorite blogs, Wronging Rights

If you thought the reappearance of the romper was the most distressing return of a misguided fad this summer, brace yourself: Cambodia has brought back the leper colony. But like all successful attempts at reviving a trend, they’ve tweaked it slightly for the modern audience and replaced lepers with the HIV-positive.

AFP reports that over the last two months the Cambodian government has relocated 40 families with HIV-positive members from their homes in the Borei Keila community in Phnom Penh to “metal sheds without running water or adequate sanitation at Tuol Sambo, an area 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the capital.” The residents of the “AIDS village” say they are reduced to collecting rainwater to drink and “scaveng[ing] for small fish and crustaceans in nearby rice paddies.”

In an open letter to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health, Human Rights Watch decries the establishment of a “de facto AIDS colony” and describes the living conditions at Tuol Sambo: “There are no kitchens and no running water in the sheds, which are flanked by open sewers, and only one public well to service the evicted families. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, these conditions do not meet international minimum standards for temporary emergency housing.”

Forced evictions to clear land for development are “one of the most widespread human rights violations affecting Cambodians in both rural and urban areas” according to Amnesty International. Cambodian human rights organization LICADHO recently estimated that 250,000 people have been affected by land seizures and forced evictions since 2003.

However, the treatment of these HIV-affected families is egregious even according to Cambodia’s “using tear gas to force people from their homes without warning is business as usual” standards. The redevelopment plan for the Borei Keila area included a requirement that the developer would build housing for residents displaced by the project. As HRW points out, none of the displaced HIV-affected families were among those considered for placement in the new onsite housing. Additionally, the sheds in which they are housed at Tuol Sambo are decidedly inferior to the brick houses being provided to non-HIV-affected families at the relocation site.

Meanwhile, the government insists that everything is fine. Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Mann Chhoeun tells the Phnom Penh Post: “We have worked hard already to do everything for them, but some NGOs just panic.”

Hear that, HRW? Government sanction for the relocation of HIV-positive citizens to squalid ghettos with no running water or access to healthcare is nothing to get worked up about. So we can all just calm down and get back to debating the advisability of grown women wearing rompers. Phew.

[Image from HRW’s photo essay “Cambodia: ‘AIDS Colony’ Violates Rights”]