GETTING IT WRONG - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 77

was reached and in 2009 the first trial was held more than thirty years after the Khmer
Rouge defeat. The first man convicted was Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch, who had headed
Tuol Sleng. By then his old torture center had welcomed nearly 1 million foreign tourists.
• • •
The building that houses the Ministry of Tourism in Phnom Penh is a metaphor for how
the government has robbed the people of their land, their heritage and their livelihoods to
profit the tourism industry.
For the first decade of peace the ministry was housed in a grand French colonial villa
on Phnom Penh's waterfront in the heart of the capital, where three rivers meet as they
flow toward the sea. This is one of the most exclusive areas of the city. The fifteenth-
century Wat Ounalom Buddhist temple is directly across the street, and the golden walls
of the Royal Palace compound are a stone's throw away. The palace resembles an illus-
tration from an Asian fairy tale, with a royal pavilion, throne hall, royal court, silver pa-
goda, Moonlight Pavilion for royal ballet performances and private residences laid out for
a dream potentate. Behind the palace is the National Museum, built in traditional Kh-
mer architecture that houses the world's finest collection of Khmer art. It was the perfect
neighborhood for the Ministry of Tourism to make a visual statement about the history and
treasures of Cambodia.
Then one morning in 2005 workers came, and in three days they had torn down the
ministry's building. Local reporters rushed to the site thinking this was an illegal demoli-
tion of one of the city's historic villas. Not so. The destruction was legal. The reporters
were told that the government had given the property to a new Cambodian development
company in exchange for a nondescript new building on Street Number 73 in a nondes-
cript neighborhood. No money was exchanged for the villa or the land that was worth mil-
lions. The company did pass out $100,000 to divide among the employees of the Ministry
of Tourism to thank them for accepting the deal. The developer, in turn, built a hotel on
that prime property.
This noncompetitive sale of public property for private gain was being duplicated
around the country. The government has orchestrated the sale of state assets to new private
business ventures that had close ties to top officials and their families. The government
used the same dictatorial powers to declare privately held lands part of new “development
zones” to sell those, in turn, to business ventures tied to the government. This was all done
behind closed doors with no competitive bidding, public hearings or judicial review.
The Ministry of Tourism was unhappy with the building on Street Number 73 and set
its eyes on land in the central district of Phnom Penh known as Borei Keila. It was home
to some of the city's poorest residents, including a high concentration of people suffer-
ing from AIDS. The area was declared an “economic concession” and the families were