Lead-up to poll saw SLCs spike
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 2012 ban on the allocation of economic land concessions was supposed to halt the unpopular practice of turning over large swaths of property to developers. And going by the numbers last year, it worked. But in the vacuum, according to local rights ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/lead-poll-saw-slcs-spike
Cambodia tests 'super rice' to fortify its children
For breakfast, it’s rice. For lunch, it’s rice again, and for dinner – rice. Sometimes, Cambodian Un Koy says, her mother will prepare some beans or carrots, and on very special days even fish or pork. Across Asia, rice is the most widely consumed staple. That’s ...
Try Pheap Firm in Talks to Replicate Timber Deal
Well-known timber magnate Try Pheap is preparing to expand cross-country with a scheme that already gives him exclusive rights to buy all the wood felled on economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, a spokesman for the businessman said. The Agriculture Ministry’s Forestry Administration in February ...
Zsombor Peter and Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/try-pheap-firm-in-talks-to-replicate-timber-deal-48511/
Evicted railway families await ADB’s help
In 2011, Oeun Phirun took out a $450 loan from the Asian Development Bank, using half to buy a used motorbike and spending the rest on a small flock of ducks and chickens he hoped to raise. His family and about 1,000 others have been evicted ...
Zsombor Peter and Phorn Bopha
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/evicted-railway-families-await-adbs-help-56128/
The rector versus the tycoon
The morning before the verdict was handed down at the Appeals Court on March 12, the mood among those working on the defence team for Heng Chheang and his wife Tep Kolap was almost optimistic. They, along with relatives of the couple and academics from Phnom ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032355213/National-news/the-rector-versus-the-tycoon.html
Last days of a valley damned
Yong Yim’s voice rises to a high-pitched quiver when she talks about a planned dam in the Areng Valley that would inundate land her family has inhabited for hundreds of years to form what amounts to a giant battery. Now they are staring at ...
May Titthara, David Boyle and Danson Cheong
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013020861238/National/last-days-of-a-valley-damned.html
Mekong basin countries target double-digit tourism growth
Five Southeast Asian countries, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam, are targeting a double-digit growth rate of international visitors annually by 2015 under the theme “Five Countries – One Destination”, according to Hoang Tuan Anh, Viet Nam’s Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism. In a ...
VietNamNet Bridge Staff
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/travel/84268/mekong-basin-countries-target-double-digit-tourism-growth.html
No Results in Protest Shooting Investigations
At 10 a.m. on January 3, about 2,000 members of the security forces, mostly military police, advanced down Phnom Penh’s factory-lined Veng Sreng Street, spraying AK-47 assault rifle fire into a crowd of about 100 protesters who had been throwing stones and crude Molotov cocktails. ...
Khuon Narim and Colin Meyn
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/no-results-in-protest-shooting-investigations-51325/
Four Dead in Cambodia Garment Strike
A weeklong strike by Cambodian garment workers turned deadly Friday as police shot and killed at least four people and wounded several others in an attempt to break up a protest for higher wages. The violence came after weeks of escalating political and labor unrest marked ...
Chun Han Wong and Sun Narin
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304325004579297511167310046
Hun Sen Asks UN Envoy to Help End Cambodia’s Political Crisis
Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on a U.N. special envoy to press the country’s opposition to rejoin parliament and negotiate an end to the country’s political stalemate since disputed July elections, an official said Wednesday. Hun Sen met with U.N. special envoy for human ...
Radio Free Asia News Staff
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/intervention-01152014162154.html
Vietnam Doubts Sustainability of Second Lao Dam Project on Mekong
Vietnam has joined Cambodia in questioning the sustainability of the planned Don Sahong dam project on the Mekong River in southern Laos, saying more environmental impact studies are needed before the scheme moves forward. Le Duc Trung, director general of the Vietnam National Mekong Committee under ...
Radio Free Asia
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/dam-11152013181814.html
US Passes Bill to Suspend Some Aid to Cambodia
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a spending bill that would suspend some funding to Cambodia until the government carries out an independent investigation of July’s disputed national election and reforms its electoral system, or until the opposition ends its boycott of parliament. The ...
Zsombor Peter
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/us-passes-bill-to-suspend-some-aid-to-cambodia-50778/
Farming’s primacy ‘hinders’
Cambodia’s economic productivity is in trouble, struggling with an inability to turn a youthful population into a skilled workforce and stunted by an over-reliance on agriculture, according to a new World Bank report. In Cambodia and Vietnam, diversification of labour from the farming sector contributed to ...
Laignee Barron
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/farming%E2%80%99s-primacy-%E2%80%98hinders%E2%80%99
Factory Orders Staff Back to Work Amid Safety Concerns
Employees at a Taiwanese-owned shoe factory in Kompong Speu province where two workers were killed when one of the building’s floors collapsed on Thursday have been ordered back to work today, despite ongoing concerns from labor activists about the building’s safety. While conceding that some parts ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/factory-orders-staff-back-to-work-amid-safety-concerns-25192/
Government Blames Child Flood Deaths on ‘Careless’ Mothers
The first vice president of the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) on Monday blamed some of the deaths in this year’s floods on “careless” mothers. “Maybe the mothers are careless, maybe they don’t pay much attention to their children, so they drown,” NCDM First Vice ...
Zsombor Peter and Khuon Narim
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/government-blames-child-flood-deaths-on-careless-mothers-45666/
Ratanakkiri Temple Now in Land Concession
Like most millennium-old structures discovered in the forests of Cambodia, the locals had known all along about this one. Jarai minority villagers in this remote spot in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district not only knew about it, but they revered the red-brick temple, using it as a ...
Kuch Naren and Michelle Vachon
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ratanakkiri-temple-now-in-land-concession-47779/
Police Train at Freedom Park as Protesters Target Hun Sen’s House
As hundreds of riot police conducted protest suppression drills in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Monday morning, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s mansion in the center of the city was the focal point of a demonstration by some 2,000 garment factory workers. Municipal police, along with 16 ...
Aun Pheap and Khy Sovuthy
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/police-train-at-freedom-park-as-protesters-target-hun-sens-house-2-45638/
After Deadly Factory Collapse, Safety Improvements Scarce
On May 16, immediately after the ceiling of a shoe factory collapsed in Kompong Speu province, leaving two people dead, promises were made to prosecute those responsible for the tragedy and to conduct a nationwide inspection of all factories. “We will have a committee investigate clearly ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/after-deadly-factory-collapse-safety-improvements-scarce-39041/
The canes of wrath
Satiating the demands of the global sugar industry is big business for Cambodia’s sugarcane plantations. Yet accusations of human rights abuses and land grabs in the Kingdom have left a bitter aftertaste for many on the ground as companies vie for a larger slice of ...