Land governance policies in Asia, especially concessions made to private companies, are leaving the region’s poorest vulnerable to human rights abuses, experts say. “Land-grabbing by the rich and powerful continues,” Suson Bunsak, executive secretary of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, said at the recent Asia ...

The National Authority for Land Dispute Resolution and Battambang provincial authorities will launch an investigation on Monday into an ongoing Land dispute between tycoon Lim Tealeng and Chan Hoeu in Kors Kralor district’s Preah Phos commune following an order from Prime Minister Hun Sen. ...

Sixty-nine families in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district have been ordered by the government to move from a 4,000-meter-square plot of land claimed by a local businessman, according to district authorities. The disputed area is part of a 9-hectare plot of land in Svay Pak commune owned by ...

Commune authorities and 41 Oddar Meanchey families Chheu Krom village staged a forum yesterday, accusing Royal Forces border soldiers of unlawfully grabbing their land and banning the villagers from farming in their area. The dispute, ongoing since 2008, has recently reached fever pitch as RCAF soldiers ...

Villagers who allege authorities and armed forces in Preah Vihear province have been burning their houses and clearing farmland of 400 families, to create a social land concession, protested yesterday, calling on intervention from Prime Minister Hun Sen. The 5,557-hectare SLC in Kulen district’s Srayang village ...

Siem Reap residents are collecting hundreds of thumbprints for the reinstatement of a village chief who was fired for joining a protest against the resettlement of Angkor evictees. ...

High-profile Phnom Penh businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to return 33 hectares of prime land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to her company, which lost the rights to it when the government claimed the land in July. Sokountheary said she ...

Military police in Battambang province shot three villagers in the legs during a confrontation between local farmers and a private company that was granted a land concession, a police official said. Phnom Penh district police chief Song Sopheak said employees of Suon Neang Sambath company, a ...

More than 300 villagers from two districts in Kampong Speu province joined forces yesterday to protest in front of the provincial court over two land disputes, vowing to continue until authorities resolved them and released a mother of seven jailed last month after she had ...

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) demanded the government intervene immediately after finding that 98.2 percent of women involved in land disputes with private companies were suffering from serious psychological after-effects and nearly half of the women participating in the survey said they had ...

Residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood burned straw effigies symbolizing corrupt government officials yesterday to mark the one-year anniversary of the demolition of eight homes at the contested site. Roughly 100 protesters gathered at the site of the demolitions and set fire to eight scarecrow-like effigies- one ...

Student volunteers working as part of the government’s land titling scheme are again being accused of refusing to measure land – this time in Pursat province – because they say those living there have done so illegally, according to villagers. Villagers in Bakan district said the ...

Villagers took an increasingly vocal stand on land issues during rare opportunities to speak with National Assembly members this past year, according to the National Democratic Institute. During the most recent town hall-style Constituency Dialogues, started by NDI in 2004 to promote contact between assembly members ...

The government’s Human Rights Committee has visited villagers in a long-running land dispute in Battambang province to find out whether members of their community have been unfairly imprisoned in recent years for land encroachment, local authorities and villagers said yesterday. Officials from committee, which is headed ...

The last of the nearly 800 families from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community who are in line for land titles will not receive their long-awaited ownership records for another “two or three weeks”, a city official said yesterday. The families were spared eviction at the hands ...

Two months after their release from Prey Sar prison, members of the so-called Boeung Kak 13 were yesterday at the forefront of more calls for authorities to mark out land promised to their community. About 50 Boeung Kak women and children gathered outside to urge authorities to ...

A okyo-based human rights group has called on the government to cease forced evictions and branded the use of armed forces against ordinary citizens defending their land as an :unforgivable human rights violation.” Human Rights Now (HRN), which in June sent a team of Japanese investigators ...

Imprisoned Yorm Bopha has either been unjustly targeted for her role in Boeung Kak lake eviction protests or is responsible for the vicious beating of two motodops, depending on which protesters’ chants were true yesterday. It was land evictees versus motodops in the capital as two ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen again addressed recent criticism from [Surya Subedi] the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia , during a speech yesterday in Bateay Meanchey province that focused on land disputes. Mr. Hun Sen was speaking in Thma Puok district’s Banteay Chhmar commune, where he ...

About 80 ethnic Bunong villagers living in Mondolkiri’s Pech Chreada district staged a protest against the Socfin-KCD rubber company Monday, demanding that the firm honor its long-standing pledge to return 1,000 hectares of farmland located inside its concession. Socfin-KCD, a join venture between Socfin, a ...