Public land lease

Cambodian politicians have begun a public campaign to defend their records on land policies, as they prepare for the run-up to July elections. Politicians from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as well as the opposition Sam Rainsy and Human Rights parties, have said they will give ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers and a local rights worker yesterday discovered about 3,000 more logs that have been illegally cut by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, according to rights group Adhoc. The logs were found stockpiled in dense forest inside ...

Malaysian-owned Maybank, one of the largest banks in Cambodia, opened its 12th national branch in Phnom Penh on Friday. The bank aims to reach emerging businesses in the city’s Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ) with the new office. ...

Forestry Administration officials and police yesterday discovered a stockpile of more than 1,000 logs that ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district claim have been illegally cut by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession, a district official said. The 4,000-hectare concession was granted to ...

More than 30 representatives of families who claim a dispute piece of land in Koh Kong province went to provincial hall for the second time yesterday and submitted an official request to allow Prime Minister Hun Sen’s youth volunteer corps to measure the area. ...

The Forestry Administration and military police are investigating reports of a stockpile of nearly 300 logs that ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadaw district claim have been illegally cut by the Vietnamese owners of a land concession, local officials said yesterday. Indigenous villagers living in Paknhai ...

After 28 years in the capital, eating like “a king” and enjoying the perks one receives as the son of high-ranking CPP officials, Sophal’s* move to the countryside was as jarring as it was eye-opening. Until the day in June when he traded his designer threads ...

Seven Vietnamese men have been arrested for illegally felling trees inside two government-granted economic land concessions in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, where a Jarai ethnic minority community is fighting to preserve the forest and their ancestral lands. ...

Representatives of an ethnic Jarai community in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, along with local human rights group Adhoc, have called on two Vietnamese rubber companies to cease the clearing of forests on their ancestral land and exporting the logs to Vietnam. The companies, Day Dong Yoeun ...

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights says that a company with a controversial economic land concession in Koh Kong province banned the centre’s officers from photographing the area and ordered police to grab their cameras. Officers from CCHR traveled to Sre Ambel district on December 14 ...

Mikasa Corporation, a famous Japanese sports goods manufacturing company, is to invest more than $5 million in building a ball production factory in Cambodia’s Koh Kong Special Economic Zone (KKSEZ) and plans to start construction early next year according to officials. Hiroshi Suzuki, chief executive ...

Lawmakers from Cambodia’s ruling party on Monday refused to accept a petition from hundreds of people who held a rally calling for the government’s help in resolving land disputes, drawing criticism from activists who questioned the effectiveness of the country’s parliament. The appeal, which contained more ...

Sixty families in Kompong Cham province’s Krathor district are planning to file a complaint with provincial authorities after local land management officials decided to take away their registration documents for land titles under Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recently launched titling program. Pon Pumm, 44 a farmer, ...

Widely different interpretations of the government’s land policy were voiced at a conference on Land Security and Housing Rights on Thursday in Phnom Penh, with civil servants defending mass relocations, while rural evictees spoke of being forced into poverty due to loss of their land. ...

The Phnom Penh Court of Appeal ruled Friday that Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando should continue serving his 20-year sentence for sedition. On October 1, the radio station owner was sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined 10 million riel in relation to a ...

More than 250 ethnic Jarai families living in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc yesterday, after local officials demanded that the villagers apply for private land titles to protect their property from two Vietnamese rubber companies currently clearing their land, ...

Provincial forestry administration officials in Ratanakkiri have dismissed allegations of illegal logging by community residents and chalked the deforestation up to legitimate clearing. A cursory examination of the land in question yesterday seemed to back the company’s claims, Ly Sophan, a team worker at the provincial ...

Seven months after Prime Minister Hun Sen unveiled an ambitious plan to demarcate 1.8 million hectares of state land and formally acknowledge those who live on it, the completion of the first – albeit the smallest – of eight affected provinces has wrapped up. Marking the ...

The court system is still “chronically underfunded” and laws on its management are almost 20 years overdue, the U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi said yesterday. One year ago, during his sixth mission to Cambodia, Mr. Subedi described reform in the courts as moving at a ...

A final report from Thailand’s human rights commission on the alleged rights violations of a Thai company involved in two Cambodian sugar plantations is expected by late January, a member of the commission said. In July, the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand said its investigation ...

Nineteen families from Svay Pak commune in Russey Keo district protested for a second day Wednesday after their homes fell into the Tonle Sap River. Twenty-four houses along the river have been affected, they said. Although five have already left, the other 19 refuse to accept ...

The European Union’s ambassador to Cambodia yesterday urged the government to heed the advice of the U.N.’s visiting human rights envoy, who has come under increasing rebuke from officials for his unflattering reports. Addressing a crowd of about 3,000, mostly garment factory workers, at Phnom Penh’s ...

Economic land concessions granted to a pair of Vietnamese companies in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district were endangering the traditional lifestyles of as many as 200 ethnic-minority families, villagerstold the Post yesterday. As the companies actively cleared forest to make room for the eventual rubber plantations, the government ...

U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi, who arrived in Cambodia Sunday on a five-day mission, spent yesterday, International Human Rights Day, in Kompong Chhnang province with about 300 villagers from a community embroiled in a long-running land dispute with the wife of a government minister. James ...