Economic land concessions and plantations

About 100 residents embroiled in land disputes in Phnom Penh submitted a petition to the U.S. Embassy yesterday requesting that President Barack Obama raise the issue of evictions and reform of the country’s land concession policy when he visits Cambodia later this month. The plea comes ...

In its first official response to a highly critical resolution on Cambodia from the European Parliament, the government has rejected all criticism and instead accused the Parliament in Brussels of playing politics and interfering in Phnom Penh’s affairs. In its resolution approved October 26, the European ...

Trade between Cambodia and Thailand increased by about 40 per cent to US$3 billion in the first nine months of this year in comparison with the same period last year, according to figures provided by the Royal Embassy of Thailand in Cambodia. According to Nat Vimonchandra, ...

– Economic Land Concessions (Government Data Complete 16 items) Click here to download – Mining ( Secondary Source Data 19 items) Click here to download ...

The entirety of three protected forests are now classified as private land, an investigation from rights group Adhoc has found, along with tens of thousands of additional hectares of what has once been state public land In three cases, Adhoc’s findings show that entire protected forests ...

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 ...

Families in Koh Kong province will today file a complaint with the U.S. government against American Sugar Refining (ASR) over farmland they claim they were violently evicted from to make way for two sugar plantations that supply the New York-based company. The 207 Koh Kong ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Saturday accused unnamed individuals of attempting to grab land in Kompong Thom province by invoking his wife’s name and ordered one of his sons to investigate and give back any misappropriated land. According to Mr. Hun Sen, unscrupulous individuals were ...

Drawing from a long list of human rights abuses, the European Parliament has urged the Cambodian government to stop forced evictions, called on the European Commission (E.C.) to investigate the country’s controversial land concessions policy, and raised the prospect of sanctions. In a resolution passed Friday ...

The European Parliament, representing one of the country’s largest donors, on Friday called for a moratorium on forced evictions, an overhaul of elections and even went so far as to suggest to the European Union that it suspend tariff-free imports of agricultural goods linked to ...

Government-issued economic land concessions are making the country’s indigenous communities in the northeast provinces worse off, according to a study by the Mekong Institute of Cambodia. Presented yesterday at the 2012 Development Research Forum in Phnom Penh, the study comes on top of mounting criticism of ...

About 200 families in Koh Kong province’s Botum Sakor district were threatened with legal action yesterday by the district governor, who told them their 100-hectare plantation had been earmarked for development by a Chinese firm, a village representative alleged. Two days later, Botum Sakor district ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court questioned two well-known human rights workers yesterday in an incitement lawsuit brought against them by a CPP commune chief, one of those questioned said. About 200 ethnic minority Tumpuon villagers, embroiled in a land dispute with the DM Group rubber company, protested ...

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 ...

Officials from Prime Minister’s Hun Sen’s cabinet yesterday accepted the petition of 110 Preah Vihear villager representatives seeking intervention in a land dispute with defunct NGO DARPO. Hun Sen cabinet member Nov Ra told villagers who protested in front of the prime minister’s house to return ...

Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...

Evictees wearing small model houses on their heads to symbolize their struggles marched to the National Assembly yesterday to ask authorities to intervene to stop more forced evictions. About 400 representatives of 40 communities across the capital joined human rights activists at the former Dey Krahorm eviction site ...

Hun Sen’s titling plan was announced in June and is intended to resolve land conflict stemming from the Khmer Rouge regime’s ban on private property in the 1970s. Around 1,600 students have been sent around the country to demarcate 4.4 million acres of uncontested territory, which ...

A week after Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that he would be cancelling an unknown number of economic land concessions in Prey Lang forest, activists called for details on the annulled concessions, saying such revocations would be meaningless unless they could be policed. On September ...

UN Human Rights Envoy to Cambodia Prof Surya Subedi has taken a strong exception to the scathing criticism of him by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, saying it was unbecoming of a person of the prime minister´s stature to “descend to the personal level”. In a ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday implicated his cousin as being behind an attempt to sell land in Svay Rieng province that was set aside by the government in 2009 to provide hundreds of land titles to villagers on a social land concession. Speaking at a ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday appeared to add his voice to the strong government reaction against criticism from U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi. Mr. Subedi last month delivered reports on human rights and economic land concessions in Cambodia to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. His ...

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 Ratanakkiri Provincial Court will appoint a new judge to process complaints filed by ethnic Jarai minority villagers against a firm owned by Keat Kolney, the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, regarding a land dispute that has now dragged on for more than five ...