Economic land concessions and plantations

Inner city students enlisted into Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide land-titling program have been getting a taste of the rural life and some of them are ready to come home. Prepped with a two-day crash course in surveying, more than 1,000 youths have been dispatched across ...

Beehive radio station director and accused “secessionist” Mam Sonando was sent to Prey Sar prison yesterday, where he will be detained until his trial on formal criminal charges including insurrection, a conviction that alone could result in up to 15 years behind bars. After two and ...

After two hours of questioning, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday sent independent radio station owner Mam Sonando to Prey Sar prison for pretrial detention, where he will await a hearing on allegations that he tried to foment a secessionist movement in Kratie province. As Mr. Sonando was being questioned, ...

The US-based Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on the government to release Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando and drop all secessionist charges against him. Mam Sonando, 70, was arrested Sunday in Phnom Penh and has been charged with crimes related to sedition, for allegedly running ...

The number of new land disputes reported in the first six months of this year decreased by 38 percent compared to the same period in 2011, according to data released by rights group Licadho last week. According to the figures, which represent 15 of the country’s ...

Mam Sonando, beleaguered owner of the independent Beehive Radio station, was arrested at his Phnom Penh home yesterday morning on a raft of charges relating to a so-called secessionist movement that authorities supposedly disbanded in Kratie earlier this year. More than a dozen plainclothes and uniformed ...

Police in the capital yesterday arrested the alleged leader of a “secessionist plot”, Beehive Radio station director Mam Sonando, who had already been abroad for two months when hundreds of security personnel stormed a Kratie province village in May. Khieu Sopheak, a spokesman for the Ministry ...

The Koh Kong Provincial Court yesterday postponed the first hearing in a long-running land dispute between dozens of villagers from Chikor Leu commune and sugar companies believed to be partly owned by ruling-party senator Ly Yong Phat. ...

Military police in Stung Treng province arrested five government officials yesterday after they forcibly stopped student volunteers from measuring property lines as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s national initiative to help settle land disputes. ...

A local police official in Ratanakkiri province has been suspended for demanding money from villagers before adding their names to a list of people eligible for Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new land-titling program, police and villagers said yesterday. A total of 1,100 student volunteers are being ...

There were scenes of jubilation in Cambodia’s capital last month when a group of 13 imprisoned women – including a 72-year-old grandmother – was set free by an appeal court. The women were arrested in May during peaceful demonstrations against the forced eviction of thousands ...

Forestry Administration officials in Banteay Meanchey province have confiscated and continue to hold equipment valued at $1.5 million from a troubled biofuel plantation without any legal backing, an official in the provincial governor’s office said. Bulldozers, steamrollers and dump trucks were confiscated last month from a ...

A Friday press conference meant to be an act of defiance and a call for justice from the so-called Kratie “secessionists” was conspicuously short on both, as two accused secessionists failed to appear as promised to demand that the government present credible evidence against them. Instead, ...

Veun sai district, Ratanakkiri – Kitted out in their camouflage uniforms, military boots, belts and Ministry of Land Management baseball caps, the dozen or so student volunteers looked like a stern bunch. There was no smiling as they sat at wooden desks in an open pagoda ...

Adorned in new military uniforms, about 400 more young volunteers who have been enlisted into Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ambitious national land-titling scheme departed from Diamond Island yesterday armed with measuring tapes, computers and GPS units. The budding surveyors are the latest group of some 2,000 ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ latest list of economic land concessions reveals some peculiar discrepancies with known records of ELCs. Some that have recently been granted are missing, while others known to have been cancelled remain. The June 8 MAFF list makes no mention ...

At one time, palm oil production stirred a lot of excitement in Cambodia. Perhaps hoping to follow in the footsteps of palm oil giants Malaysia or Indonesia, more than 10 firms in Cambodia registered for land concessions for palm cultivation around a decade ago. Today, there is one left. The others decided palm ...

Bun Chhorn and Sok Tong – fugitives accused of orchestrating a “secessionist plot” in Kratie province – are refusing to admit their guilt, and will hold a press conference Friday in Phnom Penh to say as much, despite Hun Sen’s recent promise to drop their ...

After years of futile protests demanding their land back, villagers forcibly evicted by sugarcane plantations connected to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat launched a boycott campaign yesterday targeting the international firms that sell his sugar. Thousands of families accuse the senator’s plantations of forcing them off ...

The European Union should immediately remove trade preferences it gives to Cambodian sugar companies accused of human-rights violations including land grabs, representatives of the affected communities told a press conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. Community representatives from Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Oddar Meanchey provinces said ...

More than 170 villagers in Banteay Meanchey province locked in a land dispute with a local company protested yesterday in front of the provincial hall, seeking land titles in compliance with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recent titling project. The families say they had been granted a ...

Tek Nim is well versed in dealing with adversity. In year nine, she dropped out of school, began working on the family farm and finally became resigned to the belief that her brightest prospect was to leave Omlaing commune, in Kampong Speu province’s Thpong district, ...

More than 100 villagers involved in a land dispute with an import-export company in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district protested Sunday against the firm’s alleged attempts to stop them from farming the area, officials and villagers said. Meas Sarin, one of the protesters, said that about ...

Two more of the five accused secessionists from Kratie province’s Pro Ma village turned themselves in on Friday, Ministry of Interior officials said, just days after Hun Sen declared that he would drop charges against them if they testified against the plot’s masterminds. [Bun] Ratha ...