Economic land concessions and plantations

Houy Mai has lost everything to the global demand for cheap sugar and biofuel. The 54-year-old mother-of-eight has fought a years-long battle with Mitr Phol, Asia’s biggest sugar producer and one of three major suppliers to Coca-Cola. Her family was left homeless and without a sustainable ...

A representative of 163 families who were awarded a hectare of land four years ago after a lengthy legal battle accused one of the awardees in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday of inventing a different group of 163 families with claims to the ...

More than 1,500 villagers on Tuesday marched from seven districts in Preah Vihear province to the provincial capital to call for action against companies involved in various land disputes, but a clampdown by police meant that only about 120 made it to the protest site, ...

Military police in Kampot province on Monday said they would arrest a vocal member of a Chhuk district community locked in a land dispute with the provincial government if he failed to produce land titles for the hundreds of families claiming part of the contested ...

After five months in jail, a woman whose family is embroiled in a bitter land dispute with tycoon Khun Sear was released on bail from Prey Sar prison on Friday, though the fight between the two parties remains unresolved. ...

Despite an order from the Supreme Court, officials at Prey Sar prison Thursday refused to release a woman on bail who has been jailed since November as part of a bitter land dispute with tycoon Khun Sear, her lawyer said. ...

Representatives of 29 families involved in a land dispute with the Defense Ministry in Phnom Penh visited the National Assembly on Thursday, seeking a response to a petition they submitted last month asking for intervention. ...

In this sparsely populated area along the eastern fringe of Bokor National Park in Chhuk district, villagers are scrambling to claim sandy, arid land as an international company surges ahead with its palm oil plantation. As in many of the hundreds of unresolved land disputes playing ...

The Cambodian government earned about $80 million leasing economic land concessions and forests to private companies over the last three years, according to a report from the Ministry of Economy and Finance released last week. The January report, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, found that ...

Just two days after Prime Minister Hun Sen promised to resolve a 20-year-old land dispute in Siem Reap City, the government on Friday issued a subdecree that divides 115 hectares of the contested plot between more than 700 families. ...

An environmental activist and a fisherman said Sunday that about 70 residents of Koh Kong province had worked together over the past few days to chase away sand-dredging barges they accused of operating illegally around Koh Kapi island and damaging vital fishing grounds. ...

At least 16 more families that have been locked in a bitter and lengthy dispute with the municipal government over land in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood accepted municipal governor Pa Socheatvong’s offer of a land swap Thursday morning. ...

Angry locals burned tires on the Chroy Changva peninsula Friday to protest the building of a road through their village, which is at the center of a land dispute with the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC). ...

The justice minister on Wednesday wrote to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court requesting that the judge in charge of a case surrounding a long-running land dispute report to the ministry, following intervention from the National Assembly’s human rights commission. ...

Rampant land grabs, economic land concessions and a disastrous land-titling program have fostered an environment of insecurity for Cambodia’s most marginalised citizens, according to a new report, which argues that the Kingdom needs to rethink its current business-centric development model. ...

After overseeing the destruction of all but six of 172 temporary shelters that had been erected on farmland claimed by an ethnic Bunong community in Mondolkiri province on Tuesday, authorities returned to destroy the remaining structures Wednesday, again on the grounds that the land belonged ...

Representatives for some 200 families in a yearslong land dispute with the Union Development Group (UDG) in Koh Kong province met for the first time with both company and government officials Tuesday but left with little to show. ...

Police in Mondolkiri province on Tuesday burned down more than 130 shelters belonging to a community of ethnic Bunong families in Keo Seima district that authorities accuse of squatting on a Vietnam­ese rubber plantation, a local official said. ...

Incensed by the prime minister’s assertion last week that the “same faces” always show up at protests, a group of Phnom Penh’s most prominent anti-eviction activists picketed City Hall on Monday to vent their anger. ...

Cambodia should urgently disclose all information about land ownership and rethink its “wholesale sell-off” of the country’s natural resources, a local rights group said yesterday. The call to release information about Cambodia’s land sector, including a declaration of revenues, came as Licadho released an analysis of ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc against a logging company they say has claimed more than 9,000 hectares of community forest as its own and threatened residents against using the land. ...

The barren land near Cambodian villager Ren Meas’ home used to yield cashew nut and root vegetable crops. Now the vast expanse lies bare and dry, levelled by bulldozers and set to become yet another rubber tree plantation. Australians are helping to combat the so-called land ...

Despite Cambodia’s indigenous peoples being legally recognised and protected under the country’s Forestry and Land Laws, limited implementation combined with a lack of coordination have resulted in many indigenous communities being denied their land and legal rights, according to a report released this month by ...

Seoung Sarat survived several bloody Cambodian regimes and civil wars. But only when his country was at peace was he shot and lost a leg. The indigenous Tompuon man, now living in a borrowed home in the forest of Ratanakiri province, says he lost his right ...