Economic land concessions and plantations

Botum Sakor national park is one of Cambodia’s biodiversity hotspots, where indigenous tribes have long lived in harmony with the forest and its wildlife, writes Rod Harbinson. But now they are being violently evicted as the park is being sold off piecemeal to developers for ...

Villagers in Koh Kong province involved in a land dispute with a Chinese company received notice on Saturday that the local government will soon implement a court order kicking them off their land, officials and a villager said. ...

Some 200 monks, villagers and land rights activists came together in Siem Reap province’s Chi Kreng district on Saturday to mark the six-year anniversary of the day that police opened fire on a group of farmers protesting their impending eviction. ...

City Hall announced Friday that the vast majority of remaining evictees from Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila neighborhood—who were left landless after a development firm failed to provide adequate housing for hundreds in the community—will not be rehoused in the area. ...

A year after some 2,000 families filed a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for financing rubber plantations they accuse of grabbing their farms and logging their sacred forests, all sides have finally agreed to a set of ground rules for negotiations and hope ...

More than 160 families in Banteay Meanchey province’s O’Chrou district filed a complaint on Monday with local officials calling for the removal of their village chief, whom they blame for the loss of 835 hectares of farmland to a rubber plantation. ...

About 70 villagers representing hundreds of families living in Battambang City’s Prek Preah Sdech commune protested outside the provincial hall Tuesday over fears that local authorities intend to evict them to make way for military families. ...

A plantation company with its sights set on a community forest long used by local ethnic minority Jarai in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district arranged a meeting with more than 200 villagers this week to try to persuade them to sign over the woodland. Representatives of the Heng ...

Environment Minister Say Sam Al on Monday said that more than 9,000 hectares granted to companies as economic land concessions (ELCs) were recently taken back from the owners because local villagers had been farming the land first, and announced that 14 companies had been put ...

Fourteen companies have been added to a Ministry of Environment watchlist for purportedly failing to live up to their investment promises. The companies include firms owned by some of the country’s wealthiest and most politically connected land barons, such as Mong Reththy and Sok Kong. ...

Families in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district have been protesting since Friday against wealthy businessman Khun Sear’s plan to build a brick wall that will effectively block access to their village. ...

Environment Minister, Say Sam Al, said on Monday that the Royal Government of Cambodia has cut off over 14,000 hectares of land and handed over to citizens, and military forces. ...

Villagers in Koh Kong province’s Areng Valley, the site of a proposed hydropower dam opposed by most of the local ethnic minority Chong, say police deleted their photos and video of a visit by CPP lawmaker Ay Khorn on Friday to promote the project’s potential ...

Almost three years after his father’s sudden killing, the son of late forest activist Chut Wutty has returned from a fact-finding mission to Ratanakkiri province, where he identified four companies as having stockpiled luxury timber on a large scale. ...

In the heart of the Areng Valley, on the edges of the rolling Cardamom Mountains, an old Bodhi tree pierces the thick green canopy. At its base, nestled in between its hanging roots, sits a ramshackle altar of tin and timber for the spirit of ...

Authorities in Kratie province moved to stop a convoy of trucks belonging to tycoon Try Pheap overloaded with first-grade timber on Sunday, but were only able to pull over five of the vehicles, which were found to be carrying nearly double the amount of cargo ...

Referring to Cambodia as “my country”, Alex Gonzalez-Davidson, a vocal environmental activist and Spanish national who was deported Monday, yesterday vowed to return and continue his struggle to save the Areng Valley. ...

About 100 villagers representing 19 communities in Preah Sihanouk province marched to the provincial hall in Sihanoukville on Tuesday, demanding intervention in their land disputes. ...

The day after the government deported a foreign activist opposed to a proposed hydropower dam in Koh Kong province’s Areng Valley, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday invited activists in the valley to secede from Cambodia, but warned that rocket launchers could be deployed if ...

Villagers in Banteay Meanchey province on Saturday protested against a local military official’s plan to build a reservoir on their land, then sell the dirt at a profit. ...

fter rights group Licadho released a statement Thursday saying that more than 10,000 Cambodian families were newly affected last year by land disputes in the 13 provinces where it has monitors—a three-fold increase from 2013—a government spokesman on Friday slammed the NGO’s report as “baseless ...

The number of families newly affected by land disputes last year was three times that of 2013, according to figures documented by local rights group Licadho. In a statement released yesterday, the group “strongly expresse[d] its concern” at the surge in disputes, noting that in 2014 ...

A surge in land disputes in Cambodia affected more than three times as many families last year as in 2013, a local rights group said Thursday, urging Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government to address the issue with “long-term lasting solutions” instead of making empty promises. Rights ...

Parliament’s Human Rights Commission has asked the Ministry of Justice to suspend a court verdict that could see 20 Koh Kong families, who are holding out against giant Chinese firm Union Development Group, lose their homes. ...