Ethnic minorities and indigenous people

Almost two years since the latest wave of Montagnard asylum seekers began crossing into Ratanakkiri province claiming to be fleeing persecution in Vietnam, an immigration official said on Wednesday that the 170 remaining in Phnom Penh had two weeks to return home or face forcible ...

An insurrection led by ethnic Jarai villagers against the Kingdom’s first commercial underground gold mine, to be operated by Indian-owned Mesco Gold (Cambodia), looms over the green, serene remote hamlet of Plung, a few kilometers from the Vietnamese border, in Ratanakiri’s O’Yadaw district. ...

Environmental campaigner and Areng Valley community leader Ven Vorn lost his appeal against his one-year suspended sentence for “collecting forest products without permission” yesterday at the Appeals Court. Judge Kim Danny did not give reasons why the court decided to uphold the March ruling of the ...

Ethnic Vietnamese residents of Tonle Sap Lake are continuing to head back to Vietnam in droves due to overbearing and costly rules being strictly enforced by local authorities, robbing many of them of the only homeland they have ever known. Minority Rights Organization (MIRO) official Seorn ...

Half of a Kuoy ethnic community forest in Stung Treng province – for which villagers are seeking official recognition – has been logged in the past three years for private commercial gain, according to recently returned environmental activist twins Chum Hout and Chum Hour. Seven ...

The NGO Forum on Cambodia yesterday demanded government funding for higher education for indigenous students to mark World Indigenous Peoples’ Day.   ...

Four members of a forest patrol were ambushed in Preah Vihear’s Cheam Pen community forest on Tuesday afternoon, according to deputy forest chief Ros Lim. ...

NGO Forum director Tek Vannara yesterday called on the Ministry of Land Management to speed up collective land titling for indigenous communities. ...

Villagers in Mondulkiri province are protesting the construction of a Ministry of Mines vocational training centre on a piece of land they say is sacred with cultural significance to people across the province.   ...

When French pharmacologist Francois Chassagne set out to catalogue traditional medicine used by Cambodia’s Bunong ethnic minority group in 2013, he came across a surprising remedy for burns: tiger breastmilk. ...

A community of ethnic Phnong people in Mondulkiri’s Keo Seima district has accepted a settlement from a Vietnamese rubber firm ending a five-year land dispute. ...

Exploration company Angkor Gold Corp is working with NGOs to educate residents of Pate commune’s Plang village in Ratanakiri’s Ou Ya Dav district after villagers refused to give the company permission to explore for gold on their land. ...

Preah Vihear’s deputy governor has vowed not to let protesters near Prime Minister Hun Sen as he cuts the ribbon on a $360 million sugar mill in Tbeng Meanchey district today. ...

The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia met with Stung Treng Governor Mom Saroen yesterday to discuss the plight of ethnic minorities in the province affected by the Lower Sesan 2 dam project. ...

For generations, the indigenous Bunong were famous as the great elephant keepers and masters of the forests in eastern Cambodia. They called the fertile, rolling hills of their ancestral homeland “meh ne,” or mother – a source of food, livelihoods and self-identity. ...

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia today announced she will be visiting the country Monday to assess the enjoyment of rights by women and indigenous peoples in the country. ...

The collective land of indigenous communities in Cambodia will continue to face encroachment from economic land concessions and the actions of private companies in the future despite the Cambodian Government’s moratorium on granting ELC licenses, according to a Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) report ...

More than 220 ethnic Tompuon families in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district yesterday filed a complaint to rights group Adhoc over a 2,000-hectare land dispute against an economic land concession.   ...

Police have been deployed to guard a beleaguered Muslim school for young women in a predominantly Cham community in Tbong Khmum province, amid ongoing attacks against the facility by unknown assailants, and death threats against educators, officials said on Wednesday. ...

A Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmaker is calling on young Cham party activists to rally support for the opposition party, expressing a desire to see a politician from the Muslim minority join the National Assembly. ...

An ethnic Kuoy land rights activist was detained by police in Preah Vihear province on Monday after taking part in an ongoing protest against three businesses that villagers claim encroached on their farmland, officials said. ...

More Montagnard asylum seekers are planning to return to home amid cuts in United Nations-provided food rations.Vivian Tan, regional spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said more than 10 indigenous Christian Montagnards had requested assistance in returning to Vietnam. ...

More Montagnard asylum seekers prepared to return to Vietnam yesterday after giving up on obtaining refugee status in Phnom Penh, while five Rohingya refugees set off for resettlement in Canada. ...

The Interior Ministry on Friday released a letter that it sent to Mondolkiri provincial governor Eng Bunheang asking him to respond to a petition—filed last month and thumbprinted by 900 members of 17 ethnic minority Bunong communities—requesting his removal. ...