Public land lease

Representatives of more than 300 families in Battambang province’s Bavel district yesterday urged government officials to intervene in a land dispute with provincial authorities and a businessman. Representative Thuy Ry said the 305 families had lived on the 3,638 hectares of land in Ampil Pram Doeum ...

Another building is rapidly rising on the plot of land reserved for the tenth and last building promised to evicted Borei Keila residents. Behind 100 protesting evictees, construction workers continued pounding away yesterday at a steel structure that started coming up last week, along ...

About 40 evictees form the Borei Keila community blocked a road in Phnom Penh’s Prampi Makara district for nearly two hours yesterday, protesting a letter written by municipal governor Kep Chuktekma stating that they had no right to state-provided housing. According to a copy of ...

Government officials remained tight-lipped yesterday about progress in their investigation of the Feb. 20 shooting of three female garment workers during a strike and demonstration in Svay Rieng province’s Bavet city. On Feb 20, three women were wounded when a uniformed gunman opened fire at ...

Rocks were hurled, fires lit, hostages taken and the message delivered in no uncertain terms last week: Cambodians are increasingly willing to use violence against companies that intimidate them or ignore their demands. Twice – in Svay Rieng and Kampong Cham provinces – garment workers pelted ...

Villagers being questioned in relation to a land dispute with a powerful company said on Friday that a Ratanakiri court official had intimidated them by urging them to accept an out-of-court settlement with the firm or face a countersuit. Court officials denied the claims and said ...

Two days after Ratanakiri province villagers took hostage a group of local officials who were clearing land for a rubber plantation, authorities downplayed the incident, saying they had no plans to press charges and that “the problem has been settled.” A representative of the rubber company, ...

Security footage of a shooting outside a shoe factory on Monday that left three protestors in hospital has been reviewed by police, the head of the special economic zone where the incident took place said yesterday. The three women were shot at a violent protest of ...

Ethnic minority Tumpoun villagers yesterday delivered a thumb-printed petition to commune, district and provincial authorities in Ratanakkiri demanding intervention in a Lumphat district land dispute after villagers held five rubber plantation company employees hostage on Tuesday. Five employees of Jing Zhong Ri Cambodia Co Ltd were ...

More than 1500 factory workers yesterday marched from the Manhattan Quing Dao Textiles Corp in Kompong Cham province to the provincial headquarters to ask authorities to force the factory owner to abide by two arbitration council rulings, a union representative and a factory worker said ...

A day after Interior Minister Sar Kheng revealed that authorities had identified a suspect in the shooting of three female factory workers at a special economic zone (SEZ) in Svay Rieng province, officials yesterday refused to reveal the identity of the gunman, who had still ...

More than 3,000 factory workers protested yesterday at the Manhattan Quing Dao Textiles Corp in Kompong Cham Province’s Kompong Siem District to demand that the factory owner abide by an Arbitration Council Ruling issued in late 2010, a union representative said yesterday. The factory web site ...

The last of the nearly 800 families from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community who are in line for land titles will not receive their long-awaited ownership records for another “two or three weeks”, a city official said yesterday. The families were spared eviction at the hands ...

More than 300 villagers from two districts in Kampong Speu province joined forces yesterday to protest in front of the provincial court over two land disputes, vowing to continue until authorities resolved them and released a mother of seven jailed last month after she had ...

Human rights group Licadho raised the alarm yesterday over the increased use of armed force by authorities as they seek to suppress protests over Cambodia’s numerous land disputes. It noted that during the past two months, security forces have opened fire on villagers during three ...

An 11-year-old HIV-positive girl evicted from Borei Keila moved back to Phnom Penh to live with her aunt because she had no access to medication at her relocation site in Kandal province, she said yesterday. During another day of protests outside the National Assembly, schoolgirl Theng ...

Dramatic new video footage of the January 18 Kratie province land dispute shooting has been released on the internet, depicting TTY rubber company security guards opening fire on a crowd of unarmed villagers. The 48-second video, recorded by a villager on a mobile phone and uploaded ...

More than 300 demonstrators yesterday marked the third anniversary of the forced eviction of Phnom Penh’s Dey Krahorm community, one of the city’s most violent land evictions. Five international rights groups also sent a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen urging the government to stop land ...

A deadly land dispute in Pursat province ended over the weekend with a victory for the villagers, but they said yesterday this might have more to do with the upcoming commune elections than a change of heart within the company owned by the wife of ...

The director of TTY rubber company, whose guards shot four land protestors in Kratie province last week, said he will give land back to the protesting villagers, backtracking on his vow Friday not to give up any of the land granted to him by the ...

Women from Borei Keila who escaped Prey Speu social affairs centre last Wednesday made another impassioned plea for housing and compensation at rights group Licadho’s Phnom Penh headquarters on Friday. Armed with copies of a Borei Keila construction agreement from 2004 and in tears, they spoke ...

Villagers from Kratie province, who blocked National Road 76a last week after four of their own were shot by guards working for agro-development firm TTY, appear to be on their way to receiving farmland they lost to the company in an economic land concession. A statement ...

The number of criminal charges meted out to villagers embroiled in land disputes rose by more than 50 percent in 2011 compared to the previous year, according to figures released by the rights group Adhoc yesterday. The rights group found that the courts charged 475 villagers ...

Violence erupted yesterday in Kratie province’s Snuol district where six people were shot and injured when RCAF soldiers working for a rubber company opened fire on a crowd of villagers who were trying to stop the company from clearing land in the area, police and ...