Land
Land tenure and land titling
Preah Vihear Families File Complaints As Land Set Aside for Airport
More than 60 families living in Preah Vihear province filed a complaint with rights group Ahdoc yesterday after officials announced that their land had been set aside for a new airport and would not be measured for private land titles, local officials said. Adhoc Preah ...
Senator's Wife Showers Police, Military With New Year Cash
At 9 a.m. yesterday, more than 200 soldiers, police and military police officers were gathered outside a large mansion on Street 55 in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district. All were waiting for their promised “ang pao” – red envelopes containing cash usually handed out during ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/senators-wife-showers-police-military-with-new-year-cash-9831/
Forest activists, firm facing off once again
The Prey Lang Community Network yesterday delivered a letter to authorities in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district calling for the postponement of a Vietnamese concessionaire’s forest clearing and notifying authorities of their intention to deliver a lawsuit to the provincial hall tomorrow, network activists said. According ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013021261309/National/forest-activists-firm-facing-off-once-again.html
Lawmakers to Discuss Sesan 2 Dam Draft Law
The National Assembly has announced that it will discuss a draft law on the financing of a controversial dam project in Stung Treng province on February 15, a move environmental groups called premature. Meach Mean, coordinator for 3S Rivers Protection Network – which has been ...
Land Investors Should "Play Fair"
Companies that invest in land and resources in emerging economies risk financial and public relations disasters if local inhabitants feel they are getting ripped off, consultants warned in a report last week. The report was released by a group known as the Munden Project The ...
Cambodia's government takes back land
The government has slashed about 250,000 hectares of land from 79 economic land concessions (ELCs), forest concessions and wildlife protection concessions and will return it, replete with land titles, to “poor people”, January’s Royal Book says. The publication, issued on January 17 and obtained yesterday, says ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013020761237/National/cambodia-s-government-takes-back-land.html
Jarai File Complaint Over Firm Filling In Lake
Etnhic Jarai families living in Ratanakkiri province’s Kakeo district yesterday filed a complaint with the provincial court, accusing a Vietnamese rubber company of clearing their ancestral land and filling in a lake they use for fishing and irrigation. Local officials say the company intends to ...
'Separatist' farms replaced by RCAF base
A track of land once farmed by 1,000 families in Kratie province — families violently evicted amid claims they were part of a separatist movement — is now home to a military base. Unit 9 Royal Cambodian Armed Forces base, which will be finished later this ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013020661212/National/separatist-farms-replaced-by-rcaf-base.html
National Land Program Dropped Communal Titles
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme announced in June originally included a directive for granting collective property titles to indigenous communities, but this part of the program was scrapped weeks later as it was deemed too costly and time-consuming, documents obtained yesterday show. For “indigenous ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/national-land-program-dropped-communal-titles-9480/
Companies to face court for illegal logging, land clearing
In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has ordered two companies holding economic land concessions to face court questioning on accusations of illegal logging and land clearing. Deputy prosecutor Ros Saram said he summonsed Vietnamese-owned Company 72 last week and will ...
Villagers Claim Injustice in Land-titling Project
More than 200 villagers living on an economic land concession on Pursat province say they were unfairly left out of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide land-measuring program after local authorities on Saturday printed the names of families eligible for land titles. Chhuon Khurn, chief of Phteah ...
Two Banong Groups to Get Communal Titles
Two ethnic Banong communities in Mondolkiri province’s Keo Seima district have completed the final stage in the process to receive rare collective property titles, and are set to receive ownership documents early next month, an official at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said. Kan Vibol, ...
Boeng Kak Families Pitch a New Solution to Land Dispute
A group of Phnom Penh residents locked in a long-running land dispute with a real estate project owned by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin are pitching City Hall a plan they hope will prevent them from being evicted and keep them close to home. “We ...
Phnom Penh’s development not fair for all?
Despite the massive spike in development underway in Phnom Penh, a new report says that the public interest is becoming marginalised in favour of the political and business elite. The report, from NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), says that currently “commercial interests are driving the urban ...
MPs Urge Child Labor Action
A group of opposition lawmakers have written to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen urging action against a sugar factory owned by a ruling party official accused of exploiting child labor and grabbing land from villagers. Six Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) parliamentarians sent a letter dated Jan. ...
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/children-01292013174957.html
Land laws not properly implimented
Laws protecting ethnic minorities’ communal land rights are good, but their implementation has a long way to go, said participants in a forum of minorities from Mondulkiri and Kratie provinces yesterday. After July’s parliamentary elections, legislators should take the opportunity of a newly constituted government to ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013013061073/National/land-laws-not-properly-implimented.html
Chinese Sugar Firms Accused of Land Grabbing
More than 100 villagers in Preah Vihear province have accused a group of Chinese-owned sugar plantations of encroaching on their farms and community forests since mid-2012 and say they are still waiting for a resolution. Sen Som, a rice farmer in Chheb district, said Heng Rui ...
Bunong Say They Don't Want Private Land Titles
Ethnic Bunong villagers living in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Chreada district have sent a petition to the Ministry of Land Management, urging the government to refrain from issuing them private land titles, local officials said yesterday. This way they may instead to eligible for a communal title ...
Hun Sen completes land titling mission in Koh Kong
Prime Minister Hun Sen presented land titles Monday to 513 families in Thmorbang district, an official said. The land titles cover 1,504 hectares in Tropang Cheurtrav and Korki villages in Russey Chrum commune. The official said Monday’s ceremony marked the completion of a land-titling mission launched ...
Cambodia's 'worst year’ for land disputes
More than 200 people were arrested while defending their land in 2012 – a year human rights groups described yesterday as Cambodia’s “worst” for land disputes. Of the 201 people arrested – a figure that more than doubled the 2011 total – 29 were imprisoned, mostly ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013012460955/National/cambodia-s-worst-year-for-land-disputes.html
After 6 Years, No Solution in Minority's Land Case
Ethnic minority Jarai families in Ratanakkiri province locked in a land dispute with Keat Kolney, the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, yesterday marked the sixth anniversary of inaction in the court compliant they filed accusing Ms. Kolney’s firm of taking 450 hectares of their ...
A road runs through them
UP AND down a 4km stretch of highway on the northern outskirts of Phnom Penh, about 3,000 of Cambodia’s Cham minority have built a life. Their distinctive Muslim culture thrives in conditions of close-knit community, a stark contrast to the shattering days the country endured ...
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2013/01/cambodia%E2%80%99s-cham
Activists call on government to adopt forest law
Members of the Prey Lang Community Network yesterday called on the government to approve a forest preservation sub-decree that has been in draft form since 2011. Hoeun Sopheap, representative of the Kampong Thom provincial Prey Lang community, said the sub-decree would help protect the biodiversity of ...
Prosecutors tell court to drop charge in land dispute case
Prosecutors yesterday recommended that the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court drop charges against two human rights activists and a radio reporter accused in 2009 of inciting villagers involved in a land dispute against agro-business firm DM Group. Deputy prosecutor Ros Saram told the Post that because he ...