Land tenure and land titling

Just hours before Chinese President Hu Jintao landed in Phnom Penh on Friday, a group of dismayed Koh Kong province villagers whose land is under threat from a sprawling Chinese tourism project were escorted onto a bus and sent back home before they were able ...

The Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court yesterday once again declined to receive a joint complaint from villagers in Kompong Tralach district embroiled in a land dispute with the wife of Industry Minister Suy Sem. Chhuon Siven, provincial clerk director, said that the court could not take the ...

The European Union has launched a $4.5 million program aimed at increasing food security among indigenous minorities in Ratanakkiri province, including those whose land has been affected by the growing number of economic land concessions in the area. Speaking on the sidelines of the launch in ...

One hundred and thirty-five families evicted from the Borei Keila community filed a complaint with the Council of Ministers and Finance Ministry yesterday against Phnom Penh Municipality for trying to transfer to the Phanimex company land belonging to the community, a resident said. ...

About 50 people protested in front of Pailin Provincial Hall yesterday against a government plan to turn their farmland in Sala Krao district into a special economic zone (SEZ), villagers and officials said. “It is the villagers that abuse the government land. They took the ...

Kampong Thom province About 500 frustrated villagers, citing the authorities’ inaction as their motivation, rode some 250 motorbikes into Prey Lang forest over the weekend in yet another effort to combat illegal logging they say is decimating the area. The villagers from four provinces surrounding Prey Lang ...

A total of 36 protests involving economic land concessions ended with violent intervention from armed authorities last year, according to data released this week by local rights group Adhoc. More than a fifth of the cases involved the long-simmering Boeng Kak lake evictions, in which ...

More than 2 million of the Kingdom’s nearly 18 million hectares of land – roughly 12 per cent – was given out to 225 private companies in economic concessions last year, according to an annual report released by rights group Adhoc yesterday. The concessions put 606 ...

Nearly 60,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes last year alone, often being moved to inadequate relocation sites where they face unemployment and rising debt levels, according to a report by rights group Adhoc released yesterday. A total of 59,904 people from 127 communities were ...

The government has already granted roughly 300,000 hectares in economic land concessions (ELC) so far this year, according to data released by a local rights group yesterday. The figure, which amounts to 40 percent of the total land concessions granted in all of 2011, has ...

About 100 residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community took to the streets yesterday dragging straw and cloth effigies representing local officials who are attempting to evict them. ...

About 400 villagers in Kratie province’s Snuol district blocked national road 76A for three hours yesterday to demand that authorities release a villager who had been arrested earlier in the day for allegedly inciting villagers embroiled in a land dispute, villagers and a district official ...

Opening statements started yesterday in a trial pitting Kompong Chhnang province villagers against the wife of Minister of Industry Suy Sem over a long-standing land dispute. However, the plaintiffs and human rights workers monitoring the trial criticized yesterday’s proceedings, which were allowed to proceed despite ...

The government last month granted four companies a total 23,000 hectares of land concessions for agro-industry projects and a special economic zone (SEZ), according to human rights groups, which said it obtained the information from government documents. An additional 500 hectares inside a wildlife sanctuary were ...

For hundreds of years, the ancestors of Vam Sovann have lived in Koh Kong province’s remote Araeng valley. Some 70 km from the nearest national road, Mr. Sovann’s village has no electricity or phone coverage, no paved roads or running water; instead, it has access ...

A suspect was questioned on Thursday over a grenade attack on the home of a military police officer in Kandal province’s Mok Kampoul district, which appears to have been motivated by a dispute over 3 meters of land, police said. No one was injured when the ...

About 100 residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak area protested in front of City Hall yesterday to demand that 58 more families be given titles to homes from which they are being evicted. In August, Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered that a 12.44-hectare section of the ...

In a rare siding with villagers, government officials earlier this week rejected a proposal by tycoon Kith Meng to develop the area surrounding Boeung Prek Tub lake in Preah Sihanouk town and instead vowed to issue proper land titles to residents. ...

About 400 villagers in Kratie province’s Chhlong district protested yesterday in an effort to stop Kasten agro-industrial company from building houses on contested farmland, the protesters said. The company used red paint to demarcate its boundary and started building houses on the farmland in January, said ...

More than 50 villagers from Kompong Cham province gathered in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s home in Phnom Penh yesterday morning to ask for his intervention in their ongoing land dispute with the Memot Rubber Plantation ...

Rights group Adhoc said yesterday that a large-scale march in Ratanakkiri province involving hundreds of ethnic minority villagers caught in land disputes would go on as planned later this month despite the government’s refusal to approve the march. The provincial coordinator for Adhoc, Pen Bonnar, said ...

Woes continued for 26 relocated former Borei Keila residents, who fainted after vomiting and suffering diarrhoea at Tuol Sambo Village in Dangkor district’s Prey Veng commune on Saturday. Khum Khern, village chief of Tuol Sambo, told the Post that most of the villagers who had fainted ...

Last year saw a record increase in economic land concessions and the area controlled by agro-industrial companies jumped to more than 2 million hectares nationwide, according to human rights groups who track such projects. Mining companies are also flocking to Cambodia and those already have ...

The provincial office of rights group Licadho has called on Koh Kong provincial politicians to help more than 1,000 families being forcibly evicted to make way for a sprawling gambling resort and other development, representative said yesterday. More than 130 families, from three villages in Kiri ...