Land

The Vietnam Agriculture and Forestry Investment and Development Company in Hanoi is one of the two enterprises that signed a contract on importing 20,000 cubic meters of wood from Cambodia. Cambodian authorities approved the export of the volume of wood to Vietnam in 2011-2012. The ...

Seven Vietnamese men have been arrested for illegally felling trees inside two government-granted economic land concessions in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, where a Jarai ethnic minority community is fighting to preserve the forest and their ancestral lands. ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday convicted local tycoon Chhin Sokountheary of encroaching on public lands and sentenced her in absentia to four years and six months in prison. Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge Ly Lipmeng said yesterday that Sokountheary, who is also known as ...

Representatives of an ethnic Jarai community in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, along with local human rights group Adhoc, have called on two Vietnamese rubber companies to cease the clearing of forests on their ancestral land and exporting the logs to Vietnam. The companies, Day Dong Yoeun ...

Up a sweeping jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia, Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter- (330-foot-) high dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong province, ...

More than 100 families face the loss of their rice fields over a social land concession that was granted to the families of military veterans in Stung Treng province, local authorities and villagers said yesterday. Seven families, who depend on their rice and mango harvest in ...

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights says that a company with a controversial economic land concession in Koh Kong province banned the centre’s officers from photographing the area and ordered police to grab their cameras. Officers from CCHR traveled to Sre Ambel district on December 14 ...

From a devilish-looking bat to a frog that sings like a bird, scientists have identified 126 new species in the Greater Mekong area, the WWF said Tuesday in a new report detailing discoveries in 2011. But from forest loss to the construction of major hydropower projects ...

Ethnic minority Kreung villagers filed a complaint against commune level authorities on Saturday for allegedly accepting money from a businessman to clear their ancestral land for a new rubber plantation in Ratanakkiri province, local NGOs and villagers said. ...

Mikasa Corporation, a famous Japanese sports goods manufacturing company, is to invest more than $5 million in building a ball production factory in Cambodia’s Koh Kong Special Economic Zone (KKSEZ) and plans to start construction early next year according to officials. Hiroshi Suzuki, chief executive ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday he decided to choose environment protection, not to choose 30 billion U.S. dollar expected revenues from the exploitation of titanium ore in Southwestern Cambodia. “According to a feasibility study, titanium ore deposit in Chhiphat district in Koh Kong province ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has again ordered local officials to step up their efforts to stop illegal timber being cut down and transported from Cambodia’s forest’s in response to an apparent rise in forest crimes. Thousands of cubic meters of luxury wood, as well as ...

Lawmakers from Cambodia’s ruling party on Monday refused to accept a petition from hundreds of people who held a rally calling for the government’s help in resolving land disputes, drawing criticism from activists who questioned the effectiveness of the country’s parliament. The appeal, which contained more ...

Sixty families in Kompong Cham province’s Krathor district are planning to file a complaint with provincial authorities after local land management officials decided to take away their registration documents for land titles under Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recently launched titling program. Pon Pumm, 44 a farmer, ...

Cambodian authorities announced yesterday they would release six Laos who were arrested in Cambodia last Thursday on suspicion of illegal logging, provided that Laos cooperates with broader border negotiations in Stung Treng province’s Siam Pang district, where the men were arrested. Svay Nhoun, a Stung Treng ...

Widely different interpretations of the government’s land policy were voiced at a conference on Land Security and Housing Rights on Thursday in Phnom Penh, with civil servants defending mass relocations, while rural evictees spoke of being forced into poverty due to loss of their land. ...

The Phnom Penh Court of Appeal ruled Friday that Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando should continue serving his 20-year sentence for sedition. On October 1, the radio station owner was sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined 10 million riel in relation to a ...

More than 250 ethnic Jarai families living in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc yesterday, after local officials demanded that the villagers apply for private land titles to protect their property from two Vietnamese rubber companies currently clearing their land, ...

A verdict in the land encroachment case against a prominent businesswoman was not delivered as expected yesterday, after a judge ordered the case be re-investigated due to a lack of evidence. Phnom Penh Municipal Court tried Chhin Sokountheary, director of Layimex Holdings Group, in absentia on ...

Canadian funding for ethnic minority communities in the process of applying for communal land titles will run out in March, and other donors have not yet signed up to take over the task, officials from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which currently provides the ...

Provincial forestry administration officials in Ratanakkiri have dismissed allegations of illegal logging by community residents and chalked the deforestation up to legitimate clearing. A cursory examination of the land in question yesterday seemed to back the company’s claims, Ly Sophan, a team worker at the provincial ...

Seven months after Prime Minister Hun Sen unveiled an ambitious plan to demarcate 1.8 million hectares of state land and formally acknowledge those who live on it, the completion of the first – albeit the smallest – of eight affected provinces has wrapped up. Marking the ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen appealed yesterday for developers and landowners in Kep City to build fences around their neglected properties to prevent vines from creeping onto the street of the coastal resort. Since much of the land in Kep City is owned by investors who live ...

The court system is still “chronically underfunded” and laws on its management are almost 20 years overdue, the U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi said yesterday. One year ago, during his sixth mission to Cambodia, Mr. Subedi described reform in the courts as moving at a ...