Land

Nine companies have put in bids for the rights to dredge the lengths of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers and sell the sand for export, Water Resources Ministry officials said yesterday, noting that the dredging would be beneficial in terms of deepening the waterways. ...

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 ...

The Sam Rainsy Party has asked Prime Minister Hun Sen to verify the details of a proposed dam that could inundate about 10,000 hectares of protected forest, citing concerns that it would lead to rampant illegal logging and devastate a traditional habitat of Siamese crocodiles. ...

The Thai Ambassador in Phnom Penh has suggested that Cambodia form a special delegation to tackle the common – and often deadly – practice of illegal logging along the two countries’ shared border, the ambassador said yesterday. Already this year, 11 Cambodians have reportedly been ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that he would permanentlycance all 35 fishing lots on the Tonle Sap lake – which had already been suspended in recent months – and turn them into a conservation zone to protect the lake’s pressurized wild fisheries, on which ...

Koh Kong villagers facing the loss of their land to a Chinese mega-tourism project held a news conference in Phnom Penh yesterday to appeal to the government for the right to remain on their property. Kith Ten, 54, from Kiri Sakor district’s Prek Khsach commune, ...

About 400 indigenous Lao villagers prayed and sacrificed chickens to a powerful local spirit yesterday in Stung Treng province, seeking supernatural help in halting the planned construction of the Lower Sesan 2 Dam, villagers and commune officials said yesterday. The hydropower projects, funded by Vietnam ...

The Kratie Provincial Court yesterday charged a truck driver with illegally collecting and transporting luxury wood after forestry officers last week confiscated 148 pieces of luxury wood totalling 31.2 cubic meters from his truck, which had been transporting the timber along National Road 7 ...

More than 500 ethnic minority residents of riparian communities in northeastern Cambodia held a peaceful protest Tuesday against the construction of a Vietnamese-led hydroelectric dam that will relocate them from their ancestral land. The villagers, who live along the Se San River in Stung Treng and ...

The Opposition SRP has asked the government to halt plans to proceed with the next hydropower dam slated for Koh Kong, saying that experiences with dams currently in construction in the province suggest the government has been unable to control the attendant illegal logging. In ...

Representatives from five communes in Koh Kong province are scheduled to hold a press conference in the capital today, appealing for government intervention in a land dispute with a Chinese development company that has spanned nearly four years. Lov Hov, a representative from Thmar Sar commune, ...

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 ...

Several RCAF soldiers sent by Banteay Meanchey provincial authorities to defuse a protest against an agro-industrial company Friday allegedly shot their weapons into the ground near a group of protesters, a villager and a rights worker said yesterday. The approximately 200 villagers were attempting to ...

The deaths of four more Cambodian over the past two weeks brings to 11 the number of people killed by Thai soldiers so far this year while illegally logging across the border. The death toll is fast approaching the 15 Cambodians killed in the entirety ...

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 ...

A Forestry Administration official has agreed to drop his complaint against three RACF soldiers he accused of shooting at him and fellow forestry officials in 2010 in exchange for $15,000, his lawyer said yesterday. However, officials for the Siem Reap Provincial Court and the Military ...

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, ...

Tired of the rampant destruction of their forests by loggers, villagers in Kratie province on Tuesday took matters into their own hands by briefly detaining loggers and confiscating six chainsaws and a tractor, a forestry official and villagers said yesterday. San Sihan, one of the ...

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 ...