Land policy and administration

The Koh Kong Provincial Court yesterday postponed the first hearing in a long-running land dispute between dozens of villagers from Chikor Leu commune and sugar companies believed to be partly owned by ruling-party senator Ly Yong Phat. ...

A second police official in Ratanakkiri province has been suspended on suspicion that he demanded money from villagers so that their names could be included on a list of people eligible for land titles as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new titling program, police ...

A Friday press conference meant to be an act of defiance and a call for justice from the so-called Kratie “secessionists” was conspicuously short on both, as two accused secessionists failed to appear as promised to demand that the government present credible evidence against them. Instead, ...

Adorned in new military uniforms, about 400 more young volunteers who have been enlisted into Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ambitious national land-titling scheme departed from Diamond Island yesterday armed with measuring tapes, computers and GPS units. The budding surveyors are the latest group of some 2,000 ...

Two more of the five accused secessionists from Kratie province’s Pro Ma village turned themselves in on Friday, Ministry of Interior officials said, just days after Hun Sen declared that he would drop charges against them if they testified against the plot’s masterminds. [Bun] Ratha ...

Thirteen Boeung Kak lake women who were sentenced to two and a half years in jail on Thursday following a lawyer-free trial that lasted just three hours will appeal their convictions, their distraught supporters said yesterday. As the reality of the trial, which rights groups have ...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged the Cambodian government to release 13 Boeung Kak lake women imprisoned after a three-hour trial last month, telling Foreign Minister Hor Namhong at a meeting in Washington that such a move would support freedom of expression. “The secretary ...

The U.S. has called on the Cambodian government to give fair legal treatment to the 13 women recently jailed for demonstrating against their evictions from the Boeng Kak area, according to a U.S. State Department spokeswoman. Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong met with U.S. Secretary of ...

A Cambodian court is asked to re-examine the jailing of Boeung Kak land activists. Cambodian authorities have asked a court to review the jailing of 13 women involved in a land dispute as protests over their sentences escalated with over 100 demonstrators threatening Thursday to march ...

The case of the 13 imprisoned Boeung Kak women is in the hands of the Appeal Court now, the women’s defence lawyer said yesterday. Lawyer Harm Sunrith said that Phnom Penh Municipal Court had sent the case to the Appeal Court on Tuesday, adding that he ...

The Ministry of Justice will not press the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to review the case of 13 Boeng Kak residents sentenced to jail last month for demonstrating against a CPP senator’s real estate project, despite asking the court to consider releasing the women. Now that ...

The Ministry of Justice has called on the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to re-examine whether the decision to sentence 13 Boeung Kak women to two and a half years in jail was just, according to a letter obtained by the Post yesterday. The letter was ...

The Justice Ministry has written to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court requesting that it review the case of 13 Boeng Kak women recently jailed for demonstrations against a CPP senator’s real estate project, a ministry official said yesterday. Bunyai Narin, deputy Cabinet chief for the Justice ...

The 13 Boeung Kak lake women imprisoned after a three-hour trial on May 24 were tried unjustly on charges that had no basis, according to a Cambodian Center for Human Rights report released yesterday. Ou Virak said the women’s sentencing, which came two days after ...

The Kratie Provincial Court has released on bail five of the eight people charged after a military-style operation by security forces on a small village alleged to be the home of a secessionist movement, a court official said yesterday. On May 16, a 14-year-old girl was ...

Criticism of the Cambodian People’s Party has been overt in recent months as those from Boeung Kak lake and Borei Keila have taken to the streets to vent their frustration and anger at their housing situations. But an equivalent backlash at the polls was nowhere to ...

Freedom House and several other international human rights groups condemned the conviction of 13 Phnom Penh women last week who are locked in a land dispute with CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin and called for their release in a joint statement issued Tuesday. The women were arrested ...

About 100 residents from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community rallied in front of the National Assembly yesterday to demand the release of 13 women sentenced to jail last week and two others now in pretrial detention for opposing evictions resulting from a real estate project ...

The Ministry of Environment has drafted a law that will hand out fines and prison terms for companies that fail to complete and submit Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) on the development projects they undertake. According to a copy of the EIA draft law, fines of 100 ...

Phnom Penh municipal officials yesterday agreed to mark out a plot of land promised to Boeng Kak lake villagers by Prime Minister Hun Sen in order to put a stop to a string of recent protests ...

The Australian government is committing $1 million to help families being forced out of their homes to make way for a railway rehabilitation project it is co-funding with the government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Australian Embassy said in a statement Friday. The embassy ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) met yesterday with the representatives of families evicted or facing eviction to make way for an ADB-funded railway project, and defended itself against complaints that the project was pushing some of them deeper into poverty. The ADB has billed the $142 ...

A Ratanakkiri Provincial Court prosecutor yesterday summoned an ethnic minority Jarai man in O’Yadav district to explain to the court his allegations that local authorities had threatened to kill him for exposing a land-sale corruption racket. Romas Chhvang, 45, filed a complaint to the court at ...