Agriculture

Loun Savath, a monk and rights activist who was detained by plain clothes security officials Thursday, was released that night, after he agreed to sign a letter vowing to stop leading and participating in protests. However, he has promised he will not halt his activism. Loun ...

The number of protests over land disputes increased in 2011 as forced resettlement, restrictions on freedom of assembly and the harassment of peaceful protesters continued to tarnish Cambodia’s human rights record, Amnesty International said in its annual report released yesterday. Noting the huge impact of economic ...

In the face of increasing economic land concessions and ongoing restrictions on expression, disaffected Cambodians were increasingly taking to the streets with success, Amnesty International representatives said yesterday at the launch of their annual report. Amnesty reported that Cambodians continued to face challenges to their human ...

After more than a year of speculation on Cambodian rice exports to China, a rice exporter this week said China has granted the Kingdom permission to ship milled rice northward. Despite a growing stack of quasi-agreements for exports, regulatory issues have plagued the prospects of tapping ...

The protectionist bent of conservation groups and the development agenda of the government can come together in Cambodia to create a green economy. That is the message of a new book Conservation International (C.I.) launched yesterday in Phnom Penh, outlining practical options for saving the environment ...

With a looming deadline to move still two days away, police yesterday stormed tiny Rayum commune in Mondulkiri province, dismantling and burning at least 50 homes belonging to villagers embroiled in a land dispute with a Vietnamese rubber company. Seng Channy, a villager representative who escaped ...

As the eviction deadline looms for residents of a Mondolkiri village embroiled in a land dispute with a Vietnamese-owned rubber plantation, police have begun to dismantle vacant homes in the village, an official and a villager said yesterday. Sin Seng, 43, a resident of the remote ...

Sweet news for Cambodian palm-sugar farmers: 10 international companies are keen to import their produce, one of the Kingdom’s signature products. Sam Saroeun, president of the Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association, said that after an exhibition in South Korea earlier this month, several international importers ...

An additional 200 armed police officers have moved into a village in Mondolkiri province where families locked in a land dispute with a Vietnamese-owned rubber plantation have been given until Friday to clear out, police and villagers said yesterday. Police had already moved about 100 officers ...

Authorities set a May 25 deadline yesterday for residents of Mondulkiri province’s Rayum commune in Koh Nhek district to leave their homes, prompting the deployment of additional provincial forces to the area. Villager Seng Channy, 52, said that the coalition of about 300 police, soldiers and ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday blamed soaring food prices on fuel prices set by oil cartels like OPEC, appealing to oil-producing countries to pay attention to the connection between food security and energy. Cambodia imports 100 per cent of its oil, and the majority of agriculture ...

Authorities in Battambang province’s Phnom Proek district shut down eight unlicensed gold mines Saturday and Sunday after a study revealed they were producing toxic runoff blamed for the deaths of three cattle last week, officials said. Deputy governor Pech Choun said four mines in the area ...

Surrounded by 100-armed police officers, authorities in Mondolkiri province yesterday said the roughly 200 families living on a rubber company’s land concession in Koh Nhek district have until Friday to leave their homes. After having already seen district police burn down three of their homes over ...

When it became the first—and still the only—company to list on Cambodia’s stock market on April 18, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority saw its share price shoot up some 50 percent on its first day of trading before beginning two weeks of steady decline. Since ...

In a land dispute with overtones of last week’s deadly eviction in Kratie province, villagers in Mondolkiri province yesterday said dozens of police were surrounding their houses and threatening to force them out of a private land concession. Sen Sophon, one of about 200 families in ...

The price of crocodile hatchlings in Siem Reap province has dropped drastically, and many local farmers are worrying about the future viability of crocodile farming. Tim Bunseng, a crocodile farmer in Siem Reap with around 200 female hatchlings, said the price he can get has dropped ...

After a three-day blockade, soldiers pulled out over the weekend from the Kratie province village where a teenage girl was shot dead last week by government security forces, officials said yesterday. However, human rights workers denied a report by a provincial official that freedom of ...

Growing demand for pork on the Thai market since March has lead to an increase in the price of live pigs in Cambodia, as Thai farmers reduce the amount of live pigs exported to Cambodia in order to fuel local demand, officials said yesterday. ...

Cambodia’s rubber prices declined almost six per cent in the past two weeks, caused by concern over the European crisis with Greece, industry players and Cambodian officials said yesterday. Men Sopheak, deputy director general of Chop Rubber Plantation, a big rubber exporter in Cambodia, said the ...

Cambodia’s rice exports in 2012 may fall significantly compared to last year, due to high fuel prices, soaring logistics costs and high prices. According to local sources, Cambodian rice shipments to Europe this month are at a $200 markup per container over those from Thailand and ...

Authorities in Kratie province have denied entry to journalists and rights workers to the site of violent land clashes that led to the death of a teenage girl on Wednesday. Rights workers say they fear for the safety of villagers in Broma village, but police say ...

Security forces have sealed off a village in eastern Cambodia and denied entry to human rights workers after the fatal shooting of a teenager in the latest violent eviction aimed at clearing land for development. Soldiers said they needed to secure the area around Proma village, ...

The government needs to act – and act now – to review all economic land concessions, which un­derscore the Kingdom’s dark disease of violent land disputes, rights groups said yesterday. Ten days after Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a regulation for an immediate and indefinite moratorium ...

Rapidly increasing logistics costs and low regional rice prices would hinder Cambodia’s rice-export target this year, with one expert saying that milled-rice exports could fall to half of last year’s shipments. The cost of shipping rice to Europe climbed by more than 50 per cent between ...