Public land lease

The Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) has arrested two employees of a local company linked to a British biofuel firm currently under investigation by the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), an official said Friday. ACU President Om Yentieng said that International Green Energy (IGE) director Oum Sam­nang, and ...

More than 8,000 hectares of land was cut from economic and forest land concessions owned by some of the country’s biggest tycoons and awarded to villagers last month, according to documents from the Council of Ministers. Four sub-decrees signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen order that ...

Hundreds of families in Ratanakki­ri province have asked rights group Adhoc to intervene, saying local authorities in Bakeo district’s Laminh commune are illegally forcing them from their homes. Village representative, Ek Orm, 52, said that authorities were forcing villagers to relocate to make way for a ...

First, agricultural company DM group displaced them, now a recently arrived commercial farmer has threatened their lives and chased them off their new land, said representatives of 12 families engaged in a long-standing land dispute in Ratanakkiri province. On Wednesday, the 12 Tampuon ethnic minority families ...

A Vietnamese rubber company in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district yesterday agreed to pay $4,000 in compensation to an ethnic Jarai community whose traditional graveyard was bulldozed by the firm last week, local officials said. During a meeting at the Paknhai commune police station, representatives of the ...

More than seven months after government security forces violently evicted hundreds of people living in Kratie province’s Broma village to quell a so-called secessionist movement, more than 70 families are still being prevented by patrolling soldiers from returning to the site of their former homes, ...

Rights group Adhoc has requested that the government cancel economic land concessions held by two Vietnamese companies in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, on the grounds that the firms are logging and exporting wood illegally. “Adhoc calls on the Royal Government of Cambodia to immediately cancel the ...

Cambodian politicians have begun a public campaign to defend their records on land policies, as they prepare for the run-up to July elections. Politicians from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as well as the opposition Sam Rainsy and Human Rights parties, have said they will give ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers and a local rights worker yesterday discovered about 3,000 more logs that have been illegally cut by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, according to rights group Adhoc. The logs were found stockpiled in dense forest inside ...

Malaysian-owned Maybank, one of the largest banks in Cambodia, opened its 12th national branch in Phnom Penh on Friday. The bank aims to reach emerging businesses in the city’s Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ) with the new office. ...

Forestry Administration officials and police yesterday discovered a stockpile of more than 1,000 logs that ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district claim have been illegally cut by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession, a district official said. The 4,000-hectare concession was granted to ...

More than 30 representatives of families who claim a dispute piece of land in Koh Kong province went to provincial hall for the second time yesterday and submitted an official request to allow Prime Minister Hun Sen’s youth volunteer corps to measure the area. ...

The Forestry Administration and military police are investigating reports of a stockpile of nearly 300 logs that ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadaw district claim have been illegally cut by the Vietnamese owners of a land concession, local officials said yesterday. Indigenous villagers living in Paknhai ...

After 28 years in the capital, eating like “a king” and enjoying the perks one receives as the son of high-ranking CPP officials, Sophal’s* move to the countryside was as jarring as it was eye-opening. Until the day in June when he traded his designer threads ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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, ...

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, ...

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 ...