Economic land concessions and plantations

Hundreds of families descended on Phnom Penh yesterday to ask Prime Minister Hun Sen and the United Nations to intervene in three separate land disputes. More than 800 families from across the country gathered in front of Wat Botum at about 9am, where they submitted petitions ...

Developer Shukaku has sold off close to 1.3 hectares of land at the capital’s controversial Boeung Kak lake site to a Singapore-listed HLH Group company, according to a statement from HLH. HLH subsidiary D’Lotus Development purchased the land at Boeung Kak in Daun Penh district for ...

About 50 families gathered under a timber roof here Sunday among muddy fields granted to them as compensation after China’s Union Development Group (UDG) began to turn their coastal homeland into a $3.8-billion tourist mecca. The families, who now live in timber houses dotting the barren ...

Malaysia’s Mega First Corp Bhd says it increased spending on a controversial dam project in Laos and a new rubber project in Cambodia by 45 percent to MYR 50.4 million ($15.7 million) in 2013. Project development expenditure on the Don Sahong dam on the Cambodian border ...

A villager representative in Ratanakkiri province was charged Thursday with unlawful interference in the discharge of public function after he led a group of neighbors to block a Chinese company’s bulldozer from clearing disputed land in Bakeo district on Sunday, a court official said. Morm Vanda, provincial deputy ...

The families of four people from Pailin province’s Krinh village who have been incarcerated since March for allegedly living on state land are calling for their release. Fifty-year-old Nheb Nharn said that he and his wife, Om Som Ath, had lived on the land in Stung ...

Representatives of the 301 families granted a social land concession in Kratie province to resolve a long-running land dispute said Sunday that they filed a report with authorities on Saturday detailing the new families that have since gathered with them in the hope of also ...

Mixed security forces led by Kratie province’s court prosecutor yesterday arrested six people in a huge illegal logging bust, confiscating more than 100 cubic metres of protected luxury-grade timber. The arrests of both Cambodian and Vietnamese nationals were the culmination of a three-day crackdown by prosecutor ...

When Cambodia’s most prominent forest activist, Chut Wutty, was gunned down in April 2012, the community network he created to sabotage the rampant deforestation of this vast forest fragmented. The forest patrols that he organised nearly ground to a halt. Without money to fund large-scale expeditions, ...

Kompong Chhnang provincial authorities allegedly locked villagers out of the provincial hall after dozens came to deliver a complaint against the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem, before locking out a newly appointed councilor who left the building to talk with them. The villagers ...

Representatives for the 200 Cambodian families suing U.K. sugar firm Tate & Lyle for allegedly profiting off of their stolen land say they have rejected the firm’s latest offer to settle the dispute and are looking forward to their first court date, set for October. The ...

Twelve families locked in a land dispute in Kampot province blocked a construction company on Wednesday from dumping earth onto fields they maintain are theirs, villagers and a rights worker said Thursday. The villagers say the company began encroaching on their land in 2011, when they ...

A group of villagers who were evicted from Kratie province to make way for a Vietnamese rubber company were given a 750-hectare social land concession by the government Thursday, but many said they would hold out for a better offer. A letter signed by Kratie Governor ...

Representatives for about 250 families involved in a long-running dispute with an agri-business firm in Kompong Speu province have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc and say they will attempt to retake land that was stolen from them. About 60 of the villagers traveled to ...

More than 200 people from the group Land Communities for Peace marched from the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) to the National Assembly on Thursday in defiance of a ban issued by City Hall. Phnom Penh deputy governor Khuong Sreng said the protest would not be allowed after ...

A villager involved in a long-running land dispute in Kompong Chhnang province with the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem has accused his commune police chief of discrimination after he was refused a character statement he needed to apply for a garment factory ...

A representative of villagers involved in a land dispute in Mondolkiri province appealed to the government Tuesday to address their displacement after their shelters were destroyed by police and soldiers in a forced eviction Monday. Chan Rithy stood outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh on ...

A Cambodian delegation to the United Nations last week used the stage to shame the World Bank’s financial arm for failing to adequately monitor investments in a Vietnamese rubber giant accused of illegal logging, forced evictions and sexual harassment. Representing 17 indigenous communities in Ratanakkiri that ...

Eight huts were torn down and about 50 families were ordered to vacate land yesterday in Mondulkiri province’s Koh Nhek district as the couple whom police said illegally sold them the plots was arrested and sent to court. ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri province blocked National Road 78A on Thursday for more than three hours as authorities tried to push through to evict them in favor of a rubber company, police and villagers said. About 400 villagers blocked the section of the road that links O’Chum ...

Sacred burial grounds and community forests should be granted more protection under a new government proclamation issued this month, but rights groups and land-grab victims are wary that, without proper enforcement, it will amount to little in practice. An interministerial proclamation, or prakas, signed by ...

More than 400 people clashed with police and military police in Ratanakkiri province on Wednesday as authorities attempted to bulldoze their houses to make way for a rubber company plantation, villagers said. Authorities managed to bulldoze the houses of about 200 families, who they said had ...

Some 250 families in Kampong Speu province’s Phnom Sruoch district have sought intervention from rights group Adhoc to help resolve a land dispute involving a business they allege is headed by the son of former provincial governor Kang Heang. Families from three villages say Heang, who ...

Sexual assault and the annihilation of sacred graveyards are among the many claims levelled at Vietnamese Rubber giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) by villagers in Ratanakkiri province, a report by the World Bank’s investment arm reveals. In February, 17 indigenous communities that accused HAGL of ...