Economic land concessions and plantations

A new report on land grabbing around the world highlights Cambodia as a prime example of the ill effect of the growing global appetite for farmland by industrial scale operations. Released Wednesday in Stockholm by three Swedish NGOs, The Race for Land offers Cambodia as one ...

Discussions on restarting World Bank loans to Cambodia will not commence until after the 2013 elections, a bank official said yesterday. After a landmark freeze on loans announced in December 2010, a response to the forced evictions by the government of residents of the Boeung Kak ...

CPP Senator and business tycoon Ly Yong Phat has convinced to more families in Koh Kong province to take a cash payout in exchange for dropping out of a lawsuit involving two local sugarcane plantations he once co-owned, official said. More that 200 families in Sre ...

Eight representatives of Phnom Penh communities involved in land disputes were allowed to present their petitions to the Council of Ministers yesterday after authorities blocked about 200 of their fellow petitioners from gathering in front of the Peace Palace. During a meeting with the representatives, Bun ...

Opposition party whip Son Chhay reiterated his call at a press conference yesterday for the government to raise taxes on economic land concessions from $5 to $7 a hectare up to $70 through an amendment to the draft of the 2013 budget. The Sam Rainsy Party ...

– Economic Land Concessions – ‘ELCs’ – ( Government Data Partial 4 items, and 1 Government Data Complete) Click here to download – Concessions for Mining (Secondary Source Data 10) Click here to download ...

The Cambodian National Rescue Party is making a strategic shift in its bid to win the next election: focusing less on traditional hot-button issues like government corruption and territorial disputes, and instead offering voters a series of concrete new policy initiatives. This required clear and ...

More than 100 people in Kratie province staged a peaceful protest on Sunday after excavators mobilized by a South Korean timber firm tried to clear and demarcate concession land, a commune official said yesterday. The company, Think Biotech, was granted 34,000 hectares of land on May ...

Following our investigation which highlighted allegations of human rights abuses in Cambodia’s sugar industry, activists are stepping up their campaign against sugar companies buying from the region. The call to boycott sugar company Tate and Lyle over allegations of illegal land seizures and human rights ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has reclassified 4,158 hectares of a massive land concession owned by the wife of Senator Lao Meng Khin from his own party for displaced families in Kampong Chhnang province. A jubilant representative of the 4,506 families who have long battled against ...

Land disputes are expected to be a hot issue in next year’s election, overshadowing perennial issues such as illegal immigration, destruction of forests, corruption, and unemployment. Prime Minister Hun Sen himself has acknowledged that the government’s failure to resolve the issue will mean handing ammunition to ...

Rights groups said they will continue to advocate in land grabbing and eviction cases, and villagers involved in such disputes said they will continue to turn to NGOs for help despite a warning by Prime Minister Hun Sen for civil society to stay clear of ...

They’re known as the BK13 and they’re not prepared to let greedy developers take the very, very little they have. They’re 13 women – mothers, grandmothers – who live around what used to be Boeung Kak Lake – not far from the centre of Cambodia’s ...

A group of roughly 100 anti-eviction protestors were blocked by riot police yesterday from marching to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Peace Palace to appeal to U.S. President Barack Obama for help in reforming Cambodia’s land rights policy. The protest, which took place at the Boeng Kak ...

Seven representatives of 415 families entangled in an unresolved land dispute with a deputy commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have received a second summons to appear in Battambang Provincial Court to clarify accusations that they had vandalized the commander’s property, “They not only ...

The Asean Grassroots People’s Assembly (AGPA) agreed yesterday on a list of demands it intends to present to the Cambodian and regional governments. A crowd of more than 2,000 people-including garment factory workers, victims of evictions, and sex workers, as well as undercover police-gathered at Phnom ...

Despite a moratorium on the granting of new economic land concessions (ELCs), the government has approved at least 32 ELCs since Prime Minister Hun Sen announced their suspension in May. According to sub-decrees dated from May onward and provided by local human rights group Adhoc, Mr. ...

Kratie province – Cambodia’s transformation from war-torn basket-case to one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies is being overshadowed by a backwards lurch in human rights and land policies that critics say are entrenching poverty. Next week’s visit by Barack Obama, the fist by a U.S. ...

An agriculture and transportation company has allegedly threatened to demolish the homes of about 100 families on Wednesday if they refuse to move off an agricultural land concession in Kampot province’s Chhuk district, villagers said yesterday. “So Nguon company and [Decho Aphivat commune chief] Chum Soeun ...

Villagers in Ratanakirri province filed complaints to the provincial court and rights group Adhoc yesterday, claiming three security guards patrolling former state forest in O’Chum district threatened them and fired an AK-47 to scare them away. Kreung ethnic villager Travh Khambon, 37 of La’ak commune Kam ...

Cambodia’s transformation from war-torn basket-case to one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies is being overshadowed by a backwards lurch in human rights and land policies that critics say are entrenching poverty. ...

CPP Senator and business tycoon Ly Yong Phat last week continued to offer families in Koh Kong province cash compensation to get them to drop out of a lawsuit against two sugar cane plantations he once owned, according to villagers. But villager Phann Khly yesterday ...

A company owned by a board member of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce has been accused of illegally destroying more than 80 houses in Kampot province’s Chhouk district, a claim vigorously denied by the firm and local authorities. Chan Pheng, a villager from Chi Bak village ...

Six months after Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered a moratorium on the granting of economic land concessions (ELCs) and a legal review of the concessions that already exist, the Agriculture Ministry has yet to begin the review process due to rain, and the danger of ...