Ethnic minorities and indigenous people

The collective land of indigenous communities in Cambodia will continue to face encroachment from economic land concessions and the actions of private companies in the future despite the Cambodian Government’s moratorium on granting ELC licenses, according to a Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) report ...

More than 220 ethnic Tompuon families in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district yesterday filed a complaint to rights group Adhoc over a 2,000-hectare land dispute against an economic land concession.   ...

Police have been deployed to guard a beleaguered Muslim school for young women in a predominantly Cham community in Tbong Khmum province, amid ongoing attacks against the facility by unknown assailants, and death threats against educators, officials said on Wednesday. ...

A Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmaker is calling on young Cham party activists to rally support for the opposition party, expressing a desire to see a politician from the Muslim minority join the National Assembly. ...

An ethnic Kuoy land rights activist was detained by police in Preah Vihear province on Monday after taking part in an ongoing protest against three businesses that villagers claim encroached on their farmland, officials said. ...

More Montagnard asylum seekers are planning to return to home amid cuts in United Nations-provided food rations.Vivian Tan, regional spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said more than 10 indigenous Christian Montagnards had requested assistance in returning to Vietnam. ...

More Montagnard asylum seekers prepared to return to Vietnam yesterday after giving up on obtaining refugee status in Phnom Penh, while five Rohingya refugees set off for resettlement in Canada. ...

The Interior Ministry on Friday released a letter that it sent to Mondolkiri provincial governor Eng Bunheang asking him to respond to a petition—filed last month and thumbprinted by 900 members of 17 ethnic minority Bunong communities—requesting his removal. ...

Representatives of 14 ethnic mi­nority communities in Ratana­kkiri province on Friday accepted $1,700 each from Vietnamese rubber company Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) to buy a buffalo and hold a ceremony to appease the spirits that had been disturbed by the firm’s plantations. ...

The move toward modernity and development is often represented in numbers: growth in GDP, wellness indicators and many other kinds of statistics. ...

With the deadline looming for hundreds of Montagnard asylum seekers in Cambodia to return “voluntarily” to the site of their alleged persecution or be forced back across the border, a group who have spent months living in the shadows this week spoke out about their ...

Two Muslim Rohingya refugees have volunteered to resettle in Cambodia as part of a controversial deal in which Australia has promised to pay more than U.S. $40 million in costs and aid to the Southeast Asian country for taking refugees off its hands, a Cambodian ...

A group of 900 Bunong villagers are seeking the removal of the governor of Mondolkiri, complaining in a petition that was submitted to the government Monday that he does not respect the rights of ethnic minorities in the province. ...

Eleven international organizations on Thursday condemned Cambodia’s plan to repatriate scores of Montagnards who claim to be fleeing oppression in Vietnam, while the government on Friday reiterated its position that the Montagnards were not legitimate refugees. ...

Fearing the loss of their water source, hundreds of villagers of the Jarai ethnic minority last week continued to block an Australian gold mining company from accessing a plot of land in Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district that is licensed for exploration.Angkor Gold Company, which first ...

Indigenous villagers in northeastern Cambodia’s Stung Treng province on Monday called for an investigation into a saw mill they say has polluted their local waterway and caused residents to contract a skin disease. ...

The relatives and neighbors of two sisters who were arrested in Phnom Penh last week over the alleged sexual enslavement of their 13-year-old niece are angry. Members of the mostly Cham Muslim community living along the Tonle Sap river in Russei Keo district’s Chraing Chamreh ...

Around a thousand people from Cambodian government institutions, experts and aid workers as well as community members gathered Sunday to shine a light on a variety of issues faced by the country’s indigenous peoples — including access to modern health care. ...

Twelve Montagnards were voluntarily repatriated to Vietnam on Friday through a Ratanakkiri province border checkpoint after being cheated by a broker who promised them jobs in Thailand, according to officials.​ ...

A school meal program run by the World Food Program (WFP) has run out of funds, forcing it to transfer about half of its schools to government care. ...

Just days after a dozen Montagnard asylum seekers returned to Vietnam having given up on being granted refugee status, 11 more arrived in Phnom Penh over the weekend, according to the United Nations. ...

Up to 1,500 new educators, almost all exclusively Muslims from the Cham Community in Cambodia, will be recruited to join the country’s teaching force. ...

An intensified campaign of religious and political persecution of Montagnards by security forces in Vietnam is responsible for more than 150 of the group fleeing to Cambodia, while authorities in both countries are working together to track down asylum seekers crossing the border, Human Rights ...

After spending five days hiding out in the forest in Ratanakkiri province, two teenage Montagnard asylum seekers made their way to Phnom Penh on Friday where they joined more than 100 others waiting to be registered. ...