Ethnic minorities and indigenous people

A local conservation group yesterday called for several changes to a draft sub-decree meant to turn Cambodia’s Prey Long Forest into a protected area, concerned it could end up harming, rather than conserving, the forest. ...

One hot day in June, 2009, Ven Samin, a member of the ethnic Suoy minority in Kampong Speu province, grabbed her digital camera and headed out of the house. The 44-year-old arrived at a collection of damaged rice paddies in Oral district and began taking photos. ...

During a joint investigation with police and military police last week, the Forestry Administration found evidence of large-scale illegal logging by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, officials said yesterday. ...

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 a month after halting construction around a disputed land concession in Ratanakkiri province, a Vietnam-based company has reportedly gone a step further and agreed to return 30 hectares of razed forest, a village representative and commune chief maintained yesterday. ...

Amid mounting calls for government intervention to stop the destruction of indigenous land by a Vietnamese rubber company in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, the Forestry Administration has begun investigating claims that the firm is logging illegally and clearing land outside of its concession, officials said ...

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 ...

A group of ethnic Kreung families living in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have accused a wealthy plantation owner of destroying their crops and threatening to evict them from their homes, local officials and villagers said yesterday. Soeun Sarath, a representative of 13 indigenous families living in Kaleng ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Ethnic minority Kreung villagers filed a complaint against commune level authorities on Saturday for allegedly accepting money from a businessman to clear their ancestral land for a new rubber plantation in Ratanakkiri province, local NGOs and villagers said. ...

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, ...

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, ...

Canadian funding for ethnic minority communities in the process of applying for communal land titles will run out in March, and other donors have not yet signed up to take over the task, officials from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which currently provides the ...

Economic land concessions granted to a pair of Vietnamese companies in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district were endangering the traditional lifestyles of as many as 200 ethnic-minority families, villagerstold the Post yesterday. As the companies actively cleared forest to make room for the eventual rubber plantations, the government ...

On the second day of his two-day visit to Ratanakkiri, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday cajoled indigenous minority members about their ready adoption of new technology amid the shift away from traditional ways of life, and extolled the benefits of rubber plantations over their ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen mocked a group of ethnic minority villagers who tried to petition him on Friday about their land dispute in northern Cambodia’s Rattanakiri province, after they were stopped from presenting their complaint during his visit on a land-titling campaign. Hun Sen was ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday distributed 541 land titles covering 1,308 hectares to 301 mostly ethnic minority families in Andong Meas district. ...

Local authorities have stepped in to halt construction around a disputed land concession in Ratanakkiri province in an attempt to discover whether the company has the right to clear forest that residents claim they depend on to survive. In what appears to be a rare showing ...

Until the arrival of large-scale development around her home in the northeastern province of Ratanakkiri, Sav Samourn, a member of the ethnic Jarai minority, was frightened of wild animals and ghosts. But as trees disappeared and industrial machinery razed the forestland, the old fears fell away. ...

Though they held out hope for years that they would get communal land titles, hundreds of ethnic minority families in Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces have now opted to accept individual private land titles under Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new titling scheme. While individual titles offer immediate ...