Forestry Industry

Cambodian authorities announced yesterday they would release six Laos who were arrested in Cambodia last Thursday on suspicion of illegal logging, provided that Laos cooperates with broader border negotiations in Stung Treng province’s Siam Pang district, where the men were arrested. Svay Nhoun, a Stung Treng ...

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 ...

In the latest chapter of what is proving to be an arduous struggle to protect a government demarcated Community Forest in Battambang province, 36 hectares of the land have reportedly been given over to outsiders including a military official. ...

Cambodian authorities arrest a journalist who exposed the illegal smuggling of timber. Taing Try, a reporter affiliated with the Khmer Democratic Journalists’ Association, was taken into custody on Friday, police in Kratie’s Snoul district told RFA on Sunday. But Ing Savoeun, a representative from the ...

In a rare acknowledgement of deforestation concerns, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, chairman of the National Commission for UNESCO, said the widespread clearing of forests around Angkor Wat was harming views of the historic temple complex. Sok An made the remarks in Siem Reap at a ...

The growing market for timber in China is leading to widespread logging around the world, including in Cambodia, according to a report released yesterday. The report from London-based NGO the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) – entitled Appetite for Destruction: China’s trade in illegal timber – outlines ...

The custodians of a community forest in Ratanakkiri have accused a company of illegally bulldozing their protected jungle. Sen Youn, a representative of the Jarai ethnic minority in O’Yadav district’s Lumchor commune, said yesterday an investigation with rights groups had uncovered that the Chea Chanrith Development ...

KOH KONG, CAMBODIA — A Thai force dubbed the “Rambo Army” couldn’t stop the gangs, armed with battlefield weaponry, as they scoured the forests. Neither could a brave activist, gunned down when he came to investigate. Nor, apparently, can governments across Southeast Asia. The root of the ...

Human rights groups in Cambodia fear a new south-east Asian declaration of human rights could conversely offer the government in Phnom Penh a figleaf to clamp down on dissent. Cambodia signed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) human rights declaration on Sunday, two days ...

Forestry police let a vehicle with a half cubic meter of rosewood go Wednesday after border soldiers stopped it in Ou Svay commune in Tropang Prosat district. The vehicle belonged to Rath Sambo, a police officer at the Ministry of Interior who fled the scene, sources ...

Three Cambodians including a border patrol solider were arrested by Thai soldiers whilst they and several other villagers transported illegally logged rosewood from Thailand into Cambodia last Friday. “Seven villagers escaped and three were arrested,” said Khuon Srey Sros, cheif of Oddar Meanchey Province, Thmor Daun ...

Hang Serei Oudom told his 7-month pregnant wife that he was going out to meet a source. A journalist for Vorakchun Khmer Daily, he was investigating illegal logging for luxury woods in the jungles of Cambodia’s northeastern Ratanakkiri province. Three days later, on Sept. 11, he ...

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 ...

Fourteen Cambodian men jailed in Thailand for drug trafficking or illegal logging have been released in the past week after reaching the end of their sentences, a border official said yesterday. Touch Ra, director of the Chaom Sangam Cambodia-Thailand border checkpoint in Oddar Meanchey province, said ...

Villagers in the Prey Lang forest in Kompong Thom province have filed the complaint with the provincial court and the Forestry Administration accusing a commune police chief of involvement in logging high-grade timber, officials and villagers said yesterday. The complaint, thumbprinted by 210 people, alleges that ...

The Anti-Corruption Unit has arrested a military police officer accused of involvement in an illegal luxury timber racket in Pursat province’s Krakor district – an area where government investigators conceded that complicity by the powerful was rife. On Saturday, the anti-graft agency arrested military police officer ...

Three Cambodians were shot and killed early on Saturday morning after engaging in a firefight while illegally logging along the Thai border, officials said yesterday. The three are believed to have been shot after crossing from Battambang’s Samlot district into Thai territory while logging luxury rosewood “The ...

The only man convicted in relation to a murder case that made global headlines, the killing of environmentalist Chut Wutty and military police officer, In Rattana, walked free on Friday, less than two weeks after his sentencing, rights group Licadho said. Ran Boroth, who was ...

Thai soldiers have shot dead three Cambodian men for illegally cutting rosewood on the frontier of Thai territory He [Prach Chan, governor of Cambodia’ s Battambang province] said the Thai side claimed that the men illegally entered Thai territory for logging purposes on Saturday, in an ...

Rann Boroth, the only man convicted in the double killing six months ago of the country’s leading environmental activist, Chut Wutty, and military police officer, walked free from prison on Friday after the Koh Kong Provincial Court issued an order for his release. On October ...

The entirety of three protected forests are now classified as private land, an investigation from rights group Adhoc has found, along with tens of thousands of additional hectares of what has once been state public land In three cases, Adhoc’s findings show that entire protected forests ...

More than 30 families living in Pursat province’s Dangkeab village have filed complaints with their village chief against environmental officials, whom they claim extorted money from them to pass illegal checkpoints as they transported firewood from a nearby forest to the village, authorities said yesterday. “Since ...

Reporters Without Borders has joined mounting criticism of the government’s handling of the April 26 murder of environmental activist Chut Wutty. On Monday, a security guard was convicted of accidentally killing the officer officially blamed for the activist’s death. “How convenient,” the Paris-based advocacy group said in a ...