Land policy and administration

District security guards were deployed to Chroy Changva peninsula Tuesday to intercept villagers who were ready to smash a pipe that has been pumping sand onto their land for the past year. The roughly 40 families occupy the northeastern corner of a 387-hectare swathe of wetlands ...

Villagers who will be displaced if the controversial Lower Sesan II dam is built called on the developers yesterday to postpone construction for five years, allowing time for a comprehensive resettlement scheme to be devised. But a government official dismissed their request as “beyond the pale”, ...

Despite a number of agencies dispatched to solve land dispute, rights workers say people continue to face forced evictions and rights abuses by land developments. These problems are not being handled at the local level, fueling mistrust in local government, rights workers say. Rights workers from myriad ...

Interior Ministry police arrested a former Phnom Penh deputy governor and municipal councilor on Thursday for questioning over allegations of land fraud, but released him the next day, police said Sunday. Chea Sothon, who served as a councilor from 2009 until earlier this year and was ...

About 100 plainclothes men, some wielding sticks, tried to block a group of opposition activists and youth supporters in Svay Rieng province yesterday from reaching a disputed section of the Cambodia-Vietnam border. Clashes broke out at about 10am between the group of Cambodia National Rescue Party ...

The once unified fight of the Boeng Kak lake community against their forced eviction visibly fractured over the weekend, as factions within the community accused each other of literally casting the first stone in a brawl that broke out Saturday over a new military police ...

A bloody slingshot battle broke out in Kompong Speu province yesterday when villagers who have sold their land to a private company defended the firm’s machinery as it attempted to bulldoze the homes of neighbors who have refused to sell. The dispute, in Thpong district’s Ya ...

About 60 residents from Phnom Penh and the provinces of Battambang, Banteay Meanchey and Preah Sihanouk who lost land or are in danger of losing land due to a railroad development project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) protested outside its offices Thursday morning ...

A village chief in Siem Reap who was sentenced on Tuesday to a year in prison for levelling private property to construct an office building will retain his position – at least until his appeal hearing is over, a commune official said yesterday. ...

Two men, including a local official, were sentenced to a year in prison on Tuesday for clearing privately owned land to construct an office building in Siem Reap nearly two years ago, their lawyer said yesterday. ...

A Singapore-based firm whose subsidiary plans to buy land in Phnom Penh from which thousands of families have been forcibly evicted said Wednesday that the firm had no knowledge of the long-running land dispute. The firm, HLH Group, also denied any official or financial ties to ...

An ongoing land dispute may become more than just an embittered ordeal for three Khmer Krom villagers after officials requested yesterday that a Takeo court levy them huge fines. According to representatives from Borei Choslar district’s Sangkum Meanchey village, they are only farming barren land that ...

Local authorities in Kratie met Tuesday with 301 families who were recently given a social land concession in Snuol district to discuss how to deal with an influx of hundreds of villagers who are also hoping to live on the land. The 750-hectare concession was granted ...

More than 100 families living in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have filed a complaint with authorities, claiming a rubber giant – already accused of illegal logging – filled in two natural lakes, provincial officials said yesterday. Villagers, along with government officials, say Vietnamese company Hong Anh Gai ...

A development firm owned by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin and accused of illegally evicting thousands of families from central Phnom Penh recently sold a small piece of its project area for $14.9 million to a company with ties to one of Prime Minister Hun ...

More than 100 villagers in Kompong Thom province blocked a funeral procession in Stung Sen City on Saturday to prevent the burial of a recently deceased ethnic Vietnamese man on land he owned in the vicinity of a local primary school, villagers and an officials ...

Three separate communities from across the country were in Phnom Penh on Monday to petition Prime Minister Hun Sen to personally intervene to help settle their various land disputes. Communities affected by alleged land grabs in Phnom Penh and beyond often appeal directly to Mr. Hun ...

Arrest, detention and even an upcoming trial can’t sway 68 Khmer Krom families faced with eviction to give up a bitter land dispute over a bird sanctuary in Takeo province. After being charged in April with illegally occupying state land, three representatives from Sangkum Meanchey village ...

Twenty-two families who have been locked in a bitter, seven-year dispute over 145 hectares of land in Kompong Chhnang province with a company owned by the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem claim they were illegally pressured into accepting compensation and filed a ...

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 ...

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 ...

In a rare display of solidarity outside of Phnom Penh, more than 1,000 people with varied land-related grievances across Siem Reap province gathered in front of the provincial governor’s office on Tuesday to demand action, and left with a promise from the governor to help. Activist ...

Six families that were evicted from the Boeng Kak lake community, including long-time activist Heng Mom, confirmed Wednesday that they had accepted a deal from Phnom Penh City Hall for plots of land and titles in the same neighborhood. The families have agreed to plots of ...