Land

Police officials confirmed Tuesday that the villagers involved in a land dispute with a company allegedly owned by Pailin Governor Y Chhien were arrested late Monday and said that one more villager was detained Tuesday. Sath Sin, deputy police chief of Pailin province’s Sala Krao district, ...

A wildlife sanctuary in Takeo province may provide refuge for birds, but it’s a source of contention for 68 Khmer Krom families who stand to lose their livelihood. The local fisheries administration wants to evict villagers from the state-owned sanctuary in Borei Cholsar district, but the ...

Police raided a guesthouse in Poipet City on Monday and arrested 23 men as they waited to be paid for illegally logging rosewood across Cambodia’s border with Thailand, police officials said. Um Sophal, Poipet City police chief, said the men were arrested Monday following a tip-off ...

More than half a million Cambodians have been affected by land conflicts involving the government since 2000, with more than 2,000 families across the country subjected to largely violent land grabs during the first few months of this year, local rights group Licadho said Tuesday. The ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri province have once again accused the Vietnamese owners of a rubber plantation of illegally logging their ancestral forests in a complaint filed with rights group Adhoc. A district official, however, said the plantation owner, Company 72, was granted an extension on ...

Kompong Cham authorities blocked several hundred activists from marching Monday to raise awareness about the environmental dangers raised by Don Sahong dam, officials and activists said. Kompong Cham provincial governor Lun Limthai confirmed that he banned the campaign. “We did not allow them to hold this ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen’s brother Hun Neng and a Vietnamese state-owned rubber firm are involved in an illegal logging cartel involving several well-connected companies operating on a “massive scale” in the embattled Prey Lang forest, forest monitors working in the area allege. Video footage and photographs ...

Following a scathing report from its internal watchdog about the resettlement of thousands of Cambodian families affected by a national railway rehabilitation project that it is funding, the Asian Development Bank has agreed with the government on an action plan for further compensation, it said ...

With time running short before Laos’s Xayaburi hydropower dam enters its final, potentially irreversible stages of construction, a group of NGOs has made another call for its suspension. In a joint declaration released today, 39 organisations based in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Australia set a one-year ...

A 12-year-old boy and a 37-year-old farmer lost their lives over the weekend in UXO explosions in Battambang and Pailin provinces. ...

A man and a teenage boy were killed by an anti-tank mine and a mortar shell in separate incidents on Friday and Saturday, according to police. In Battambang province, Chea Toum, 37, was seriously injured when the tractor he was walking behind set off a buried ...

Economic land concessionaires not abiding by their contracts could have their licences revoked if they have seriously breached the terms, Prime Minister Hun Sen has said. Illegally seizing forest land would be punished under the Law on Forestry, he said on Friday, speaking at an annual ...

Minister of Environment Say Sam El urged economic land concessionaire Union Development Group (UDG) – the mega-resort developer at the centre of a long-running Koh Kong province land dispute – to provide sufficient infrastructure in the relocation areas provided for residents it displaced, a ministry ...

Residents along Cambodia’s coastline may want to relocate to higher ground in the wake of a climate-change assessment that predicts much of the Kingdom’s coast could be submerged by rising sea levels. Based on predictive models that take into account global temperature trends and melting ice ...

A company in Mondulkiri’s Sok San commune has been gradually cutting down a community forest, pushing more than 100 families off their land, villagers said yesterday. “That land belongs to us, the government granted it to us in 1999. But the company invaded and let us ...

A property expert and investor in the construction sector says that home prices have increased between 10 and 20 per cent so far this year compared to last year. Kim Heang, president of Khmer Real Estate, says that demand for property in boreys is healthy. Most ...

A forest patrol in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district spotted five loggers clearing the community’s ancestral forest on Tuesday, villagers and rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Adhoc provincial coordinator Chhay Thy said that three representatives of nearly 200 ethnic Jarai families in Pak Nhai commune asked for help ...

The director of the Lumphat district forestry department in Ratanakkiri province was charged and put in pre-trial detention on Monday for allegedly logging on protected land around Ou’Sinlair waterfall, police and court officials revealed yesterday. Deputy Police Chief Klol Thoeun said that Meung Bunthin was picked ...

The opposition CNRP made another pitch for an end to free trade benefits for Cambodian sugar exports to the European Union at a meeting in Phnom Penh on Wednesday with visiting European Parliament members, blaming the benefits for effectively subsidizing companies that are evicting poor ...

Three villagers hunting for edible ants and wild vegetables were injured when one stepped on an anti-personnel mine in Banteay Meanchey province near the Poipet border crossing. ...

Battambang land prices have increased this year, according to a local real estate firm. Sorn Seap, general manager of Key Real Estate, said land prices in Battambang city, capital of the province of the same name, have increased by around 12 per cent this year compared ...

In the wake of several international scandals, the 120-megawatt Stung Atai hydropower plant in Pursat province and its transmission line will be inaugurated today in a celebration headed by Prime Minister Hun Sen. The $255 million hydropower project financed by China Development Bank has been operating ...

For three days last week, the Preah Roka forest in Preah Vihear province was silent, the usual cacophony of chainsaws notably absent. The buzz of trucks arriving empty and later leaving heavily loaded with timber had been replaced by ethnic Kuoy villagers, about 300 in all, ...

Forty families in Kampong Chhnang province’s Peani commune complained yesterday that a local factory has been polluting their land with toxic liquid waste. Kong Yom, 40, a representative of the 40 families in Krang Ta Ekh village, said yesterday that this is not the first time ...