Land

Police detained nearly 100 suspected loggers from crossing into Thailand from Oddar Meanchey’s Trapaing Prasat district on Friday to illegally cut timber, Provincial Governor Sar Thavy said yesterday. The 95 would-be border crossers were arrested in several different groups and were in possession of logging equipment, ...

At least a dozen companies including some of Cambodia’s most prominent developers have been illegally logging and transporting rosewood since the election without any action from authorities, a pair of local NGOs alleged. In a report released yesterday, the Coalition of Cambodian Farmer Community and the ...

Outspoken land activist Kuch Veng will regain his freedom in 15 days after the Pursat provincial court yesterday handed down a guilty verdict with a one-year sentence, then suspended nearly three quarters of that term. Veng has been in prison since May 19 on charges of ...

After more than three months in jail, environmental activist Kuch Veng is set to hear his verdict at the Pursat provincial court. The verdict was originally scheduled to be handed down July 10, but the judge ordered it delayed after some 300 people from 11 provinces ...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the country’s financial regulator have informed Australia-based mining giant BHP Billiton it could still be charged over allegations the company bribed overseas officials, which include claims of improper payments to members of the Cambodian government. Prime Minister Hun Sen ...

Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital and largest city, has seen rapid development in the last decade — numerous high-rises, large shopping malls and business centres as well as public parks are beautifying this city — in the meantime, slum-dwellers are also on the rise. According to the ...

The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS: Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Yunnan and Guangxi in China) is undergoing unprecedented changes. Many of these are positive, reflecting political stabilization and economic growth following decades of poverty and conflict. But the rate and type of development is ...

Sri Lankan agricultural group Lankem Ceylon PLC says it plans to plant 20,000 hectares of rubber in Cambodia as part of a diversification strategy. Lankem chairman A Rajaratnam disclosed the strategy in the company’s annual report for the year to March, 2012, released by the company ...

Locals and rights groups on Wednesday said dozens of farmers in a village in Preah Vihear province have been singled out for eviction after supporting the opposition CNRP in last month’s vote, a claim their village chief denied. Residents of Choam Ksan district’s Kom Prak village ...

Six farmers were killed on the spot and another one seriously injured after a home-made tractor ran onto an old anti-tank mine in northwestern Preah Vihear province, police chief confirmed Thursday. The accident occurred in a forest in Chom-ksan district when the tractor hit the mine ...

Five Tumpuon villagers have again been summonsed for questioning by the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court in a lengthy dispute after private firm Ly Sokim Co Ltd accused villagers of destroying its property. In the latest summons, dated July 30, villagers are warned that failing to show up ...

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights yesterday expressed concern at a recent spate of land disputes coming on the heels of last month’s vote, and questioned whether campaign promises of resolving the Kingdom’s ongoing land issues had been forgotten now that the election has passed. The ...

More than 700 families living in Stung Treng province’s Siem Pang district have appealed to local authorities, demanding that they intervene to stop a Chinese company mining gold near their homes. Sin Dan, chief of Thma Keo commune, said he had delivered the petition to both ...

Police seized about 600 pieces of luxury-grade rosewood weighing about 2,000 kilograms during a raid in Oddar Meanchey province on Sunday, but are still deciding whether to arrest the owners of the property on which it was found, an official said. Bun Heng, a communal forestry ...

Phnom Penh municipality and the Cambodian Red Cross (CRC) on Sunday donated money and food rations to 176 families from Borei Keila—where thousands of people have been violently evicted from their homes in recent years after the land was sold to a private company. Phnom Penh ...

Following an investigation of alleged illegal logging by Vietnamese Company 72 in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district forests yesterday morning, provincial Forestry Administration officials claimed nothing seemed awry. Four villagers patrolling the forest at the border of Vietnam reported they had seen six Vietnamese loggers with two tractors, ...

Their work is far from over, but Jarai minority villagers in Ratanakkiri province took another important step forward yesterday in their quest for communal land titles. More than 200 residents of O’Yadav district’s Pate commune signed declarations outlining the ways in which they make use of ...

At least 20,000 tourists and travellers will participate in the so-called “sea festival” at the end of this year, officials at the Kep province tourism department said. The two-day event, which started in 2011 as a tourism booster for the country’s coasts and beaches, was cancelled ...

More than 100 families living in Koh Kong’s Kiri Sakor and Botum Sakor districts are on the clock, with an official government decree demanding they vacate their land in less than two months or face the bulldozers of the Chinese firm slated to build a ...

Employees reportedly working for the controversial Company 72 have allegedly been illegally felling timber in a community forest in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district and shipping it across the Vietnamese border, community members and Adhoc said yesterday. Romas Svat, a community representative in Paknhai commune’s Lom village, ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Monday vowed to return Phnom Penh’s beleaguered Boeng Kak neighborhood to its residents and to have those who filled the lake with sand thrown in jail, should the opposition CNRP ultimately prevail in contesting the unofficial results of last month’s ...

The more Cambodia’s economy grows and the more investors come into Cambodia has had some positive and negative effects, and one of those effects is to push up land prices in Phnom Penh for the first quarter in 2013, an increase of 15 per cent. Sorn ...

Thousands of people have been evicted from their homes to make way for a Chinese development in Koh Kong province. But some of the families have returned to their land, leaving a relocation site they say was insufficient for their needs. For families like those of ...

Thousands of villagers in a remote district of the coastal province of Koh Kong have been evicted or are facing eviction in the face of a Chinese resort development project. Some families have moved unwillingly to relocation sites. But others are refusing to leave, setting the ...