Land

China may not be in ASEAN, but it’s looking more and more like an honorary member – at least where the South China Sea is concerned. ASEAN foreign ministers yesterday took a significant step towards involving the burgeoning superpower in South China Sea discussions, adopting key ...

In February, Son Chhay wrote to the premier urging him to investigate illegal logging outside the legal clearing area slated for the Stung Tatai dam reservoir in Koh Kong province and the environmental destruction that would be wrought by the Stung Cheay Areng dam.  In a ...

As the ASEAN summit turns Phnom Penh into a buzz of diplomatic activity, the chance to send a well-timed message has not been lost on the local community. Fifteen representatives of the evicted families of Borei Keila yesterday filed a petition asking US Secretary of State ...

Forestry Administration officials in Banteay Meanchey province have confiscated and continue to hold equipment valued at $1.5 million from a troubled biofuel plantation without any legal backing, an official in the provincial governor’s office said. Bulldozers, steamrollers and dump trucks were confiscated last month from a ...

A Friday press conference meant to be an act of defiance and a call for justice from the so-called Kratie “secessionists” was conspicuously short on both, as two accused secessionists failed to appear as promised to demand that the government present credible evidence against them. Instead, ...

As much of the world struggles with post growth, Cambodia’s tourism and hospitality sector continued to expand and diversify, attracting more intraregional activity and especially from major emerging markets in Asia, MICE segments, as well as traditional leisure clientele. Like neighboring countries Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Laos, Cambodia has quickly emerged into a well sought-after tourist ...

Veun sai district, Ratanakkiri – Kitted out in their camouflage uniforms, military boots, belts and Ministry of Land Management baseball caps, the dozen or so student volunteers looked like a stern bunch. There was no smiling as they sat at wooden desks in an open pagoda ...

Adorned in new military uniforms, about 400 more young volunteers who have been enlisted into Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ambitious national land-titling scheme departed from Diamond Island yesterday armed with measuring tapes, computers and GPS units. The budding surveyors are the latest group of some 2,000 ...

Bonna Realty Group will prepare to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange, the company’s president said this week. The real estate firm joins a small but growing group of private companies that say they are gearing up for initial public offerings on the new exchange. ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries’ latest list of economic land concessions reveals some peculiar discrepancies with known records of ELCs. Some that have recently been granted are missing, while others known to have been cancelled remain. The June 8 MAFF list makes no mention ...

At one time, palm oil production stirred a lot of excitement in Cambodia. Perhaps hoping to follow in the footsteps of palm oil giants Malaysia or Indonesia, more than 10 firms in Cambodia registered for land concessions for palm cultivation around a decade ago. Today, there is one left. The others decided palm ...

Over 300 Buddhist monks and Cambodian residents who live along Mekong River in Kampong Cham province, about 120km from Phnom Penh, gathered in the provincial town to demand for Laos to halt the construction of Xayaburi dam. “We want the Lao government to stop the construction of Xayaburi dam because it will affect the ...

Cambodia will begin the creation of its first Marine Protected Area (MPA) this year, covering some 300 square kilometres of coral-rich seas around islands of Koh Rong and Koh Rong Samloem in the Gulf of Thailand. This follows a successful two-year scientific survey of the area ...

Bun Chhorn and Sok Tong – fugitives accused of orchestrating a “secessionist plot” in Kratie province – are refusing to admit their guilt, and will hold a press conference Friday in Phnom Penh to say as much, despite Hun Sen’s recent promise to drop their ...

Homeless Borei Keila evictees who have been living in tents surrounded by garbage since authorities bulldozed their homes in January pleaded outside Phnom Penh Municipal Hall for housing yesterday. Representative Chhay Kimhorn said the families could no longer stand living in tents and stairwells infested with ...

An EU scheme to boost trade with developing nations is fuelling land grabs in Cambodia, activists say, with thousands evicted from their property to make way for a booming sugar industry. Campaigners are taking their fight to European supermarkets, encouraging a boycott of Cambodian sugar, which ...

After years of futile protests demanding their land back, villagers forcibly evicted by sugarcane plantations connected to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat launched a boycott campaign yesterday targeting the international firms that sell his sugar. Thousands of families accuse the senator’s plantations of forcing them off ...

The European Union should immediately remove trade preferences it gives to Cambodian sugar companies accused of human-rights violations including land grabs, representatives of the affected communities told a press conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. Community representatives from Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Oddar Meanchey provinces said ...

More than 170 villagers in Banteay Meanchey province locked in a land dispute with a local company protested yesterday in front of the provincial hall, seeking land titles in compliance with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recent titling project. The families say they had been granted a ...

Twelve of the 29 excavators seized by military police in Kompong Thom province during Monday’s military police raids on illegal Tonle Sap reservoirs were confiscated from a farming collective run by a newly elected CPP commune chief. Peanh Poul, director of the Dry Rice Season Community, ...

More than enough vacant plots exist within Boeung Kak lake’s 12.44-hectare concession area to house those denied land permits, a new NGO report says. Sahmakum Teang Tnaut claims to have found “a viable and practical” solution for households excluded from the unmarked land the prime minister ...

Kampong Thom provincial authorities have confiscated more than two dozen dirt excavators in Stoung district over the past week after the machinery had been allegedly used to dig up land for development in a protected area used primarily for breeding fish. Hang Thol, a military police ...

Kompong Thom provincial military police confiscated 29 excavators and arrested four drivers in a four-day operation ending yesterday aimed at stopping the illegal construction of reservoirs around the Tonle Sap lake, officials said. The reservoirs, which are used to retain water for use in dry-season farming, ...

Tek Nim is well versed in dealing with adversity. In year nine, she dropped out of school, began working on the family farm and finally became resigned to the belief that her brightest prospect was to leave Omlaing commune, in Kampong Speu province’s Thpong district, ...