Land

Sixteen ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province have claimed that they are being forced from their land after a commune chief signed it away, and that commune borders have been redrawn to dispossess them. On Friday, the families, who have been living on 30 hectares of ...

Four Boeung Kak women convicted to two-and-a-half years in Prey Sar prison went on a hunger strike yesterday as their husbands and children led a 200-strong rally outside, the husband of imprisoned village representative Tep Vanny told the Post. ...

The Kratie Provincial Court yesterday issued a search warrant for the home of Chum Vuthy, a man who allegedly trades in luxury wood, in Kratie City, provincial police said. Mr. Vuthy had been transporting a load of illegal lumber from Stung Treng City to Vietnam and ...

Boeng Kak protesters continued their fight for the release of 14 women and one man imprisoned since May 24, delivering a petition to the Senate and the Japanese Embassy on Friday that they hope will spur new intervention in the long-running land dispute. More than 100 ...

In Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district there is a 133-hectare mound of sand that was once a lake. It took nearly four years to fill Boeng Kak with that sand. On the southern perimeter of the massive sand pit sit two large billboards. On those billboards there ...

Land issues will continue to be a serious problem for Cambodia’s government, given the high number of continued crackdowns, arrests and violence, analysts say. “If an issue is covered and unsolved, one day it will explode,” Lao Monghay, an independent political analyst, told “Hello VOA,” in ...

In Washington yesterday, Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker Mu Sochua lobbied US government officials to withhold military funding to the Cambodian government if it does not meet two political demands ahead of her meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday. Mu Sochua said she would ...

The Kratie Provincial Court has released on bail five of the eight people charged after a military-style operation by security forces on a small village alleged to be the home of a secessionist movement, a court official said yesterday. On May 16, a 14-year-old girl was ...

Forestry officials on Monday confiscated nearly two-and-a-half cubic meters of luxury grade Thnong wood in Stung Treng province from a military truck emblazoned with the insignia of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Bodyguard Unit, forestry officials said yesterday. An additional 100 pieces of luxury grade wood were ...

Members of the Prey Long Forest Network yesterday said they are planning to hold a citizens’ patrol to look for evidence of illegal logging in Kompong Thom province this weekend. The patrol would be the first such patrol in the country since the April 26 murder ...

The Oddar Meanchey Provincial Court on Saturday charged a 31-year-old soldier for helping villagers who were shot dead after crossing the Thai border while logging for luxury timber, officials and a rights worker said yesterday. Mao Chenda, 20, and Ung Theara, 17, villagers from Anlong Veng ...

A former RCAF soldier accused of leading a group of Cambodians across the Thai border to log luxury wood – an incident that left two dead – is awaiting trial in Oddar Meanchey province, officials said yesterday. Ngoun Thyrith, district military police chief for the Anlong ...

Criticism of the Cambodian People’s Party has been overt in recent months as those from Boeung Kak lake and Borei Keila have taken to the streets to vent their frustration and anger at their housing situations. But an equivalent backlash at the polls was nowhere to ...

While preliminary results from Sunday’s commune elections indicate that the SRP took a thumping in urban centers—the SRP lost all three of their commune chief positions in Phnom Penh—the party appears to have made gains in rural areas locked in land disputes. Though the figures are ...

Opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua departed for the U.S. yesterday in hopes of pressuring Washington into suspending all military aid to Cambodia over the government’s use of soldiers to defend the land holdings of powerful business families. “We have enough evidence that soldiers are providing protection to ...

Thirteen Boeung Kak women locked in Prey Sar prison after a three-hour trial on May 24 are threatening to go on a hunger strike in protest, an opposition Sam Rainsy lawmaker said yesterday. A team of SRP MPs, including Mu Sochua, was granted access to the ...

The Phnom Penh municipality defended itself for the first time this weekend against sustained criticism from rights groups over the jailing of 13 female protesters from Boeng Kak, blaming the backlash on the “insanity” of unnamed foreign provocateurs. SRP lawmakers, meanwhile, met with the women in ...

Members of the opposition SRP on Saturday sent a petition to King Norodom Sihamoni asking him to pardon the 13 Boeng Kak residents who were sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail on May 24 after holding a peaceful protest against CPP senator Lao Meng Khin’s ...

Just days ahead of Sunday’s commune elections, Prime Minister Hun Sen again broke his pledge to remain silent during his party’s campaign period and sought to ease the concerns of communities whose livelihoods have been threatened by land disputes. Speaking to villagers through a mobile telephone, ...

Children of imprisoned Boeung Kak lake women pleaded for their mothers’ release outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday. The demonstration, which included more than 200 Boeung Kak residents and activist monk Loun Savath, was held on the eve of International Children’s Day. It also coincided with more ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday questioned four Russei Keo district villagers from two families who have been embroiled in a land dispute for two years with a local businessman, lawyers said yesterday. The families are accused of physically attacking landowner Lao Tong Ngy, a man ...

Freedom House and several other international human rights groups condemned the conviction of 13 Phnom Penh women last week who are locked in a land dispute with CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin and called for their release in a joint statement issued Tuesday. The women were arrested ...

Borei Keila evictees will have a chance to revisit the area they were forcibly evicted from this Sunday when authorities truck them back from the makeshift tents of their relocation site for a special purpose – to vote. Touch Khorn, a representative of the Borei Keila ...

This month’s eviction of villagers in Kratie province that resulted in the death of a 14-year-old girl was one of many such violent incidents over land that have erupted in Cambodia in recent years. But what set the May 16 violence apart was a word: ...