Land

The senior government official in charge of land dispute resolution visited more than 300 Koh Kong province families who are threatened with eviction by China’s Union Development Group to compile a report on the issue for Prime Minister Hun Sen. ...

Influential businesswoman You Chantha was arrested on Wednesday over allegations she cleared 17 hectares of land in Phnom Penh’s Por Sen Chey district, defying a court order handed down as part of an ongoing land dispute. ...

Gathering yesterday in front of Phnom Penh City Hall to demand a speedy resolution to longstanding land disputes, 10 Boeung Kak villagers were forcibly dispersed by security personnel citing traffic concerns. ...

Nearly 200 Kuoy villagers protested yesterday at the Forestry Administration Office in Preah Vihear province to demand a Malaysian-owned company return 1,100 hectares of land and a tractor confiscated by officials last month. ...

Cambodia reported 66 landmine casualties in the first six months of 2015, a 35 percent drop, compared with 101 cases one year earlier, according to data released yesterday . ...

Reinforcing a view that land grabbing is now a business for some rural Cambodians, several villagers who were paid Wednesday for ending their squat on a palm oil plantation reappeared 48 hours later, laying claim to different parts. ...

A hundred members of the Lor Peang community performed a cursing rite yesterday over a 10-year running land dispute with the KDC International Company. ...

The Ministry of Land Management has again accused rights group Licadho of spreading false data that shows that the number of families embroiled in new or intensifying land disputes jumped threefold last year. ...

After about 100 villagers on Sunday burned effigies of officials involved in a land dispute in Kompong Chhnang province that has dragged on for nearly a decade, the provincial governor said the protest was “contrary to the law” and gave authorities a reason to arrest ...

After exposure in the press and a brush with military police, a protest leader has fled rural Kampot for Siem Reap province. ...

Cambodis’s most crucial forests are disappearing at a rate of more than 2,000 kilometres a year, as agricultural firms continue to harvest timber by illegal means in protected areas and national parks, according to a study from Washington-based Forest Trends. ...

The analysis, from campaign group Forest Trends, says that large corporations are using legitimate development permits to illegally clear land.Around 2,000 sq km of forests are being lost every year, they say. ...

Twenty-three families in a village in Pursat province currently embroiled in a land dispute with a company owned by tycoon Try Pheap have claimed that authorities are putting pressure on locals in an attempt to quash the issue. ...

The government has declared leases on plantations will be limited to 50 years, slashing the length of some existing concessions in half, though neither ministry responsible for overseeing the move would confirm the legal basis for doing so.The decision was announced in a press release ...

The governor of Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district said Tuesday that land titles were handed to two more families from the Boeng Kak neighborhood, including that of 76-year-old land rights activist Nget Khun, known also as “Mummy.” ...

Thun Saray, president of the rights group Adhoc, urged Cambodia’s leader to use their newfound political “culture of dialogue” to resolve the problem of chronic land disputes across the country. ...

Thai-listed electronics manufacturer, SVI Public Limited, will be next in line to join Cambodia’s emerging light-manufacturing industry. ...

CNRP lawmaker Un Sam An sent a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday asking for an investigation of Try Pheap’s Special Economic Zone in Ratanakkiri province, saying that the timber magnate is misusing the site to export illegally logged trees to Vietnam.   ...

Although the number of land disputes across the country decreased in the first six months of the year—largely due to a freeze on the granting of economic land concessions—little has been done to resolve existing disputes, according to a report released Wednesday by rights group ...

A quiet, unoccupied section of Victory Beach in Sihanoukville hosted a group of remarkable visitors this week as divers from the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC) tested sophisticated new sonar and magnetic equipment donated by the US. ...

Police in Kratie province on Sunday arrested a farmer—accused of trying to squat on a new social land concession for poor families—after he allegedly struck the officers when they arrived to tell him and his wife to leave. ...

Protected areas and other biodiversity hotspots across Southeast Asia are increasingly under threat from expanding rubber plantations, with Cambodia at risk of losing more ecologically important land than any of its neighbours, a recent study reports. ...

About 300 protesters from Svay Rieng and Preah Sihanouk provinces marched to parliament yesterday to file petitions urging the local authorities to intervene to resolve ongoing land disputes in their homelands. ...

About 200 villagers involved in land disputes in three provinces protested Monday outside Cambodia’s parliament building in Phnom Penh, demanding that lawmakers resolve their cases and threatening not to vote for those who turn down their requests. ...