Land
Land tenure and land titling
Pepsi sugar draws ire
Investors in drinks giant PepsiCo have filed a shareholders resolution urging the company to account for alleged land-rights violations in Cambodia. The 14 shareholders – including Oxfam – are increasing the pressure on PepsiCo following Coca-Cola’s pledge earlier this month of “zero tolerance” towards land grabs. An ...
Daniel Pye
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/pepsi-sugar-draws-ire
Villagers fight mining venture
Nearly 70 representatives from 278 families in Preah Vihear’s Rovieng district are seeking intervention after a national mining company began drilling on their farmland last week, locals said yesterday. According to villager Yean Bunchan, 47, representatives from a company based in Kandal province called T P ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/villagers-fight-mining-venture
Despite Promise of Title, Authorities Refuse to Measure Land
Villagers and local authorities continued to argue over a 4-hectare plot of land in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district on Monday, a day after officials promised to measure and issue a title for it. District council chief Prak Channa on Sunday promised to issue a land ...
Mech Dara and Alex Willemyns
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/despite-promise-of-title-authorities-refuse-to-measure-land-47905/
Cambodian NGOs Threaten to Expose More Illegal Logging
A group of Cambodian NGOs threatened on Monday to expose more cases of forestry crime involving businessmen and the police, saying they were unshaken by a defamation suit filed by top tycoon accused of illegal logging and land-grabbing. Representatives of the five organizations told reporters Monday ...
Radio Free Asia News Staff
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/logging-11252013185559.html
More Youth Involvement Needed To Settle Land Disputes, Groups Say
Local NGOs on Friday urged more participation in land dispute resolution by the nation’s youth. Youth participation can mean better laws, better application of those laws and greater respect for citizens, “especially for farmers and the poor,” said Chhit Sam Ath, executive director of the NGO ...
Kong Sothanarith
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/more-youth-involvement-needed-to-settle-land-disputes-groups-say/1795721.html
Villagers Get Land Title After Torching Excavator
A land dispute between a development company and residents in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district boiled over late Friday night, with villagers setting fire to an excavator that they say company staff were using to raze a crematorium on the disputed plot of land. Villagers say ...
Mech Dara and Alex Willemyns
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/villagers-get-land-title-after-torching-excavator-47790/
After prison, Bopha undeterred
Shelving any thoughts that 14 months in prison had deterred her from protesting, Yorm Bopha rushed to the capital’s Borei Keila community yesterday morning to try to stop authorities from forcing evictees from an abandoned building. Bopha was one of about 10 Boeung Kak activists called ...
Phak Seangly, Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Shane Worrell
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/after-prison-bopha-undeterred
Families Protest Eviction by Chinese Company
Forty-two families from Preah Vihear province’s Chheb district on Sunday held a demonstration to protest their pending eviction in favor of a Chinese company that plans to establish a sugarcane plantation on the land the families have occupied for almost three years. Local authorities have told ...
Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/families-protest-eviction-by-chinese-company-47808/
Ratanakkiri Temple Now in Land Concession
Like most millennium-old structures discovered in the forests of Cambodia, the locals had known all along about this one. Jarai minority villagers in this remote spot in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district not only knew about it, but they revered the red-brick temple, using it as a ...
Kuch Naren and Michelle Vachon
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ratanakkiri-temple-now-in-land-concession-47779/
Lumber Tycoon Denies Allegations of Illegal Deforestation
The assistant of a lumber tycoon accused of major deforestation and forced evictions rejected Thursday the findings of a recent report by local rights groups. The Cambodian Human Rights Task Force said in its report that some 1,400 families had been pushed from their land by ...
Kong Sothanarith
http://www.voacambodia.com/content/lumber-tycoon-denies-allegations-of-illegal-deforestation-cambodia/1794954.html
Environment Ministry Denies Issuing New ELC to Logging Firm
The Ministry of Environment on Thursday denied that a private agro-industry firm had been issued an “unofficial” land concession inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, as stated on Monday by the provincial governor. In response to claims by local officials that Daun Penh Agrico Co. Ltd. ...
Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/environment-ministry-denies-issuing-new-elc-to-logging-firm-47675/
Hun Sen’s Student Volunteers to Resume Land-Titling Program
The government is set to start re-deploying student volunteers to measure and demarcate plots of land across the country as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme, which was briefly suspended ahead of July’s national election. The program was announced by the prime minister in ...
Kuch Naren and Ben Woods
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/hun-sens-student-volunteers-to-resume-land-titling-program-47528/
Official Says Legality of Sanctuary Logging Unknown
A district-level Environment Ministry official in Ratanakkiri province on Wednesday claimed that he had no way to determine the legality of logging operations by firms with private land concessions inside the province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary. The claim by Chou Sopheak, director of Lumphat district’s environment department, ...
Aun Pheap and Ben Woods
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/official-says-legality-of-sanctuary-logging-unknown-47518/
ELC in Nature Preserve Is Illegal, Government Spokesman Says
An “unofficial” land concession granted earlier this year to an agro-industry firm that has logged luxury hardwood in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary is in violation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 2012 moratorium on new economic land concessions (ELCs), a government spokesman said Tuesday. Phay Siphan, ...
Aun Pheap and Ben Woods
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/elc-in-nature-preserve-is-illegal-government-spokesman-says-47379/
Preah Vihear Residents Protest Future Eviction
Fifty-three families in Preah Vihear province’s Kulen district on Sunday protested outside the headquarters of a Malaysian company that is threatening to clear villagers’ farmland to make way for a rubber plantation, rights groups and officials said Monday. The families, who live in Srayong commune’s Srayong ...
Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/preah-vihear-residents-protest-future-eviction-47273/
Cambodian Villagers Demand Land Activist’s Release Ahead of Appeal
More than 200 villagers involved in three different land disputes gathered in front of Cambodia’s top court in the capital Tuesday to demand the release of jailed rights campaigner Yorm Bopha ahead of her final appeal against a criminal conviction later this week. Yorm Bopha’s impending ...
Radio Free Asia Staff
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/appeal-11192013183435.html
Phnom Penh’s 5 New Districts Create Fears of Gerrymandering
Phnom Penh City Hall’s plans to undertake the largest redrawing of the city’s administrative boundaries in decades, by creating five new districts before May’s district and city-level council elections, is likely an effort to gerrymander voting constituencies, a senior opposition party member said Monday. Municipal government ...
Alex Willemyns
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/phnom-penhs-5-new-districts-create-fears-of-gerrymandering-47269/
River-widening project to displace 600 families
More than 600 families living along the Siem Reap riverside are to be relocated at the beginning of next year by the government, a top provincial official said yesterday. The families will be evicted as part of a provincial government plan to widen the river to ...
Thik Kaliyann
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/river-widening-project-displace-600-families
Intervention sought in land dispute
Twelve representatives of 50 families in Preah Vihear’s Kulen district are seeking aid from a rights group after being summonsed to court last week over a land dispute with a Malaysian company. The villagers gathered in Adhoc’s provincial office in Srayong commune yesterday to draft and ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/intervention-sought-land-dispute
Preah Vihear temple: Disputed land Cambodian, court rules
Cambodia should have sovereignty over disputed land around the Preah Vihear temple on the border with Thailand, the UN’s highest court has ruled. The International Court of Justice in the Hague said Thailand must withdraw any soldiers from the area. Cambodia sought a clarification of the ...
BBC News Staff
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24897805
Thai Sugar Firm Meets With Koh Kong Evictees
Koh Kong Sugar has offered to settle its yearslong dispute with Cambodian families who accuse its plantations of stealing their land, but the farmers remain wary of being able to secure a fair deal. The firm, a subsidiary of Thailand’s Khon Kaen Sugar Industry Limited (KSL), ...
Zsombor Peter and Chhorn Chansy
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/thai-sugar-firm-meets-with-koh-kong-evictees-46811/
Coca-Cola To Probe Seven-Year-Old Cambodian Land Grab Case
Declaring that it has “zero tolerance” towards land grabbing, Coca-Cola has agreed to investigate a long running case in Cambodia where villagers are seeking court action against a company accused of seizing their land to make way for plantations linked to the supply of sugar ...
Eurasia Review News Staff
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09112013-coca-cola-probe-seven-year-old-cambodian-land-grab-case/
Court asked to cancel warrant for 'Crocodile Grandma'
Defence lawyers representing well-known businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary, also known as the “Crocodile Grandma”, requested the Court of Appeal to consider voiding the tycoon’s warrant for arrest yesterday. Sokountheary was convicted for encroaching on public land and sentenced in absentia to four years and six months in ...
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea and Amelia Woodside
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/court-asked-cancel-warrant-crocodile-grandma
Boeung Kak villagers closer to land titles
It’s taken years of waiting – and protesting – but families in the capital’s Boeung Kak community yesterday saw City Hall officials measure land in their villages. Representatives of the city were deployed yesterday to villages 24, 22 and 6 to demarcate land as a step ...
Khouth Sophak Chakrya
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/boeung-kak-villagers-closer-land-titles-linkfix