Details on cancelled concessions sought
A week after Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that he would be cancelling an unknown number of economic land concessions in Prey Lang forest, activists called for details on the annulled concessions, saying such revocations would be meaningless unless they could be policed. …
On September 28, the Prime Minister said in a Council of Ministers meeting that he would be cancelling a number of concessions in the 3,600 square-kilometer, highly bio-diverse Prey Lang forest. ELCs have proliferated in Prey Lang in recent years, often skirting provisions in the land law and threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of mainly Kuy ethnic minority residents facing the fallout of mass deforestation.
In the statement sent to the Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture, members of the Prey Lang Community Network commended the recent announcement but called for greater transparency regarding the cancelled concessions. They also noted that, thus far, “not one of the companies has stopped their actions at all”. …
