Land tenure and land titling

Preah Vihear provincial governor Oum Mara has sent a letter to inform Interior Minister Sar Kheng that he is ordering an NGO to close its local offices, on the grounds that the organization is inciting villagers to destroy sugarcane farmed by a Chinese company. In the ...

A villager involved in a dispute over 684 hectares of land with Pailin provincial governor Y Chhien claimed Thursday that in 1999 Mr. Chhien and a senior military officer distributed axes and farm tools to the families now on the land. Pailin Provincial Court on Wednesday ...

Police in Preah Vihear province say they have uncovered more evidence of child labor on a Chinese-owned sugarcane plantation and will send the case to court if further investigation confirms their preliminary findings. A former employee of the Lan Feng plantation filed a complaint last month ...

Pailin Provincial Court on Wednesday charged four villagers with infringing on public property because they cultivated 684 hectares of land that the court says belongs to the state, but which villagers claim to have farmed legally since 1999, a rights worker said. The villagers were arrested ...

Police officials confirmed Tuesday that the villagers involved in a land dispute with a company allegedly owned by Pailin Governor Y Chhien were arrested late Monday and said that one more villager was detained Tuesday. Sath Sin, deputy police chief of Pailin province’s Sala Krao district, ...

A wildlife sanctuary in Takeo province may provide refuge for birds, but it’s a source of contention for 68 Khmer Krom families who stand to lose their livelihood. The local fisheries administration wants to evict villagers from the state-owned sanctuary in Borei Cholsar district, but the ...

More than half a million Cambodians have been affected by land conflicts involving the government since 2000, with more than 2,000 families across the country subjected to largely violent land grabs during the first few months of this year, local rights group Licadho said Tuesday. The ...

Ethnic Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri province have once again accused the Vietnamese owners of a rubber plantation of illegally logging their ancestral forests in a complaint filed with rights group Adhoc. A district official, however, said the plantation owner, Company 72, was granted an extension on ...

Following a scathing report from its internal watchdog about the resettlement of thousands of Cambodian families affected by a national railway rehabilitation project that it is funding, the Asian Development Bank has agreed with the government on an action plan for further compensation, it said ...

A company in Mondulkiri’s Sok San commune has been gradually cutting down a community forest, pushing more than 100 families off their land, villagers said yesterday. “That land belongs to us, the government granted it to us in 1999. But the company invaded and let us ...

A Chinese developer with a “family-like” relationship to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit has accelerated construction at its $5 billion resort – ostensibly cancelled by royal decree in 2010 – in a protected national park in Preah Sihanouk province. The 3,300-hectare Golden Silver Gulf resort ...

Activists from the Boeung Kak, Borei Keila and Thmor Kol communities were on board a bus on Saturday night when a bullet was fired into the windscreen, their representatives said yesterday. Bo Chorvy, 39, from Boeung Kak, said more than 40 people were on the bus ...

On the shore of Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district overlooking a cluster of islands, a flourishing new golf course lies vacant but for a handful of workers tending its empty greens. The Romanesque hotel behind it, replete with a bold central dome, luxury VIP suites ...

Logging by Vietnamese-owned concessionaire Company 72 has once again spilled the boundaries of its land in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district, this time without paying proper taxes to the Forestry Administration (FA), local forest conservation activist Romas Svang said yesterday. ...

Fifty families who have lived in squalid conditions at Borei Keila in the capital’s Prampi Makara district since they were evicted and their homes destroyed have accepted City Hall’s offer of temporary shelter at the site, their representatives said yesterday. Evictee Sar Son said the 50 ...

Soft-drinks giant PepsiCo has pledged to take a “zero-tolerance” approach to land grabs by its sugar suppliers. In a statement posted on the company’s website on Tuesday, it said the move came in response to a campaign by Oxfam, which targeted Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday heard the case of a woman charged with defaming mining magnate and RCAF Lieutenant General Nim Meng in relation to a land dispute in Preah Sihanouk province. Presiding Judge Kim Dany said that Sok Neang Gek was being charged ...

When he assumed leadership of Phnom Penh municipality in May 2013, Pa Socheatvong vowed to be a governor who would get things done. His predecessor, Kep Chuktema, oversaw the filling in of Boeng Kak lake and the mass eviction of its residents. A similar scenario unfolded ...

Seven Chinese nationals were prevented from entering the Areng Valley in Koh Kong province yesterday as locals continued their standoff with the operator of the Stung Cheay Areng dam concession, villagers at the scene said. Ven Vorn, a community leader among those blocking a road used ...

Dozens of ethnic minority Kreung villagers protested outside the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court on Monday, demanding the release of a fellow Kreung man presently in pretrial detention for setting fire to a pile of wood on land the community sold in 2007 but claims it was ...

Desperate ethnic minority villagers in Koh Kong province’s Areng Valley have blocked a road that was to be used to transport heavy machinery onto their lands to start construction of the highly controversial Stung Cheay Areng dam, according to villagers and officials. Three Chinese employees of ...

European Union Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht will visit Cambodia this week, the European Commission announced, with rights groups hoping that land grabbing related to sugar plantations will be high on the agenda. Following bilateral meetings in Brussels last week between Cambodia and the EU during ...

A representative for villagers living in Ratanakkiri’s O’Chum district who say that buyers from a local company failed to uphold a 2007 land deal has been charged and temporarily detained by local authorities for allegedly destroying private property. Haing Noeur, 50, was detained on Saturday after ...

The World Bank on Thursday asked Phnom Penh municipal officials to do more to help the thousands of families the city evicted from the Boeng Kak neighborhood to make way for a CPP senator’s private real estate project, and is now waiting for a reply, ...