Social development

Prime Minister Hun Sen will officially open the Chinese-made Kamchay dam in Kampot province today, the largest hydropower dam to date to operate in Cambodia and capable of supplying an extra 193.2 megawatts of energy. Environmental and human rights groups yesterday criticized the dam’s builder and ...

The water and environment ministers of the four Mekong River Commission (MRC) countries are scheduled to meet in Siem Reap today and tomorrow to reach a key decision on the future – some say the survival – of the Mekong River. The ministers – from Cambodia, ...

Hundreds of people whose land has been swallowed by a giant Chinese tourism project on the coast of Koh Kong province will attempt to demonstrate their grievances today by blocking national roads 4 and 48, villagers and human rights workers said Protesters have been resisting China’s ...

At least 20 Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand have had their passports confiscated by a Thai recruitment agency, while another 10 have gone missing after they fled the same agency fearing they would be trafficked to work on Thai fishing vessels, Human Rights Watch and ...

Rounding off a week that included two violent clashes with police and the charging and release of four protesters, Boeng Kak lake villagers yesterday daubed paper sheets with their blood in a symbolic call to end what they consider judicial intimidation. About 50 villagers gathered at ...

The Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA) plans to propose a set of measures to the government that would put the association in charge of improving protection for Cambodian maids working in Malaysia. A human rights worker, however, disapproved of the plan because it only involved ...

Prison directors across the country said yesterday they were eager to launch for-profit manufacturing programs following the expected passage of a controversial prison law that legalizes such schemes. Human rights groups, however, called on the government to strike the provision, saying that it would violate ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday charged four female Boeng Kak lake residents with insulting police and obstructing public officials during a protest that turned violent on Monday. Earlier in the day, dozens of residents were blocked by riot police from leaving the lake area, ...

Cambodia’s 2012 budget passed through the National Assembly yesterday unopposed, without a single question asked and no parliamentary debate in a situation the government, opposition and observers all said was unfortunate. It took just over three hours for the law to be passed, 86 to 0, ...

The Ministry of Land Management and Urban Planning announced yesterday that it will soon complete a new draft sub-decree that aims to guide and regulate urban development in towns and cities. Land and human rights groups, however, criticized the ministry for failing to consult them on ...

Amnesty International yesterday launched a report on land evictions in Cambodia that details the impact that government-bestowed economic land concessions have had on women, and sets out recommendations for the government in light of those findings. The new report, titled ‘Eviction and Resistance in Cambodia: Five ...

Three Oddar Meanchey province villagers were shot to death on Monday while logging on the Thai-Cambodian border, officials said yesterday, bringing the total number of border killings so far this year to 14 and drawing concern from human rights groups over the continuing bloodshed around ...

A group of international NGOs urged the Asian Development Bank (ADB) yesterday to press the government on abandoning its plans for a law regulating the country’s non-governmental groups despite a recent pledge to drop its most controversial provision. “The ADB should convince the Cambodian authorities to ...

A group of about 100 villagers who have been embroiled in a long-running land dispute in Kandal province’s Kandal Stung and Takhmau districts gathered in Phnom Penh yesterday to file a petition with foreign donors seeking help in resolving the dispute. The villagers – part of ...

A 54-year-old man in Kratie province’s Snuol district was crushed to death under trees felled on Tuesday morning by bulldozers belonging to Vietnamese rubber company Dy Nam, an official said. District governor Iv Saphum said that Khem Kan, a representative of 77 families involved in a ...

For the third time this week, Boeng Kak residents protested on Friday over claims that their land rights have been violated. More than 50 residents gathered outside the Srah Chak commune office to complain that a sub-decree issued by Prime Minister Hun Sen in August, ...

About 150 former Boeng Kak lake residents staged a protest at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park yesterday, demanding more compensation than they initially received when they were evicted from their homes to make way for a real estate project owned by the firm of a CPP ...

Kompong Thom provincial officials denied a media report yesterday that authorities had filed a legal complaint against two villagers and two human rights workers who campaigned in the province last week to demand protection for Prey Long forest ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) met yesterday with the representatives of families evicted or facing eviction to make way for an ADB-funded railway project, and defended itself against complaints that the project was pushing some of them deeper into poverty. The ADB has billed the $142 ...

A Ratanakkiri Provincial Court prosecutor yesterday summoned an ethnic minority Jarai man in O’Yadav district to explain to the court his allegations that local authorities had threatened to kill him for exposing a land-sale corruption racket. Romas Chhvang, 45, filed a complaint to the court at ...

After walking and camping in the jungle for more than a week, Tha Sros and hundreds of other villagers finally reached the winding red dirt road that lead to the rubber plantation of Vietnamese-owned CRCK company, which has cleared a vast 6,000-hectare swathe out of ...

Eight Cambodian suspected of illegally logging along the Thai-Cambodian border have been shot dead by Thai soldiers, and three others have been wounded in the month of October alone, human rights workers and officials said Friday. The latest figure brings the death toll so far this ...

Angered by the clearing of parts of Prey Long forest, several hundred indigenous minority villagers marched on a rubber plantation here in northern Kompong Thom province yesterday night and breached its gate in order to demand that the company stop cutting down trees in the ...

Military police in Ratanakiri province arrested an RCAF officer Monday evening for shooting a 20-year-old villager who was riding his motorcycle across land at the center of a long-running land dispute between ethnic minority villagers and rubber company DM Group, officials said yesterday. RCAF second lieutenant ...