Land tenure and land titling

Prime Minister Hun Sen made a bold pledge to the hundreds of thousands of Cambodian villagers fighting companies for their homes yesterday, ordering that in every economic land concession across the country, space must be provided for those they would displace. But last month’s royal book ...

The U.S. has called on the Cambodian government to give fair legal treatment to the 13 women recently jailed for demonstrating against their evictions from the Boeng Kak area, according to a U.S. State Department spokeswoman. Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong met with U.S. Secretary of ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday gave authorities six months to end a spate of land disputes pitting developers against villagers that have sparked increasingly violent protests. Hun Sen ordered officials to visit contested areas and issue deeds to families facing illegal evictions, a move ...

A Cambodian court is asked to re-examine the jailing of Boeung Kak land activists. Cambodian authorities have asked a court to review the jailing of 13 women involved in a land dispute as protests over their sentences escalated with over 100 demonstrators threatening Thursday to march ...

The case of the 13 imprisoned Boeung Kak women is in the hands of the Appeal Court now, the women’s defence lawyer said yesterday. Lawyer Harm Sunrith said that Phnom Penh Municipal Court had sent the case to the Appeal Court on Tuesday, adding that he ...

Seventeen villagers from Banteay Meanchey province’s O’Chrou district filed a complaint yesterday with the rights group Adhoc after their homes were allegedly unlawfully bulldozed in June last year. ...

The Ministry of Justice has called on the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to re-examine whether the decision to sentence 13 Boeung Kak women to two and a half years in jail was just, according to a letter obtained by the Post yesterday. The letter was ...

The Koh Kong Provincial Court summonsed 23 villagers from Chikor Leu commune to present themselves – and any relevant documents – at a July 12 hearing with representatives of the two sugar companies that bulldozed their farmland and evicted them from their homes in 2006. ...

Banteay Meanchey’s provincial environment department, a local company and two bulldozer drivers, have sued four villagers in Banteay Meanchey province over their alleged role in a violent land protest in February. The villagers, who have been summoned for questioning this week, stand accused of intentional property ...

The 13 Boeung Kak lake women imprisoned after a three-hour trial on May 24 were tried unjustly on charges that had no basis, according to a Cambodian Center for Human Rights report released yesterday. Ou Virak said the women’s sentencing, which came two days after ...

Residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community yesterday said they visited four former neighbors now serving jail terms in Prey Sar prison for demonstrating against CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin’s real estate project and urged the women to end their reported hunger strike. A prison official, however, insisted there was ...

Sixteen ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province have claimed that they are being forced from their land after a commune chief signed it away, and that commune borders have been redrawn to dispossess them. On Friday, the families, who have been living on 30 hectares of ...

Four Boeung Kak women convicted to two-and-a-half years in Prey Sar prison went on a hunger strike yesterday as their husbands and children led a 200-strong rally outside, the husband of imprisoned village representative Tep Vanny told the Post. ...

Boeng Kak protesters continued their fight for the release of 14 women and one man imprisoned since May 24, delivering a petition to the Senate and the Japanese Embassy on Friday that they hope will spur new intervention in the long-running land dispute. More than 100 ...

In Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district there is a 133-hectare mound of sand that was once a lake. It took nearly four years to fill Boeng Kak with that sand. On the southern perimeter of the massive sand pit sit two large billboards. On those billboards there ...

Land issues will continue to be a serious problem for Cambodia’s government, given the high number of continued crackdowns, arrests and violence, analysts say. “If an issue is covered and unsolved, one day it will explode,” Lao Monghay, an independent political analyst, told “Hello VOA,” in ...

In Washington yesterday, Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker Mu Sochua lobbied US government officials to withhold military funding to the Cambodian government if it does not meet two political demands ahead of her meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday. Mu Sochua said she would ...

The Kratie Provincial Court has released on bail five of the eight people charged after a military-style operation by security forces on a small village alleged to be the home of a secessionist movement, a court official said yesterday. On May 16, a 14-year-old girl was ...

Criticism of the Cambodian People’s Party has been overt in recent months as those from Boeung Kak lake and Borei Keila have taken to the streets to vent their frustration and anger at their housing situations. But an equivalent backlash at the polls was nowhere to ...

While preliminary results from Sunday’s commune elections indicate that the SRP took a thumping in urban centers—the SRP lost all three of their commune chief positions in Phnom Penh—the party appears to have made gains in rural areas locked in land disputes. Though the figures are ...

Opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua departed for the U.S. yesterday in hopes of pressuring Washington into suspending all military aid to Cambodia over the government’s use of soldiers to defend the land holdings of powerful business families. “We have enough evidence that soldiers are providing protection to ...

Thirteen Boeung Kak women locked in Prey Sar prison after a three-hour trial on May 24 are threatening to go on a hunger strike in protest, an opposition Sam Rainsy lawmaker said yesterday. A team of SRP MPs, including Mu Sochua, was granted access to the ...

Just days ahead of Sunday’s commune elections, Prime Minister Hun Sen again broke his pledge to remain silent during his party’s campaign period and sought to ease the concerns of communities whose livelihoods have been threatened by land disputes. Speaking to villagers through a mobile telephone, ...

Children of imprisoned Boeung Kak lake women pleaded for their mothers’ release outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday. The demonstration, which included more than 200 Boeung Kak residents and activist monk Loun Savath, was held on the eve of International Children’s Day. It also coincided with more ...