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Kampong Thom province About 500 frustrated villagers, citing the authorities’ inaction as their motivation, rode some 250 motorbikes into Prey Lang forest over the weekend in yet another effort to combat illegal logging they say is decimating the area. The villagers from four provinces surrounding Prey Lang ...

A total of 36 protests involving economic land concessions ended with violent intervention from armed authorities last year, according to data released this week by local rights group Adhoc. More than a fifth of the cases involved the long-simmering Boeng Kak lake evictions, in which ...

More than 2 million of the Kingdom’s nearly 18 million hectares of land – roughly 12 per cent – was given out to 225 private companies in economic concessions last year, according to an annual report released by rights group Adhoc yesterday. The concessions put 606 ...

Nearly 60,000 people were forcibly evicted from their homes last year alone, often being moved to inadequate relocation sites where they face unemployment and rising debt levels, according to a report by rights group Adhoc released yesterday. A total of 59,904 people from 127 communities were ...

The government has already granted roughly 300,000 hectares in economic land concessions (ELC) so far this year, according to data released by a local rights group yesterday. The figure, which amounts to 40 percent of the total land concessions granted in all of 2011, has ...

The march of a thousand villagers in Ratanakkiri province’s Lum­phat district, planned for yesterday, was cancelled after provincial authorities promised to help settle their long-running land dispute. Adhoc coordinator in Ratanakkiri Pen Bunnar said the provincial governor had appealed to villagers in a meeting over the ...

A mother from Kampong Chhnang’s Rolea Ba’ier district filed a complaint with the rights group Adhoc yesterday, claiming her daughter, a maid in Malaysia, was being forced to take drugs and work without enough food. Im Meoun, 52, said her daughter Phon Sophea, 20, had been ...

Rights group Adhoc said yesterday that a large-scale march in Ratanakkiri province involving hundreds of ethnic minority villagers caught in land disputes would go on as planned later this month despite the government’s refusal to approve the march. The provincial coordinator for Adhoc, Pen Bonnar, said ...

The number of families claiming to have lost contact with relatives working overseas has seen a significant increase in recent months, three human rights groups said Thursday. Local rights groups Adhoc and Licadho and the legal aid association Cambodian Legal Education Center (CLEC), said that ...

One garment worker was killed and 30 others seriously injured on Wednesday when the truck in which they were travelling crashed in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district, a police official said yesterday. Free Trade Union (FTU) President Chea Mony said all 58 women were workers ...

The number of migrant workers abused by their foreign employers abroad more than doubled in 2011, rights group Adhoc announced yesterday before calling on the government to improve its efforts to protect both migrant and repatriated workers. “It’s a dangerous sign,” said Adhoc president Thun Saray ...

If the government continues to grant economic land and mining concessions at the current rate, there will be no more arable land left in the country to give away within one year, a researcher from the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights said yesterday. Pointing to the ...

The total number of land concessions offered by the government to private agro-industrial firms hit 1.19 million hectares, or 13.5 percent of Cambodia’s total land mass, a senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday. The government figure undermines figures released late last year ...

Two days after Ratanakiri province villagers took hostage a group of local officials who were clearing land for a rubber plantation, authorities downplayed the incident, saying they had no plans to press charges and that “the problem has been settled.” A representative of the rubber company, ...

More than 300 villagers from two districts in Kampong Speu province joined forces yesterday to protest in front of the provincial court over two land disputes, vowing to continue until authorities resolved them and released a mother of seven jailed last month after she had ...

The director of TTY rubber company, whose guards shot four land protestors in Kratie province last week, said he will give land back to the protesting villagers, backtracking on his vow Friday not to give up any of the land granted to him by the ...

The number of criminal charges meted out to villagers embroiled in land disputes rose by more than 50 percent in 2011 compared to the previous year, according to figures released by the rights group Adhoc yesterday. The rights group found that the courts charged 475 villagers ...

More than 11,000 families were affected by government-granted economic land concessions in 2011, nearly 3,000 more families than were affected the previous year, according to figures released yesterday by local rights group Licadho. A total of more than 2 million hectares of the country’s forests and ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday ordered an end to all private land deals inside the country’s protected areas and warned local businessmen and officials against making such illegal deals. “All official paperwork in connection with natural protected areas is invalid,” he said while speaking at the ...

The father of an 18-year-old girl who he said had been missing in Malaysia for more than a year, has filed a complaint with the rights group Adhoc against the labour firm that sent her there. Minh Ngi, 46, from Preah Vihear province, said yesterday the ...

The government failed to evaluate social and environmental impacts before granting economic land concessions to private companies, while officials and company staff used the courts to intimidate residents during land disputes, representatives of NGOs said at a conference in the capital yesterday. “The courts are not ...

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 ...

The government has granted more than 7 million hectares of land to private companies through concessions since 2008, with 222 private companies claiming more than 2 million hectares alone in economic land concessions, rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Ouch Leng, head of Adhoc’s land program, said ...

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 ...