News

Economic land concessions (ELCs) benefit only a minority, the human rights consequences of the concessions are stark, and Cambodia’s sustainable economic development is threatened by the practice. U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi told the Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday. Mr. Subedi cited uneven access to ...

The Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court has summoned four villagers embroiled in a long-running land dispute over charges of alleged incitement  and violence involving a company owned by the wife of government minister, a court official said yesterday. Two summoned vllagers, from Kompong Tralach district’s Ta Ches commune, faced similar ...

A Malaysian company has been granted three tracts of land totaling more than 23,000 hectares for oil palm and rubber plantations in Preah Vihear province, according to documents submitted to the Malaysian stock exchange. The acquisition flout the legal maximum of concession land that a single ...

Investment in the Cambodian construction sector reached US$1.38 billion in the first seven months of 2012, an 85-percent rise over the same period last year, according to figures from the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction. During the January to July period this year, the ministry ...

Economic land concessions strewn over the remote Western Siem Pang forest, in Stung Treng province, are threatening the survival of Cambodia’s national bird, the giant ibis, a report reveals. The forest, flanking the Kingdom’s border with Laos,  is home to five critically endangered bird species, yet ...

Villagers living in raised houses on the capital’s Boeung Tumpun lake fear their eviction is on the horizon as sand pumping increases at the site, they said yesterday. In recent months, heavy machinery has been at work at the Boeung Tumpun site. Sand pumping has ...

Once a majority ethnic minority province where Tampoun, Jarai and Kreung speakers outnumbered the Khmer, Ratanakkiri is now one of the country’s fastest growing provinces where inhabitants of lowland provinces, particularly Kompong Cham, Svay Rieng and Prey Veng, are flocking in search of a better ...

Ethnic Bunong villagers in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Chreada district are bitterly divided over how best to protect their ancestral land amid efforts by authorities to map it in preparation for property titles. Bosra commune chief Yoeth Sarin said that since student volunteers-deployed across the country as ...

Fifty Boeng Kak and Borei Keila residents rallied outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday and submitted a petition demanding the release of two anti-eviction activists they say have been jailed on trumped-up charges. Four representatives from the two groups were allowed to enter the ministry yesterday, ...

Free of the police resistance that thwarted their march the previous day, about 65 Borei Keila and Boeung Kak community supporters marched to the Ministry of Justice yesterday in another effort to have land dispute activists Tim Sakmony and Yorm Bopha freed from pre-trial detention ...

High-profile Phnom Penh businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to return 33 hectares of prime land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to her company, which lost the rights to it when the government claimed the land in July. Sokountheary said she ...

Japanese Ambassador Kuroki Masafumi met with human rights workers on Friday to discuss land rights in Cambodia, particularly implementation of the law and the use of force in evictions, two of the participants at the meeting said. Adhoc President Thun Saray, Licadho President Pung Chhiv Kek and ...

The U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik, has waded in to the furor surrounding the imprisonment this week of two anti-eviction activists from Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities, posing with a poster calling for the release of the two women. Yorm Bopha, 32, ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday questioned three Borei Keila residents about a complaint they filed six month ago against the property development firm Phanimex from evicting them from their land. In March, a group of Borei Keila residents filed their complaint against Phanimex’s owner ...

Members of Bunong ethnic minority forest group in Kratie province who accused local police of barring their community patrols in search of illegal logging were told by a Forestry Administration official yesterday that they had no authority to operate. Mr. [Peit] Kun Pedor [head of ...

Police and court officials yesterday questioned, charged and imprisoned elderly woman involved in the long-running land dispute at the Borei Keila community in Phnom Penh, a day after an anti-eviction protester from Boeng Kak community met a similar fate. In both cases, police and court officials ...

A 65-year-old woman who has spent months sleeping under a staircase at Borei Keila yesterday became the second land-rights activist sent to Prey Sar prison in little more than 24 hours. Phnom Penh Municipal Court investigating judge Ly Leabmeng questioned villager representative Tim Sakmony for almost ...

Contractors hired by Cambodian land brokers bulldozed through four hectares of villagers’ crops in Poipet town on Monday, breaching a truce contract that protected the villagers’ land until January 1 next year. According to the contract, the families residing on land claimed by 11 independent Cambodian ...

The government earned just over $25 million in rental fees from state land leased to private companies in the first six months of the year, according to new figures from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. While the data shows that earning have risen, critics say ...

A okyo-based human rights group has called on the government to cease forced evictions and branded the use of armed forces against ordinary citizens defending their land as an :unforgivable human rights violation.” Human Rights Now (HRN), which in June sent a team of Japanese investigators ...

A Council of Ministers official and her husband who were arrested in July for obstructing a land-titling initiative spearheaded by Prime Minister Hun Sen have received bail, Stung Treng Provincial Court prosecutor Chroeng Khmao said Friday. Meas Sokhon, who works at the Council of the Ministers’ ...

The government has reclassified 23,182 hectares of state land in Preah Vihear province for private development by three agro-industry firms, paving the way for them to secure economic land concessions (ELCs). Reclassification of state public land to state private land is a key step toward establishing ...

Taiwanese food supplier Ve Wong, one of two sugar company owners locked in a long-running battle with villagers in Koh Kong’s Sre Ambel district, has made an eyebrow-raising offer – to give the disputed land back. The company’s offer, posted to the non-profit Business and Human ...

Villagers who allege authorities and armed forces in Preah Vihear province have been burning their houses and clearing farmland of 400 families, to create a social land concession, protested yesterday, calling on intervention from Prime Minister Hun Sen. The 5,557-hectare SLC in Kulen district’s Srayang village ...