ការជួលដីសាធារណៈ

Evictees wearing small model houses on their heads to symbolize their struggles marched to the National Assembly yesterday to ask authorities to intervene to stop more forced evictions. About 400 representatives of 40 communities across the capital joined human rights activists at the former Dey Krahorm eviction site ...

The effects of the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009 on the Cambodian economy showed how perilous having a narrow economic base can be. Since the Kingdom’s economy is dependent on a few “pillars”-garments, construction, tourism and agriculture-downturns in any of those sectors can ...

Thirty families uprooted by Cambodia’s railway rehabilitation project have filed a complaint with Australia’s highest human rights body, alleging rights abuses as a result of the partially AusAid-funded rail project. The complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission was made on behalf of the families by NGOs Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive ...

Hun Sen’s titling plan was announced in June and is intended to resolve land conflict stemming from the Khmer Rouge regime’s ban on private property in the 1970s. Around 1,600 students have been sent around the country to demarcate 4.4 million acres of uncontested territory, which ...

A week after Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that he would be cancelling an unknown number of economic land concessions in Prey Lang forest, activists called for details on the annulled concessions, saying such revocations would be meaningless unless they could be policed. On September ...

UN Human Rights Envoy to Cambodia Prof Surya Subedi has taken a strong exception to the scathing criticism of him by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, saying it was unbecoming of a person of the prime minister´s stature to “descend to the personal level”. In a ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday implicated his cousin as being behind an attempt to sell land in Svay Rieng province that was set aside by the government in 2009 to provide hundreds of land titles to villagers on a social land concession. Speaking at a ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday appeared to add his voice to the strong government reaction against criticism from U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi. Mr. Subedi last month delivered reports on human rights and economic land concessions in Cambodia to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. His ...

Villagers took an increasingly vocal stand on land issues during rare opportunities to speak with National Assembly members this past year, according to the National Democratic Institute. During the most recent town hall-style Constituency Dialogues, started by NDI in 2004 to promote contact between assembly members ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court will appoint a new judge to process complaints filed by ethnic Jarai minority villagers against a firm owned by Keat Kolney, the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, regarding a land dispute that has now dragged on for more than five ...

Land governance policies in Asia, especially concessions made to private companies, are leaving the region’s poorest vulnerable to human rights abuses, experts say. “Land-grabbing by the rich and powerful continues,” Suson Bunsak, executive secretary of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, said at the recent Asia ...

Hundreds of families living near Phnom Penh International Airport are facing imminent eviction from heir homes as security preparations begin for world leaders who will attend next month’s Asean and East Asia summits. A total of 387 families living on 6.3 hectares of land to the ...

Protester’s from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities demonstrated outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday by employing a new tactic: locking themselves up inside a cage. With about 100 people in attendance, two protesters crouched inside a small cage to protest against the detention ...

Villagers accused of incitement in a long-running land dispute with a company owned by the wife of a government minister did not show up for scheduled questioning yesterday at the Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court, officials said. On September 17, KDC Development company, owned by Chea Kheng, the wife of Minister of Industry, ...

Despite the government embarking on a nationwide land-titling program, there is still little space for communities affected by economic land concessions to voice their concerns with the government, members of civil society said at a conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. “We’ve observed that there is limited ...

Cambodia is among the tropical countries whose forests are being cleared using increasingly advanced methods to feed a growing global trade in illegal timber worth at least $30 billion a year, according to a new report. The report, Green carbon, black trade, a joint effort by ...

Global development group Oxfam on Wednesday called on the World Bank to suspend financing for large-scale land acquisitions to ensure that its practices do not encourage foreign land grabs in developing countries. Oxfam urged Jim Yong Kim, the lender’s new president, to announce a six-month moratorium ...

A UN envoy has called on the international community to pay more attention to human rights issues in Cambodia. The call comes amid ongoing land disputes and legal harassment of activists. Surya Subedi is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia and has submitted ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday that there was a lack of staff at the Ministry of Land Management, and suggested that the students in his land measuring program be utilized to rectify the shortage. Mr. Hun Sen made the comments while visiting Pursat province’s Phnom ...

Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday summonsed three well-known rights workers and a journalist to appear for questioning next week over years-old incitement charges in connection with a long-standing land dispute. In a summons signed by deputy provincial prosecutor Chea Sopheak, the court ordered Radio Free Asia journalist Sok Ratha, ...

A Cambodian court has jailed a 71-year-old broadcaster and land rights campaigner for 20 years after finding him guilty of leading an anti-state rebellion, a verdict condemned by activists as the latest crackdown on human rights. Three judges at the Phnom Penh court convicted Sonando, who ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday amended a directive on economic land concession (ELC) taxes, which will mean that owners of agricultural ELCs must pay tax of $5 on every hectare of land after the fifth year of ownership, according to the Council of Ministers. Mr. ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday ordered investors in economic land concessions (ELC) to pay tax from the sixth year of their investment in a bid to speed up their agricultural production. The premier decided that investment companies receiving ELCs must pay the land tax ...

Kampong Chhnang villagers who have been hit with a new lawsuit over property that they and the wife of a senior government official both claim said yesterday that coming to court would be impossible, as they did not have a defense lawyer and needed time to locate ...