ដីធ្លី

The Council of Ministers yesterday backed Prime Minister Hun Sen’s plan to rebuild the flattened homes of 49 families who were violently evicted earlier this month in Preah Sihanouk province’s Stung Hav district. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Hun Sen dismissed the Council of Ministers’ ...

Debt levels among the more than 1,000 families being evicted by a $142.6 million railway project bankrolled by Australia and the Asia Development Bank (ADB) have reached “crisis” proportions and require major intervention, according to a U.S resettlement expert who was hired by the ADB ...

Three ethnic Jarai minority communities passed a crucial hurdle on the way to obtaining communal land titles in government-sanctioned ceremonies this week. But a human-rights activist tempered the celebration, saying mass deforestation in the province had already stripped most of the land the villagers are ...

CONSTRUCTION is progressing on a $1.5 million baby-products factory that will be among the largest in the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ). Combi (Cambodia), which owns the factory, announced the plans for its new facility in an online job listing yesterday. The five-hectare factory was scheduled ...

It was not the hero’s welcome that greeted Mam Sonando when more than a thousand boisterous supporters cheered his release from Prey Sar prison Friday and lifted the popular radio station owner onto their shoulders for an impromptu parade. But for the three unheralded farmers caught ...

Yet another resident of Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district came forward yesterday to join “Crocodile Grandmother” Chhin Sokoutheary in accusing city and district officials of issuing a false sub-decree to acquire land in the vicinity of Pong Peay Lake in Phnom Penh Thmey commune. Chea Savean, ...

Twenty-seven families in Oddar Meanchey’s Trapaing Prasat district filed a complaint with Hun Sen’s cabinet and the rights group Adhoc on Monday, maintaining that soldiers have been preventing them from farming since October 2012. A representative of the villagers, Soeung Sophea, 59, said yesterday that troops ...

Hun Sen asked authorities to maintain the pristine beaches along coastal provinces by not allowing any industrial factories to be constructed on or near them. The comment was aimed towards an agreement signed by Cambodian and Chinese companies late last month to build a $2.3 ...

Hun Sen announced that 1.5 mln hectares of Economic Land Concessions were granted to private companies. 1.2 mln hectares, 80 percent, of the concessions are used for rubber plantation sector. He said, that Cambodia still maintain[s] 9.2 mln hectares of forest land even though 1.5 mln ...

The Ministry of Tourism and the French TV channel TF1 have signed a deal on a “2013 action plan” that will promote Cambodia’s beach tourism. The agreement was inked yesterday by Tourism Minister Thong Khon and Franck Firmin Guion, the president of Adventure Line Product-ions (ALP). The plan ...

The Asian Development Bank has refused to release a critical study on the impacts its $141.6 million railway project is having on thousands of Cambodian families because disclosure of the report could hurt its relationship with the government, an ADB spokeswoman said. Raising concerns about the ...

Nearly 50 families in Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district will finally receive official titles after repeatedly requesting – and being denied – student volunteers to measure their land, the villagers’ commune chief said yesterday. Koh Pol commune chief Ev Kosal, who participated in the meeting ...

Fifty Tampuon ethnic minority families protested yesterday in front of the Soeung Commune Hall in Bakeo district against their commune chief, who they allege sold land that belonged to the Ratanakkiri community. In a complaint filed to rights group Adhoc yesterday, the families claim that commune ...

Activists in Kratie province’s Snuol district seized seven chainsaws over the weekend and collected evidence that four police checkpoints were used to solicit bribes from illegal loggers, representatives of the network said yesterday. After scouring thousands of hectares of protected forest from Friday through yesterday, the ...

The Prime Minister ordered 49 family’s houses to be rebuild [sic] at Keo Pus Village, in the Steung Hav District of Sihanoukville, after they had been demolished by authorities earlier this month. He also ordered Bin Chhin, Chairman of the National Authority for Land Dispute ...

Prominent businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary yesterday announced her intention to sue Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema for falsifying documents saying she illegally occupied state land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district in a bid to steal the land and develop a sports stadium on it. Sokountheary, 57 ...

Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a ...

Faced with widespread evictions and opaque private sector deals, activists in Cambodia are calling on the government to be more open and transparent about land concessions, beef up mechanisms for resolving land disputes, and abide by the rule of law. It is estimated that ...

Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque. But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, ...

Eight members of the Prey Lang forest community network, summonsed to the Kampong Thom provincial court yesterday to answer a 2011 complaint, rejected its accusation that they had caused intentional damage by uprooting cassava plants belonging to Ol Ratha and maintained they had acted only ...

People applying for land titles in urban areas are at a huge disadvantage compared to their rural counterparts due to the higher percentage of property disputes with powerful officials and businesspeople in the country’s cities, a new report on land registration has found. To improve ...

Beehive radio owner Mam Sonando, along with two others appeared in the Court of Appeals Thursday to listen to their verdicts. The sentence was changed from five years to eight months imprisonment, but will be released on March 16, 2013 for having spent the same amount ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos to help curb the illegal trade in rosewood after Cambodia’s bloodiest year yet for logging-related border shootings. Speaking to reporters at Phnom Penh International Airport after the premier returned from a two-day meeting ...

Land prices in Preah Siahnouk province have risen slightly, by 5 to 10 per cent in early 2013, despite increasing numbers of tourists who have visited Cambodia and travelled to the province. Cheng Kheng, director of the CPL real estate company and president of Cambodian Valuers ...