ដីធ្លី
Prey Lang villagers on patrol
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 ...
Laos logging incident sees man shot, injured
A Cambodian man was injured last week after Lao authorities shot him while he was illegally logging rosewood in Laos’ Champasak district, near Stung Treng province, authorities said yesterday. Siem Pang district police chief Var Sophan told the Post yesterday that 27-year-old Sarin Da was accompanied ...
Drugs: our man in Cambodia
The inquiry that targeted Hun To, dubbed Operation Illipango, investigated the shipment of heroin into Australia from Cambodia in loads of timber. Hun To, a nephew of Prime Minister Hun Sen, is a powerful and feared figure in Cambodia. He was once considered a close business ...
http://www.theage.com.au/national/investigations/drugs-our-man-in-cambodia-20120325-1vsiz.html
Violence in Land Disputes Up, Rights Group Says
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 ...
The great land giveaway
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 ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032355211/National-news/the-great-land-giveaway.html
60,000 Evicted in 2011 Alone; Majority From Phnom Penh
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 ...
Cambodia Surges Full-Speed Ahead With Land Concessions
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 ...
Boeng Kak Protesters Burn Effigies of ‘Bad Officials’
About 100 residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community took to the streets yesterday dragging straw and cloth effigies representing local officials who are attempting to evict them. ...
Mondolkiri Minority Group Granted Communal Land Title
Residents of an ethnic minority village in Mondolkiri’s Seima Protected Forest on Monday became the first community in the province to receive a communal land title, land management officials said yesterday. About 500 indigenous Bunong families from Andoung Kraloeng village in O’Reang district’s Sen Monorom commune ...
Hundreds of Villagers Block Road to Protest Land Clearing
About 400 villagers in Kratie province’s Snuol district blocked national road 76A for three hours yesterday to demand that authorities release a villager who had been arrested earlier in the day for allegedly inciting villagers embroiled in a land dispute, villagers and a district official ...
Fight Illegal Logging From Top, World Bank Says
Echoing longstanding calls from conservation groups, the World Bank says in a new report today that governments need to look past low-level criminals to tackle illegal logging and to follow the money the illicit trade generates instead. That trade of illegal logging generates up to $15 ...
Laos Sets Free Seven Cambodians; 16 Waiting
Laos yesterday released seven of 23 Cambodians who have been apprehended across the border since the start of the year on suspicions of illegal logging, according to a military and district official. ...
Trial of Minister’s Wife Opens Without Plaintiffs
Opening statements started yesterday in a trial pitting Kompong Chhnang province villagers against the wife of Minister of Industry Suy Sem over a long-standing land dispute. However, the plaintiffs and human rights workers monitoring the trial criticized yesterday’s proceedings, which were allowed to proceed despite ...
23,000 Hectares of Land Concessions Approved
The government last month granted four companies a total 23,000 hectares of land concessions for agro-industry projects and a special economic zone (SEZ), according to human rights groups, which said it obtained the information from government documents. An additional 500 hectares inside a wildlife sanctuary were ...
Officials Seize 100 Cubic Meters of Luxury Wood
Forestry officials in Ratanakkiri province, along with provincial officials, have carried out several operations in three districts this month that netted about 100 cubic meters of various types of luxury wood, but no suspects were arrested, officials said yesterday. ...
Court Sets Date for Questioning Bavet Victims
Svay Rieng Provincial Prosecutor Hing Bunchea said yesterday that he had summoned two of the three women shot at a Bavet City special economic zone (SEZ) for questioning next week, and denied accusations that investigators were dragging their feet on the case. Rights groups continued to ...
Officials Again Seize Timber In Kratie Without Any Arrests
For the second time in a month, Forestry Administration officials in Kratie province’s Snuol district have found hundreds of cubic meters of first-grade wood that had been smuggled to a site near the tributary of the Prek Pao river, officials said yesterday. As in previous wood ...
Villagers to police logging in Prey Lang
More than 600 villagers from four provinces and civil society organisation officials would embark on the largest community crackdown yet on the “anarchic logging” of Prey Lang forest in Kampong Thom, representatives said yesterday. ...
Five Cassava Plantation Workers Injured by UXO
Two workers were blinded and three others were injured on Saturday after a fire they built on a cassava plantation in Kratie province set off an unexploded ordnance (UXO), Pi Thnou commune police chief Sum Hon said yesterday. ...
Governor Drew Gun, Not Blood, Prosecutor Says
The court prosecutor investigating last month’s shooting of three female factory workers at a special economic zone (SEZ) denied a newspaper report claiming the chief suspect, former Bavet City Governor Chhouk Bundith, had confessed to shooting the women. Svay Rieng Provincial Court prosecutor Hing Bunchea said ...
As Plans for Dam Gain Traction, Villagers Balk
For hundreds of years, the ancestors of Vam Sovann have lived in Koh Kong province’s remote Araeng valley. Some 70 km from the nearest national road, Mr. Sovann’s village has no electricity or phone coverage, no paved roads or running water; instead, it has access ...
Suspect Questioned Over Kandal Grenade Attack
A suspect was questioned on Thursday over a grenade attack on the home of a military police officer in Kandal province’s Mok Kampoul district, which appears to have been motivated by a dispute over 3 meters of land, police said. No one was injured when the ...
City on a hill sparks little talk
A casino complex on top of Kampot province’s Bokor Mountain will open in less than two weeks – but environmental groups are strangely quiet about the effects the development, the size of a small city, could have on Cambodia’s natural heritage. The complex, in the Preah ...
Proposed Prey Long Protected Area Shrinks by 20 Percent
The Forestry Administration’s proposal to create a conservation zone for Prey Long, one of Cambodia’s largest remaining primary forests, has been scaled down by more than 20 percent and now covers about 480,000 hectares, an official said. During consultation workshops in Phnom Penh last month, the ...