ដីធ្លី
Four Men Arrested for Illegal Clearing of National Forest
Police in Kompong Chhnang Province arrested four men and confiscated two bulldozers Tuesday for illegally clearing more than 10 hectares of national forest in the Toek Phos district, officials said yesterday. District Police Chief Kim Sareth said that police apprehended the four laborers in Chorng ...
Villagers take hostages
The clearing of land for a Ratanakkiri rubber plantation had been frozen after more than 300 Tumpoun ethnic minority villagers captured a quartet of company security guards and another staffer, tied them up and held them hostage on Tuesday, company officials said yesterday. Jing Zhong Ri ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012022354691/National-news/villagers-take-hostages.html
Still No Arrest in Shooting of Special Economic Zone Workers
A day after Interior Minister Sar Kheng revealed that authorities had identified a suspect in the shooting of three female factory workers at a special economic zone (SEZ) in Svay Rieng province, officials yesterday refused to reveal the identity of the gunman, who had still ...
Workers Protest at Factory Linked to Manhattan SEZ
More than 3,000 factory workers protested yesterday at the Manhattan Quing Dao Textiles Corp in Kompong Cham Province’s Kompong Siem District to demand that the factory owner abide by an Arbitration Council Ruling issued in late 2010, a union representative said yesterday. The factory web site ...
Last of Boeng Kak land titles still weeks away
The last of the nearly 800 families from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community who are in line for land titles will not receive their long-awaited ownership records for another “two or three weeks”, a city official said yesterday. The families were spared eviction at the hands ...
Free mother, protesters urge
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 ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012012754191/National-news/free-mother-protesters-urge.html
Deforestation for Sesan River dam project ceases, for now
Workers who were seen last week clearing forestland in Stung Treng province in preparation for the construction of the 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam have stopped their work after receiving an order to do so by the district governor, officials said yesterday. Sesan district governor Bou ...
Villagers hand over seized illegal wood
Villagers in Kompong Thom province’s Sandan district said yesterday that they handed over 77 pieces of luxury wood, which they had seized from illegal loggers, to the Forestry Administration after they were threatened with arrest. Fed up with the perceived lack of government action against illegal ...
Land protests increasingly met with force, rights group says
Human rights group Licadho raised the alarm yesterday over the increased use of armed force by authorities as they seek to suppress protests over Cambodia’s numerous land disputes. It noted that during the past two months, security forces have opened fire on villagers during three ...
Vulnerable evictees speak out
An 11-year-old HIV-positive girl evicted from Borei Keila moved back to Phnom Penh to live with her aunt because she had no access to medication at her relocation site in Kandal province, she said yesterday. During another day of protests outside the National Assembly, schoolgirl Theng ...
Illegal rosewood seized from overturned cruiser
Authorities in Preah Vihear province on Monday confiscated one ton of illegally logged rosewood from a Land Cruiser that had crashed after careening out of control on a sharp bend, environment officials said yesterday. The vehicle was found in the early hours of Monday, overturned on ...
Footage shows chaos, panic during shooting
Dramatic new video footage of the January 18 Kratie province land dispute shooting has been released on the internet, depicting TTY rubber company security guards opening fire on a crowd of unarmed villagers. The 48-second video, recorded by a villager on a mobile phone and uploaded ...
Evictees mark 3rd anniversary of Dey Krahorm
More than 300 demonstrators yesterday marked the third anniversary of the forced eviction of Phnom Penh’s Dey Krahorm community, one of the city’s most violent land evictions. Five international rights groups also sent a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen urging the government to stop land ...
Villagers wary of Pheapimex olive branch
A deadly land dispute in Pursat province ended over the weekend with a victory for the villagers, but they said yesterday this might have more to do with the upcoming commune elections than a change of heart within the company owned by the wife of ...
Company backtracks, says villagers will now get land
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 ...
Borei Keila villagers set to sue
Women from Borei Keila who escaped Prey Speu social affairs centre last Wednesday made another impassioned plea for housing and compensation at rights group Licadho’s Phnom Penh headquarters on Friday. Armed with copies of a Borei Keila construction agreement from 2004 and in tears, they spoke ...
Villagers set to regain land
Villagers from Kratie province, who blocked National Road 76a last week after four of their own were shot by guards working for agro-development firm TTY, appear to be on their way to receiving farmland they lost to the company in an economic land concession. A statement ...
Work to begin on controversial dam in Stung Treng next week
Workers will begin clearing forestland in Stung Treng province as early as next week in preparation for the controversial 400-megawatt Lower Sesan 2 dam, district officials and villagers said yesterday. The hydropower project, funded by Vietnam Electricity (EVN), will flood tens of thousands of hectares of ...
Courts step up charges in land disputes
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 ...
Soldiers shoot villagers over land protest
Violence erupted yesterday in Kratie province’s Snuol district where six people were shot and injured when RCAF soldiers working for a rubber company opened fire on a crowd of villagers who were trying to stop the company from clearing land in the area, police and ...
Villagers in Prey Long Forest seize load of illegal timber
Faced with continued illegal logging in Prey Long forest, villagers in Kompong Thom province’s Sandan district once again took the initiative to seize a large haul of illegal timber from local loggers. Villagers, however, said that local officials are complicit in the logging ring and ...
Land grants affected 11,377 families in 2011, rights groups say
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 ...
Firm refuses housing pleas
The owner of development firm Phan Imex Company said yesterday that 64 families from the capital’s Borei Keila community who were demanding compensation for houses demolished on January 3 did not have the documents to prove they had owned a house on the site. Phan Imex ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012011854001/National-news/firm-refuses-housing-pleas.html
Locals protest Pheapimex land clearance; deny role in murder
About 200 villagers, who have been embroiled in a long-running land dispute with the well-connected agro-business Pheapimex over a 316,000-hectare economic land concession in Pursat province, staged a protest yesterday against the company’s continued efforts to clear their farmland. The protests came just three days after ...