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Policing, Free Expression Raised at Donor Meeting
Amid a recent spike in police violence against land protesters, Cambodia’s foreign donors yesterday together called on the government for “responsible policing” and expressed “concern” over the trend. The relative candor from aid donors toward the end of the high-level but long-delayed meeting with top government ...
Families Face Re-Eviction, Submit City Hall Petition
Representatives of 19 families facing the eviction from their homes in Phnom Penh’s Pur Senchey district submitted a petition to City Hall yesterday, demanding land as compensation. The families claim that the eviction is doubly bitter because they had been relocated to Andong 3 Village, Kouk ...
Gov't to Award Three Communal Land Titles to Ethnic Bunong
Three ethnic Bunong communities in Mondolkiri province may soon receive long-awaited collective property titles, which would bring to six the total number of communal land titles granted to the country’s indigenous people since the Land Law was created in 2011. And while the possible issuing of the three ...
More R'kiri Journalists Threatened Amid Illegal Timber Trade
Just two weeks after a journalist’s bludgeoned corpse was discovered in Ratanakkiri province, a human rights group yesterday identified two more recent cases of violence or intimidation against reporters in the northeastern province. The report from Adhoc said the pressure from local journalists has occurred alongside an increase ...
Eviction Protest Held Outside Donor Meeting
Anti-eviction activists from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Borei Keila neighborhoods, dressed as white doves, protested yesterday in front of the Council for the Development of Cambodia, where the country’s donors were meeting with top government officials to discuss the country’s reform targets. Donning paper helmets ...
ELCs on mind at donor meet
While protesters demonstrated outside, urging land and human-rights reform, members of the donor community met with the government yesterday at the Council for the Development of Cambodia in Phnom Penh to sign off on a series of development targets that bore only a faint resemblance to those ...
Cambodia's Angkor Wat Temple attracts 1.36 mln foreign visitors in 8 months, up 31%
About 1.36 million international tourists visited Cambodia’s Angkor Wat Temple, one of the World Heritage Sites, in the first eight months of this year, a 31 percent rise compared with 1.04 million during the same period last year, a report of Siem Reap provincial tourism ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/culture/2012-09/26/c_131874967.htm
Cambodia Aims for Offshore Production Next Year
The Cambodian government expects U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. CVX -0.53%to begin developing the country’s first offshore oil field early next year, and hopes the nation will become a regional hot spot for oil and gas investment, a government official said Wednesday Chevron discovered commercial resources ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443507204578020023711640726.html
Social Work to shape Kingdom
Social work, long-established in developed countries but unheard-of in Cambodia, could be set to change the face of child protection in the country as interest in the field grows. Last week, a hundred potential social workers from around the country came to Phnom Penh for an ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012092558885/Lifestyle/social-work-to-change-cambodia.html
Bokor development harms biodiversity
Two studies have found that development on Bokor Mountain in Kampot province is threatening some of the area’s plant and animal species. The Sokimex Group has been granted development rights for the entire mountain and in May, the first of three hotels to be built ...
Training needed for tourist industry
Representatives of Cambodia’s booming tourism industry yesterday called on the Asian Development Bank to provide funding for workforce training in the sector. During the meeting at the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, tour operator Ho Vandy, who also co-chairs the Tourism Working Group in the Government-Private Sector Forum, said representatives ...
Hun Sen Urges Vigilance as Flood Conditions Persist
More than 100 families were evacuated to higher ground in Banteay Meanchey province’s Serei Saophoan City yesterday, as Prime Minister Hun Sen urged people to be vigilant in the face of continued flooding. After heavy rain last night, 100 more people from Serei Saophan City ...
Anti-Eviction Activists Conjure Up Curses to Bolster Cause
Residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Borei Keila neighborhoods yesterday sprinkled a concoction of chili, salt and black rice into flames of a small fire in front of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to “curse” the court officials they accuse of unjustly charging and ...
Official pushes for an information access act
Many groups, including the ruling party, would benefit from a proposed access to information law – which would provide transparency when it comes to the government’s development plans and spending – a Council of Ministers official said yesterday. Tuot Lux, a legal expert who has been ...
UN Envoy Paints Bleak Picture of Economic Land Concessions
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 ...
Government Hopes for Chevron Offshore Oil Deal This Year
The Cambodian government expects U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. CVX +0.77% to begin developing the country’s first offshore oil field early next year, and hopes the nation will become a regional hot spot for oil and gas investment, a government official said Wednesday. Cambodia has vast untapped oil and gas resources ...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443507204578020023711640726.html
US Says Army Truck in Crash Not a Donation
An American-made army truck that was allegedly used to smuggle illegal timber through SIem Reap province, and which crashed and killed a family of three on Friday, was not a U.S. government donation, the embassy confirmed yesterday. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy said an inspection ...
NGOs Discuss Reforms Ahead of Donor Meeting
At a meeting in Phnom enh to prepare for today’s high-level donor Government-Development Partner Coordinating Committee (GDCC) forum, dozens of mostly local NGOs agreed on their own list of broad reform suggestions for the government. But land disputes took center stage. Today’s GDCC meeting, which the ...
Villagers facing re-eviction
Villagers evicted from the former Sambok Chab community in the capital’s Dangkor district in 2006 face eviction for the second time – this time without any compensation, evictees told the Post yesterday. According to villager Heng Pheng Chun, 26, authorities in Por Sen Chey district have ...
Land abuses 'threaten stability'
Cambodia’s economic land concession (ELC) policies are hindering development far more than helping it and beginning to erode the country’s hard-won stability, Cambodia’s special rapporteur warned yesterday. “As I have noted in relation to other sectors in Cambodia, the existence of the legal framework on paper ...
Gov't Says No Plans to Send Maids to Singapore
The governemnt yesterday denied a recent news report that discussions were under way to have Cambodian domestic workers sent to Singapore. An Bunhak, chairman of the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA), said he did not know of any immediate plans to send maids to ...
The Bottom Line
Clashes between garment workers and the local manufacturing industry came to a head in February when three women were shot while protesting for increased bonuses outside their workplace. It was almost five more months before manufacturers and governing bodies agreed to raise the earning potential ...
Cambodia: Kampot Port Development Hits Hurdle
A local investor revealed yesterday that the construction of the US$100 million Kampot sea port had been further delayed by rain. Vinh Huor, president of the Kampot Special Economic Zone, (KSEZ) said: “We are preparing to be better, and that may take some time. I am ...
Dredging Today Staff
http://www.dredgingtoday.com/2012/09/25/cambodia-kampot-port-development-hits-hurdle/
Mirach Energy Aims for Green Light to Start Drilling Cambodia Offshore D
The energy exploration and production company said in a statement on Tuesday that its associate company CPHL (Cambodia) has signed a drilling environmental impact assessment (EIA) contract with two environmental consulting firms The firms, the International Environmental Management Company Limited and SAWAC Consultants For Development Company ...