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Protesters Demand Anti-Eviction Activists' Release
Fifty Boeng Kak and Borei Keila residents rallied outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday and submitted a petition demanding the release of two anti-eviction activists they say have been jailed on trumped-up charges. Four representatives from the two groups were allowed to enter the ministry yesterday, ...
District Governor Questioned Over Clearing Protected Forest
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court questioned a district governor from Kampong Thom province yesterday over his involvement in clearing protected flooed forest in the province in July. Prim Rottha, Stong district governor, is one of about 20 officials who received court summonses in July over their suspected ...
B Keila, B Kak continue petitioning
Free of the police resistance that thwarted their march the previous day, about 65 Borei Keila and Boeung Kak community supporters marched to the Ministry of Justice yesterday in another effort to have land dispute activists Tim Sakmony and Yorm Bopha freed from pre-trial detention ...
Villagers Save Pond From Being Filled
Approximately 400 people from 10 villages in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district stopped a truck on Monday that had been hired to fill in a pond in preparation for the reported building of a military police base, officials said. Thuon Nging, a representative of the ...
Kaing Menghun, P. 18
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/
Journalist Murdered in Ratanakkiri
A Cambodian journalist, who reported on forest crimes in Ratanakkiri province for a little-known newspaper, was found murdered in the trunk of his car yesterday, police said. Hang Serei Odom, 42, a journalist at the Khmer-language Virakchun Khmer Daily, had been missing since Sunday, when he ...
Trial of the 'secessionist' commences
Throngs of protesters gathered at the Olympic Stadium yesterday, at times straining against a mix of police force barriers and riot shields in their effort to show support for jailed Beehive Radio director Mam Sonando, whose trial was beginning just down the street at Phnom ...
Cambodian Activists Call for International Sugar Boycott
Human rights monitoring groups and Cambodian activists are calling for an international boycott of Tate & Lyle and Domino Sugar, who do business with sugar suppliers accused of participating in government-sanctioned land grabs and illegal evictions throughout rural Cambodia. According to the Cambodian League for the ...
Official Urges Students to Take Technical Studies to Find Work
A preference for NGO and government jobs among young Cambodians was contributing to a critical labor shortage in the industrial manufacturing sector, a Labor Ministry official said yesterday. Speaking to 3,000 prospective university students on Phnom Penh’s Diamond Island, Labor Ministry Secretary of State Pich Sophoan ...
Businesswoman calls on government to return land
High-profile Phnom Penh businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to return 33 hectares of prime land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to her company, which lost the rights to it when the government claimed the land in July. Sokountheary said she ...
Villain or victim? Protesters divided over Bopha
Imprisoned Yorm Bopha has either been unjustly targeted for her role in Boeung Kak lake eviction protests or is responsible for the vicious beating of two motodops, depending on which protesters’ chants were true yesterday. It was land evictees versus motodops in the capital as two ...
Police Block Boen Kak Anti-Eviction Protesters
Police in Phnom Penh blocked all attempts by anti-eviction protesters to march out of the city’s Boeng Kak community yesterday, but made no attempt to stop a counter-demonstration against the marchers by a little-known association of tuk-tuk and motorcycle-taxi drivers. About 150 residents of the Boeng ...
ASEAN senior officials meet ahead of 30th ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting
ASEAN senior officials on energy gathered here on Monday to discuss and prepare documents for the 30th ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting and related meetings to be held on Sept. 12. The two-day preparatory meeting, under the theme “ASEAN Green Connectivity”, was chaired by Tun ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/10/c_131841006.htm
Sri Lanka’s Touchwood acquires land in Cambodia to set up an agricultural project
Sri Lanka’s Touchwood Investments PLC has acquired 11,138 hectares of land in Cambodia to set up an agricultural project to plant rubber and other crops. Chairman of the firm, Roscoe A. Maloney, says the acquisition done in the previous financial year is aimed at exploring the ...
Dams, climate plague Mekong
Villagers in Kratie province have long feared the proposed Sambor hydroelectric dam and the impact it could have on their subsistence fishing and riverbank agriculture. According to Resilience on the Mekong: A Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment in North-East Cambodia, a report released by the World Wildlife ...
http://www.eco-business.com/news/dams-climate-plague-mekong/
Angkor sees gold in Liberty
Angkor Gold Corp has acquired a new economic land concession as it gains full control of its other concessions with the purchase of another mining company, according to officials. According to a statement released last week, Angkor Gold has purchased Liberty Mining International Pty Ltd (Liberty), ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012091058590/Business/angkor-sees-gold-in-liberty.html
Hundreds of illegal migrants return
Nearly 450 Cambodians who were illegally working in Thailand were repatriated across the Battambang province border on Saturday in one of the largest one-day operations along that border, officials said yesterday. Thai authorities had rounded up the 447 workers, who were busted without the required paperwork, ...
Fellow villagers pray for land rights activists
Borei Keila protesters, including many who live in squalor under staircases at the site, have already been compensated for losing their homes and have no right to demand more, Suy Sophan, the owner of developer Phan Imex, told the Post yesterday. About 200 supporters from the ...
Boeng Kak Arrest Not Linked to Evictions, Says Local Man
The Phnom Penh man who filed a complaint against a woman deeply involved in the Boeng Kak community’s anti-eviction protests called a press conference on Friday to insist that his dispute with the woman, which led to her arrest last week, was a personal matter ...
Dams, climate plague Mekong
Villagers in Kratie province have long feared the proposed Sambor hydroelectric dam and the impact it could have on their subsistence fishing and riverbank agriculture. According to Resilience on the Mekong: A Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment in North-East Cambodia, a report released by the World Wildlife Foundation on Friday, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012091058600/National-news/dams-climate-plague-mekong.html
Cambodia Says No Strings Attached in Recent Chinese Aid
China has done a lot to support Cambodia over the years, with millions of dollars in aid, loans and investment. But after reports last week that China has pledged another $500 million in soft loans and grants-and publicly thanked Cambodia for its support in Southeast ...
South China Sea outlook
The disputes over sovereignty in the South China Sea are approaching a tipping point. As former ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo Severino said last month: “The disputes cannot be resolved anytime soon, if at all. The most that can be done is to prevent them developing into armed ...
Rights activists concerned about status of human rights under AEC
Despite so much excitement in the run-up to the inception of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, experts and activists on human rights and democracy are ambivalent about what AEC’s repercussions will be on human rights and democracy. They have expressed concerns about AEC’s negative ...
Cambodia: Mandatory Internet Surveillance Cameras
The Cambodian government is enforcing a circular drafted earlier this year which requires internet cafes to set up surveillance cameras and to register callers. Based on an unofficial translation made by Jinja, the government said the circular was made in response to the rising number ...
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/09/cambodia-mandatory-internet-surveillance-cameras/
UN Housing Envoy Wants Eviction Activists Freed
The U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik, has waded in to the furor surrounding the imprisonment this week of two anti-eviction activists from Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities, posing with a poster calling for the release of the two women. Yorm Bopha, 32, ...