ខេមបូឌា ដេលី
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 ...
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 ...
Firms may invest in light rail, traffic lights
Japanese technology companies Toshiba Corp and Kyosan Electric have met with Phnom Penh Municipality to discuss investing in a light rail system and new traffic light network. According to an announcement on the municipality’s website yesterday, Kazutoshi Fukuda, managing director of Kyosan Electric, and Yasuyoshi Mugiya, ...
Human Rights Watch slams government for poor rights record
With a focus on the NGO draft law and allegations of government interference in the Khmer Rouge tribunal, international rights group Human Rights Watch blasted Cambodia’s rights record in its annual report yesterday. The government was quick to hit back at the criticism, saying that HRW ...
Farming group to quadruple organic production
The Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (Cedac) said yesterday that it plans to raise its annual production of organic vegetables from 120 tons to 600 tons by the end of 2015. Lim Sokun Darun, program coordinator at Cedac, said that the decision to ...
Damages from mine to cost at least $4m
The government said yesterday that a gold mine in Kompong Cham province that has damaged about 1 square km of land with chemical waste would cost at least $4 million to clean up. Speaking at a workshop in Phnom Penh on revenue transparency, Sim Sisokhaly, director ...
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 ...
World Bank expects strong growth in 2012
The World Bank yesterday predicted gross domestic product to grow 6.5 percent this year, though it said that economic conditions could sour if the economies of Cambodia’s largest export markets in the US and Europe deteriorate. In an economic report outlining prospects for all of the ...
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 ...
Garment, shoe exports set to surpass $4bn
Buoyed by strong demand from the economies of Europe and North America, the total amount of garment, shoe and textile exports that left Cambodia last year was on target to surpass the $4 billion mark, dwarfing 2010’s total of $2.88 billion, the Garment Manufacturers Association ...
Thailand's second-largest rice exporter invests $47m in mills
Asia Golden Rice (AGR), Thailand’s second-largest rice exporter, will invest $47 million to build milling plants in Cambodia capable of processing up to 1 million tons of rice per year, according to a company representative and reports from the Thai news media yesterday. “This will be ...
China's Xinwei becomes country's 10th mobile operator
The government has granted China’s Xinwei Telecom a license to become the country’s tenth mobile phone operator and the second firm to roll out so-called 4G technology, the fastest and most advanced network currently available on the market. Those in the telecommunications industry said that the ...
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 ...
Deadline extended for comment on new urban planning rules
The Ministry of Land Management is giving a brief reprieve to non-government groups and donor partners who missed yesterday’s deadline to comment on a draft sub-decree aiming to guide and regulate the country’s urban development. After making the Sub-Decree on Urban Planning and Town Areas public ...
Digging of deep quarry halted after protesters block road
Authorities in Phnom Penh’s Dangkao district have ordered a land excavation company to stop digging an enormous quarry in Prek Kampoes commune that villagers claim has damaged surrounding rice paddies. Last Wednesday, about 100 villagers blocked National Road 2, burning car tires in protest against the ...
Hun Sen overturns recent large-scale fish export ban
Less than two weeks after the Tonle Sap Authority reportedly installed a ban on large-scale fish exports, Prime Minister Hun Sen declined to endorse the order and re-opened exports, officials said yesterday. Chan Youttha, secretary-general of the Tonle Sap Authority, said it had prepared a report ...
Minister directs mock trading; launch unclear
Finance Minister Keat Chhon joined officials of the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) yesterday to conduct another day of mock trading of stocks ahead of the still-unknown launch of actual operations at the bourse, which opened in July but has yet to see a single stock ...
Measures outlined to save the endangered Mekong dolphin
Officials and environmentalists yesterday agreed to draw up new measures to save the endangered Mekong dolphin and find more information on why the species is disappearing. At the end of a three-day workshop in Kratie province, officials and representatives from the World Wildlife Fund signed a ...
As chair of Asean, Cambodia promotes Korean peace talks
In its capacity as Asean chair, Cambodia has said it wants to help lessen tensions on the Korean peninsula by trying to revive the six-party talks on North Korean denuclearization and by inviting North Korea to join the Asean Ministerial Meeting in Phnom Penh in ...
Law drafted to enforce environmental reports
The Ministry of Environment has drafted a law that will hand out fines and prison terms for companies that fail to complete and submit Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) on the development projects they undertake. According to a copy of the EIA draft law, fines of 100 ...
No sign World Bank will renew funds
Just over a year since the World Bank froze its funds to the government, the bank yesterday reiterated that a decision on whether or not it would start providing loans again remains nowhere in sight. In August, the World Bank announced that it would not provide ...