ODC English Site
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, ...
P Vihear Villagers Protest at National Assembly
More than 350 villagers from Preah Vihear province protested in front of the National Assembly on Friday, asking for support from lawmakers in their dispute with military veterans. The villagers, representing some 370 families in Kulen district’s Srayong commune, said that the land on which they ...
New Mekong Port to Ease Overloaded Phnom Penh Terminal
With cargo traffic at the Phnom Penh Autonomus Port growing rapidly, a nearly completed container terminal just south of the city on the Mekon River should help ease the congestion. The 30-hectare port, in Kandal province’s Kein Svay district, was completed late last month, though cranes ...
Court Hears Borei Keila Evictees' Complaint
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday questioned three Borei Keila residents about a complaint they filed six month ago against the property development firm Phanimex from evicting them from their land. In March, a group of Borei Keila residents filed their complaint against Phanimex’s owner ...
Land, Borders Reemerge as Top Issues for 2013 Elections
With national elections less than a year away, ruling party officials have begun a publicity campaign to show they are tackling tough issues facing the country, such as border delineation and land grabs, but opposition leaders say the Cambodian People’s Party cannot claim it has ...
Largest hydropower station on Mekong River starts operation
The largest hydropower station on Lancang River in southwest China’s Yunnan Province — known as the Mekong River in southeast Asia — went into operation Thursday with its first power generating unit up and running. The Nuozhadu hydroelectric station, located in the city of Pu’er, is ...
Conscription not for everyone
In less than a week, 18-year-old Heng Tina, who has just finished his high-school exam, will take another test that determines whether he’ll get a scholarship to go to technical school, a development that would put him one step closer to his dream of becoming ...