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The postponement of two US internet piracy bills last week was met with relief by human rights and media experts in Cambodia, who say the overreaching grasp of the proposed legislation would hinder the internet’s progress and growth in the Kingdom. The US House of Representative’s ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy is set to provide a total of US$800,000 to small and medium enterprises as part of an initiative to strengthen the sector’s technical and competitive strategy. As many as 30 companies would receive the financing, Meng Satheara, the ministry’s ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cambodia’s biggest solar power initiative to date – expected to provide electricity to 12,000 households in off-grid areas – will be completed on January 31, according to officials involved with the project. Yiang Tal, chief of administration at the Rural Electrification Fund, said more than 10,000 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Amnesty International yesterday called on authorities to immediately release the 30 women and children from the Borei Keila community being detained against their will at Phnom Penh’s Prey Speu Social Affairs Center. “Those people never should have been arrested in the first place,” said Amnesty’s Deputy ...