Economic land concessions and plantations

Shukaku, a company owned by a CPP Senator was given a 99-year lease to to the area in 2007.  Immediately, the company started filling in the lake with sand and began kicking out thousands of families in what is one of the most notorious evictions ...

According to documents published in the latest Royal Gazette, Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on three land concessions covering more than 20,000 hectares last month, 11 days after a moratorium on the granting of such concessions was announced. On May 7, Mr. Hun Sen signed ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen made a bold pledge to the hundreds of thousands of Cambodian villagers fighting companies for their homes yesterday, ordering that in every economic land concession across the country, space must be provided for those they would displace. But last month’s royal book ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday gave authorities six months to end a spate of land disputes pitting developers against villagers that have sparked increasingly violent protests. Hun Sen ordered officials to visit contested areas and issue deeds to families facing illegal evictions, a move ...

The case of the 13 imprisoned Boeung Kak women is in the hands of the Appeal Court now, the women’s defence lawyer said yesterday. Lawyer Harm Sunrith said that Phnom Penh Municipal Court had sent the case to the Appeal Court on Tuesday, adding that he ...

Seventeen villagers from Banteay Meanchey province’s O’Chrou district filed a complaint yesterday with the rights group Adhoc after their homes were allegedly unlawfully bulldozed in June last year. ...

The Koh Kong Provincial Court summonsed 23 villagers from Chikor Leu commune to present themselves – and any relevant documents – at a July 12 hearing with representatives of the two sugar companies that bulldozed their farmland and evicted them from their homes in 2006. ...

Sixteen ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province have claimed that they are being forced from their land after a commune chief signed it away, and that commune borders have been redrawn to dispossess them. On Friday, the families, who have been living on 30 hectares of ...

Land issues will continue to be a serious problem for Cambodia’s government, given the high number of continued crackdowns, arrests and violence, analysts say. “If an issue is covered and unsolved, one day it will explode,” Lao Monghay, an independent political analyst, told “Hello VOA,” in ...

The Kratie Provincial Court has released on bail five of the eight people charged after a military-style operation by security forces on a small village alleged to be the home of a secessionist movement, a court official said yesterday. On May 16, a 14-year-old girl was ...

While preliminary results from Sunday’s commune elections indicate that the SRP took a thumping in urban centers—the SRP lost all three of their commune chief positions in Phnom Penh—the party appears to have made gains in rural areas locked in land disputes. Though the figures are ...

Opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua departed for the U.S. yesterday in hopes of pressuring Washington into suspending all military aid to Cambodia over the government’s use of soldiers to defend the land holdings of powerful business families. “We have enough evidence that soldiers are providing protection to ...

Just days ahead of Sunday’s commune elections, Prime Minister Hun Sen again broke his pledge to remain silent during his party’s campaign period and sought to ease the concerns of communities whose livelihoods have been threatened by land disputes. Speaking to villagers through a mobile telephone, ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday questioned four Russei Keo district villagers from two families who have been embroiled in a land dispute for two years with a local businessman, lawyers said yesterday. The families are accused of physically attacking landowner Lao Tong Ngy, a man ...

This month’s eviction of villagers in Kratie province that resulted in the death of a 14-year-old girl was one of many such violent incidents over land that have erupted in Cambodia in recent years. But what set the May 16 violence apart was a word: ...

Despite facing criminal charges, 70 villagers from Kompong Chhnang province embroiled in a long-running land dispute with the KDC Development Company have moved back onto the contested land, court officials and villagers said yesterday. KDC, which is owned by Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy Suy ...

Forty Kampong Chhnang villagers embroiled in a long-running land dispute with KDC International, a company owned by the wife of a senior CPP official, farmed contested land without interference on Monday, prompting some to wonder if they were being coaxed to vote for the ruling ...

Villagers in Koh Kong province involved in a long-running land dispute with two sugar cane plantations linked to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat handed out petitions to passing motorists along National Road 48 demanding their land back. It was a change of pace for the villagers, ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has told villagers they should not to protest in land disputes but rather seek help from authorities following a spate of violent crackdowns on demonstrations. The premier said protests affect public order and claimed they sometimes become violent in a statement signed ...

Authorities in Mondulkiri province started tearing down the last of 195 houses claimed by villagers in Rayum commune at about 7am on Friday morning. Three hours later, not one was standing. Many villagers said they had no idea where they were going to live, and one man ...

Some of the 200 families evicted from a village in Mondolkiri province’s Koh Nhek district last week said yesterday that they were taking up temporary residence in nearby villages and forests because they could not afford to go home, or had no land to return ...

A combined force of police, soldiers and military police last night set a deadline of 8am this morning for villagers in Mondulkiri province’s tiny Rayum commune to leave their homes or face forcible eviction. Authorities, who have surrounded the village for a week, say the villagers’ ...

Loun Savath, a monk and rights activist who was detained by plain clothes security officials Thursday, was released that night, after he agreed to sign a letter vowing to stop leading and participating in protests. However, he has promised he will not halt his activism. Loun ...

The number of protests over land disputes increased in 2011 as forced resettlement, restrictions on freedom of assembly and the harassment of peaceful protesters continued to tarnish Cambodia’s human rights record, Amnesty International said in its annual report released yesterday. Noting the huge impact of economic ...