Economic land concessions and plantations

Displaced villagers from two Phnom Penh neighborhoods on Wednesday submitted a petition to the UN’s human rights envoy, who is in Cambodia on a routine fact-finding mission. The envoy, Surya Subedi, was visiting the Phnom Penh eviction site of Borei Keila ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen has issued an immediate and indefinite moratorium on the granting of new economic land concessions and called for a review of all existing concessions, a regulation signed by the premier yesterday states. Dated to an April 27 Council of Ministers’ meeting, the ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday issued a moratorium on economic land concessions, temporarily halting a long-standing policy of granting land to private companies and those with powerful political connections that has sparked growing concerns from national and international human rights groups. The prime minister’s announcement comes ...

Cambodia’s government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging. Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, was in Ratanakkiri province yesterday as part of his weeklong visit to the country to investigate the impact land concessions have on local communities. Some rights groups have singled out land concessions as the premier human rights ...

About 500 families from three communes in Siem Reap province’s Chi Kraeng district are seeking the prime minister’s intervention in a dispute with a rubber company over 1,000 hectares of land. Siem Reap provincial governor Chan Sophal said on Wednesday that Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Seang ...

In what is becoming an increasingly popular – and coordinated – protest tactic among Phnom Penh’s dispossessed, several women took off their shirts and bras during a demonstration over land rights that briefly turned violent near the World Bank yesterday. About 100 protesters, most of them ...

The “company” that military police have declined to identify but said sent staff to confront activist Chut Wutty shortly before he was shot last Thursday is Timbergreen, a firm the slain activist had attempted to expose for illegal logging. Documents obtained by the Post yesterday and sources have ...

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights yesterday called on the government to ensure its investigation into the deaths of forestry activist Chut Wutty and military police officer In Rattana remained independent, and raised concern over an apparent increase in attacks on ...

Amid mounting calls for further investigation, officials said yesterday they were establishing a task force to look into the death of outspoken forestry activist Chut Wutty, while the family of the military police officer who allegedly killed Chut Wutty before turning the gun on himself ...

Deep in Koh Kong’s forested district on Thursday, Chut Wutty, 46, the founder of the Natural Resource Protection Group, and In Rattana, 32, a military police officer, were shot dead. Chut Wutty, a forestry activist who has dedicated himself to preserving Cambodia’s disappearing forests since ...

The military police officer who killed well-known anti-logging campaigner Chut Wutty, 46, on Thursday in Koh Kong province then died by his own hand after turning his AK-47 assault rifle on himself in an apparent act of instant suicide following the slaying of the forestry ...

The government needs to enforce legislation on protecting the environment, even as it gives away masses of land and resources in concessions, or risk jeopardising its economic future, the UN assistant secretary-general for disaster risk reduction said yesterday. “The most critical impact of disasters today is ...

A Cambodian opposition leader, [Mu Sochua], has urged the federal government to stop Australian companies from accepting land concessions in Cambodia, saying they are contributing to a pressing humanitarian crisis displacing up to one million people. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday told senior officials to stop investors from using land concessions as a pretext for logging and to discuss the possibility of reducing the amount of time such concessions can last. The government placed a moratorium on logging concessions in 2002 to ...

About 70 villagers in Pursat province’s Krakor district held a daylong prayer ceremony yesterday to request help from spirits to curse the powerful Pheapimex company for destroying their farmland, villagers said. Pheapimex, owned by the wife of CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin, has maintained a 316,000-hectare ...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced plans Thursday to encourage rubber smallholdings in a bid to expand production as the country promotes the cash crop as the number two commodity after rice. Hun Sen said the government will support not only large-scale rubber plantations but also ...

Provincial authorities released land protester Bun Ratha, who was detained on Friday and sent to Kratie prison, after his supporters blocked traffic on National Road 73 yesterday. More than 500 villagers from Chhlong district’s Kampong Damrei commune, who are in a dispute with rubber company Kasotim ...

About 150 villagers embroiled in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator and tycoon Ly Yong Phat protested peacefully outside the Kompong Speu Provincial Court yesterday as five villagers were questioned over accusations that they are illegally occupying the senator’s land. The villagers, from Thpong district’s ...

About 100 residents of Kampong Speu’s Omlaing commune will accompany five fellow villagers to the provincial court today after  receiving summonses last week. ...

About 300 people from six villages in Pursat province’s Kbal Trach commune protested yesterday outside Pheapimex Group’s Krakor district office, the latest confrontation in a land dispute that stretches back 13 years. Villager representative Duok Sary said they had come to demand that the company ...

About 300 villagers in Pursat province’s Krakor district yesterday protested to stop the powerful Pheapimex Company from clearing their farmland after armed military police arrived in the area to guard the firm’s government-awarded land concession, villagers said. The company used two excavators and nine bulldozers to ...

Kratie provincial authorities met with more than 500 Pi Thnou commune families seeking a social land concession yesterday, making good on a promise made last week in order to get villagers to end their blocking of national road 6A. ...

More than 400 families in Kampong Cham province’s Chup commune had filed a complaint yesterday to local authorities over relocation orders issued last week, villagers said. Hom Hon, 55, a retired rubber plantation worker and former employee of Sopheak Nika Investment Group Company, said that on ...