Land
UDG issuing eviction threats again: villagers
Security guards armed with axes, clubs and hammers have reportedly threatened villagers with eviction at the Union Development Group (UDG) site in Koh Kong province just weeks after the Chinese company pledged to peacefully resolve the dispute. About 50 security officials arrived at the villagers’ homes ...
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/udg-issuing-eviction-threats-again-villagers
Network bust doesn’t stop logging
Villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district last week seized several logs of illegal timber, ending what they said had been a lull in illegal logging since the arrests of two officials accused of colluding with loggers. ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/network-bust-doesnt-stop-logging
Gov’t settles land dispute after Hun Sen’s visit
Just two days after Prime Minister Hun Sen promised to resolve a 20-year-old land dispute in Siem Reap City, the government on Friday issued a subdecree that divides 115 hectares of the contested plot between more than 700 families. ...
Aun Pheap
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/govt-settles-land-dispute-after-hun-sens-visit-82132/
Fishermen claim victory against sand dredgers
An environmental activist and a fisherman said Sunday that about 70 residents of Koh Kong province had worked together over the past few days to chase away sand-dredging barges they accused of operating illegally around Koh Kapi island and damaging vital fishing grounds. ...
Hul Reaksmey
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/fishermen-claim-victory-against-sand-dredgers-81942/
Monitors accused of complicity in logging
Officials charged with protecting Cambodia’s Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary are colluding with loggers responsible for felling at least 300 trees each day, according to activists in the area. ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/monitors-accused-complicity-logging
Boeng Kak families accept swap to end land disputes
At least 16 more families that have been locked in a bitter and lengthy dispute with the municipal government over land in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood accepted municipal governor Pa Socheatvong’s offer of a land swap Thursday morning. ...
Mech Dara
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/boeng-kak-families-accept-swap-to-end-land-disputes-81780/
Armed guards forcibly evict residents from village in Cambodia’s Kratie province
Armed guards evicted residents from their homes from a village in Cambodia’s Kratie province on Thursday as rival villagers burned their houses down when local authorities tried to hand over their land to the first group, local witnesses said. ...
Prach Chev
http://bit.ly/1HY84pr
Hun Sen tells officials to stop passing blame
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday told provincial governors to take responsibility for curbing forestry crimes in their respective provinces and scolded officials who blame one another when illegal logging is uncovered. ...
Khuon Narim
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/hun-sen-tells-officials-to-stop-passing-blame-81705/
Ministry official rejects NGO report on city’s slums
A government official rejected calls from a pair of NGOs on Tuesday to do more for Phnom Penh’s slums amid what they described as an opaque land-titling system that has routinely failed poor communities. In a joint report, “The Exclusion of Urban Poor Communities From Systematic ...
Khuon Narim and Zsombor Peter
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ministry-official-rejects-ngo-report-on-citys-slums-81606/
Urban poor more likely to lack titles: report
Cambodia’s land-titling review process lacks transparency and clarity and is in danger of leaving behind Phnom Penh’s urban poor, according to a new report. Since the Systematic Land Registration (SLR) program was established in 2002, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction has granted ...
Sarah Taguiam and Pech Sotheary
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/urban-poor-more-likely-lack-titles-report
Survey finds deep discontent as Cambodian land disputes continue
According to a new survey, land disputes in Cambodia lead to employment insecurity, causing poverty, food insecurity, and increasing physical and psychological insecurity. The survey found that most expressed a desire for the government to eliminate land disputes and set a clear policy to address ...
Neou Vannarin
http://bit.ly/1H3iZQi
Mine, UXO explosions casualties up in 2014
Both the number of accidents and casualties caused by old landmines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO) rose by nearly 40 percent last year, according to the latest government data, though the two figures were still the second lowest on record following years of progress in ...
Zsombor Peter
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/mine-uxo-explosions-casualties-up-in-2014-81534/
Timber by the numbers
Cambodia’s foremost logging baron exported more than 100,000 cubic metres of timber from Sihanoukville Port last year, likely including a species protected by an international treaty to which the Kingdom is a signatory, an analysis by Global Witness of leaked export records suggests. The data, obtained ...
Daniel Pye
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/timber-numbers
Prey Long network ends four-day patrol to monitor logging
A network of about 400 activists completed a five-day patrol of the unprotected 650,000-hectare Prey Long forest in the country’s north Sunday, seizing and burning illegally logged wood and confiscating chainsaws from those they discovered felling trees. ...
Aun Pheap
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/prey-long-network-ends-four-day-patrol-to-monitor-logging-81439/
New summonses in old dispute in R’kiri
Four ethnic Jarai village representatives in Ratanakkiri province, including the wife of a rights group activist, were ordered to appear at court today or face arrest on charges of defamation against Keat Kolney, the sister of Deputy Prime Minister Keat Chhon. The case is part of ...
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/new-summonses-old-dispute-rkiri
Sand dredgers freed in capital, jailed in Kandal
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Saturday fined and released 10 workers swept up in a crackdown on illegal sand dredging operations by the Ministry of Mines and Energy last week. ...
Ben Sokhean and Alex Consiglio
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/sand-dredgers-freed-in-capital-jailed-in-kandal-81451/
Tires torched by angry Chroy Changva families
Angry locals burned tires on the Chroy Changva peninsula Friday to protest the building of a road through their village, which is at the center of a land dispute with the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC). ...
Sek Odom
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/tires-torched-by-angry-chroy-changva-families-81404/
Eleven arrested over illegal Sand dredging
Three owners of sand dredging companies were among 11 people arrested Thursday by military police—working in tandem with the Ministry of Mines and Energy—for operating without a proper license, according to a spokesman for the ministry. ...
Kang Sothear
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/eleven-arrested-over-illegal-sand-dredging-81320/
IFC criticised for abusive investments
Rights groups yesterday took aim at the private-sector arm of the World Bank for investing money into companies that are responsible for human rights abuses around the world, highlighting a Vietnamese rubber firm accused of illegal logging and land grabbing in Ratanakkiri province as a ...
Alice Cuddy
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ifc-criticised-abusive-investments
Justice minister seeks briefing over years-old land dispute
The justice minister on Wednesday wrote to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court requesting that the judge in charge of a case surrounding a long-running land dispute report to the ministry, following intervention from the National Assembly’s human rights commission. ...
Ben Sokhean
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/justice-minister-seeks-topic-over-years-old-land-dispute-81308/
Land, insecurity linked: report
Rampant land grabs, economic land concessions and a disastrous land-titling program have fostered an environment of insecurity for Cambodia’s most marginalised citizens, according to a new report, which argues that the Kingdom needs to rethink its current business-centric development model. ...
Ethan Harfenist
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/land-insecurity-linked-report
In Mondolkiri, police return to raze remaining shelters
After overseeing the destruction of all but six of 172 temporary shelters that had been erected on farmland claimed by an ethnic Bunong community in Mondolkiri province on Tuesday, authorities returned to destroy the remaining structures Wednesday, again on the grounds that the land belonged ...
Aun Pheap
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/in-mondolkiri-police-return-to-raze-remaining-shelters-81241/
World Bank may be blind to harm of financial investments: Oxfam
The World Bank’s private sector arm may be doing more harm than good when it invests in private equity firms, banks and other financial intermediaries, global development group Oxfam said in a report on Wednesday. In one project indirectly sponsored by the bank’s International Finance Corporation ...
Anna Yukhananov
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/01/us-worldbank-investments-idUSKBN0MS5IJ20150401
Meeting between Koh Kong families, development firm fruitless
Representatives for some 200 families in a yearslong land dispute with the Union Development Group (UDG) in Koh Kong province met for the first time with both company and government officials Tuesday but left with little to show. ...
Hul Reaksmey
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/meeting-between-koh-kong-families-development-firm-fruitless-81149/