News

More than 200 villagers involved in three different land disputes gathered in front of Cambodia’s top court in the capital Tuesday to demand the release of jailed rights campaigner Yorm Bopha ahead of her final appeal against a criminal conviction later this week. Yorm Bopha’s impending ...

Land activists who were brutally cracked down on at a protest in September submitted video and pictorial evidence of masked suspects slinging marbles, beating and electric shocking them to Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday. The group of 70 Borei Keila and Boeung Kak activists are suing ...

Evictees and anti-eviction activists on Wednesday briefly scuffled with police and security guards after cutting off traffic in front of Phnom Penh City Hall to demand that businesswoman Suy Sophan compensate them for homes that were bulldozed early last year. Human rights group Adhoc said at ...

Phnom Penh Municipality will provide land titles to 33 more families living in the city’s Boeng Kak neighborhood, a municipal official said Tuesday, roughly a third of those still seeking property rights in the area that has seen some 3,000 forced evictions. “First, we will solve ...

Cambodian housing rights activist Tep Vanny is in Washington this week, seeking to increase international pressure on Cambodian authorities to end forced evictions and find resolutions to longstanding land disputes. Tep Vanny, a housewife who has emerged as a leader for Cambodian victims of forced evictions, ...

Phnom Penh municipality and the Cambodian Red Cross (CRC) on Sunday donated money and food rations to 176 families from Borei Keila—where thousands of people have been violently evicted from their homes in recent years after the land was sold to a private company. Phnom Penh ...

At least two women were injured Monday as housing rights activists clashed with police in Phnom Penh. The activists had been demonstrating by sitting in a major street in front of City Hall to demand land titles in two ongoing land disputes in the capital, those ...

Local authorities met with Boeung Kak community members yesterday to register villagers left out of the oft-criticised resettlement scheme as a first step to providing them with titles and onsite housing. More than 10 officials including police, commune and village chief, as well as representatives of ...

Cambodian police used water cannons Wednesday to disperse around 200 women demanding a quick resolution to long-running land disputes, knocking at least three of the protesters, including a 72-year-old, unconscious. The move came two days after authorities used stun batons to disperse a protest over wages ...

About 20 people protesting their pending eviction from their homes near Phnom Penh International Airport blocked people from leaving or entering the airport for about half an hour yesterday, before a large force of police broke up their protest. In July, authorities told 182 families ...

Around 30 residents from Boeung Kok, Borei Kei and Thmor kol communities gathered and knelt down Monday in front of the Royal Palace to seek intervention from the King to release jailed land activist Yorm Bopha. In the petition, they asked him to intervene the ...

Phnom Penh’s new governor used his swearing in ceremony to Friday to boldly vow to solve some of the municipality’s longest-running and most high-emotive land disputes. Pa Socheatvong officially took over on Friday from outgoing governor Kep Chuktema, who served as the city’s chief for 10 ...

Phnom Penh, a city once fabled for its stately colonial buildings and boulevards, and its serene riverside setting, is becoming a city of glaring contrasts. An economy left in ruins by the years of war and violent revolution in the 1970s and 80s grew at a ...

Dozens of families at Borei Keila have moved back on to land they were evicted from last year, despite intimidation and threats of arrest by security forces employed by developer Phan Imex. Earlier this month, security guards tore down the shelters of 12 families who had ...

Four families who were violently evicted from Borei Keila in January last year built shelters yesterday in the rubbish where their houses once stood, claiming the land still belonged to them. The evictees erected small frames on the land, in the capital’s Prampi Makara district, irritating ...

Despite the massive spike in development underway in Phnom Penh, a new report says that the public interest is becoming marginalised in favour of the political and business elite. The report, from NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), says that currently “commercial interests are driving the urban ...

Prominent female land activists Tim Sakmony and Yorm Bopha, who have been locked in Prey Sar prison since their arrest in early September, will face court today on charges rights groups say have been fabricated to stop them and others from protesting. Hundreds of the women’s ...

After 28 years in the capital, eating like “a king” and enjoying the perks one receives as the son of high-ranking CPP officials, Sophal’s* move to the countryside was as jarring as it was eye-opening. Until the day in June when he traded his designer threads ...

Eight representatives of Phnom Penh communities involved in land disputes were allowed to present their petitions to the Council of Ministers yesterday after authorities blocked about 200 of their fellow petitioners from gathering in front of the Peace Palace. During a meeting with the representatives, Bun ...

A group of roughly 100 anti-eviction protestors were blocked by riot police yesterday from marching to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Peace Palace to appeal to U.S. President Barack Obama for help in reforming Cambodia’s land rights policy. The protest, which took place at the Boeng Kak ...

Capitalising on recent worldwide attention to their plight, some 200 villagers who say they’ve been robbed of their homes and land staged a vivid and stylised protest yesterday aimed at President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling for intervention in Phnom Penh’s land-titling ...

Anti-eviction protesters set up camp in front of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh for a second day yesterday, but ended their protest in the early evening when a petition to U.S. President Barack Obama was taken into the diplomatic mission by an embassy guard. “The ...

As Barack Obama was declared president of the United States for a second term yesterday, about 50 anti-eviction protesters for the Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities camped out in front of the U.S. Embassy and appealed for the president’s help in addressing land rights ...

Two land activists from forced evictions in Phnom Penh will not be released on bail as they await trial on incitement charges widely seen as an attack on free speech. The two women, Yorm Bopha and Tim Sak Mony, were arrested in early September and accused ...