News
Lao, Cambodian families pay for summit luxuries
As Asian and European leaders gather for high level meetings this month in Cambodia and Laos, the luxury living quarters and extensive security arrangements made for their arrivals have come at considerable human and environmental expense. Government authorities went on a building spree ahead of this ...
Volunteers Move In to Measure Kratie Site
Two months after government security forces evicted hundreds of families from Kratie’s Broma village at gunpoint, residents who were permitted to remain there took their first steps toward legal land tenure. Scores of volunteers last week began to collect data of families in Chhlong and Snuol ...
Years After Eviction, Families Return In Search of Land Titles
More than 100 families in Stung Treng province have returned to land they were evicted from in 2007, hoping to acquire property titles after student volunteers arrived in the area to demarcate land under the titling program announced last month by Prime Minister Hun Sen. Stung ...
Homes Razed to Stop ‘Secession,’ Officials Say
The homes of nearly 200 families living in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district were demolished yesterday and Monday after officials accused the residents of being involved in a secessionist plot, local officials and villagers said. District governor Chhe Chhiv said that authorities had demolished 191 homes ...
Poipet families told to make way for train
Families living along a planned national train route in Poipet town were told they have 10 days to vacate their properties or be forcibly evicted, residents and NGOs said yesterday. Eang Vuthy, Development Watch Program Manager of Equitable Cambodia, said an eviction notice from the Poipet ...
Landless Cambodians see nothing sweet in EU sugar deal
An EU scheme to boost trade with developing nations is fuelling land grabs in Cambodia, activists say, with thousands evicted from their property to make way for a booming sugar industry. Campaigners are taking their fight to European supermarkets, encouraging a boycott of Cambodian sugar, which ...
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1211528/1/.html
Families Call for Boycott of Senator's 'Blood Sugar'
After years of futile protests demanding their land back, villagers forcibly evicted by sugarcane plantations connected to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat launched a boycott campaign yesterday targeting the international firms that sell his sugar. Thousands of families accuse the senator’s plantations of forcing them off ...
Koh Kong pagodas threatened
Prak Thon says he will give up everything to stop a Chinese company from destroying his pagoda in Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district. “I’ll allow them to demolish my house, but I will not allow them to destroy the pagoda. I’m satisfied if I die, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012070257150/National-news/koh-kong-pagodas-threatened.html
Sand Settles on Boeng Kak Project as Site’s Future Uncertain
In Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district there is a 133-hectare mound of sand that was once a lake. It took nearly four years to fill Boeng Kak with that sand. On the southern perimeter of the massive sand pit sit two large billboards. On those billboards there ...
Children of Jailed 15 Make Plea for Parents
Relatives and neighbors sang, cried and pleaded outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday for the release of the 14 women and one man arrested last week for protesting against CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin’s controversial Boeng Kak real estate project. Worried by reports that the World ...
Borei Keila evictees will be given a lift back to vote
Borei Keila evictees will have a chance to revisit the area they were forcibly evicted from this Sunday when authorities truck them back from the makeshift tents of their relocation site for a special purpose – to vote. Touch Khorn, a representative of the Borei Keila ...
Evicted M’kiri Families Can’t Afford Trip Home
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 ...
As Soldiers Leave Kratie Village, Problems Remain
After a three-day blockade, soldiers pulled out over the weekend from the Kratie province village where a teenage girl was shot dead last week by government security forces, officials said yesterday. However, human rights workers denied a report by a provincial official that freedom of movement ...
After clashes, tentative agreement for Borei Keila
Following their fourth protest in as many weeks, residents of Phnom Penh’s displaced Borei Keila community yesterday reached a tentative housing agreement with development firm Phanimex, company and village representatives said yesterday. The meeting came after a protest yesterday morning in which more than 100 residents ...
City Hall officials vow lake residents will get land
Phnom Penh municipal officials yesterday agreed to mark out a plot of land promised to Boeng Kak lake villagers by Prime Minister Hun Sen in order to put a stop to a string of recent protests ...
Australian grant to assist railway families
The Australian government is committing $1 million to help families being forced out of their homes to make way for a railway rehabilitation project it is co-funding with the government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Australian Embassy said in a statement Friday. The embassy ...