News

Global Witness has called on the United States to impose sanctions against four Cambodian tycoons for their alleged roles in the demise of Cambodian democracy and for human rights abuses. Its allegations, in a report on Friday, were brushed off by a ruling CPP spokesman ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen declared a passion for forest protection yesterday, urging officials to improve the efficiency of forest crime prevention. ...

Massive deforestation is playing a crucial role in the droughts that have devastated Cambodia. But despite an official ban on timber exports, forests continue to be cut down at a record rate.The Cambodian government awarded between 30 and 40 logging concessions to private companies during ...

Government officials reacted strongly yesterday to a recent statement by NGO Global Witness calling on Switzerland, the host of this year’s World Economic Forum, to turn away Prime Minister Hun Sen and not give him a platform to find new international business partners. ...

Cambodian forests, some of the most biologically diverse areas in the world, are vanishing fast as a result of the Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodian political interests. Cambodia has one of the largest deforestation rates in the world. Forest Trends, an influential organization with a mission to conserve ...

The Commerce Ministry has scrubbed its website of all corporate shareholder information since last month’s release of a report damned by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s children for shedding light on the first family’s sprawling business empire. ...

A group of United Nations human rights experts have condemned the murder of Cambodian political analyst and social activist Kem Ley and called for an impartial investigation by an independent body with no ties to the government. ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s family has amassed a “vast fortune”, with stakes in at least 114 domestic companies spanning most of the Kingdom’s key sectors, including major energy, telecoms, mining and trading firms, according to an investigation by Global Witness, which accuses the Hun ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday retracted an order to use all illegally logged wood seized by the government to build schools and housing for teachers, arguing that they would struggle to carry the wood out of the forest.   ...

The smuggling of illegally cut timber from northeastern Cambodia’s Ratanakiri  province to Vietnam has dramatically increased since around April 17, with smugglers traveling the roads between the two countries day and night, sources in the region say. ...

The nearly 1 million hectares of newly protected forests the Environment Ministry wants to create by the end of the year will add nearly a third more land to the portfolio of an agency already struggling to manage the 3.2 million hectares it has. And ...

Environment and agriculture ministry officials Wednesday warned the authors of a new report accusing the government of colluding with timber magnate Try Pheap to illegally log the protected forests of northeastern Cambodia that they could be sued unless they made changes to the text. ...

More than a dozen international advocacy groups wrote to National Assembly President Heng Samrin asking him to withdraw a controversial draft law on NGOs and associations. ...

Seoung Sarat survived several bloody Cambodian regimes and civil wars. But only when his country was at peace was he shot and lost a leg. The indigenous Tompuon man, now living in a borrowed home in the forest of Ratanakiri province, says he lost his right ...

A parliamentary committee will look into allegations of illegal logging and timber exports, where big money and deep corruption have led to conflict, deforestation and tax fraud. Opposition lawmaker Ho Vann, who leads the National Assembly committee, told VOA Khmer he is looking into evidence and ...

In a new report, U.K. environmental rights group Global Witness places Cambodian timber magnate Try Pheap at the heart of a vast illegal logging operation driving the country’s rarest tree species to the brink of extinction with the collusion of government and military officials. “The Cost ...

Contentious plantation giant Vietnam Rubber Group reportedly “lost” nearly $391 million of state funds over five years, including $22.75 million from a rubber plantation in Cambodia, an official investigation into the firm’s dealings has found, according to Vietnamese media. Hanoi’s anti-corruption body, the General Inspectorate, last ...

The head of the country’s anti-graft body has said he has received two death threats since the unit responsible for directing investigations into public and private-sector corruption was established in 2010. ...

More than 15 months after a Global Witness report revealed that Vietnam’s state-owned rubber giant had illegally cleared land and displaced communities in Cambodia, the company has announced that it will accept and respond to complaints from those whose lives it has damaged. Vietnam Rubber Group, ...

Try Chamroeun, a 19-year-old student, was planting soybeans on Sunday along with fellow villagers on a two-hectare (half-acre) plot in Preah Vihear province, when soldier Poeun Tash demanded that he stop, claiming the land belonged to his military boss, according to London-based environmental advocacy group ...

In the predawn hours of May 6, a flatbed truck packed with lengths of illegally logged timber sped past a checkpoint in Ratanakkiri province, knocking aside a police car and racing off. Police later tracked down the truck to a house in Banlung City. In the ...

A Cambodian delegation to the United Nations last week used the stage to shame the World Bank’s financial arm for failing to adequately monitor investments in a Vietnamese rubber giant accused of illegal logging, forced evictions and sexual harassment. Representing 17 indigenous communities in Ratanakkiri that ...

Sexual assault and the annihilation of sacred graveyards are among the many claims levelled at Vietnamese Rubber giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) by villagers in Ratanakkiri province, a report by the World Bank’s investment arm reveals. In February, 17 indigenous communities that accused HAGL of ...

A forestry official with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) who is usually tight-lipped acknowledged last week that his agency has struggled to combat illegal logging, blaming a shortage of manpower and entrenched opportunistic logging by villagers – explanations that were laughed off ...