News

The provincial office of rights group Licadho has called on Koh Kong provincial politicians to help more than 1,000 families being forcibly evicted to make way for a sprawling gambling resort and other development, representative said yesterday. More than 130 families, from three villages in Kiri ...

Confusion continued to swirl around the fate of Bavet city Governor Chhuk Bundith yesterday after the Interior Ministry last week identified him as the sole suspect in the Feb. 20 triple shooting of protesters at a special economic zone (SEZ). While human rights groups claimed yesterday ...

If the government continues to grant economic land and mining concessions at the current rate, there will be no more arable land left in the country to give away within one year, a researcher from the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights said yesterday. Pointing to the ...

The total number of land concessions offered by the government to private agro-industrial firms hit 1.19 million hectares, or 13.5 percent of Cambodia’s total land mass, a senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday. The government figure undermines figures released late last year ...

Human rights group Licadho raised the alarm yesterday over the increased use of armed force by authorities as they seek to suppress protests over Cambodia’s numerous land disputes. It noted that during the past two months, security forces have opened fire on villagers during three ...

Dramatic new video footage of the January 18 Kratie province land dispute shooting has been released on the internet, depicting TTY rubber company security guards opening fire on a crowd of unarmed villagers. The 48-second video, recorded by a villager on a mobile phone and uploaded ...

More than 11,000 families were affected by government-granted economic land concessions in 2011, nearly 3,000 more families than were affected the previous year, according to figures released yesterday by local rights group Licadho. A total of more than 2 million hectares of the country’s forests and ...

Angered by the clearing of parts of Prey Long forest, several hundred indigenous minority villagers marched on a rubber plantation here in northern Kompong Thom province yesterday night and breached its gate in order to demand that the company stop cutting down trees in the ...

For the several hundred villagers who have been camping and patrolling in a remote part of the jungle in northern Kompong Thom for several days as part of their campaign to save Prey Long forest, the strain is starting to show. Human rights workers say that ...

Two new claims of abuse of Cambodian maids employed in Malaysia have emerged since Friday, including one case of a woman who returned home with severe mental trauma following alleged mistreatment by her Malaysian employer, the victims’ families said. Iy Thar, a villager from Kompong Thom ...

Despite Prime Minister Hun Sen’s indefinite ban on sending Cambodian maids to Malaysia, two recruitment agencies continued to send maids there yesterday, according to rights group Licadho Recruitment agency Top Manpower put seven recruits on Air Asia flight AK 273 to Kuala Lumpur yesterday morning, while ...

Rights groups said yesterday a ban on sending Cambodian domestic workers to Malaysia – signed by the Prime Minister on Saturday – should not be lifted until both countries implemented measures to stop deaths, rapes, forced detainment and under-age recruitment in the labour sector. Groups including ...

More than 1,000 families from four districts in Siem Reap province involved in ongoing land disputes released a joint statement on Friday asking for intervention from government officials. Villagers involved in six separate land disputes with various private companies in four districts claim a total ...

Authorities in Phnom Penh briefly detained about 100 villagers yesterday who were distributing leaflets to raise awareness of the ongoing destruction of Prey Long, one of Cambodia’s largest remaining primary forests. The leaflet distributors had their materials confiscated and were escorted to six commune offices ...

Police and a human rights group said they rescued a 15-year-old girl from the training center of an overseas job recruitment agency in Kompong Chhnang province on Saturday. A rights worker said two more underage girls had been saved from being sent abroad to work ...

Phnom Penh City Hall yesterday warned Angkor Beer promoters to protest peacefully until a resolution could be reached on their pay claims, a union representative said. Protests held by the Angkor Beer promoters turned violent on Tuesday evening, with one promoter hospitalized after protestors clashed ...

Mong Reththy, former advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen has said that investors should use local residents on their land concessions rather than evicting them and hiring outsiders. According to a US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks Mr. Reththy is “Hun Sen’s Money Man” and ...

Three villagers have been summoned as a result of  bloody clash last year stemming from a land dispute and eviction by the Kompong Speu Provincial Court. The 65 hectares of land have been awarded to Kuo Sheng a Taiwanese businessman by the Supreme court. Licadho, ...

The last of the Chi Kraeng villagers has been freed by the Appeal Court after it upheld their acquittal. The villagers had originally been convicted of forcibly detaining two businessmen over a land dispute involving 475 hectares of rice paddies in Siem Reap in 2009. ...