ADB Smothers Report On Families Hit by Rail Project
March 19th, 2013, The Cambodia Daily, Business & Commercial Development, Construction, Disputed Land, Economics, Foreign Aid, Infrastructure, International Relations, Land Tenure, News Source, Social Concerns, Technical Assistance
The Asian Development Bank has refused to release a critical study on the impacts its $141.6 million railway project is having on thousands of Cambodian families because disclosure of the report could hurt its relationship with the government, an ADB spokeswoman said.
Raising concerns about the ADB’s decision to bury the report‘s findings, housing rights groups released a statement yesterday criticizing the banks lack of transparency and public accountability. …
After having its initial request for access to the report denied, Inclusive Development International (IDI) appealed to the ADB’s Public Disclosure Advisory Committee on February 16. The ADB committee informed IDI that its appeal has also been rejected on Friday.
“ADB has long recognized that transparency and accountability are essential to development effectiveness and ADB’s ability to achieve its vision of an Asia and Pacific free of poverty,” ADB spokeswoman Ann Quon said in the letter.
But releasing Dr. Cernea’s findings on the rail project, Ms. Quon said, would further delay a project that is already behind schedule and over budget, damage the ADB’s long term relationship with the government, and “compromise the integrity of the of ADB’s deliberative decision-making process.” …
Both the ADB and the Australian government’s foreign aid arm co-funding the project, AusAid, have sold the railway’s rebirth as a key of bringing down the cost of transport and doing business across the country.
They have also placed the responsibility for the roughly 1,200 families the project will ultimately see evicted on the government, while pledging extra money to help the families supplement their diminished incomes after eviction. …
Zsombor Peter and Phorn Bopha, P.1
www.cambodiadaily.com
Titles near as students finally on way to district
March 19th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Farmland, Land Tenure, News Source
Nearly 50 families in Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district will finally receive official titles after repeatedly requesting – and being denied – student volunteers to measure their land, the villagers’ commune chief said yesterday.
Koh Pol commune chief Ev Kosal, who participated in the meeting between local authorities and land department officials at Koh Kong City Hall, confirmed that authorities had indeed agreed to send youth volunteers to demarcate villagers’ land, cementing what villagers feared was becoming a tenuous living situation.
Villager representative In Chron, 52, said the families’ land had gone unmeasured since the start of the volunteer-titling program, raising fears among residents that their homes and farmland would be forfeited unless they could prove their legal ownership. …
R’kiri minorities say land’s sale improper
March 19th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Disputed Land, Land Tenure, News Source
Fifty Tampuon ethnic minority families protested yesterday in front of the Soeung Commune Hall in Bakeo district against their commune chief, who they allege sold land that belonged to the Ratanakkiri community.
In a complaint filed to rights group Adhoc yesterday, the families claim that commune chief Ro Mam Tham sold a 52-by-72-metre piece of the 1.5 hectare of land set aside for the commune hall to a Mr. Meng for $10,000, said Dy Virak, one of the protesters. …
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031962012/National/r-kiri-minorities-say-land-s-sale-improper.html
Illegal checkpoints, logging tools netted
March 19th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Environment & Natural Resources, Environmental change, Forests, Land Tenure, News Source, Timber/Wood
Activists in Kratie province’s Snuol district seized seven chainsaws over the weekend and collected evidence that four police checkpoints were used to solicit bribes from illegal loggers, representatives of the network said yesterday.
After scouring thousands of hectares of protected forest from Friday through yesterday, the evidence that 40 network patrollers uncovered showed significant evidence of illegal logging of three kinds of luxury wood in Ksim commune, said Sorn Siyan, a community network representative. …
Since 2003, when the government recognised the area as community forest, 2,459 hectares of that forest has been completely destroyed, and the remaining portion was threatened by powerful officials and newcomers, said Siyan.
Ksim commune police chief Or Seng denied that illegal logging was occurring in his area, asserting that all of the commune’s community forest already had been felled and that the remaining forest had been granted to a private company in a government concession. …
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031962013/National/illegal-checkpoints-logging-tools-netted.html
Hun Sen: to rebuild homes in Sihanoukville
March 18th, 2013, The Cambodia Herald, Business & Commercial Development, Construction, Disputed Land, Industry, Infrastructure, Land Tenure, Social Concerns
The Prime Minister ordered 49 family’s houses to be rebuild [sic] at Keo Pus Village, in the Steung Hav District of Sihanoukville, after they had been demolished by authorities earlier this month. …
He also ordered Bin Chhin, Chairman of the National Authority for Land Dispute and Resolution, to personally oversee the problem and solve it. …
The land had been the topic of dispute between 49 families and Leo Brewery owner Cheam Pen since 2006. …
The Cambodian Herald Staff
http://www.thecambodiaherald.com/cambodia/detail/1?page=11&token=YmFjMDM0MTczYzl
‘Crocodile’ gran to file $100 million lawsuit
March 18th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Disputed Land, Land Tenure, News Source
Prominent businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary yesterday announced her intention to sue Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema for falsifying documents saying she illegally occupied state land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district in a bid to steal the land and develop a sports stadium on it.
Sokountheary, 57 – also known as Yeay Kraper, or “Crocodile Grandmother” – chairwoman of the board of directors of Layimex Holding Group, said she would be submitting her criminal lawsuit against Chuktema and some Sen Sok district officials to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court today, and would be seeking the return of her 34 hectares and $100 million in damages. …
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031861997/National/crocodile-gran-to-file-100-million-lawsuit.html
New study reveals catastrophic loss of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands
March 17th, 2013, Phys Org News, Agriculture & Agri-business, Agro-Industry, Business & Commercial Development, Climate Change, Construction, Disasters & Disaster Management, Economics, Environment & Natural Resources, Environmental change, Farming, Fishing, Infrastructure, International Relations, Lakes/Rivers, Land Tenure, Reports
Around half of Cambodia’s tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years according to new research from the University of East Anglia. The seasonally flooded grasslands around the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake, are of great importance for biodiversity and a refuge for 11 globally-threatened bird species, including the Bengal Florican. They are also a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1 million people. …
The grassland area spanned 3349 km² in 1995, but by 2005 it had been reduced to just 1817 km² – a loss of 46 per cent.
Despite conservation efforts in some areas, it has continued to shrink rapidly since, with a further 19 per cent lost in four years (2005-2009) from the key remaining grassland area in the southeast of the Tonle Sap floodplain.
Factors include intensive commercial rice farming with construction of irrigation channels, which is often illegal. Some areas have also been lost to scrubland where traditional, low-intensity agricultural activity has been abandoned. …
Phys Org News Staff
http://phys.org/news/2013-03-reveals-catastrophic-loss-cambodia-tropical.html
Land rights have key role in Cambodia
March 16th, 2013, The Gulf Times, Business & Commercial Development, Construction, Disputed Land, Economic Land Concessions, Environment & Natural Resources, Industry, Infrastructure, International Relations, Land Tenure, Timber/Wood
Faced with widespread evictions and opaque private sector deals, activists in Cambodia are calling on the government to be more open and transparent about land concessions, beef up mechanisms for resolving land disputes, and abide by the rule of law. …
It is estimated that at least two thirds of Cambodians, many of them poverty-stricken farmers, lack proper deeds to the property they live on. Over the past decade thousands have been forcibly evicted from their homes, while others have fallen victim to land-grabbing. During this time of rapid economic growth, and with more growth forecast, there has been increasing demand for land in this largely agricultural country of about 15mn people, and rising land tenure insecurity, experts say. …
Rights groups have largely welcomed a moratorium on the granting of new ELCs, a review of existing concessions, and a nationwide land-titling programme announced by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in June 2012 to stem the number of disputes. According to ADHOC, official data states that by the end of 2012, more than 71,000 land titles had been issued through the programme. …
Cambodian government spokesperson Phay Siphan said allegations of government complicity in land-grabbing were “baseless” and, if necessary, people could take disputes to court. …
Gulf Times Staff
http://www.gulf-times.com/asean-philippines/188/details/345724/land-rights-have-key-role-in-cambodia
Sugar Playing Catch-Up With Spice
March 15th, 2013, Independent European Daily Express, Agriculture & Agri-business, Agro-Industry, Business & Commercial Development, Disputed Land, Economic Land Concessions, Economics, Environment & Natural Resources, Exports, Farming, Foreign Investment, International Relations, Land Tenure, Production, Social Concerns, Trade
Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque.
But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, as the neighbouring beachside Kampot province did just three years ago.
Back in 2009, Kampot became to Cambodia what Champagne is to France – a region bestowed with the prestigious Geographical Indication (GI) status, which ensures a higher market value for specialty produce. …
Here in Kampot, farmers supplying European gourmets with what is lauded as the best pepper in the world enjoy a higher daily wage than their counterparts in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, 30 percent of whom live on less than a dollar a day. …
Sun Somnang of the export company Starling Farm and a member of both the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association (KPPA) and the Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association (KPSA) believes there is an urgent need to publicise palm sugar and attract tourists.
Experts like Somnang and government officials seek to improve farmers’ lives in Kampong Speu, where the average gross annual income is 500 to 1,000 dollars. …
Independent European Daily Express Staff
http://www.iede.co.uk/news/2013_1290/sugar-playing-catch-spice
Forest activists answer complaint in court
March 15th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Agriculture & Agri-business, Disputed Land, Farming, Forests, Land Tenure, News Source
Eight members of the Prey Lang forest community network, summonsed to the Kampong Thom provincial court yesterday to answer a 2011 complaint, rejected its accusation that they had caused intentional damage by uprooting cassava plants belonging to Ol Ratha and maintained they had acted only to prevent Ratha clearing community land.
“She came to clear our community forest. and we barred her. I am worried that there are senior police officers behind this [complaint],” summonsed community representative Chheang Vuthy said, adding that a ninth summonsed activist had not appeared yesterday because he was sick. …
May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031561954/National/forest-activists-answer-complaint-in-court.html
Urban Dwellers Face a Battle for Land Ownership Registration
March 15th, 2013, The Cambodia Daily, Business & Commercial Development, Disputed Land, Farmland, Infrastructure, Land Tenure, Social Concerns
People applying for land titles in urban areas are at a huge disadvantage compared to their rural counterparts due to the higher percentage of property disputes with powerful officials and businesspeople in the country’s cities, a new report on land registration has found. …
To improve the situation, the report says the government should respect legal possession rights, as stated under the 2001 Land Law, rather than granting newly approved projects on such land. The report also recommends that the government conduct research to find out how many households have been unfairly excluded from registering their land in the country. …
Beng Hong Socheat Khermo, spokesman for the Land Management Ministry, said the government was addressing all the recommendations put forward in the report. …
Phorn Bopha, P.17
www.cambodiadaily.com
Mam Sonando’s verdict announced
March 14th, 2013, The Cambodia Herald, Disputed Land, Land Tenure, Social Concerns
Beehive radio owner Mam Sonando, along with two others appeared in the Court of Appeals Thursday to listen to their verdicts.
The sentence was changed from five years to eight months imprisonment, but will be released on March 16, 2013 for having spent the same amount of time in prison. …
Mam Sonando, 72, a director of the Democrats Association, had been sentenced last year by Phnom Penh Municipal Court to 20 years imprisonment for his role in secession movement in Kratie’s Chhloung district. …
The Cambodian Herald Staff
http://www.thecambodiaherald.com/cambodia/detail/1?page=15&token=NTNlN2Y5YmNmYjg
Sihanoukville land prices largely flat
March 14th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Land Tenure, News Source, Real Estate
Land prices in Preah Siahnouk province have risen slightly, by 5 to 10 per cent in early 2013, despite increasing numbers of tourists who have visited Cambodia and travelled to the province.
Cheng Kheng, director of the CPL real estate company and president of Cambodian Valuers and Estate Agents Association, said that land trading in Preah Sihanouk in early 2013 has grown between 5 to 10 per cent this year, but some areas have advanced and some have only slightly increased. …
Siv Meng
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031461949/Real-Estate/sihanoukville-land-prices-largely-flat.html
Camko City’s potential seen
March 14th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Construction, Infrastructure, Land Tenure, News Source, Real Estate
Property experts say the Camko City project has a great deal of potential, after visiting and studying the satellite city last week.
Kim Heang, general manager of Khmer Real Estate Co, said that he is very interested in Camko City because he has seen that it has good infrastructure and sewage and electricity systems, the buildings are of good quality and its interior design is of international standards. …
Siv Meng
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031461948/Real-Estate/camko-city-s-potential-seen.html
Deputy Prime Minister Says Homeless People A worry For Tourism
March 14th, 2013, The Cambodia Daily, Industry, International Relations, Land Tenure, Social Concerns, Tourism
Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam An yesterday said the government should clear beggars away from the country’s most popular tourism sites by providing them with decent education and legal ownership of their land. …
“We have performed well in working with homeless people, but I noticed that [in] some tourism regions like Siem Reap and Preah Sihanouk [a lot of] children and homeless people ask for money from foreigners,” Ms. Sam An said.
“We need to provide them with education and make sure they can stay in a house permanently and have land so they can earn a living.”…
Am Sam Ath, senior rights monitor for local NGO Licadho, said that he supported Ms. Sam An’s idea to provide homeless people with land in order to stop them from begging. …
Sun Mesa, P.16
www.cambodiadaily.com
Six Cambodians Injured in Capital Land Clash
March 13th, 2013, Radio Free Asia, Business & Commercial Development, Disputed Land, Economic Land Concessions, International Relations, Land Tenure, Social Concerns
At least six people were seriously injured Wednesday in clashes between about 100 villagers demanding land compensation and 300 security personnel in front of the home of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, activists said.
According to villager representative Tep Vanny, the evictees from Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak lake community had earlier protested in front of the Ministry of Justice over the dispute and called for the release of a jailed fellow activist. …
When the mostly-female villagers tried to enter Hun Sen’s residence to confront the prime minister, “around 300 [security personnel] surrounded the villagers and detained at least three of them,” she said.
The action by Phnom Penh municipal police and Daun Penh district security guards, who were armed with riot shields and batons, led to a confrontation between the two sides that quickly escalated into violence, activists said. …
Protests over Boeung Kak Lake evictions have been ongoing since 2008, when the Chinese-Cambodian Shukaku Inc. began draining the lake to make way for a luxury residential development, drawing international attention to the country’s land development policies. …
According to Licadho, the government has given away nearly 4 million hectares (15,000 square miles), or 22 percent of the country’s land area, in mining or economic land concessions, in some cases pitting residents against developers and sparking protests. …
Radio Free Asia Staff
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/clash-03132013184900.html
Round 2 at Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila district
March 13th, 2013, The Phnom Penh Post, Business & Commercial Development, Construction, Disputed Land, Economic Land Concessions, Infrastructure, Land Tenure, Social Concerns
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 Suy Sophan, the owner of Borei Keila developer Phan Imex, who accused them of trespassing. …
Phan Imex, backed by municipal authorities, evicted about 300 families from Borei Keila on January 3 last year, ordering them to remote housing sites out of the city.
As part of a land swap deal inked in 2004, the company was contracted to build 10 high-rise apartment blocks for 1,776 families at Borei Keila, in exchange for their adjacent land, but finished only eight, leaving hundreds homeless. …
Dy Sokdeoun, a commune security official, said the villagers should leave the land if they did not want to deal with authorities and another “company crackdown”.
“They should be patient and wait for a solution to avoid being charged for building shelter on the company’s land,” he said. …
Khouth Sophak Chakrya
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013031361918/National/round-2-at-borei-keila.html
Still No Donor to Take Over Communal Land Titling From Canada
March 13th, 2013, The Cambodia Daily, Disputed Land, Foreign Aid, Land Tenure, News Source, Technical Assistance
The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said yesterday that it had still found no replacement donor to commit long-term to carrying on its work helping indigenous ethnic minority groups secure communal land titles once it pulls out in May.
Kan Vibol, project field manager for CIDA’s Cambodia Land Administration Support Project, said they will have spent $240,000 by the time the last of the five communities they have been working with receives its title in late April. …
The titles, granted to a whole community at a time, are designed specifically to protect the ancestral land of ethnic minorities from outside developers. Unlike with private titles, outsiders cannot buy up the land one family at a time. …
Zsombor Peter
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/still-no-donor-to-take-over-communal-land-titling-from-canada-14638/
Upstream Dams, Downstream Trouble
March 12th, 2013, HydroWorld.com, Agriculture & Agri-business, Business & Commercial Development, Construction, Disputed Waters, Electricity, Energy, Environment & Natural Resources, Environmental change, Fishing, Hydroelectricity, Infrastructure, International Relations, Lakes/Rivers, Land Tenure, Water
As examples, Laos broke ground on a new Mekong River dam that’s causing concern bordering on fury in Cambodia and Vietnam. India is enraged about a new Chinese dam going up on the Brahmaputra River. And Ethiopia’s new dam on the Nile is angering Sudan, while Egypt has threatened war. …
Perhaps the most egregious example is Laos, which broke ground on a new hydroelectric dam on the Mekong late last year – ignoring the howls of complaint from downstream. Just south in Cambodia, for example, the Mekong provides the livelihood for much of the population because of an unusual natural phenomenon.
Cambodia’s Tonle Sap River is a Mekong tributary that flows southeast from a lake of the same name. Each spring, the Mekong swells, and its current grows so strong that it forces the Tonle Sap River to reverse course, carrying tons of rich, fertile mud and millions of young fish back up to the lake. the lake floods, depositing new, rich soil on thousands of acres around its perimeter. the fish provide meals for Cambodians through the year. By potentially restricting the river’s flow, the Laotian dam threatens all of that. …
Hydroworld Staff
http://www.hydroworld.com/news/2013/03/12/upstream-dams-downstream-trouble.html
Banong Families Receive Communal Land Tiles
March 12th, 2013, The Cambodia Daily, Farmland, Land Tenure, Protected Areas
Seventy-two ethnic minorities Banong families received communal titles to a combined 1,008 hectares of ancestral land in Mondolkiri province yesterday morning in a ceremony attended by Land Management Minister Chhun Lim.
Communal titles were designed to protect the ancestral lands of the country’s minorities from outside developers, and yesterday’s titles were only the fourth or fifth to be issued since they were established by the 2001 Land Law. …
Besides the spirit forests, the titles will protect the communities’ traditional rotational farmland, residential land and land held in reserve for future generations for farming and living. …
Kuch Naren, P.19
www.cambodiadaily.com