In a sign that they no longer have faith in the court system, more than 100 villagers in Kampong Chhnang province placed their fates in the hands of a higher power yesterday, and prayed for misfortune to rain down on a company with whom they’ve fought a bitter land dispute for years.
The object of scorn for residents of Lorpeang village was KDC International, owned by the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy minister’s wife, Chea Kheng. …
A group of ethnic Kreung families living in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have accused a wealthy plantation owner of destroying their crops and threatening to evict them from their homes, local officials and villagers said yesterday.
Soeun Sarath, a representative of 13 indigenous families living in Kaleng commune, said that workers employed by Kim Kheng Chou destroyed mango and jack fruit trees growing near their houses on Sunday. …
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday encouraged Cambodians to strive for Chinese-style millionaire status as he inaugurated a sugar refinery located inside two controversial plantations belonging to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat and his wife in Kompong Speu province.
“I have one clear policy in strengthening the capacity of local investors, and that is making Cambodians become rich,” Mr. Hun Sen said in a speech at the inauguration. …
Though the mood was congratulatory yesterday at the inauguration of ruling party Senator Ly Yong Phat’s sugar company – a gleaming, new facility nestled in between two hills in Kampong Speu province’s Omlaing commune – the mood just a few kilometres away bordered on desperation.
Sitting in a small house just off a red dirt road, 55-year-old Kim Ponn’s voice cracked as she explained how after two years of struggling to get her farmland back after losing it to Yong Phat’s Phnom Penh Sugar Company, she had hoped to attend the ceremony – which was presided over by Prime Minister Hun Sen – if only to seek some answers. …
Villagers travelled from Poipet to Phnom Penh yesterday to seek the prime minister’s help in ending a land dispute with military police officials.
About 30 villagers travelling on behalf of families from Banteay Meanchey province’s Poipet town gathered in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s home yesterday to seek intervention after attempts by authorities to solve the dispute failed. …
The Phnom Penh Court of Appeal ruled Friday that Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando should continue serving his 20-year sentence for sedition. …
On October 1, the radio station owner was sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined 10 million riel in relation to a land dispute in Kratie. Three others involved in the dispute have been sentenced to 30 and 15 years while nine people have been released.
U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi, who arrived in Cambodia Sunday on a five-day mission, spent yesterday, International Human Rights Day, in Kompong Chhnang province with about 300 villagers from a community embroiled in a long-running land dispute with the wife of a government minister.
James Heeman, acting country representative for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, said Mr. Subedi visited the same community on a previous mission. …
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen mocked a group of ethnic minority villagers who tried to petition him on Friday about their land dispute in northern Cambodia’s Rattanakiri province, after they were stopped from presenting their complaint during his visit on a land-titling campaign.
Hun Sen was attending an event in Andoung Meas district to distribute deeds for land that his volunteer youth movement had been sent to measure for local villagers, when four representatives from a Charai hill tribe community in neighboring Bar Keo district came to present him with their petition. …
The Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court delayed the destruction of the homes and subsequent eviction of 14 families embroiled in a land dispute with a company owned by tycoon Kong Treav in Village 4 of Sihanoukville’s Commune 4, local authorities said yesterday.
Though many of the families on the disputed land have already moved, the remaining families last month were given a November 21 deadline in a letter signed by Judge Moung Monychakrya to “remove [your houses] and leave on your own, [or] the court will make pressure pursuant to the Supreme Court’s power in the case of your being obstinate, and will not take responsibility for damaged property and housing”. …
Seven representatives of 415 families entangled in an unresolved land dispute with a deputy commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have received a second summons to appear in Battambang Provincial Court to clarify accusations that they had vandalized the commander’s property, …
“They not only sued us for damaging the rubber plantation, but also bulldozed our land for the rubber plantation, so I want to issue a strong rejection of this allegation,” …
More than 300 families embroiled in a land dispute with notorious, and now defunct, NGO Darpo said yesterday that they had filed complaints to the Preah Vihear Provincial Court on Wednesday accusing a Koh Santepheap reporter of disinformation and calling for his arrest and $4,000 in compensation.
Village representatives Sath Savoeun, Srey Sophan and Kim Sophal of Kantuot commune in Choam Ksan district alleged that a series of purportedly false articles by Try Vantha misrepresented the trio’s involvement in the land dispute, amounting to disinformation and incitement, and that in the course of his reporting, Vantha accepted bribes from Darpo – which villagers have accused of rape, forced eviction and a host of other abuses while it was managing a social land concession. …
A Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporter in Ratanakkiri province will be questioned at the provincial court today in relation to claims that he incited villagers to commit crimes against a rubber company that they have been locked in a land dispute with since 2004.
Lim Chanlyda, defence lawyer for accused journalist Sok Ratha, also known as Ratha Visal, told the Post yesterday that her client had been accused in 2009 of inciting the ethnic Tumpoun villagers in Lumphat district to rebel against DM Group, which was awarded land there in 2004. …
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will hold a verbal hearing with Cambodian and Thailand over disputed land around Preah Vihear temple in April, government officials said yesterday.
“A verbal hearing with the Thai party will be held in April so that [we can] have a question and answer session face to face with the courts,” said the chairman of Cambodia’s border committee, Var Kimhong, on the sidelines of a Friends of Preah Vihear seminar held in Phnom Penh. …
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday charged a Ministry of Interior police general with intimidation and unlawful interference in the discharge of a public function for allegedly attempting to use Prime Minister Hun Sen’s student volunteer program to settle a personal land dispute. …
Mr. Hun Sen said that Lt. Gen. Sovann had written to the Land Management Ministry asking that the student volunteers be sent to measure a piece of land he claims to own in Pursat province’s Veal Veng District, and which is disputed by nine families. …
High-profile Phnom Penh businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to return 33 hectares of prime land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to her company, which lost the rights to it when the government claimed the land in July.
Sokountheary said she purchased the 34 hectares from villagers in the north of Pong Peay lake – in Phnom Penh Thmey commune – in 1979, and for the past 13 years, her company Layimex Holding Group has had control of the property.
The group was still awaiting a complete land licence – so-called hard plans – that would allow it to build schools, markets, hospitals and health clubs, developments in keeping with the government’s own poverty reduction goals, Sokountheary claims, when a governent sub-decree claimed all but one of the 34 hectares as state property.
The July 10 order, signed by Hun Sen, claimed land around the Pong Peay lake area, covering three communes in Sen Sok and Russey Keo districts, as a part of the Ministry of Water Resources’ flood protection policy. …
Contractors hired by Cambodian land brokers bulldozed through four hectares of villagers’ crops in Poipet town on Monday, breaching a truce contract that protected the villagers’ land until January 1 next year.
According to the contract, the families residing on land claimed by 11 independent Cambodian land brokers would move to an area near their original Stung Bot village.
Instead, bulldozers greeted the families on Monday, destroying crops, three small sheds and the familys’ livelihood. …
Residents have resided on the land since 1997 and were issued land titles in 1998. However, the land brokers claim to have held a title since 1993.
The villagers are now demanding compensation and the right to remain on their land. …
Prominent Boeung Kak villager and protester Yorm Bopha was yesterday jailed in Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, after she and her husband – en route to check for their names on a voting register – were pounced on by police in plain clothes in what her husband claims was a set-up.
Outside a building housing Srah Chork commune’s electoral roll, 29-year-old Bopha and her 56-year-old husband Lous Sakhorn were arrested at about 9am by 10 policemen, who shoved them into an unmarked car and sped away, according to witness Doung Kea. …
Sakhorn said he and his wife had never received the warrant and a Srah Chork police officer had phoned them several days ago, asking them to check their names on the electoral roll. …
Housing Rights Task Force communication official Long Kim Heang said the arrest and warrant were a new, illegal tactic to scare Boeung Kak women into silence. …
More than 180 families living adjacent to the Phnom Penh International Airport were told yesterday that they must vacate their homes to make was for a security road to ensure the safety of U.S. President Barack Obama, who is expected to visit in November. …
Var Sarang, deputy chief of Choam Chao commune, confirmed the eviction was for security purposes ahead of the next Asean Summit in Phnom Penh in November. …
U.S. Embassy spokesman Sean McIntosh did not comment yesterday on the planned eviction, noting only that President’s Obama’s attendance in Phnom Penh was not yet confirmed. …
Yin Kea, deputy governor in charge of the land dispute commission in Pur Senchey district, insisted that the families were on the land illegally. …
A district police chief in Kampong Chhnang province has been removed from his post over his alleged involvement in the sale of almost 130 hectares of state land to private buyers, provincial officials said yesterday.
Kim Sareth, the chief of police in Toek Phos district, was fired from his position after lower-level officials informed authorities about his role in the sale of the land in Khal Toek commune, district governor Ou Sakhorn said. …
…[The] informants in the case of the police chief also made allegations against his superior in the district administration, Mr. Sakhorn. …
“The sold the land to a branch of Ly Phat’s company. It is an individual’s legally owned land,” he [Mr. Sakhorn] said.
Ly Phat is a prominent businessman and, due to his close tied with the ruling party, is also a CPP member of the senate. …
