More than 40 families from Koh Kong province gathered on Friday outside Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Phnom Penh home to ask him to intervene in their land dispute with provincial forestry administration, village representatives said yesterday.
According to one villager, 37-year-old Sam Sary, 47 families delivered a petition to Mr. Hun Sen’s Cabinet bearing the thumbprints of 100 families from Khemara Phoumint City’s Smach Meanchey commune. …
Twenty-one families whose houses were demolished during an eviction on Tuesday said yesterday that they planned to refuse an offer of houses, land and cash from the tycoon who now possesses their land. …
Villagers, however, will continue to discuss the offer in another meeting scheduled for today, commune chief Nong Dinara said. …
Economic land concessions remain a major concern, with more than 230 people arrested in 2012, an increase of more than 150 percent from the year before, according to an annual report by the rights group Adhoc. …
That means land conflicts have increased, Thun Saray, president of Adhoc, told VOA Khmer. The government issued 66 directives setting aside 381,121 hectares of land in 2012, he said. That’s an increase of about 16.7 percent from the year before, he said. …
Despite the massive spike in development underway in Phnom Penh, a new report says that the public interest is becoming marginalised in favour of the political and business elite.
The report, from NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), says that currently “commercial interests are driving the urban development agenda, meaning needs such as adequate low-cost housing, public transportation, and inclusive urban planning are not addressed.” …
Thousands of villagers who will lose their land to the construction of the Lower Sesan 2 dam in Stung Treng province later this year have not been told of the government’s plans for their resettlement and compensation, a new study released yesterday shows.
Through interviews with 353 villagers who will be directly and indirectly affected by construction of the 400-megawatt dam, NGO Forum – an umbrella group of local organizations who published the report – found that nearly all those surveyed had only heard of the planned dam through unofficial channels. …
The ministry said it had issued 1,694 construction patents covering 6.5 million square metres of land, involving total capital of $2.1 billion in 2012, compared with 2,125 patents for 4.2 million square metres and capital of $1.2 billion in 2011, an increase of 71.9 per cent, the data shows. …
More than 2,000 student volunteers yesterday were sent to measure land in 19 provinces, starting the second phase of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide land-titling program.
Of the 2,016 volunteers, 1,362 are new and the rest are returning for the second time. …
The government’s Human Rights Committee has visited villagers in a long-running land dispute in Battambang province to find out whether members of their community have been unfairly imprisoned in recent years for land encroachment, local authorities and villagers said yesterday.
Officials from committee, which is headed by Anti-Corruption Unit chairman Om Yentieng, interviewed villagers in Bavel district’s Khnach Romeas commune yesterday and Wednesday over their claim to 161 hectares of disputed territory with local businessman Eang Oeun, commune chief Lam Vanny said. …
In an effort to reach a crowing number of customers in the agricultural sector Malaysia based CIMB bank Plc on Friday opened 4 new branches in Phnom Penh, Battambang and Kompong Cham cities. …
CIMB wants to provide loans to customers in the rice, rubber and cassava industries…
Police officials said yesterday two people had died when a Mondulkiri gold mine collapsed on Saturday, but that neither of them worked for the mining company that owns it.
Provincial police chief Nhem Vanny said two men aged 25 and 30, had died in a Pech Chreada district mine owned by Australia’s Southern Gold…
Construction of the Lower Sesan 2 Dam in Stung Treng province will begin in 2014 and the government will spend next year relocating some 5,000 people from villages that are located in the dam’s future reservoir area.
Located near the confluence of the Sesan and Srepok rivers in Stung Treng, the 400-megawatt hydropower dam was approved by the Council of Ministers on Friday, but neither a start date nor financial compensation for the affected communities has been announced. …
Prime Minister Hun Sen has said that the company responsible for building the Lower Sesan 2 dam in Stung Treng province will be in charge of constructing homes for thousands of villagers that will be displaced according to a statement Friday by the Council of Ministers…
The government approved the Lower Sesan 2 dam project in Stung Treng province without any prior consultation with the most affected communities in Sesan district, where at least 5,000 people stand to be displaced, rights groups and villagers said yesterday. …
A study published earlier this year by a group of international scientists said that tributary dams, most notably the Lower Sesan 2, would have “catastrophic impacts on fish productivity and biodiversity.” The scientists estimated that the Lower Sesan 2 dam would cause a 9.2 percent drop in fish stock through the entire Mekong Basin. …
A week after the European Parliament issued a damning resolution on Cambodia’s human-rights situation and called for a revoking of trade privileges, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has shot back.
“It is essential for the EU parliament to study and better understand the situation before passing any such wrong and biased resolution in the future,” reads a letter to the president of the European Parliament from So Soengha, charge d’affaires at the Cambodian embassy in Brussels…
Boeung Kak lake land evictions protester Tep Vanny has been honoured for years of activism by receiving an award from an international organisation that recognises the role of women in promoting human rights.
Vanny, 32, who has been imprisoned, assaulted and threatened for fighting evictions at the now filled-in lake, will travel to the US in April to accept the award from the Vital Voices Global Partnership…
“I’m certain it will inspire me to continue doing more work for our community and other vulnerable communities in Cambodia.”…
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. …
About 80 ethnic Bunong villagers living in Mondolkiri’s Pech Chreada district staged a protest against the Socfin-KCD rubber company Monday, demanding that the firm honor its long-standing pledge to return 1,000 hectares of farmland located inside its concession. …
Socfin-KCD, a join venture between Socfin, a Luxembourg-based holding company, and Cambodia’s Khaou Chuly Group, has been accused of forcing villagers into selling their land. Back in 2008, hundreds of villagers torched and smashed vehicles belonging to the rubber company and confronted armed police. …
Mr. Sin [a representative of Bunong families] said that following the half-hour demonstration outside Socfin-KDC’s offices, two of the protesters met with representatives of the firm in an attempt to resolve the conflict. Although not present at the meeting, Mr. Sin said the company had agreed to demarcate the 1,000 hectares of contested land for the villagers. …
Soldiers should not have been deployed in support of a warrant to arrest land dispute protesters in Kratie province in May—an operation that led to the killing of a 14-year-old girl by armed forces, a Japanese human rights group said in a new report.
The report by Tokyo-based Human Rights Now, which was based on a June investigation into land conflicts in Cambodia, includes interviews conducted with Kratie provincial governor Sar Chamrong and Kratie’s Provincial Court president Din Sivuthy, who both defended the decision to deploy troops against civilians. …
The Japanese investigators also found that the number of land conflicts in Cambodia is on the rise, and that many of these situations have been exacerbated by what they called illegal arrests, imprisonments, and extrajudicial killings. The group also found that laws are not being implemented properly, leaving people vulnerable to eviction.
Japan has a vested interest in the Cambodian legal system, and in the Civil Code in particular, because it is based on the Japanese model and was drawn up with the help of Japanese experts and with Japanese financial assistance.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Saturday accused unnamed individuals of attempting to grab land in Kompong Thom province by invoking his wife’s name and ordered one of his sons to investigate and give back any misappropriated land. …
According to Mr. Hun Sen, unscrupulous individuals were claiming that his wife Bun Rany and the Cambodian Red Cross, which she heads, had grabbed land in Kompong Thom province. …
Land grabbing by the powerful and government-issued economic land concessions have become a lightning rod for criticism of the ruling CPP government.
Prime Minister Hun Sen publicly castigated the Kampong Thom provincial governor in a speech on Saturday for allegedly claiming a large portion of land and saying it was needed for the local office of the Cambodian Red Cross, an agency lead by Hun Sen’s wife, Bun Rany.
He brought up the provincial governor, Chhun Chhorn, during a ceremony to distribute land titles to citizens in Kampong Chhnang province’s Kraing Leav commune. Chhorn had submitted a proposal, later rejected by the prime minister’s office, that 500 hectares of land be used for the Cambodian Red Cross. …
[Provincial governor Chhun] Chhorn told the Post that nobody controlled the land when he submitted the proposal, but 250 families have set up makeshift homes there now, and their timing couldn’t have been better.
Hun Sen, in the same speech, called on plots to be given to the new residents. …
