Commune authorities in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district have allegedly banished a local resident for persisting with a lawsuit that accuses them of selling 500 hectares of community forest to two Cambodian developers for $300,000.
Romas Svang, who is a member of the ethnic Jarai minority, filed the suit in 2011. The 45-year-old said most villagers living near the forest received $200 to $300 for allowing developers to use the area. …
Ya Tung commune chief Rocham Vin said 199 families had agreed to sell the land, and received the money.
Ratanakkiri provincial police on Monday arrested the chief of staff of a Vietnamese rubber concessionaire and his Cambodian translator who are believed to have burned down more than $5,000 worth of property related to a land dispute in O’Chum district, police said.
Meas Pov Bora, chief of the provincial minor crimes office, said that Vietnamese national Ngvieng Hong Fou, 30, chief of staff for a company called CRD, and his translator Sim Borin, 31, were arrested for allegedly setting fire to one house and four huts, and destroying some 200 bunches of cassava plants – alone worth $5,650 – belonging to local landowner Ly Sok Ngim. …
Provincial authorities in Ratanakkiri have warned ethnic Jarai villagers that they will be arrested if they continue to stop bulldozers belonging to a Vietnamese company from clearing forest in O’Yadav district’s Paknhai commune, community leaders said yesterday.
Sav Finh, leader of Lom village’s forestry protection committee, said provincial and forestry administration officials visited the cleared area late last week to warn villagers not to take direct action against the company again. …
O’Yadav district governor Dork Sar said the forest belonged to the state and that, if the company had been granted the land, the villagers had no right to stop the company’s activities. …
Deutsche Bank and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) have poured millions of dollars into Vietnamese rubber companies operating in Cambodia that have engaged in illegal logging and forced evictions of local farmers, the environmental rights group Global Witness says in a new report released today.
Drawing on satellite images, government and corporate documents, field visits and exchanges with firms involved, Global Witness deduced that the IFC currently has $14.95 million stake in a Vietnamese-based investment fund investing in Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), a Vietnamese rubber firm listed on the London Stock Exchange. The organization also says that Deutsche Bank holds another $4.5 million worth of HAGL shares, along with $3.3 million in shares of Dong Phu, a member of the state-owned Vietnamese Rubber Group (VRG). …
Combined, Global Witness says, HAGL and VRG alone now control at least 180,000 hectares of rubber plantations in Cambodia.
“HAGL and VRG’s ultimate ownership of these [subsidiary] companies lies behind an intricate web of shell companies,” the Global Witness report says. “This allows them to disguise the fact that they have massively exceeded Cambodia’s legal limit on land holdings,” which sets the ceiling for any on person at 10,000 hectares. …
In the hilly wilderness across southwestern Cambodia, the foundations of the country’s strengthening bonds with China are taking root. It is there that large dams supported by Chinese money are being built to literally bring the impoverished Southeast Asian nation out of darkness.
The largest of them so far, the US$280 million (RM865.2 million) Kamchay Dam in Kampot province, came to life a year ago, helping to brighten the nights in Phnom Penh. It is one of five dams backed by Chinese investments aimed at easing the electricity deficit in the country of 14.9 million people â [sic] ” where only a quarter of the population has access to power from the national grid.
The howls of protests from villagers and green groups have not deterred China’s dam builders, which have committed a total investment of US$1.6 billion to produce an estimated 915mw of power by harnessing the untamed rivers that gush down that remote terrain. The largest symbol of this Cambodian-Chinese alliance is the 338mw Russei Chrum Krom hydropower project, which is being built at a cost of US$500 million. …
A draft law on the financing of a controversial dam project in Stung Treng province obtained yesterday shows that about $38 million will be spent on the resettlement of almost 800 families. This marks a significant decrease from the more than 1,000 families the companies building the dam originally said would be affected.
The draft law – which is dated January 10 and is currently awaiting approval at the National Assembly – is signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and reveals other key financing and resettlement details for the affected villagers. Hailing from Srekor, Kbal Romeas and Phluk communes, the majority of those affected say they have received no official information from the project’s owners, local conglomerate Royal Group and China Hydrolancang International Energy Co. Ltd. …
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme announced in June originally included a directive for granting collective property titles to indigenous communities, but this part of the program was scrapped weeks later as it was deemed too costly and time-consuming, documents obtained yesterday show. …
For “indigenous minority groups registered as ‘communities’ by the Ministry of Interior…the land identification process shall be done in the same working spirit as the one prevailing in the [Ministry of Land Management's ] cadastral department instructions on the implementation of the Royal Government of Cambodia’s Order 01,” the directive states.
“[T]he land shall be registered as collective ownership of the ‘community’ according to the request of its traditional authorities,” it continues. …
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 Asean Grassroots People’s Assembly (AGPA) agreed yesterday on a list of demands it intends to present to the Cambodian and regional governments.
A crowd of more than 2,000 people-including garment factory workers, victims of evictions, and sex workers, as well as undercover police-gathered at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park throughout the day. …
Among their demands, the assembly called for improvements to conditions for workers in the formal and informal sectors, as well as migrant workers.
“We demand a fair living wage for workers and civil servants regularly adjusted to inflation,” a statement from the assembly reads. …
Villagers in the Prey Lang forest in Kompong Thom province have filed the complaint with the provincial court and the Forestry Administration accusing a commune police chief of involvement in logging high-grade timber, officials and villagers said yesterday.
The complaint, thumbprinted by 210 people, alleges that Nuon Bophan, police chief for Sandan district’s Dang Kambit commune, is responsible for the logging of hundreds of trees in Prey Long, according to Kem Chheng, chief of the Kbal O’Takong forest community.
“We want the court to prosecute this police officer for committing deforestation, logging high-grade timber for Prey Lang forest,” Mr. Chheng said, adding the complaint was filed to both the court and the Forestry Administration on October 31. …
A 75-year-old man living near the former site of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake was detained by police on Thursday after he was found collecting thumbprints from villagers for a petition calling for the release of jailed independent radio station owner Mam Sonando, villagers said Friday.
Chey Lay said he was visiting homes in Daun Penh district’s Srah Chak commune when six police officers approached him and ordered him to stop asking villagers to put their name to Mr. Sonando’s cause. …
Local authorities, including a heavily armed police officer, broke up a training session on land rights in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat district on Friday, claiming the two groups had no legal right to hold such a meeting.
The move marks the second time in less than a week that authorities have moved to disband the land rights education program run by Adhoc and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR).
Chhim Savuth, project coordinator for CCHR, said that roughly 50 villagers had gathered for the training sessions in a private home in Batang commune’s Batang village, when three commune police officers, the village chief, the commune chief and the deputy commune chief knocked on the door and demanded that the meeting be halted.
The two rights groups ignored the orders and tried to proceed with the class, he said, but 15 minutes later, two additional district police officers—one of whom was armed with an M-16 assault rifle appeared. …
Local police in Ratanakkiri province’s Veun Sai district yesterday tried to shut down a community meeting in which villagers were being educated about land rights, because it was being held without permission, rights workers said.
According to Pen Bonnar, provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc, two Phnom Kuk commune police arrived at the house in which the meeting attended by 20 villagers was being held, and demanded it be shut down on orders from district authorities.
Mr. Bonnar then called commune police chief Chea Sok in an effort to defuse the situation, but Mr. Sok allegedly reiterated the orders that the meeting be shut down. …
A coalition of about 30 soldiers, police, forestry officials and military police armed with chainsaws razed some 40 houses belonging to villagers in Pursat province’s Santre commune yesterday, claiming the villagers were illegally living in a state forest, villagers and officials said.
According to resident Chin Saran, 44, about 25 families had lived in the area since 2008, and had been asked to leave before. …
More than six years after a sugar company bulldozed their farms in Koh Kong province, some 200 families who have held out ever since, arguing the action was illegal, will finally get their day in court on Thursday. …
…100 villagers will join them at the provincial court as they make their case. …
Villagers locked in a land dispute in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district no longer pose a secessionist threat, and those remaining in the contested area will receive new plots of land on which to live, the district governor said yesterday.
District governor Chhe Chhiv said that about 300 families—whose homes were demolished in Krapoeu Pi commune beginning on July 16—have already left the area and that the remaining 100 families living there would receive new plots of land nearby.
“We have asked them [the remaining villagers] to come to register with officials and we will provide them land on which to build a house and grow crops,” Mr. Chhiv said, adding that the remaining families were living illegally inside state forest in both Krapoeu Pi and Pramoy communes. …
Ministry of Interior officials announced yesterday that three more villagers accused of involvement in a “secessionist plot” in Kratie province turned themselves in and confessed their guilt on Saturday, taking advantage of the prime minister’s offer of immunity for those who agree to act as witnesses.
National Police spokesman Kirt Chantharith said that, so far, a total of six villagers – out of an undisclosed number of accused – have admitted to planning an autonomous zone in Kratie’s Pro Ma village. …
Two more people in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district have been arrested in conjunction with what local authorities are calling a secessionist plot, while provincial authorities threatened to demolish more homes if residents do not leave a disputed area, officials said yesterday.
Deputy provincial court prosecutor Pang Chansoyutheara said that Kim Chantheoun, 50, and Choa Samnang, 40, were arrested on Thursday for illegally clearing state forest and measuring plots for villagers and—along with three other people arrested since July 16 in Krapoeu Pi commune’s Kompong Kdey village for the same crimes—charged by the provincial court on Friday. …
The Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court questioned four villagers among 12 summoned for questioning over a land dispute in Samakki Meanchey district, which has pitted some 80 local families against the owner of a private company they accuse of taking their land.
While the dispute stems from alleged land grabbing, the court summoned the 12 villagers for questioning after they were accused of spreading slander and incitement by five leaders of a mosque in Kraing Leav commune, whom the villagers claim were part of deal to take their land.
Sun Pou, 36, one of those questioned by provincial court prosecutor Penh Vibol, said that he had the contract, which proved that the five local Islamic leaders conspired with businesswoman Uo Kally to take their land. …
Police in Battambang arrested six villagers embroiled in a land dispute with a local businessman on Wednesday after 10 other villagers accused them of defrauding families in the area, deputy provincial governor Uy Ry said yesterday.
However, villagers and rights workers in Kors Kralor district said the arrests were merely designed to put pressure on the community, which has been locked in the dispute over land in Dounba commune for the past five years.
The arrests came shortly after more than 1,000 families in the area made a request for student volunteers to demarcate their land under the government’s new land-titling project. …
