"This is too late. There are still disputes with even stronger protests to come.": Chan Soveth

Cambodia suspends new land concessions to companies

By Prak Chan Thul

In some cases, they come in, violently evict people and cut down trees rather than do the projects they promised.

PHNOM PENH May 7 (Reuters) - Cambodia's government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging.

Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the temporary measure did not go far enough and a permanent ban was needed.

The government said in the order, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, it would confiscate any concessions that involved the grabbing of villagers' land and illegal logging.

Environmental activists say national parks and wildlife sanctuaries in Cambodia could soon vanish as foreign companies, including Chinese investors, accelerate work in protected areas.

The election season is fast approaching ... Hun Xen is ORDERING the cancellation of fishing lots to please the poor

Hun Xen's rule by order

Fishing Lots Canceled in Four Provinces

Tuesday, 06 March 2012
Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh

Chan Ratt, a program officer with the Fishery Action Coalition Team, said the new policy would help “end conflicts” over fishing rights on the Mekong.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has ordered the cancellation of commercial fishing lots in four provinces along the Mekong River, in a decision aimed at helping families and reducing conflict along the river.

In a sub-decree signed Monday and distributed to media on Tuesday, Hun Sen said the policy would preserve fish resources but would not affect families that fish along the river.

Chan Ratt, a program officer with the Fishery Action Coalition Team, said the new policy would help “end conflicts” over fishing rights on the Mekong, but he said the enforcement of the policy remained a concern.

Opposition activist shot and killed in Kampong Thom

18 December 2007
By Sav Yuth Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

A Sam Rainsy Party activist in Prasat Sambo district, Kampong Thom province, claimed in the afternoon of Monday 17 December that one of the party members living in Kauk Srok village, Taing Krosao commune, was shot and killed by an unknown assailant.

Sok Kheng, the SRP working group chairman for the Prasat Sambo district, said that 47-year-old Kan Siem, a party supporter, was shot by an unknown assailant at about 4:30 AM on Monday, when she left her home to go cook for students at a nearby school.

SRP activists call this murder a political assassination.

Sok Kheng said: “They shot her three times, one bullet pierced her chest all the way to her back and hit her arm and broke it, her head was shattered (by a bullet) and they also shot her mouth, her lips are all torn into pieces.”

However, Phon Toch, the (CPP) Taing Krosao commune chief, came out to reject this fact immediately, saying that this was not a political killing, but that it was a revenge killing stemming from a land dispute, and he claimed that Kan Siem was not a SRP party member, but rather a CPP group leader instead.

Commune police all the way to the provincial police commissioner still cannot provide any clear explanation about this assassination.

Kim An, the deputy police commissioner of Kampong Thom province, said that he did not hear about this information yet and he also pushed (RFA) to go ask the Prasat Sambo police commissioner instead: “The shooting and killing took place in Prasat Sambo, go ask at Prasat Sambo.”

7 surviving family members of the victim expressed their concerns about their daily safety, claiming that in the past 7 years, 3 members of their family were shot and killed by unknown assailants, and no one knows why.

Thon Vy, the fifth daughter of the victim, said that all 8 of her family members are SRP card holders, and her father, her older brother, and her mother were successively shot and killed one after another.

Thon Vy said: “Three already died: my older brother, someone shot and killed him, my father was shot and killed in 1998.”

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy said that this savage killing is due to political hatred, and he called on the authority to search for the assassins and bring them to face justice.

Sam Rainsy said: “This is a political violence because they saw that the SRP is becoming very popular, and more people are supporting the SRP.”

According to a SRP party official, since 1995 until 2007, 75 party members and activists were killed, and in the majority of the cases, the culprits were never found and brought to justice.