Cambodia’s government is unable to resolve the country’s myriad land disputes because many of them involve senior officials, Minister of Interior Sar Kheng said in a rare acknowledgement Tuesday, as a rights group urged authorities to take action against all perpetrators of illegal land grabs equally.

Speaking at a conference that included provincial governors and local authorities from across the country, Sar Kheng did not disclose the names of the involved officials but said that at least one of the disputes involved one of Cambodia’s deputy prime ministers.

Main photo: Protesters call in Phnom Penh for government authorities to intervene in land-rights disputes, Jan. 13, 2020 (RFA).

Cambodia’s government is unable to resolve the country’s myriad land disputes because many of them involve senior officials, Minister of Interior Sar Kheng said in a rare acknowledgement Tuesday, as a rights group urged authorities to take action against all perpetrators of illegal land grabs equally.

Namgyal Durbuk knows the steep mountainous terrain of Ladakh like the back of his hand. But in the 45 years he has lived here, along the Indian state’s volatile and poorly defined border with neighbouring China, he has watched Indian land disappear before his eyes.

A war is brewing in Agudama-Epie community in Yenagoa Local Government Area, Bayelsa State, over moves by the Central Naval Command (CNC), Nigerian Navy, to demolish buildings around its headquarters, known as Camp Porbeni. Until 2013, Camp Porbeni was the cynosure of all eyes when entering Yenagoa because its alluring environment had been used by the Nigerian Army to accommodate its top officers and by Julius Berger as residential quarters for its management staff.

The Siem Reap provincial Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries called on citizens to stop stealing forest land belonging to the state. It said village, commune and district authorities should cooperate to protect forest land in the province.

Department director Tea Kimsoth told The Post on Monday that forest land managed by the Forestry Administration and residents in Siem Reap spanned over 30,000ha. The forests have an abundance of high-grade Cambodian timber.

Oknha Sorng Thorn, the owner of 5,000ha which covers a fourth of Koas Krala district in Battambang province, was taken in for questioning by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Saturday in regards to corruption allegations.

In a move that civil society organisation Adhoc does not believe to be related to Thorn’s case, Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a sub-decree ending Mao Sochan’s tenure as Koas Krala district governor.

Peace-building nongovernment organization (NGO) International Alert Philippines (IAP) has expressed alarm over what it described as “raging conflicts” over land and natural resources in the Bangsamoro amid the Covid-19 pandemic in the last two months.

The group has been monitoring events in conflict areas, particularly Mindanao, through its critical events monitoring system (CEMS) bulletin.

A giant Vietnamese agribusiness company is destroying indigenous land in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province, said a joint press release from Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive Development International that was published on Monday.

The human rights groups wrote that many indigenous people in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province have been waiting for years for the Vietnamese rubber company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), to finally return their sacred land, as had been promised by a 2015 mediation agreement.

Some 50 people representing more than 100 families locked in a land dispute in Kampong Thom province’s Kraya commune, in Santuk district, travelled to Phnom Penh to submit a petition at the National Assembly, the Prime Minister’s Cabinet and the Ministry of Interior on Monday and Tuesday.

The petitioners, who are also requesting intervention in the land dispute to acquire authorised land titles, accused provincial authorities of an attempt to jail them, but provincial governor Sok Lou denied this.

A MAJOR land dispute involving Rachel Marape, wife of Prime Minister James Marape, and a Motu Koitabu family may soon be the subject of a court debacle specically over the land title. Businesswoman Beatrice Geita took to social media last week “crucifying” Mrs Marape for allegedly obtaining a land title on top of their title for a small area behind the bike track, they built few houses and a liquor shop from their family portion of land outside of Port Moresby city in the Central province.

• A court in Indonesia has sentenced two indigenous farmers to eight and 10 months in prison respectively for harvesting palm fruit from land whose ownership is contested by the community and a palm oil firm, PT Hamparan Masawit Bangun Persada.
• The ruling appeared to ignore evidence showing that the villagers are the rightful owners of the land; the defendants say they will appeal and also file a lawsuit against the company.

While indigenous communities in Cambodia stayed home to stem the Covid-19 outbreak, a Vietnamese rubber firm bulldozed their land. Experts say disputes arising from Cambodia's complicated land management system will be difficult to resolve.

When the indigenous Kreung and Kachok communities locked down their villages in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province in March to keep safe from the novel coronavirus, no one knew change was afoot in their ancestral forest.