Both Nhung, 61, and Sok, 46, have lived their whole lives in Cambodia except to escape Khmer Rouge purges against ethnic Vietnamese. Now, alongside hundreds, they have been evicted from floating homes here, some told to cross a border blockaded by Vietnamese ships.
Sre Ambel residents have long dealt with land issues related to infamous sugarcane plantations nearby. Activity on those plantations appears to be waning, but they are now bracing for more problems as an opaque state program privatizes swaths of protected areas across the province.
Violence committed by the state against Cambodians — or “these things” as one shooting victim put it — is not infrequent. But amid villagers’ decadeslong struggle against land grabs, many are finding courage in filming and broadcasting authorities’ abuses live, across the country.
As part of a massive government campaign to privatize land, ostensibly for poor families, Cambodia has cut off nearly 127,000 hectares from Koh Kong’s protected parks. In part one of reports from the province, Tuol Koki commune residents laugh off the prospects of benefiting from the campaign.
Excavators have started digging a waste-water treatment reservoir off a wastewater canal in Boeng Tompun I commune, with Phnom Penh authorities telling the land’s claimants they had no claim to the land.
Whether they have the virus or not, Cambodian workers in Thailand say they’re struggling as Covid-19 surges at construction sites and other workplaces packed with migrant laborers.
A fisherman is waiting for sand-dredging company officials to respond after his boat and home was severely damaged in a crash with one of the barges hauling new land for Phnom Penh’s developments.
Amid a spate of rice wine deaths in July, winemakers share some of the production shortcuts that can make the tradition profitable — but hold higher risk of yielding a poisonous batch.
With under a year until next year’s local-level elections, political analyst Em Sovannara predicts that the country’s opposition parties might be able to win a total of five to 10 communes out of more than 1,600.
2017’s political crackdown ousted more than 5,000 opposition commune councilors from their elected seats. Now with less than a year until the next commune elections, two former CNRP commune chiefs speak of the desolation of the current opposition landscape.
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