UDG, a massive Chinese-owned, U.S.-sanctioned development in the coastal province, has been embroiled in disputes with residents for years, with more than 1,000 families forced off about 10,000 hectares, and 1,500 houses dismantled and cleared, according to past research reports.
A Koh Kong journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for incitement on Thursday — without a lawyer and just two days after being questioned by police — over a report that the deputy governor was “cruel and abuses citizens.”
Some 1,333 families in Koh Kong are being offered 1 to 3.5 hectares each over a decade-old land dispute with the Union Development Group, as some families say they reject the deal and will fight to stay on their old land.
An audio recording, shared with VOD, appears to show Defense Minister Tea Banh instructing Koh Kong officials to take action against journalist Youn Chhiv. Several government-aligned media outlets have reported on Banh’s instructions, including some that quoted from the recording.
More than 20 families in Koh Kong province, where authorities have been razing villagers’ farmland, are asking officials to formalize their ownership as they fear the land clearings will continue.
Koh Kong villagers said that authorities have been clearing their crops since last week in the province’s Botum Sakor district, with authorities saying the people were encroaching on the Botum Sakor National Park.
Families who built their stilted homes on Kiri Sakor district’s estuaries decades ago say their lives revolve around the antics of the Union Development Group, locked in a stalemate as they repeatedly rebuild the structures that the company’s guards dismantle.
A former district police chief in Koh Kong province is under investigation for allegedly bulldozing 87 hectares of forest around the Dang Peng multiuse protected area.
Oknha Heng Huy has filed a lawsuit for defamation and incitement against a villager who posted on Facebook that the Koh Kong sugar tycoon should work to clear his name.
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.
An Appeal Court hearing for three jailed Mother Nature activists on Tuesday had heated exchanges between the defendants and prosecution, as the environmentalists defended their activism.
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