Cambodia

Today, Cambodian plaintiffs representing more than 700 farming families won a landmark appeal allowing them to move forward with their class action against Asia’s largest sugar producer, Mitr Phol. The transboundary class action Hoy Mai & Others vs. Mitr Phol Co. Ltd. is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia.

On 17 July 2020, Amnesty International submitted a third-party legal intervention (amicus curiae brief)to Bangkok South Civil Court that grant Class Action Lawsuit (CAL) status to more than 700 Cambodian families who are suing Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol after being forcibly evicted from their homes in 2008-09.

The Preah Vihear Provincial Court in Cambodia has dropped all charges against eight ethnic Kuoy villagers who were in a land dispute with the Hengfu Group Sugar Industry Co Ltd since 2014.

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

People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty, GRAIN, and Ponlok Khmer urged the government of Cambodia to return disputed land from Chinese company Hengfu Group Sugar Industry to the Khmer and Indigenous Kuy communities. The groups expressed solidarity with the Indigenous Kuy people who continue to assert their legitimate land rights even amid the global health crisis.

Socfin, a Belgian holding company that operates palm oil and rubber plantations through dozens of subsidiaries across Africa and Southeast Asia, has been rebuked for alleged human rights violations at its plantations.

The agribusiness company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), pledged to World Bank in 2015 to return land within its rubber concessions to local communities. But as residents have sheltered at home due to COVID-19, the company has cleared much of the land.

A Chinese sugar company with a large long-term land concession in Cambodia came under fire from NGOs Tuesday for leasing parts of the concession to local villagers, collecting rent instead of engaging in the activities stipulated in its contract with the Cambodian government.

A group of 160 poor families from the Bunong indigenous community in Mondulkiri province, Cambodia have filed a complaint against their representative, accusing him of selling land earmarked for them as part of a social land concession. The 160 families were entitled to 2,400ha to be divided between them but as of now, most of the poor families had not received their plots.

The ANZ bank has agreed to provide a financial package to Cambodian families forcibly displaced by a sugar company the Australian bank loaned money to in 2011.

Almost a decade since government of Cambodia granted 40,000 hectares land concession to five Chinese companies believed to be subsidiaries of a single Chinese owned firm, Hengfu. The whole project that affected indigenous Kuoy community has now fallen apart.

Chinese sugarcane concessionaire Rui Feng and four linked firms seemed to have shut down their operations in the combined 40,000-hectare sugarcane plantation in northern Cambodia, with little public notice of the closure. All firms have faced multiple land disputes, especially with indigenous minorities.