"Cambodia: communities in protracted struggle against Chinese sugar companies’ land grab", 8 Jun 2017

[Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Hengfu Sugar again to respond to the new report, the company did not do so]

Tens of thousands of people have been affected by a 2011 land grab in the Cambodian province of Preah Vihear in which five Chinese-owned companies were granted land concessions totaling more than 40 thousand hectares. Families have lost the means to produce food and earn a living as the companies have converted rice fields, forests, pasture land, and streams into sugarcane fields. With the enclosure within the concessions of the sites of at least 19 ancient temples, Cambodia has also lost part of its cultural heritage. Affected communities have engaged in sustained resistance to the destruction of their livelihoods and culture. They have called for the concessions to be cancelled and the land returned to them since the arrival of the companies. So far, they have managed to slow but not stop the onslaught from the concessions – but they have not given up. This briefer exposes what the land grabs in Preah Vihear have entailed for communities over the past six years: human rights violations, lost livelihoods and cultural and ecological devastation…