Main photo: The family of Chai Bunthonglek, a farmer who was killed in 2015 in a community farm in Klong Sai Pattana in Surat Thani province in southern Thailand, Aug 24, 2020. (Photo: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Rina Chandran)

SURAT THANI: Somruedee Bunthonglek has not repaired the bullet holes in the pickup truck her husband was driving when he survived an assassination attempt barely a year after her father was shot dead on the same communal farm in southern Thailand.

Preah Vihear Provincial Court prosecutor Phy Sithorng issued a summons for four forest activists to appear in court on September 14 over charges of incitement to commit a felony after PNT Co Ltd filed a complaint against them concerning a 2015 land dispute.

The summons ordered Khem Sokhy, 36; So Thal, 45; Vong Sok Khengly, 46; and San Reth, 62, to appear in court. All of the suspects are men and residents of Ruosroan commune’s Russey village in Rovieng district.

(Main photo: Lao agricultural expert Sombath Somphone, who went missing in December 2012, in 2005 file photo. Courtesy of Somphone family)

The 10^th annual International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearance Sunday offers a fresh reminder that Laos has done little or nothing to investigate citizens, including a highly respected development expert, who have vanished in the communist Southeast Asian nation, human rights groups said.

The first class action lawsuit against a Thai firm for its actions in Cambodia is a test case for transboundary disputes

BANGKOK, July 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A Bangkok court on Friday agreed to grant class action status to more than 700 Cambodian families suing a Thai sugar firm for evicting them from their homes, a lawsuit that human rights experts see as a test case for transboundary disputes.

The Philippines was the deadliest country in Asia for land and environmental defenders again last year while slipping to second most dangerous in the world behind Colombia, a watchdog said Wednesday.

A total of 43 defenders were killed in the archipelago -- the vast majority on the fertile and resource-rich islands of Mindanao and Negros -- compared with 30 in 2018, Global Witness said in a report.

Global Witness campaigners warn of risk of further killings during Covid-19 lockdowns

Main photo: Celia Xakriaba, an indigenous educator and activist of the Xakriaba people of Brazil, with a portrait of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, who was killed in an ambush by illegal loggers in 2019. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

From forced displacement to conflict over resources, the coronavirus pandemic has created a “perfect storm” for land rights abuses - and the situation is likely to worsen, researchers and activists warned on Thursday.

The migration of men to rural areas due to lockdowns and job losses has increased competition over land, with a disproportionate impact on woman, said organisers of a land rights webinar.

A Vietnamese agribusiness company in eastern Cambodia has illegally cleared old-growth forests, wetlands and spiritual sites on land that it pledged to return to indigenous communities. The land move reneges on promises the company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai, made in a mediation process with the World Bank.

New reports from eastern Cambodia say a Vietnamese rubber company has illegally cleared swaths of land in Ratanakiri province belonging to local indigenous communities, in violation of a World Bank-mediated agreement to return the land to local residents. 

A journalist and radio station owner in Kampong Chhnang province was jailed on Friday on incitement charges in relation to his “exaggerated and inciting” news coverage and comments on a land dispute, officials said. 

Sok Udom, owner of the 99.75 FM radio station and Rithysen news website, was provisionally detained after he was questioned in court and charged with incitement to commit a felony, said Chhuon Sivin, a provincial court spokesman.

Cadasta Foundation is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day by signing onto Interaction Forum’s NGO Climate Compact: Commitments Toward Environmental Action and Sustainability. 

The NGO Climate Compact represents a pledge by over 75 non-governmental organizations’ CEOs to urgently address climate change and our recognition that the environment is central to achieving our missions to serve the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.