Social development

Ethnic minorities and indigenous people

Indigenous and local communities see big gains in land rights, study shows

Land legally designated or owned by Indigenous, Afro-descendant and local communities increased by 102.9 million hectares (254 million acres), larger than the size of Egypt, between 2015 and 2020, according to a new report released by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). These groups now own more ...

Dimitri Selibas

Myanmar junta discusses elections with ethnic groups

Myanmar’s military junta is holding talks with three ethnic rebel groups on staging elections in areas they control, a rebel spokesman said on Friday, as the military prepares for polls the United States has said will be a “sham.” The country has about 20 ethnic rebel ...

No justice for Indigenous community taking on a Cambodian rubber baron

The mood outside the Kampong Thom Provincial Court had grown tense on the afternoon of July 26. Some 12 residents of Ngon village, an Indigenous Kuy community in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district, waited for the judge’s verdict. The group had spent roughly $200 traveling the ...

Gerald Flynn, Vutha Srey

Vietnam’s minorities lose right to farm forests

One afternoon at the end of 2017, officials in Dakrong district in Central Vietnam’s Quang Tri province visited Ho Thi Nieng’s house. They claimed she and her husband had “burned the protected forest to do farming.” “We had been cultivating that land for a long time ...

Nguyen Dac Thanh

Indigenous Cambodians stripped of ancestral land

In the remote and densely forested northeastern province of Mondulkiri in Cambodia, Song Pro, a member of the indigenous Bunong community, stares at a rubber plantation that was once a sacred forest. When the war in Indochina came to Cambodia in the 1970s, the forest saved ...

Nehru Pry

Indigenous rights bill languishes

Thailand is home to over 6 million indigenous people. Yet many are outlawed, denied basic rights, and subject to many forms of oppression. This must change.  According to the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, about 10% of the population belongs to 60 indigenous and ethnic ...

BANGKOK POST EDITORIAL COLUMN

Thailand: Officials Indicted for Karen Activist’s Murder

 Thai authorities should fully and fairly prosecute all those responsible for the murder of a prominent ethnic Karen environmental activist in 2014, Human Rights Watch said today. On August 15, 2022, the Attorney General’s Office formally notified the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) of its ...

Thousands fish for luck in central Vietnam's marsh festival

The Dong Hoa fishing festival, which began dozens of years ago, is a yearly festival celebrated in the fifth month of the lunar calendar at the Vuc Marsh in Xuan Vien Commune, Nghi Xuan District. The marsh spans around a kilometer and is near the Hong ...

Duc Hung

Four Indigenous Environmentalists Questioned in Mondulkiri Court

The Mondulkiri Provincial Court questioned four Bunong environmentalists for several hours on Tuesday over alleged defamation and incitement based on a developer’s complaint. Kroeung Tola, Ploek Phyrom, Ploek Nary and Kloeung Tum were summoned to appear on allegations leveled by Kak Ratana, director of Villa Development, according ...

Khut Sokun

Indigenous community mounts legal challenge to Thai coal mine development

Local opposition to a planned coal mine in northern Thailand escalated in April when plaintiffs representing more than 600 villagers filed a lawsuit requesting the revocation of an environmental impact assessment conducted and approved more than 10 years ago. Members of Kabeudin village, an Indigenous Karen ...

Carolyn Cowan

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