Main photo: Chaiwat Limlikitaksorn, the former head of Kaeng Krachan National Park and one of the indicted officials.

• Brazilian police reported on June 15 that they had found the bodies believed to be those of Brazilian Indigenous defender Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips deep in the western Amazon.
• The bodies were found not far from where the pair disappeared on June 5, in the Vale do Javari region, considered the most violent region of Brazil, where criminal groups vie to seize land occupied by Indigenous and traditional communities.
• Similar conflicts occur all over the Amazon, with some land grabbers admitting that they will, if necessary, us

LONDON: A British Pakistani family from Birmingham has complained to Overseas Pakistanis Commission Punjab that their land worth tens of millions of Rupees has been taken over fraudulently by three men with powerful connections.

Anti-corruption authorities in Pakistan briefly arrested a female opposition leader Saturday on land-grabbing allegations dating back five decades, a move that critics swiftly condemned as politically motivated.

April and May 2022 will be remembered as the most important months in the post-independence era. During this short period the much hoped for people’s awakening expressed itself powerfully. People who wielded authority failed to see the writing on the wall although the wall was just next to the Presidential Secretariat and everywhere in the country. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa thought he was merely seeing ghosts. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa believed in the comforting words of his friends despite knowing that the treasury was empty.

• The publication of an audit of forestry contracts in the Democratic Republic of Congo has exposed serious management failures.
• The audit cites serial breaches of the country’s forest code and more than a dozen violations of a 2002 moratorium on new concessions.
• The DRC’s environment minister announced the immediate suspension of forestry contracts deemed illegal by the audit, saying that where a special commission confirms the Inspectorate General of Finance’s findings, those contracts will be canceled.
• The audit is the first re

Mining in the former homelands in South Africa remains highly contested. At issue is the tendency of many mining companies to trample land rights, negotiate deals with elites to avoid securing informed consent  while sowing division and conflict in poor rural communities.

• Critics of a government plantation scheme have slammed the program following revelations that only a fraction of forest reserves cleared for plantations over the past decade have actually been replanted.
• An investigation by environmental news site Macaranga found that only 5% of the 77,331 hectares (191,089 acres) of forest reserves cleared in Pahang state for plantations between 2012 and 2020 were replanted.
• A Pahang state opposition lawmaker has called the program a “cover-up” for a logging scheme, while an environmental activist has criticized

A lucrative plot of Tashkent land belonging to a major Uzbek steel plant has been sold to a company close to President Shavkat Mirziyoev’s son-in-law, at a fraction of its market value, documents showed.

Somalia has been at a crossroads in recent years, with one pathway leading towards forging state-building and re-establishing democracy and another threatening a regression on the substantive gains made on many fronts. Narratives of Somalia’s growth and potential fronted on social media by ordinary citizens and returning diaspora are contrasted by conflict and frequent attacks on civilians by armed non-state actors.

COLOMBO (IDN) — As land forgery continues unabated in Sri Lanka, something has to be done to prevent the prevalent rate of land fraud, with legal owners and innocent buyers unknowingly falling into these traps.

According to news sources, the Registrar General N C Withanage had said, as far back as March 2019, that 40 to 50 per cent of land deeds in Sri Lanka are forged documents.

But unfortunately, things continue to go from bad to worse.

Uganda: On Feb. 28, President Yoweri Museveni wrote a letter addressing it to Robinah Nabbanja, the Prime Minister. The letter directed her to halt land evictions across Uganda. Museveni said he was using his powers under Article 98(1) and 99(1) of the Constitution that enjoins him to ensure good governance and protect the Constitution, President Museveni directed as follows: