INFORMATION Minister Khieu Kanharith said Tuesday that the economic crisis and downturn in the real-estate sector has reduced land disputes in Cambodia. "The economic crisis has slightly reduced land disputes, but it does not mean that the government turns a blind eye to land disputes," he said. "The UN's Human Rights office in Phnom Penh reported to me that so far there have been 42,000 complaints relevant to land disputes out of a whole population of 14 million. I'd like to appeal to the land dispute committee to inspect, practically and thoroughly, land dispute cases, not to just get the reports from local authorities," he said.