For generations, the indigenous Bunong were famous as the great elephant keepers and masters of the forests in eastern Cambodia. They called the fertile, rolling hills of their ancestral homeland “meh ne,” or mother – a source of food, livelihoods and self-identity. ...

According to a Labor Ministry prakas, or official statement, both employers and employees will be responsible for paying 1.3 percent of an employees’ monthly salary to the government for state-supplied health insurance guaranteed to all workers under the Labor Law. ...

Turning his back on a public promise, opposition leader Sam Rainsy canceled his scheduled return to Cambodia on Monday night and said he would instead return “in the next few days,” refusing to guarantee that his time abroad would not stretch into weeks or months. ...

The health minister on Friday defended the government’s failure to fine or shut down any of the private clinics that are currently illegally promoting baby formula to new mothers, saying that more time was needed for committees to “investigate” the breaches. ...

NGOs huddled yesterday to make sense of a letter from the Interior Ministry asking them to comply with controversial provisions of the Law on Associations and NGOs (LANGO), with some considering requesting further clarification or an extension of a September deadline for compliance. ...

Social Affairs Minister Vong Soth said on Monday that all civil servants must support the Cambodian People’s Party or resign from their jobs, and warned that the government will use bamboo rods to bludgeon anyone who protests after next year’s election. ...

The Interior Ministry has instructed provincial officials to urgently report any instances in which activities are carried out by any NGOs or grassroots associations without prior notification, adding that authorities can stop any planned events if they affect “public order and national security”. ...

A live-fire exercise along the Cambodian-Lao border yesterday in Stung Treng province’s Siem Pang district, where a conflict with Laos arose last year, was not to demonstrate power or threaten any neighbouring countries, according to the Ministry of National Defence.​ ...

Transport Minister Sun Chanthol said yesterday that there are about 150,000 cars on Cambodia’s roads without valid road safety certificates, and called on vehicle owners to schedule safety checks on his ministry’s website or risk being fined by police. ...

Cambodia’s top election body will take legal action against groups that conduct or publish opinion polls in the two weeks leading up to June 4 commune elections, its spokesman said on Sunday, warning that the surveys could lead to “social instability.” ...

Senior government officials yesterday gathered to celebrate the 24th anniversary of the adoption of the Kingdom’s Constitution, lavishing praise on the Constitutional Council – while simultaneously appearing to threaten legal action against those who question the body’s independence or decisions. ...

The number of Vietnamese tourists visiting Cambodia and Cambodians visiting Vietnam has increased recently, according to new data released by the Cambodian tourism ministry. Vietnam has the largest number of tourists visiting Cambodia at 600,000, or 21 per cent, of all international visitors. ...

The European Union (EU) said this week that it has hired a pair of consultants to help the government design a system for compensating the thousands of families believed to have had their homes or farms illegally confiscated by the country’s private sugar plantations. ...

Families living on contested land on Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changva peninsula were on Wednesday given a choice by municipal governor Pa Socheatvong: give up 90 percent of your land and live on the remainder or sell it all at $40 per square meter. ...

Anti-human trafficking police arrested a woman Wednesday after they discovered she was running an unlicensed training center in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district that promised to send students to work in Japan or South Korea after paying for courses, an official said Thursday. ...

The calls almost always come at night. Three or four times a month, the mobile phone of Koh Pdao’s river guard outpost will ring. A villager has spotted illegal fishermen somewhere along a 10-kilometer stretch of brushy island shore and wants them caught. ...

More than 30 percent of tourism-related businesses have resumed operations after closing or suspending work since March this year because of COVID-19, according to a senior official at the Ministry of Tourism. ...

Small mud carps or “Trey Riel” (Henicorhynchus entmema and H. siamensis) are the most commercially important keystone species in Cambodia, according to Wonders of the Mekong project. ...

The National Election Committee (NEC) calls on people on the 2021 voter list to prepare or prepare documents to participate in the commune elections which will be taking place soon. ...

People hoping to hold weddings or other celebration and events on the streets of Daun Penh District will have to postpone them after the authorities banned any from taking place during election campaigns. ...