The UN’s special rapporteur on Cambodia yesterday slammed the Kingdom’s government at the 36th session of the UN Human Rights Council, going so far as to express doubt as to whether next year’s crucial elections will be free and fair. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said from now on he will “stop talking” about the recently dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party and instructed his government officials to do the same, before vowing that self-exiled opposition members who returned to Cambodia would not face arrest. ...

Shanghai-listed Guangzhou Yuetai Group will purchase $49.2 million in assets in Cambodia by buying a 45 percent stake in a local property development firm and a 19 percent stake in a Cambodian import-export company, the company said in a filing yesterday. ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court issued a warrant yesterday summoning human rights activists Am Sam Ath and Chan Puthisak to court today on charges that they incited an attack on two Daun Penh district security guards during a World Habitat Day protest on October 10. ...

The two main political parties contesting the upcoming commune elections revealed disparate campaign budget plans yesterday, with the opposition pledging to spend over $1 million and a spokesman for the ruling CPP saying his party will not be creating a central campaigning budget at all. ...

The CNRP and the CPP will cap off two weeks of commune election campaigning on Friday with daylong processions, to which they expect to draw hundreds of thousands of people through opposite sides of Phnom Penh amid heightened security, party officials said on Tuesday. ...

Havas Riverorchid, a leading advertising agency in Indochina, has officially launched its digital and social media brand to tap into the popularity of social media, the ever-rising use of mobile phones as well as digital innovation in the Cambodian market.   ...

Over a hundred families in Stung Treng province’s Srekor and Kbal Romea communes said yesterday that they have located around 2,000 hectares to relocate to when a scheduled test run for the Lower Sesan II dam this week leaves their villages flooded. ...

Cambodia has made significant progress in HIV treatment, taking the lead regionally by reaching 80 percent of those living with the virus and becoming one of only seven countries globally to reach target treatment goals, according to a U.N. report released on Thursday. ...

International condemnation of the government’s aggressive pursuit of a tax dispute with the Cambodia Daily continued to pour in yesterday, with the US Embassy in Phnom Penh calling the closure of the hard-hitting newspaper a “sad day for the press and for Cambodia”. ...

Hydropower developers and representatives of the Mekong River Commission member countries met last week for the last time before finalising guidelines to mitigate the negative impacts of dam construction on the Mekong River, though conservationists expressed doubts about whether such guidelines would make a difference.​ ...

t the forthcoming regional consultation forum on Laos’ Pak Beng hydropower dam in Luang Prabang, Cambodian environmental groups will urge relevant stakeholders, including the Cambodian government, to reject the 912-megawatt project, alarmed by the potential impacts on fisheries and sediment flow in the Mekong. ...

Political parties are scrambling to complete their internal processes and register ahead of this year’s commune elections, which are to be held in June. The National Election Committee (NEC) will be accepting registration applications for all parties’ candidates from March 3 to 5. ...

The US-based nonprofit Global Financial Integrity (GFI) measured illicit financial flows – the illegal movement of money or capital from one country to another – and found that as much as $45 billion in trade activity in Cambodia over the period was not accounted for. ...

After spending the last three months under the watchful eye of their own personal retinue of bodyguards, nine endangered royal turtles successfully broke free from their shells on Tuesday and were transferred to the Koh Kong Reptile Conservation Centre, where they will be raised. ...

More than 10 students at Bak Chenhchean senior high school in Pursat province’s Phnom Kravanh district fainted yesterday. Major Tann Kearith, district police chief, said the students fainted at about 9am and were sent to the provincial referral hospital following the incident. ...

The government yesterday maintained it was opening a path to citizenship for roughly 70,000 ethnic Vietnamese people living in Cambodia, though many have lived here for generations, and advocates say a current drive to revoke “irregular” government documents is effectively rendering many stateless. ...

Major clothing brands sourcing from Cambodia’s garment factories have expressed concern about the growing number of strikes in the country and called for the renewal of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) aimed at preventing strikes, a representative from the International Labor Organization (ILO) said yesterday. ...

More than 400 workers of the Next Apparel (Cambodia) factory in Kandal province protested for a third time Saturday and destroyed property while demanding the reinstatement of two workers fired for attempting to establish a union, the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (CCAWDU) ...

More than 2,000 student volunteers yesterday were sent to measure land in 19 provinces, starting the second phase of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide land-titling program. Of the 2,016 volunteers, 1,362 are new and the rest are returning for the second time. ...