Official Explanation for Canceled Water Festival Questioned
From the leadership of the opposition CNRP down to Phnom Penh’s street vendors, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s explanation for once again canceling the city’s annual Water Festival—recent flooding in the provinces—is being met with mounting skepticism. In a government decree on Sunday, Mr. Hun Sen said ...
Zsombor Peter and Hul Reaksmey
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/official-explanation-for-canceled-water-festival-questioned-44565/
Ex-Finance Minister’s Sister Buys Up More Ethnic Jarai Lands
About 50 ethnic Jarai families in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district have sold their farmland and part of the forests their culture depends on to the sister of former Finance Minister Keat Chhon, rights group Adhoc said Monday. Last year, the ethnic minority Jarai in the district ...
Aun Pheap
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ex-finance-ministers-sister-buys-up-more-ethnic-jarai-lands-45093/
The scramble to Siem Reap
As Cambodia’s busy tourism season approaches, domestic and regional airlines are scrambling to offer Siem Reap routes in a bid to capitalise on the growing number of visitors to the Angkor Wat gateway. In the past several months, players have entered the fray at a ...
We’ll always have Paris
It may not be a milestone anniversary, but the significance of this day 22 years ago is something the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party wants everyone to remember when it begins its latest mass protest this morning, a spokesman said yesterday. From today until Friday, ...
Shane Worrell
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/we%E2%80%99ll-always-have-paris
Hun Sen Offers ‘Back Pay’ to Ousted Opposition Lawmakers
Prime Minister Hun Sen has offered to pay back the lost salaries of opposition lawmakers who were stripped of their parliamentary posts in June by the then CPP-led National Assembly, a CNRP official said. The offer to back-pay the 27 lawmakers from the Sam Rainsy Party ...
Colin Meyn
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/hun-sen-offers-back-pay-to-ousted-opposition-lawmakers-42679/
Home for the holidays
Still agitated 20 minutes after the rally in front of SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd had dispersed yesterday, Choem Som Im held up seven fingers as she jerked her arms forward and spoke in an equally sharp tone. The dilemma, faced by many garment workers, ...
Sean Teehan and Mom Kunthear
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/home-holidays
Specter of Typhoon Approaching Raises Fears of More Floods
As monthlong flooding that has so far left 122 dead slowly subsides, officials and relief agencies were on Sunday concerned that a powerful typhoon approaching Vietnam may bring more heavy rain and the risk of more floods to provinces where tens of thousands of families ...
Simon Henderson and Ben Sokhean
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/specter-of-typhoon-approaching-raises-fears-of-more-floods-45003/
More unionists charged on eve of brand meeting
The Takeo Provincial Court charged eight union representatives with incitement Sunday for taking part in a garment factory strike, bringing to 17 the number of unionists charged this month alone. The latest in the spate of recent arrests came just ahead of today’s high-level meeting between ...
Mech Dara
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/more-unionists-charged-on-eve-of-brand-meeting-59538/
CMAC Closes Probe Into Fire Amid Allegations of Corruption
The Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC) said Wednesday that it has closed its investigation into a fire at an equipment repair workshop in Battambang City on January 24 that destroyed equipment and vehicles worth an estimated $400,000. Heng Ratana, CMAC’s director-general, said that the fire had ...
Kuch Naren and Colin Meyn
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/cmac-closes-probe-into-fire-amid-allegations-of-corruption-51543/
Railway leaves area in limbo
In 2009, a railway project official arrived at 45-year-old Ry Preng’s home in Por Sen Chey district and spray-painted “1.042” in red on the side of his house. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but was told that at some point he would need to ...
Daniel de Carteret
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/railway-leaves-area-limbo
11 Activists Arrested for Views That ‘Impact Public Order’
Eleven political activists were pulled off the street by helmeted security guards Tuesday morning during a peaceful march to foreign embassies to deliver petitions calling for an end to government violence and the release of 23 imprisoned activists and strikers. The 11 protesters—10 land rights activists ...
Phorn Bopha and Colin Meyn
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/eleven-activists-arrested-for-views-that-impact-public-order-50934/
Be glad you’re not paid in rice, Prime Minister tells teachers
Prime Minister Hun Sen advised the country’s newest crop of teachers not to feel down about their poor salaries, recalling that were they embarking on their careers in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime their pay would be a few bags of rice each ...
Khy Sovuthy
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/be-glad-youre-not-paid-in-rice-prime-minister-tells-teachers-53965/
Mekong villagers wary of Xayaburi dam
Fishermen bring their boats to shore, pack away their traps and hand over the day’s catch to their awaiting families on the banks of the Mekong River in Kratie province’s Chitra Borei district. “When my husband arrives home each day, we eat some of what he ...
Land Is Life, and It’s Slipping Away
Nean Narin, a humble man and father of three children, says his family is going hungry. Narin lives in the village of Boeung Kak, situated on the edge of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. For years, he and other villagers relied on the Boeung Kak Lake ...
Hun Sen Lauds Land Project, Lashes Media
Decked out in camouflage military uniforms shipped fresh from Indonesia and wearing soldier’s caps emblazoned with the Ministry of Land Management’s logo, 1,100 students who have volunteered to measure land in an ambitious titling project attended a speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday. The uniformed ...
Underage, Overworked
Child labour is being used at a footwear factory owned by the same Taiwan-based company as Wing Star Shoes – where two workers were killed in a ceiling collapse this month – numerous employees have told the Post. A former Ying Dong employee said the ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013052965915/National/underage-overworked.html
Trading Floor Silent Two Years After CSX Launch
It is almost two years to the day since Cambodia’s stock market launched in Phnom Penh in front of proud government officials, senior financiers and eager investors from across the region. Initial expectations were that a total of three state-owned firms would be listed within six ...
Hul Reaksmey and Alex Willemyns
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/business/trading-floor-silent-two-years-after-csx-launch-35211/
Grand Plans for $80-Billion Capital City Fit for a Techo
If Phoeung Sophoan has his way, Phnom Penh’s days as Cambodia’s capital city are numbered. A secretary of state at the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, Mr. Sophoan has big plans for a new 35,000-hectare capital city north of Phnom Penh called “Samdech ...
Cambodia’s Excess Baggage
“I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t going expecting to look out the bus window and see all the blue bags along the roads and in the fields,” said 27-year-old Christopher Convery, who is currently backpacking for the first time in Cambodia. ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/selected-features/cambodias-excess-baggage-22003/
Gems in the rough in Ratanakkiri
“These are the best quality stones,” Lat Yun says with a grin. Nestled in his outstretched hand are three unassuming rocks. “I don’t know what they’re called, I just know they’re the best.” The gemstones of Ratanakkiri are a mineral called zircon, but in Cambodia, they ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/gems-rough-ratanakkiri