Environmentalists skeptical ahead of Laos meeting on hydropower dam
The four-nation Mekong River Commission (MRC) this week holds public consultations on the development of a large hydropower dam in southern Laos. The project is one of a series of planned dams in the Mekong River Basin that environmentalists say could harm an ecosystem critical ...
Ron Corben
https://www.voanews.com/east-asia/environmentalists-skeptical-ahead-laos-meeting-hydropower-dam
Candlelight leaders decry persecution as Hun Sen threatens another lawsuit
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday threatened to sue the opposition Candlelight party after its leaders accused the ruling CPP of political persecution in the run-up to the July 23 national elections. ...
Sorn Sarath
https://cambojanews.com/candlelight-leaders-decry-persecution-as-hun-sen-threatens-another-lawsuit/
Standards Building Up Safety Fears
When a 100-metre-long section of a Phnom Penh garment factory crumpled in on itself like a cheap pup tent, Sen Sok district officials promised an investigation. The results of that investigation, which was to have taken place more than a year ago, in March 2012, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013052265780/National/standards-building-up-safety-fears.html
Cambodia’s Economic Opportunity
While significant obstacles remain, the success of the rice sector is a potentially crucial driver in Cambodia’s prosperous and equitable development. Cambodia announced two major bilateral trade agreements recently, with the Philippines and Thailand, that are expected to further expand the country’s rice export sector. ...
http://thediplomat.com/2013/05/09/cambodias-economic-opportunity/
Illegal Construction Rampant in Angkor Heritage Site
In the months leading up to Cambodia’s national election on July 28, authorities in the Angkor Archaeological Park allowed dozens of land owners to build new houses and develop plots of land inside highly protected areas of the world heritage site. Villagers interviewed last week said ...
Phorn Bopha and Simon Marks
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/illegal-construction-rampant-in-angkor-heritage-site-42860/
Bruised but Not Beaten, Protesters Return to Wat Phnom
Anger over the violent attack on peaceful protesters at Wat Phnom on Sunday night simmered at the site Monday morning, with the same demonstrators returning to confront their alleged attackers and detaining a police official they accused of spying. Shortly before 11 p.m. on Sunday night, ...
Ben Woods and Mech Dara
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/bruised-but-not-beaten-protesters-return-to-wat-phnom-43049/
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/
Government to Spend $13.7M on Appeal Courts
The government will spend a total of $13.7 million in the next three years to build new appeal courts outside of Phnom Penh along with free accommodation for judges and prosecutors across the country, according to the draft budget law for 2014, which is scheduled ...
Kuch Naren
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/government-to-spend-13-7m-on-appeal-courts-46853/
Rights Group Wants Abe to Press Cambodia on Poll Probe
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who makes a visit to Phnom Penh this weekend, should leverage his country’s aid to pressure the Cambodian government to launch an independent probe into fraud and other irregularities in disputed elections, a rights group said Thursday. As head of the ...
Radio Free Asia News Staff
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/investigation-11142013171238.html
Opposition Lays Out Reform Demands at ‘People’s Congress’
Amidst an opposition boycott of the National Assembly, CNRP leaders on Sunday announced to about 10,000 supporters gathered in Phnom Penh their tentative plans to push the one-party CPP government to investigate irregularities in the July election and enact a broad slate of reforms. As patchy ...
Aun Pheap and Colin Meyn
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/opposition-lays-out-reform-demands-at-peoples-congress-44450/
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
Cambodia: Chut Wutty's legacy creates an opportunity for land justice
In Cambodia, there is talk of change. Not just from Hun Sen, the prime minister, who has promised reforms after his party suffered a significant blow in recent elections, but from environmental activists and campaigners, who say there has never before been such an opportunity ...
Kate Hodal
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/oct/02/cambodia-chut-wutty-land
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
Laos aims to build Mekong dam this year, testing neighbours
Laos wants to start construction this year on the $3.8 billion (Bt115 billion) Thai-financed Xayaburi hydropower plant on the Mekong River after changing the design of the dam to placate neighbouring countries opposed to the project. Laos completed a review of the dam recently to ease ...
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 ...
UK to Request Extradition of Biofuel Company’s Chairman
The U.K.’s fraud office plans to request the extradition of a British national currently detained in Cambodia, after it brought charges against four people for their part in a $36 million Ponzi scheme involving a biofuel plantation. Gregg Fryett was arrested in Phnom Penh in March ...
Simon Lewis
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/uk-to-request-extradition-of-biofuel-companys-chairman-40796/
UK to Request Extradition of Biofuel Company’s Chairman
The U.K.’s fraud office plans to request the extradition of a British national currently detained in Cambodia, after it brought charges against four people for their part in a $36 million Ponzi scheme involving a biofuel plantation. Gregg Fryett was arrested in Phnom Penh in March ...
Simon Lewis
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/uk-to-request-extradition-of-biofuel-companys-chairman-40796/
Neutrality of Red Cross in Question After Bun Rany’s Speech
It was the bloodiest battle since Waterloo. Yet the carnage wrought 150 years ago by the Italian and French troops, fighting under Napoleon III, and the forces of the Austrian Hungarian Empire, was overshadowed by its aftermath. While 30,000 had died on the battlefield, more than 40,000 ...
Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/neutrality-of-red-cross-in-question-after-bun-ranys-speech-46497/
Tep Vanny—From Boeng Kak Protester to Globe-Trotting Advocate
On the morning of September 23, anti-eviction champion Tep Vanny was grappling with a legion of security guards blocking the entrance of the Daun Penh district offices while fellow protesters dismantled a razor-wire barricade nearby. The next day, she was on a plane to Washington ...
Mech Dara and Ben Woods
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/tep-vanny-from-boeng-kak-protests-to-globe-trotting-advocate-44583/
Government Reverses Ban, Agrees to CNRP March
The Ministry of Interior announced Tuesday in a last minute meeting that it would allow the opposition CNRP to take 1,000 people through the streets of Phnom Penh to deliver a petition to the U.N. and eight foreign embassies during its three-day mass demonstration that ...
Mech Dara and Alex Willemyns
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/government-reverses-ban-agrees-to-cnrp-march-45694/