Human rights

CNRP President Kem Sokha has promised opposition supporters among the Cham Muslim community that any government he leads would put an end to political harassment from the community’s pro-CPP leaders, whom he claimed pressured followers not to join his party. ...

The 13-month investigation into five current and former human rights workers known as the ‘Adhoc 5’ has ended, a court spokesman said on Wednesday, paving the way for a trial in a case widely condemned as being unjust and politically motivated. ...

Cambodia Youth Party leader Pich Sros filed a complaint today at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court against Cambodia National Rescue Party leader Kem Sokha in response to the latter’s encouragement of voters not to “waste” their votes on small parties. ...

The government body charged with managing the Angkor Archaeological Park on Monday started tearing down the first of more than 500 homes and shophouses illegally built within the park in the weeks before the June 4 commune elections. ...

Human Rights Watch (HRW), long one of the government’s harshest critics, on Tuesday condemned the June 4 commune elections as “neither free nor fair” and called for urgent reforms to safeguard next year’s national election. ...

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak’s pre-election warning that some NGOs and their leaders were being watched for illegally aiding the opposition was a threat designed to frighten them, General Sopheak said on Wednesday, as civil society groups warily condemned the statements. ...

Cambodian youngsters are being invited to take part in a video contest on the theme “Asean Against Trafficking – Humans Are Not For Sale”. The Cambodia Human Rights Committee (CHRC) has announced its support for the Asean Youth Video Competition, which aims to raise public awareness ...

Australian national James Ricketson was arrested on Saturday, according to police officials, with local media claiming the independent journalist was detained for “stealing information”. ...

UNHCR, the U.N.’s refugee agency, will question the government over its decision to deny asylum to the majority of Montagnards left in Cambodia, officials said, a month after the group was criticized for its role in repatriating some of the asylum-seekers to Vietnam. ...

The Ministry of Health yesterday denied a local media report that children in Cambodia under one year old have a 50 percent chance of catching whooping cough. ...

A European Union election expert mission yesterday met with the government’s Cambodia Human Rights Committee in a closed-door meeting as part of its visit to the Kingdom, at the end of which it will submit recommendations to the Cambodian authorities. ...

Local residents in Battambang town took part in a political debate organized by U.S. Democracy promotion group, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) on Monday ahead of local elections early next month. Attendees asked prospective candidates questions related to citizen’s concerns over unemployment, migration, ...

Political campaigning in Cambodia’s local elections began on Saturday and has so far passed without incident. Cambodians in Phnom Penh on Monday said they hoped that the election could be conducted fairly and free of violence. Sim To, a second-year student at Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia, ...

Officials from the government’s Cambodian Human Rights Committee (CHRC) yesterday appeared to lay the blame for the delayed establishment of an independent rights body at the feet of civil society. ...

The CPP has filed a complaint to a commune election committee in Takeo province alleging that a group of CNRP supporters obstructed a ruling party parade of about 400 supporters on Saturday, officials said yesterday. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen used a news conference at Thursday’s World Economic Forum on Asean in Phnom Penh to warn that two foreign-owned news outlets, including The Cambodia Daily, were “against” the government and that journalists who did not report “properly” would be seen as ...

The government has lashed out at the U.S. and E.U. over their criticism of the detention of five current and former rights workers in Cambodia for more than a year, adopting the language of its critics by calling their statements “politically motivated.” ...

About 130 villagers and more than 20 of their children demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Land Management from 8am to noon yesterday, demanding that the government exclude their villages from a proposed development plan and protect their homes by granting them land titles. ...

Chroy Changvar peninsula land disputants yesterday delivered a petition to the Ministry of Land Management rejecting City Hall’s proposal to take away 90 percent of their land for the development of a satellite city. ...

A civil society group yesterday rebuked a recent report by the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR), claiming the scathing report on the country’s legislative practices violated Asean principles. ...

The Foreign Affairs Ministry yesterday released a strongly worded, albeit vague, rebuttal to a harsh report released by ASEAN parliamentarians on Monday, which chided the government for its legal onslaught against the opposition and alleged the “systematic dismantling [of] democracy” in the Kingdom. ...

Every Cambodian will be assigned a 10-digit identification number under which information from various government departments, as well as the private sector, will be collected in a central database, Interior Minister Sar Kheng announced on Thursday.   ...

Many of the news media’s favorite political analysts aren’t picking up their telephones. They say they are busy with work, traveling abroad or focusing on their studies. ...

Four senior officials for rights group Adhoc will remain behind bars after the Supreme Court on Monday upheld the Court of Appeal’s ruling that they should be held in detention while awaiting trial, but gave no reason for the decision. ...