Human rights

Government-issued economic land concessions are making the country’s indigenous communities in the northeast provinces worse off, according to a study by the Mekong Institute of Cambodia. Presented yesterday at the 2012 Development Research Forum in Phnom Penh, the study comes on top of mounting criticism of ...

In a rare intervention, the Thai Labor Ministry has stepped in to stop the exploitation of migrant workers from Cambodia and Myanmar at a seafood factory in the country’s south, correspondence obtained by the Post reveals. The ministry found the Phatthana Seafood factory, in Songkhla province, which employs ...

The Koh Kong Provincial Court yesterday convicted a private security guard of accidentally killing the military police officer who allegedly shot dead the country’s most prominent environmental activist, Chut Wutty, and sentenced him to two years in prison. The presiding judge, Kham Sophary, then immediately suspended ...

Time is running out to rid the proposed ASEAN Human Rights Declaration of clauses that would restrict peoples’ rights rather than protect and enhance them, civil society groups said yesterday. Nay Vanda, deputy head of the monitoring section of rights group Adhoc, said civil society groups needed more ...

Less than a month before Asean heads of state are expected to approve the first-ever human rights declaration for the regional group, Cambodian and Indonesian NGOs yesterday urged member states to give their organizations a larger role in the process. In the works for more than ...

The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) issued a statement on Friday praising the U.N. General Assembly for not voting in favor of Cambodia during its bid for a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. U.N. member states cast their votes on Thursday in ...

Police targeting of sex workers for arrest has made them vulnerable to contracting or spreading HIV, according to a U.N. report released yesterday. The U.N. report, Sex Work and Law in Asia and the Pacific-Laws, HIV and human rights in the context of sex work, states that ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has summoned for questioning two human rights workers who have lodged court complaints against local officials for disrupting their land-rights workshop in July. Pen Bonnar, provincial coordinator for Adhoc, and Chhim Savuth, a project coordinator for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), filed ...

The U.N. General Assembly’s vote for the Asia-Pacific non-permanent seat on the Security Council went to the wire yesterday night, as a second ballot had to be held when none of the contenders, Cambodia, South Korea and Buthan, won a clear two-thirds majority. After the ...

A Ratanakkiri-based human rights worker charged by the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court with inciting ethnic minority villagers to protest during a 2009 land dispute with a private agro-industry company has been transferred to work in Phnom Penh. Pen Bonnar, Ratanakkiri provincial coordinator for Adhoc , said yesterday ...

Cambodia lacks the resources for implementing intellectual property rights, while relevant officers lack skills to monitor the import of counterfeit products, according to an official. Var Roth San, Head of the Secretariat of National Committee for Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR) and Director of  the Department of  ...

Journalists, NGO workers and politicians are not immune to the long arm of the law if they flout it, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday as he distributed land titles in Kampot province. Mr. Hun Sen’s comments come 10 days after independent radio station owner Mam ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court questioned two well-known human rights workers yesterday in an incitement lawsuit brought against them by a CPP commune chief, one of those questioned said. About 200 ethnic minority Tumpuon villagers, embroiled in a land dispute with the DM Group rubber company, protested ...

Land governance policies in Asia, especially concessions made to private companies, are leaving the region’s poorest vulnerable to human rights abuses, experts say. “Land-grabbing by the rich and powerful continues,” Suson Bunsak, executive secretary of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, said at the recent Asia ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen again addressed recent criticism from [Surya Subedi] the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia , during a speech yesterday in Bateay Meanchey province that focused on land disputes. Mr. Hun Sen was speaking in Thma Puok district’s Banteay Chhmar commune, where he ...

Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...

Evictees wearing small model houses on their heads to symbolize their struggles marched to the National Assembly yesterday to ask authorities to intervene to stop more forced evictions. About 400 representatives of 40 communities across the capital joined human rights activists at the former Dey Krahorm eviction site ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday questioned one of three human rights workers charged-alongside a journalist-with inciting ethnic minority villagers to protest violently against a powerful agro-industry firm during a 2009 land dispute. A representative of the villagers said yesterday that about 500 of them are planning to gather ...

Thirty families uprooted by Cambodia’s railway rehabilitation project have filed a complaint with Australia’s highest human rights body, alleging rights abuses as a result of the partially AusAid-funded rail project. The complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission was made on behalf of the families by NGOs Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive ...

Hundreds of families from more than a dozen communities joined local human rights groups yesterday as they rallied outside the National Assembly for World Habitat Day, calling for an end to forced land evictions in Phnom Penh. Among those protesting were residents from the Boeng ...

UN Human Rights Envoy to Cambodia Prof Surya Subedi has taken a strong exception to the scathing criticism of him by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, saying it was unbecoming of a person of the prime minister´s stature to “descend to the personal level”. In a ...

Officials from the government  U.N. and human rights groups on Friday put forward amendments to draft memorandum of understanding (MoU) that is designed to impose safeguards for Cambodians to travel to work as maids in Malaysia. While the original draft by the Malaysian government sets out the responsibility of ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday appeared to add his voice to the strong government reaction against criticism from U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi. Mr. Subedi last month delivered reports on human rights and economic land concessions in Cambodia to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. His ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen lashed out at the UN’s human rights envoy to Cambodia yesterday, saying Surya Subedi’s latest report skewed too heavily toward the opposition and suggested his talents might be better employed elsewhere.   While the premier never mentioned the Nepalese national and Leeds ...