Human rights

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 ...

Hundreds of families living near Phnom Penh International Airport are facing imminent eviction from heir homes as security preparations begin for world leaders who will attend next month’s Asean and East Asia summits. A total of 387 families living on 6.3 hectares of land to the ...

When the international community hammered out a hard-fought deal with the government in 2001 for a war crimes tribunal to try the most senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, they hoped their efforts would also set an example for local court system riddled with ...

The country’s foremost campaigning monk, Loun Sovath, received the Martin Ennals Award in Geneva on Tuesday for his efforts to document the plight of people fighting against eviction in Cambodia. The award, which honors one human rights defender each year, is valued at $21,300, a purse ...

Activist monk Luon Sovath has been named the recipient of this year’s Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders for his work promoting villagers’ land claims and publicising rights abuses. A familiar figure at protests in Cambodia, including the widely decried May trial of the Boeung Kak 13, ...

Despite the government embarking on a nationwide land-titling program, there is still little space for communities affected by economic land concessions to voice their concerns with the government, members of civil society said at a conference in Phnom Penh yesterday. “We’ve observed that there is limited ...

The government has completed the communal land-titling process for three ethnic Bunong communities in Mondolkiri province living on 1,000 hectares of land in Keo Seima district, villagers and a rights group said yesterday. The three new titles-which will bring to six the total number of communal titles granted ...

The recent deluge of comments critical toward the Cambodian government is an attempt to sow political chaos, a senior official said yesterday. At a press conference held at the Council of Ministers, Keo Remy, deputy chairman of the Press and Quick Reaction Unit, blasted several individuals ...

A senior government spokesman held an impromptu press conference at the Council of Ministers yesterday to defend Prime Minister Hun Sen against critics and accused the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia [Surya Subedi] of being biased in his assessment of the country’s electoral process. In ...

Three of the Cambodia’s most important donors have now condemned the 20-year jail term handed down to independent radio station owner Mam Sonando for alleged insurrection activities-a verdict branded as politically motivated by many local and international human rights groups. Despite the tough words from the normally very ...

A UN envoy has called on the international community to pay more attention to human rights issues in Cambodia. The call comes amid ongoing land disputes and legal harassment of activists. Surya Subedi is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia and has submitted ...

Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday summonsed three well-known rights workers and a journalist to appear for questioning next week over years-old incitement charges in connection with a long-standing land dispute. In a summons signed by deputy provincial prosecutor Chea Sopheak, the court ordered Radio Free Asia journalist Sok Ratha, ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday summoned three human rights workers and a journalist over allegations that hey incited indigenous ethnic minority villagers in Lumphat district to protest violently against a powerful agro-industry company in 2009. Deputy court prosecutor Chea Sopheak said he had requested Adhoc provincial ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court handed down a 20-year jail sentence to independent radio station owner Mam Sonando yesterday for his role in fomenting an alleged secessionist movement in a decision drawing condemnation from human rights groups and some of Cambodia’s main foreign donors. The court ...

A Cambodian court has jailed a 71-year-old broadcaster and land rights campaigner for 20 years after finding him guilty of leading an anti-state rebellion, a verdict condemned by activists as the latest crackdown on human rights. Three judges at the Phnom Penh court convicted Sonando, who ...

Resources to feed and educate a child, access to shelter and a life free of abuse arc fundamental rights, yet each day millions of Cambodians struggle to meet their basic needs alone. With more than 30% of the population living below the national poverty line of ...

The Kandal Provincial Court yesterday questioned labor leader Rong Chhun over allegations he incited garment factory workers to stage an illegal strike, a court official said. A director at the Tai Yang garment factory in Ang Snuol district- which supplies apparel to U.S. brands Levi Strauss, ...

Officials yesterday confirmed that the Cambodian government will receive a majority of the revenue share from Chevron’s offshore Block A oil permit area near Sihanoukville in the Gulf of Thailand. The government expects to issue the American oil giant a production permit licence by the ...

Om Yentieng, president of the government’s Cambodian Human Rights Committee, yesterday accused U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi of pandering to the opposition party and trying to stifle the work of the national court system through his examination of Cambodia’s rights situation. Mr. Yentieng, who also heads the Anti-Corruption ...

U.N. representatives from Japan, the European Union and Australia called on Cambodia to heed recommendations made in a report on human rights and economic land concessions by the U.N.’s envoy Surya Subedi at the Human Rights Council in Geneva Tuesday. While the E.U. commended Cambodia ...

Amid a recent spike in police violence against land protesters, Cambodia’s foreign donors yesterday together called on the government for “responsible policing” and expressed “concern” over the trend. The relative candor from aid donors toward the end of the high-level but long-delayed meeting with top government ...

Three ethnic Bunong communities in Mondolkiri province may soon receive long-awaited collective property titles, which would bring to six the total number of communal land titles granted to the country’s indigenous people since the Land Law was created in 2011. And while the possible issuing of the three ...

Just two weeks after a journalist’s bludgeoned corpse was discovered in Ratanakkiri province, a human rights group yesterday identified two more recent cases of violence or intimidation against reporters in the northeastern province. The report from Adhoc said the pressure from local journalists has occurred alongside an increase ...

While protesters demonstrated outside, urging land and human-rights reform, members of the donor community met with the government yesterday at the Council for the Development of Cambodia in Phnom Penh to sign off on a series of development targets that bore only a faint resemblance to those ...