Crime and law enforcement

About 100 Daun Penh district riot police on Wednesday held exercises in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park in preparation for possible industrial action in a week that garment workers’ unions had called for a mass stay-at-home strike. Unions had downscaled plans of street protests to a mass ...

A draft trade union law that the government has pledged to introduce by the end of the year includes provisions that will allow for unions to be suspended if their activities are deemed illegal, the head of Cambodia’s largest employers association said Wednesday. Van Sou Ieng, ...

Labor unions and associations have suspended their strike plan scheduled for March 12 following the request by garment workers, according to a union leader. The suspension came after the meeting between the union leaders from a coalition of 18 labor unions and associations today. The unionists ...

Corruption remains the most significant challenge facing Cambodia’s economy, according to a survey of more than 300 employers conducted last year by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the results of which were released Tuesday. Despite legislation meant to stamp out graft, corruption continues to be perceived ...

Phnom Penh Municipal Court has reopened an investigation into the high-profile slaying of union leader Chea Vichea in 2004, a court official said yesterday. Prosecutor Sok Roeun said the court’s head prosecutor began reinvestigating the case early last month in response to an order from the ...

A handful of stores in Phnom Penh’s City Mall closed up shop yesterday morning, draping large curtains over their storefronts rather than face an impending police raid on businesses allegedly selling pirated movies there, police and other vendors said. The aborted raid came less than two ...

Road traffic accidents are killing more Cambodians per year than those who died annually as a result of war during their country’s more than two decades of armed conflict, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday. Speaking in Battambang province’s Bavel district at the inauguration of the ...

The Kratie Provincial Court on Sunday charged three villagers with illegally clearing community forest, and six more for clearing state-owned land, officials said Monday. The three people were arrested in Snoul district’s Khyoem commune and accused of clearing protected forest while the other six were arrested ...

Journalists need to be more professional in their reporting, which is the best way to protect themselves, a media educator says. “Like any other profession, journalism can be risky, but if journalists follow their professional codes of conduct and ethics and work with responsibility, there should ...

Freedom Park was placed under lockdown and a march by land rights activists was blocked Saturday morning as Phnom Penh’s security officials were out in force to ensure that peaceful rallies on International Women’s Day could not go as planned. Prime Minister Hun Sen on February ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has summoned 10 witnesses, including several police officials and one reporter, as it begins investigating the brutal murder of Nguyen Vann Chean, an ethnic Vietnamese man who was beaten to death by an angry mob in Meanchey district last month. The ...

A team of ethnic minority Banong villagers in Mondolkiri province detained a group of Vietnamese men on Saturday, who they suspect of illegally logging inside their community forest, and have handed them over to local police. Khut Chanra said he was among about 60 fellow Banong ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Friday warned that a union-led public forum scheduled for Freedom Park on Saturday morning would not be allowed to proceed, adding that a fresh wave of union marches next week are also banned. The security minister’s comments came during a talk ...

As International Women’s Day is marked around the world on Saturday, calls are being made for more rehabilitative opportunities to be made available to female prisoners in Cambodia and, separately, for cultural norms that rank women below men to be challenged and overcome. Local rights group ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Police held a special training at the capital’s Olympic Stadium on Thursday afternoon in preparation for any future demonstrations. More than 2,000 policemen, armed with shields and batons, joined the half-day training, Gen. Chuon Sovann, chief of the Phnom Penh Municipal Police, ...

The government can’t seem to agree on whether or not Prime Minister Hun Sen has lifted the ban on the constitutional right to freedom of assembly. Last week, Mr. Hun Sen said in a speech: “I will not prevent [demonstrations] because everyone has equal rights,” which ...

A U.N. rights envoy to Cambodia on Wednesday expressed “cautious optimism” that the parties of Prime Minister Hun Sen and opposition leader Sam Rainsy would move toward ending their seven-month political deadlock following an agreement achieved this week between the two sides on a set ...

A group of 18 labor unions and associations said they will proceed with plans for a public forum in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Saturday, despite City Hall’s rejecting their request, citing public security concerns. The unions, who are organizing a nationwide strike in the garment ...

Two Phnom Penh economic police officers were charged with misappropriation of public funds Tuesday by the municipal court and placed in pretrial detention at Prey Sar prison, according to court staff. Theng Ramy, a clerk for the court’s prosecution office, identified the charged officers as Sok ...

When a group of six unions organized nationwide strikes in December demanding a $160 minimum wage, the opposition CNRP aggressively took up the cause. Opposition leaders rallied support outside factory gates around the country and tens of thousands of garment workers flooded into Phnom Penh’s Freedom ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen told business leaders and government officials Tuesday that he will not tolerate “illegal” labor strikes that harm investment, but avoided judgment on a request to withdraw ratification of a U.N. convention protecting workers’ rights to unionize. Speaking at the 17th Government-Private Sector ...

A day after union leader Vorn Pov was violently arrested during garment strikes in early January, he was driven to an unknown location and told by armed officers to get out of the vehicle. The union leader said his group of co-accused share a cell ...

Two political activists were injured by district security guards outside the Daun Penh district office Monday morning after a protest to free 21 protesters beaten and imprisoned during a strike in January turned into an effort to reclaim a confiscated protest drum. The protesters, dressed in ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday called on government bodies, local authorities, international organisations and the private sector to dial back Cambodia’s widespread theft of copyrighted works, like film and music, and encouraged the creation of more original, home-grown cultural works. Copying other countries’ cultural output – ...