Law and judiciary

The long-awaited trial of the 23 men arrested during strike demonstrations in early January began this morning at 8 am at Phnom Penh Municipal Court and is proceeding into the afternoon. Before the trial began, police had already blocked off the street in front of the ...

Ancient ironwork at a site in Preah Vihear province that predates the civilisation of Angkor will fall within a new national park formed by royal decree last week. More than 200 pre-Angkor era industrial sites have been discovered since 2010, but the newly created national park ...

Garment factory owners failed to turn up for what was supposed to have been a tripartite meeting with the government and worker unions on Thursday to help break an impasse in negotiations to increase the minimum wage for workers, officials said. The International Labor Organization (ILO) ...

The appointment of General Sok Phal to head the Interior Ministry’s newly formed department to monitor migrant workers has raised concerns over his close familial connection to a labor recruitment industry fraught with human rights abuses. Gen. Phal’s sister, Ung Seang Rithy, is the owner of ...

Twenty-one labor activists who have been detained in Kampong Cham province since their arrests in January were moved to the main prison outside Phnom Penh on Wednesday. Supporters say the 21 are being detained as a lesson to other would-be demonstrators, after a brutal crackdown ...

Two union leaders were summonsed and questioned by a municipal court prosecutor yesterday over allegations they illegally detained the boss of a packaging factory in Por Sen Chey district’s Choam Chao commune during a strike. According to Phnom Penh Municipal Court deputy prosecutor Ek Chheng Huoth, ...

Officials with the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Tuesday spoke out for the first time against Australia’s plans to send some of the asylum seekers trying to reach its shores to Cambodia, saying the pending deal was not a “real ...

Members of a Lao ethnic community in Ratanakkiri province allegedly burned down three makeshift houses belonging to a rubber plantation on Monday. The 250 villagers in Veun Sai district’s Hatpak village accuse Indian-owned SK Company of encroaching on the forest and ignoring markers demarcating village farmland, ...

Police in Kompong Speu province on Monday night stopped three container trucks on National Road 4 bound for Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, seizing more than 100 logs of illegal luxury wood, officials said. Provincial economic police chief Nhem Sao said that his officers and police from Chbar ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday ordered embattled union leader Ath Thorn to stay away from the SL garment factory and its workers and to avoid any public gatherings that could “damage public order,” drawing a tight circle around one of the country’s most ...

Officials from the opposition CNRP announced Tuesday that they will file lawsuits against deputy Daun Penh district governor Sok Penhvuth, who on Monday ordered district security guards to attack a small and peaceful group of CNRP supporters near Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park. Speaking at a press ...

The Court of Appeal on Tuesday upheld a 2012 conviction of encroaching on public land, but significantly reduced the sentence, against businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary for illegally filling in part of a Phnom Penh lake. Ms. Sokountheary—also known as Grandma Crocodile for the crocodile farm she owns—was ...

Cambodia on Tuesday revealed two suspected hackers, who have attacked in large scales on the information technology networks of the national institutions, the National Police announced in its website. Bun Kingmongkol Panha, 21, and Chou Songheng, 21, both are the third year information technology students at ...

The latest version of the government’s draft law on NGOs, which was approved by the Council of Ministers in January, is identical to an earlier version made available to civil society in 2011, with several outstanding concerns still intact, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights ...

Embattled union leader Ath Thorn yesterday said that he had begun a fundraising effort, trying to come up with $25,000 in bail money by the end of the week. Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), said union members would begin ...

A familiar figure has popped up atop a building that authorities in Phnom Penh ordered demolished in October for violating height restrictions around the Royal Palace: a statue of late King Father Norodom Sihanouk. “I have built a King statue on the top of my building ...

Forestry officials arrested four men and confiscated two pickup trucks containing illegally logged luxury timber en route to Vietnam on Sunday in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district before releasing both the men and the timber after fining them thousands of dollars, officers and a rights group representative ...

The justice minister yesterday defended three long-awaited laws on judicial reform which were approved by the Council of Ministers last week in a move slammed by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) as lacking transparency. Minister of Justice Ang Vong Vathana said that the “three ...

Ang Mealatey, the former president of Banteay Meanchey Provincial Court, was appointed president of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday, ending the eight-year tenure of Chiv Keng. Justice Minister Ang Vong Vathana and Supreme Court President Dith Munty presided over the ceremony of around 100 ...

The U.N.’s human rights office in Cambodia expressed concern Monday that 22 detained protesters may not be allowed to attend their trials on Friday, while the government insisted that the prisoners will be transported to the court. Two minors were arrested for intentional violence for their ...

A team of disabled security guards hired to protect the embattled SL Garment Factory in Phnom Penh is seeking the formalization of their employment and an end to what they claim is the factory’s exploitation of their impairments. In November—at the height of an occasionally violent, ...

Military police and local forestry officials in Stung Treng province confiscated more than 90 pieces of luxury-grade Thnong wood from a private farm on Sunday, but only after the suspected owner escaped, according to officials. Provincial court prosecutor Chroeng Khmao said a joint force of military ...

Seven Borei Keila community activists were summonsed to Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday to back up a complaint they filed accusing high-ranking Prampi Makara district officials of assault for their role in the violent dispersal of demonstrators in February. ...

Seven people were injured Monday when opposition lawmaker-elect Mu Sochua clashed with security forces outside Freedom Park in the Phnom Penh. Mu Sochua is leading a non-violent campaign by attempting to enter the park in protest of the government’s current ban on public gatherings. ...