Law and judiciary

Prime Minister Hun Sen was sued by a young man for allegedly cutting two islands of Cambodia to Vietnam. Neang Sokhun, 25, filed a complaint on Monday with Phnom Penh Municipal Court against Hun Sen for allegedly cutting Koh Tral and Koh Krochorch Sess to Vietnam. ...

Twelve representatives of 50 families in Preah Vihear’s Kulen district filed an appeal yesterday after being summonsed to court over a land dispute with a Malaysian company. The villagers gathered in Adhoc’s office in Srayrong commune to draft and submit a letter requesting that their court ...

Two years after Cambodia’s Acid Law took effect, and one year after a subsequent sub-decree further regulated the dangerous substance, significant hurdles remain in securing justice for victims of acid attacks, according to a paper published in the Cambodian Law and Policy Journalon Sunday. In her paper, ...

At 10 a.m. on January 3, about 2,000 members of the security forces, mostly military police, advanced down Phnom Penh’s factory-lined Veng Sreng Street, spraying AK-47 assault rifle fire into a crowd of about 100 protesters who had been throwing stones and crude Molotov cocktails. ...

Mak Sambath, deputy chairman of the government’s Human Rights Committee, came under fire Monday from activists who accused him of lying to the U.N. in Geneva regarding land issues and the displacement of affected people. The criticism of Mr. Sambath’s report to the U.N.’s Human Rights ...

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has for the first time admitted to major flaws in its efforts to protect the roughly 4,000 families losing land to a $143 million project it is funding to rehabilitate Cambodia’s dilapidated railway system. On Friday, the ADB said it would ...

The U.N.’s General Assembly released its latest round of recommendations to improve the human rights situation in Cambodia on Thursday following a review held last week in Geneva. The statements made by delegations from 76 countries during the review urged Cambodia to fulfill its promise to ...

About 100 monks, activists and workers returned on Saturday evening to the Canadia Industrial Park, where garment workers clashed with military police on January 3, to pray for the five protesters who were shot dead in the violence and call for the release of 23 ...

Opposition party members will lead a delegation to the doors of Kampong Cham Correctional Centre 3 on Tuesday in the hope of visiting the 23 people imprisoned there following a violent crackdown on striking garment workers in early January. Despite having previously been denied access to ...

A call for the Cambodian government to lift its controversial ban on public assembly is among 34 such recommendations it has chosen to defer in the wake of last week’s second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights situation. The UN on Saturday released a ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri’s Lumphat district have filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc, claiming their village chief has threatened them with arrest over a petition accusing officials of illegally logging a community forest. Sven Vev, 40, said he and three other representatives of the ethnic Tumpoun ...

Market vendors hawking pirated government textbooks have a month to get their shops in order if they want to avoid an authority-led crackdown, a statement released on Friday by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport warns. Selling or buying textbooks labelled “not for sale” or ...

The opposition party’s planned complaint to the International Criminal Court against government officials for long-term rights abuses will likely be beaten to the punch by a US lawyer and rights activist, Voice of America reported on Friday. According to VOA, Morton Sklar, executive director of the ...

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association will arrive in Cambodia on February 5, his office announced on Friday. ...

A local journalist was beaten to death in Kampong Chhnang province’s Cholkiri district on Saturday night in an attack that authorities believe may have been related to his reporting on illegal fishing, police said yesterday. District police officer Tith Reth said that Suon Chan, 44, a ...

Sugar plantations that benefit from the European Union’s Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme, which allows preferential access to the E.U.’s market, have further impoverished Cambodia’s poor, and an investigation needs to be launched, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) said on Friday. Patrice Tirolien, MEP ...

Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng became the latest senior member of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s CPP government to accuse the opposition CNRP of attempting to “topple” the government though what he claimed is a “constitutional coup.” In a posting to the Interior Ministry ...

Two human rights groups on Friday appealed to Interior Minister Sar Kheng to intervene after the General Department of Prisons, which is part of the Interior Ministry, refused to allow representatives from their organizations to meet with some of the 23 union activists and protesters ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy says the international community is now pushing hard for serious human rights reforms in Cambodia. Sam Rainsy, head of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, was this week in Geneva, where a UN human rights review of Cambodia took place. The UN’s Human Rights ...

A member of the European Parliament is in Cambodia investigating agri-business firms accused of evicting hundreds of families while benefiting from a free-trade scheme with Europe worth millions of dollars, according to the NGO Equitable Cambodia. The visit from France’s Patrice Tirolien follows a resolution the ...

Just weeks after the country’s only independent teachers’ association staged a strike for higher wages, Phnom Penh’s education chief told teachers this week that they must stop taking bribes to comply with the government’s promised reform agenda. Speaking to about 500 educators, mainly school directors, from ...

An outspoken CNRP youth activist who claims that her passport application was leaked by immigration police said Thursday that she will lead protests in front of the Ministry of Interior and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s residence in Phnom Penh if authorities do not attempt to ...

Five police from Phnom Penh’s Dangkor and Russey Keo districts could face charges for allegedly beating false confessions out of three suspects, a technique human rights observers say is pervasive in Cambodia. Judges and lawyers at Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday questioned the three Russey Keo ...

Cambodia is preparing three long-awaited laws aimed at restoring its widely criticized judicial system. However, two of the three draft laws obtained by VOA Khmer still need a lot more improvement, according to legal experts. The laws focus on codifying court jurisdiction, laying out guidelines for ...