Law and judiciary

First, agricultural company DM group displaced them, now a recently arrived commercial farmer has threatened their lives and chased them off their new land, said representatives of 12 families engaged in a long-standing land dispute in Ratanakkiri province. On Wednesday, the 12 Tampuon ethnic minority families ...

Free Trade Union of Workers of Cambodia said Tuesday it had sued the director of Thailand’s Mfone Co Ltd for not respecting local labor laws. In a letter issued Tuesday to the Department of Labor Disputes, the union’s deputy secretary general Sam Srey Mom accused Mfone ...

About 300 workers continued protesting at the Master and Frank garment factory yesterday, rejecting a Kandal Provincial Court injunction ordering them back to work within 48 hours. After the company promised to consider workers’ demands that it reinstate fired union members, workers cancelled their plans to ...

Prominent female land activists Tim Sakmony and Yorm Bopha, who have been locked in Prey Sar prison since their arrest in early September, will face court today on charges rights groups say have been fabricated to stop them and others from protesting. Hundreds of the women’s ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday convicted local tycoon Chhin Sokountheary of encroaching on public lands and sentenced her in absentia to four years and six months in prison. Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge Ly Lipmeng said yesterday that Sokountheary, who is also known as ...

The Government of Cambodia on Friday passed a draft law on fire prevention in order to contribute to maintaining security, social safety, public order, and life and property protection, according to a media statement released after the weekly Cabinet meeting. In the meeting, Hun Sen ...

The Phnom Penh Court of Appeal ruled Friday that Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando should continue serving his 20-year sentence for sedition. On October 1, the radio station owner was sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined 10 million riel in relation to a ...

The court system is still “chronically underfunded” and laws on its management are almost 20 years overdue, the U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi said yesterday. One year ago, during his sixth mission to Cambodia, Mr. Subedi described reform in the courts as moving at a ...

Despite a court-ordered land title in their favour, 163 families in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district last week watched excavators rip apart their homes at the behest of two district deputy governors. The forced eviction, denounced in a petition delivered on Friday to Prime Minister Hun ...

Union leaders representing workers on strike at the Tropicana Casino and Resort were served with a summons by the Banteay Meanchey provincial court yesterday after a complaint by the casino’s management. The court summons came around the time Sum Sam Ith, the Tropicana representative, sent ...

Electronic equipment supplier Eltek Valere Ltd. filed a complaint Wednesday with the Phnom Penh Municipal Court against mobile operator Mfone, demanding the company pay the $3.7 million it owes to Eltek from a previous GSM contract, a lawyer for Eltek said. ...

Lawmakers at the National Assembly yesterday debated the government’s plan for public spending next year, with the opposition challenging the government’s plans to rack up more foreign debt. Since the draft of the 2013 budget was released last month, the opposition has come forward with detailed ...

Cambodia continues to rank among the most corrupt countries in the world and much needs to be done to enforce the Anti-Corruption Law and investigate allegations of corruption, Transparency International (T.I.) Cambodia said yesterday. According to T.I.’s 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Cambodia ranked 157th among ...

Next Apparel has filed a lawsuit against its workers for damaging factory property during their ongoing strike. More than 200 workers smashed windows, bikes, cupboards, flower pots and other items in the factory last Saturday. “We demand that the court find justice for the company,” Chea Sovann ...

Human rights groups in Cambodia fear a new south-east Asian declaration of human rights could conversely offer the government in Phnom Penh a figleaf to clamp down on dissent. Cambodia signed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) human rights declaration on Sunday, two days ...

Only about 5 percent of the roughly 2,000 major development projects, such as dams, roads and bridges, approved by the government between 2004 and 2011 carried out environmental impact assessments, an official at the ministry of Environment said yesterday. Speaking at a workshop in Phnom Penh ...

Asean leaders Tuesday discussed the importance of expanding economic opportunity for the region, vowing to increase efforts for better trade and investment amid members states and with the US. Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of Asean, said “more and more” was expected of Asean today. “So it is ...

The Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court delayed the destruction of the homes and subsequent eviction of 14 families embroiled in a land dispute with a company owned by tycoon Kong Treav in Village 4 of Sihanoukville’s Commune 4, local authorities said yesterday. Though many of the families ...

Criticism continued yesterday of the Asean Human Rights Declaration, which was signed in Phnom Penh on Saturday after regional leaders decided to make last-minute revisions that were widely deemed as inadequate. U.N. experts ans civil society groups criticized the lack of consultation in drawing up the ...

U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Prime Minister Hun Sen on the government’s human rights record during a closed-door meeting between the two leaders in Phnom Penh yesterday, calling for fair elections and the release of all political prisoners. In the first visit to Cambodia by a ...

Seven representatives of 415 families entangled in an unresolved land dispute with a deputy commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have received a second summons to appear in Battambang Provincial Court to clarify accusations that they had vandalized the commander’s property, “They not only ...

More than 300 families embroiled in a land dispute with notorious, and now defunct, NGO Darpo said yesterday that they had filed complaints to the Preah Vihear Provincial Court on Wednesday accusing a Koh Santepheap reporter of disinformation and calling for his arrest and $4,000 ...

In a sitting of parliament yesterday that was rather more subdued than the vicious session that led to an opposition walkout a day earlier, a law to support an environmental program passed with bipartisan support. All but two of the 93 legislat-ors present voted in favour ...

A Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporter in Ratanakkiri province will be questioned at the provincial court today in relation to claims that he incited villagers to commit crimes against a rubber company that they have been locked in a land dispute with since 2004. Lim Chanlyda, ...