Law and judiciary

A teenager was one of 13 girls locked inside a recruitment company’s offices in the capital last year after being promised work as a maid in Malaysia, she told the Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday. The court yesterday tried three people over alleged illegal detention and human ...

Phnom Penh City Hall has banned all trucks transporting goods and gasoline from traveling on the city’s roads in daytime hours to ease traffic during the Asean Summit, according to a notice placed on the municipality’s website Saturday. The Ministry of Education has also told 12 ...

The Svay Rieng Provincial Court yesterday questioned two of the three female garment factory workers who were shot during a protest at a special economic zone (SEZ) in Bavet City in February, the provincial prosecutor said yesterday. Keo Nea, 18; Bun Chenda, 21; and Nuth Sokhorn, ...

The Supreme Court has requested that the owner of Phnom Penh’s shuttered Renakse Hotel deposit $200,000 with the court as proof that it is able to pay compensation to the hotel’s former manager, a lawyer said yesterday. In 2008, the ruling CPP sold the French colonial-era ...

The three young women wounded in last month’s factory shooting in Svay Rieng province will meet with provincial prosecutor Hing Bunchea today to give their account of the February 20 incident that has yet to produce an arrest warrant. Bun Chinda, 21, Nuth Sokhorn, 23, and ...

The government is finalizing a draft law that will aim to prevent importers from price dumping and protect local producers by allowing authorities to raise tariffs on goods, according to a copy of the draft law. In the past, local producers have been negatively affected by ...

Rangers paid by an internationally funded conservation organisation have been directly profiting for years from the very trade they are supposed to be preventing in southwest Cambodia, documents obtained by the Post allege. Former Conservation International (CI) staff members say when they spoke up about endemic ...

The European Union had provided more than US$265,000 to a land reform project that aimed to shift political will and opinion towards land and human rights in Cambodia, development partners said yesterday. The Cambodian Centre for Human Rights will spearhead the Cambodian Land Law Reform Project, ...

In an effort to stop mass faintings at garment factories, a government committee will issue a prakas this year aimed at reducing fatigue among workers by requiring factories to establish on-site housing, an official said yesterday. Pok Vanthath, deputy director of vocational training at the Ministry ...

A total of 36 protests involving economic land concessions ended with violent intervention from armed authorities last year, according to data released this week by local rights group Adhoc. More than a fifth of the cases involved the long-simmering Boeng Kak lake evictions, in which ...

The morning before the verdict was handed down at the Appeals Court on March 12, the mood among those working on the defence team for Heng Chheang and his wife Tep Kolap was almost optimistic. They, along with relatives of the couple and academics from Phnom ...

An estimated 73 suspects and convicts involved in illegal fishing were released on bail in accordance with a blanket amnesty granted by Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier this month, a court official said yesterday. Speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the Ministry of Justice’s annual ...

Echoing longstanding calls from conservation groups, the World Bank says in a new report today that governments need to look past low-level criminals to tackle illegal logging and to follow the money the illicit trade generates instead. That trade of illegal logging generates up to $15 ...

Opening statements started yesterday in a trial pitting Kompong Chhnang province villagers against the wife of Minister of Industry Suy Sem over a long-standing land dispute. However, the plaintiffs and human rights workers monitoring the trial criticized yesterday’s proceedings, which were allowed to proceed despite ...

A government lawyer has written to the Phnom Penh municipal court to again ask it to allow land belonging to fugitive former Cambodian ambassador to Brunei Nan Sy to be sold at auction. ...

The first trial in a long-running land dispute with the wife of Industry, Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem will start today at the Kompong Chhnang Provincial Court, a human rights worker and court officer said yesterday. Court prosecutor Penh Vibol confirmed that the court would ...

After being found guilty yesterday, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court handed four men prison sentences and fines for their involvement in a smuggling ring, which brought more than two and a half tonnes of illegal cold medicine into the Kingdom from South Korea. Both men ...

The court prosecutor investigating last month’s shooting of three female factory workers at a special economic zone (SEZ) denied a newspaper report claiming the chief suspect, former Bavet City Governor Chhouk Bundith, had confessed to shooting the women. Svay Rieng Provincial Court prosecutor Hing Bunchea said ...

Despite admitting yesterday to firing his pistol during last month’s protest at a Svay Rieng province special economic zone (SEZ), where three women were shot, Bavet City’s former governor Chhuk Bundith was free to return home after making his confession to the court. “[Mr. Bundith] came ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday tried a Vietnamese-Canadian national, four Cambodians and a Vietnamese national, the latter in absentia, for their roles in smuggling about 3 kg of drug precursor chemicals from India to Cambodia using the FedEx shipping service. ...

Four former workers at the Angkor Villa Hotel and Resort appeared in the Appeal Court yesterday for questioning in relation to allegations that they ransacked the hotel during a strike last year. Korng Kimlean, union president of the Cambodian Tourism and Service Workers’ Federation and the ...

Two female garment workers who were shot last month during a protest at a Svay Rieng province special economic zone (SEZ) filed a complaint with the provincial court yesterday accusing former deputy Bavet City Governor Chhuk Bundith of attempted murder. Bun Chenda, 21, and Nuth Sokhorn, ...

Following a three-hour debate at the National Assembly, lawmakers passed a draft law approving the $2.5 billion the government spent in 2010. During the debate, CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap presented a 10-page document that he said justified the $2.5 billion in spending, which was 25 percent ...

About 50 Borei Keila evictees gathered outside Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday to again pressure officials to lay criminal charges against Suy Sophan, the owner of development firm Phan Imex, for destroying their homes and breaching an agreement to build them new ones. The former Borei ...