Legal professions and services

A deal signed Thursday with the China Law Society will give Justice Ministry officials access to scholarships at Chinese universities and see Beijing fund the construction of a legal research center in Cambodia, ministry spokesman Chin Malin said. ...

Mark Harmon, the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s international co-investigating judge, announced Tuesday that he was stepping down from his position following almost a year of inaction by judicial police in executing arrest warrants in two government-opposed cases. ...

The director of the Mondolkiri provincial mines and energy department Tuesday identified the operators of an illegal gold mine that was shut down last week as Royal Cambodian Armed Forces officers. ...

A Bangkok-based regional law firm says it will expand to Cambodia in the coming weeks, despite the local bar association’s renewed drive to clamp down on foreign lawyers practising “illegally” in the country. Law firm Tilleke & Gibbins said it expected to enter the legal scene ...

The chief of police in Preah Sihanouk province has been removed from his position and will be replaced by Chuon Narin, deputy chief of the Phnom Penh municipal force, according to the Interior Ministry. ...

Opposition party defector Van Sam Oeun yesterday slammed reports that his recent move to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party was due to alleged bankruptcy and that he had been “bought” by Prime Minister Hun Sen. ...

The National Assembly yesterday appointed a ruling Cambodian People’s Party stalwart to fill the final seat of the judicial body that oversees the Kingdom’s judges and prosecutors and whose political independence is already a target of criticism. A majority of 66 parliamentarians voted Ith Rady, an ...

Local and international NGOs yesterday rallied behind the inaugural United Nations-declared International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists by urging the government to bring perpetrators to justice. Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said yesterday that the government was not responsible for any ...

Media experts are asking the government to consider granting citizen journalists the same safeguards as professional journalists under Cambodia’s Press Law. ...

Police in Kratie province on Monday arrested two journalists for allegedly extorting $100 from a villager whose stockpile of wood the reporters suspected had been illegally logged, according to local officials. ...

NGO workers interviewing evictees in Oddar Meanchey province said police pulled their car over without cause on Saturday and tried to seize one of their cameras, the third reported case of authorities in the area harassing the group’s staff in the past month. ...

The long-awaited draft law on the Supreme Council of Magistracy continues the practice of secret votes and gives Justice Minister Ang Vong Vathana key powers, according to excerpts from the document, but it would reduce the position of King Norodom Sihamoni if passed in its ...

A new draft law on the Status of Judges and Prosecutors does not prohibit the judiciary from affiliation with political parties and allows Supreme Court judges and prosecutors to work beyond the mandatory retirement age of 60, when all other judges will be expected to ...

Officials from the ruling CPP said Wednesday that a series of public forums announced by Prime Minister Hun Sen earlier this year, which he said would help gather input for his promised plans to introduce widespread political reform, are now being held around the country. The ...

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, ...

About 30 law students on Friday participated in the seventh Client Counseling Competition to put their newly acquired professional skills into practice and compete for a trip to the international competition in Puerto Rico in April. “We created the case based on this year’s theme, ...

The British Embassy in Phnom Penh on Monday sponsored a training course on company and insolvency law for 150 commercial judge trainees with the aim of supporting legal and judicial reform in Cambodia. The workshop is intended to train Cambodian commercial judge trainees on English ...

A national legal aid system is imperative and must be established to offset a widening gap between those who can afford justice and those who cannot, the representative for the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Cambodia said on Friday. In ...

The Bar Association of Cambodia has written to Justice Minister Ang Vong Vattana requesting that an official price be set for photocopies of court case files, claiming that court clerks are taking advantage of the current system by charging lawyers extortionate amounts. The letter, dated October ...

The Bar Association of Cambodia should consider stricter standards on admission to the bar, make lawyers take regular mandatory training and set up a new disciplinary committee in order to ensure that Cambodia’s legal professionals are independent, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has said. The ...

Ministry of Interior officials held a closed-door meeting Monday with NGO representatives to contest Cambodia’s recent downgrade on the U.S. State Department’s Global Trafficking in Persons Report, which the ministry will discuss in a meeting with the U.S. Em­bassy this week. The annual report, released last ...

The president of the Bar Association of Cambodia has hit back at the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), which called for assurances that the Bar Association’s newly launched Code of Ethics, which was unveiled on Friday, would allow Cambodian lawyers to freely express themselves without ...

The Ministry of Labor on Sunday launched an educational campaign aimed at preventing further mass faintings in garment factories, a ministry official said yesterday. Meng Hong, director of the ministry’s inspection and legal affairs department, said that the campaign would target more than 30,000 garment workers ...

Authorities in Kompong Thom province yesterday forced a pagoda to withdraw its invitation to host a workshop about forest protection, continuing their pressure on two NGOs that provide community legal education in the province, a monk and NGO worker said. Chin Neth, chief monk at ...