Prisons

Abuse, discrimination, exploitation and corruption are endemic in Cambodia’s prisons, spurred on by judicial and penal systems “driven by nepotism”, according to a new report from local rights group Licadho. The report, Rights at a Price: Life Inside Cambodia’s Prisons, which was released yesterday, details a ...

Opposition CNRP lawmaker Eng Chhay Eang says he will visit Phnom Penh’s Prey Speu social affairs center today to investigate its controversial treatment of detainees following the death of a recent charge. ...

Staff at the Phnom Penh Municipal Referral Hospital said Tuesday that they had no record of a recent visit from a man who died late last month at the Prey Speu social affairs center, contradicting claims made by a city official. Both a file search by ...

The Cambodian government should promptly close all centers arbitrarily detaining people outside the criminal justice system, Licadho and Human Rights Watch said today. The abusive nature of these centers was highlighted by the death on November 26, 2014, of a man who was arbitrarily detained ...

In spite of international laws and Cambodia’s own legal code, pre-trial detention in the country is becoming more prevalent among child offenders than adults, according to data compiled by a trial monitoring project. The notes are compiled from trial monitoring of 2,558 cases from 2009 ...

Six inmates busted out of Ratanakkiri Provincial Prison in the wee hours of yesterday morning, police said, adding another incident to a string of embarrassing escapes at the facility over the past two years. According to a post on the National Police’s website, authorities in Ratanakkiri’s ...

Samraong City, Oddar Meanchey province – In December, Kuy Bunsorn, director-general of the General Department of Prisons (GDP), announced that ground would be broken on two new prisons in Pailin and Oddar Meanchey provinces to alleviate chronic overcrowding. Mr. Bunsorn said that the Ministry of Finance ...

Even within the country’s notoriously overcrowded prison system, inmates in this northern province live in particularly harsh conditions. Approximately 120 prisoners, including 16 women and three children, are held in four cells in the Oddar Meanchey provincial police headquarters. “In one cell we keep 20 or more ...

Prey Sar prison officials are carting thousands of liters of water to the prison each day because a construction company smashed a water main and has yet to fix it. According to prison officials, inmates are rationed 3 liters of clean water each day, which is ...

The National Assembly yesterday agreed to forward to the Ministry of Interior a request from five Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmakers to visit the five Lorpeang villagers jailed over their involvement in their ongoing land dispute with KDC International. ...

Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison has been buying truckloads of water for inmates since a road construction crew broke the water pipe leading to the jail last week, officials said Sunday. ...

The Kandal Provincial Court on Tuesday tried two opposition CNRP officials and their lawyer—two of them in absentia—over a case dating back to 2011 that was abruptly scheduled a week ago. Chan Cheng, who was elected last year as a CNRP National Assembly member from Kandal ...

Despite multiple requests, the US Embassy has not been given access to visit dual citizen Mu Sochua since her arrest last Tuesday, officials said yesterday. “Consular officers attempted to visit Mu Sochua the evening she was arrested but were not permitted to see her and multiple ...

A large group of Cambodian migrants were rounded up and detained in a Bangkok prison at the end of May, where many still remain, Thai officials told the Post yesterday. Separate unconfirmed reports that at least 130 Cambodians had been in detention for more than a month emerged ...

Detainees and prisoners continue to be administered electric shocks, beaten unconscious and even smothered by plastic bags, with 49 new allegations of torture or abuse at the hands of authorities this year, according to rights group Licadho, which says in a report released Wednesday that ...

Prey Sar prison officials on Friday set fire to 1,705 mobile phones that had been confiscated from inmates there over the past three years. Yin Kun, deputy chief of Prey Sar’s Correctional Center 1, said that the public burning of phones would remind prisoners that communicating ...

The number of inmates who died in the country’s prisons in the first quarter of the year dipped to nine from 15 during the same period last year, a rights group and the prison department said. From January to April, nine prisoners—five men and four women—reportedly ...

Two men were sentenced to three years in prison yesterday by Phnom Penh Municipal Court for impersonating a police officer by donning a National Police uniform, complete with a plastic pistol and fake number plate. “After stopping, checking and asking him, we knew he was ...

The Interior Ministry is seeking 478 students to work in prisons and offices across the country, according to an announcement posted online Monday. The ministry’s message, posted to the website of the National Committee for Sub-National Democratic Development, calls for 80 candidates to work as prison ...

The Kandal Provincial Court will question five prisoners next month over the theft of 2,500-year-old relics of the Buddha from the top of Odong mountain in December to ascertain if they were actually involved, a court official said Monday. Lim Sokuntha, an investigating judge at the ...

Hundreds of prisoners will be pardoned or see their sentences reduced on Tuesday following a request by the Ministry of Interior to the King. The royal pardons and sentence reductions, which benefit 339 inmates, coincide with Pisak Bochea Day, a celebration of the Buddha’s birth. ...

Independent union leader Ath Thorn said Sunday he had collected enough money from supporters to pay most of his $25,000 bail to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, and would deliver it to the court Monday. The court has charged Mr. Thorn, president of the Coalition of ...

Cambodia’s Supreme Court on Friday upheld a decision refusing bail to 21 people arrested during a deadly worker strike crackdown, a defense lawyer said, as dozens of supporters protested outside, calling the charges against them politically motivated and demanding their release. The top court upheld the ...

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 ...