Human rights

Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia, is the President of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), the country’s ruling party since 1979. In recent years, when an opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), started gaining momentum and making their voices heard, Sen’s government found ...

The government’s suppression of human rights poses a serious threat to Cambodia’s democratic progress, visiting members of the European Parliament’s human rights subcommittee warned on Friday.   ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia said the political climate had clearly deteriorated in the six months since her first fact-finding mission and that the country remained at a “dangerous tipping point” ahead of commune and national elections. ...

The United Nations Human Rights Commission in Cambodia (OHCHR) yesterday released an analysis of the contentious draft trade union law finding key clauses to be in violation of existing Cambodian law, human rights norms and the ILO’s conventions.   ...

After police in Preah Vihear province blocked the U.N.’s human rights envoy from meeting with indigenous villagers earlier this week, Rhona Smith sat down with Interior Minister Sar Kheng in Phnom Penh on Wednesday and called for better communication between national and local government officials. ...

Former residents of Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community on Wednesday handed petitions to the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, requesting that she intervene in their feud with authorities after they were snubbed by City Hall earlier in the day.   ...

The independence of the country’s judiciary was among the issues that UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Rhona Smith raised yesterday during a meeting with the minister of justice as part of her 10-day visit. ...

The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia met with local rights advocates on Monday as she began her second fact-finding mission to the country, one of the meeting’s attendees said.   ...

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia today announced she will be visiting the country Monday to assess the enjoyment of rights by women and indigenous peoples in the country. ...

The two-kilometer stretch of white sand that curves along  translucent sea in an idyllic bay near Sihanoukville was still living up to its picture-perfect mystique on Sunday, with couples strolling hand-in-hand beneath the cloudless sky as others slouched in cushioned chairs soaking up the sun. ...

More than 200 activists attempting to cycle from the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to the National Assembly in Phnom Penh to mark International Women’s Day were penned in by authorities Tuesday morning after pedaling less than 100 meters.​ ...

As the government issued a familiar package of platitudes and promises on International Women’s Day, a walk through a single rural village in Kandal offered a shocking glimpse into how widespread – and widely accepted – domestic abuse remains in the Kingdom. ...

Roughly 100 Phnom Penh residents who believe they will be affected by a planned expressway leading from the airport to the city centre protested again at the Ministry of Public Works yesterday, demanding that community representatives be included on the committee that settles such matters ...

Cambodia’s ambassador to Asean on Friday rebuked his U.S. counterpart for comments she made on the country’s human rights situation, asking her to refrain from “criticizing Cambodia inappropriately.” ...

Cambodia has been taken to task in Amnesty International’s latest global report, which said the Southeast Asian country continued to abuse human rights while allowing impunity to continue unchecked. ...

The top U.S. envoy to ASEAN said on Wednesday that despite trade and security issues being at the cen­ter of last week’s U.S.-ASEAN Sum­mit, U.S. President Barack Obama also used the setting to address the region’s human rights problems. ...

Cambodians continue to suffer from a raft of human rights abuses in­cluding “arbitrary restrictions” on freedoms of assembly and ex­pression, according to Amnesty In­ternational’s latest global report re­leased this morning. ...

A grinning Prime Minister Hun Sen walked up to US President Barack Obama and shook his hand in California yesterday, lending the premier his long-sought aura of legitimacy even as hundreds of angry Cambodians protested his 31-year rule less than half of a kilometre away. ...

In a wide-ranging speech to ruling Cambodian People’s Party supporters in California yesterday, Prime Minister Hun Sen slammed the US government as well as the opposition, and said his presence at the US-ASEAN Summit at Rancho Mirage was no different than that of US President ...

More than 100 Southeast Asian parliamentarians are urging President Barack Obama to address regional human rights issues during his meetings with ASEAN leaders next week, according to an open letter posted online Thursday. ...

Amid fears of a potential reprise of anti-opposition violence that flared in October, a US Embassy spokesman yesterday called on the government “to ensure that no one is threatened, punished, or harmed in Cambodia” if a planned anti-Hun Sen rally takes place as scheduled next ...

Twelve civil society organizations submitted a joint statement asking the US government and heads of democratic ASEAN members to raise issues of human rights violations in Cambodia and the misuse of courts to stifle the opposition at next week’s US-ASEAN Summit in California, in order ...

The Cambodia Confederation Development Association (CCDA), a well-known tuk-tuk and moto-taxi association, plans to lodge complaints against local rights group Licadho next week over a statement the NGO co-signed with 33 other civil society groups regarding the association’s involvement in a Saturday protest at the ...

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights released a public notice on Monday noting a “substantial increase” in the number of people being charged for making anti-government or anti-Hun Sen comments in social media. ...