Human rights

A family of Montagnard asylum seekers, including two young children and a 9-month-old baby, has been deported to Vietnam, where the father was reportedly beaten by authorities for attempting to escape. But Moeng Sineath, spokesman for Ratanakkiri Provincial Hall, confirmed for the first time yesterday ...

Government spokesman and four-star General Khieu Sopheak has threatened to sue an NGO worker over his “false allegations” about Montagnard asylum seekers. Sopheak said authorities had only arrested “illegal Vietnamese immigrants”, and called on Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc and the ...

A draft telecommunications law is causing concern from rights groups, who say it threatens freedom of speech online, one of the few spaces open to political discussion. ...

The electoral reform working groups from the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP resumed talks Monday after canceling their meetings last week, with officials from both parties again defending their controversial push to ban NGOs from “insulting” parties during election campaigns. ...

A rights group has asked the Cambodian government to stop harassing Christian Montagnards from Vietnam who are seeking refugee status in the country following the arrest of a family of five Montagnards in a northeastern province. ...

Human Rights Watch says that 2014 was one of Cambodia’s worst years in recent history in terms of human rights violations, citing “killings by security forces, arrests of activists and opposition politicians, summary trials and crackdowns on peaceful protest”. The Cambodia section of its World Report ...

The number of Cambodian women caught in abusive marriages in China is increasing dramatically, according to rights groups, which last year helped repatriate nearly 50 brides who had been either trafficked abroad or lured by the promise of a better life. Local rights groups Adhoc and ...

Following reports of endemic corruption and suppression of dissent in the Kingdom last year, Cambodia was once again classified by global watchdog Freedom House as “not free” in a generally bleak report released yesterday. In Freedom of the World 2015, Freedom House’s assessment of the real-world ...

A report based on interviews with 54 children has exposed critical failings in Cambodia’s judicial system, recounting stories of unpleasant experiences in the presence of police, doctors and court rooms. UNICEF and Hagar, a child rights NGO based in Cambodia, released Wednesday “A System Just for ...

A secretary of state at the Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday defended the government’s widely criticized imprisonment of 11 activists and an opposition official during a closed-door meeting with a visiting U.S. diplomat. Daniel Russel, an assistant secretary of state at the U.S. government’s Bureau of ...

Three of the refugees Australia is holding at a detention center on the South Pacific island nation of Nauru agreed to meet with Cambodian officials who traveled there last week to assess the possibility of resettling some of the asylum seekers in Cambodia, Interior Minister ...

Municipal anti-human trafficking police arrested three suspects in the past two days for allegedly sending at least four Cambodian women to marry men in China over the past year. Municipal anti-human trafficking police chief Keo Thea said one of the four Cambodian women sent to China ...

The presence of dozens of riot police yesterday swiftly ended the first day of Boeung Kak land-rights activist Yorm Bopha’s planned month-long protest in the capital’s Freedom Park. At virtually the same time, Surya Subedi, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, visited a ...

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 ...

Some 50 Daun Penh district security guards and about as many riot police prevented 100 anti-eviction protesters from gathering at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Tuesday after the city deemed the gathering illegal. The protesters were from a number of eviction-hit communities, including the Boeng Kak ...

The International Organisation for Migration has told the Cambodian government it is willing to take part in the resettlement of refugees from Nauru if a number of conditions are met.​ ...

The opposition CNRP plans to screen the banned documentary film “Who Killed Chea Vichea?” this week to mark the 11th anniversary of the Free Trade Union (FTU) leader’s assassination in front of a newspaper stall in Phnom Penh on January 22, 2004. CNRP public affairs director ...

The Phnom Penh municipal government on Monday rejected a request from protesters to stage a one-month demonstration in the city’s Freedom Park for the release of 10 jailed activists and refused to receive their latest petition demanding a solution to their long-running land disputes. About 100 ...

Two weeks after five Montagnard asylum seekers crossed into Ratanakkiri province from Vietnam, the U.N. said Sunday that reports of the arrival of nine more—including three children—added to the situation’s “urgency.” Two ethnic Jarai villagers living in Ratanakkiri said the nine Montagnards—an indigenous group from Vietnam’s ...

A government delegation that traveled to the South Pacific island nation of Nauru last week to study the possibility of resettling in Cambodia some of the refugees Australia is currently holding there will return to Phnom Penh on Monday, a government official said. ...

A Cambodian delegation that arrived in Nauru on Tuesday for high-level meetings to progress a controversial refugee resettlement scheme has toured Australian-run detention centres on the island, according to a rights group. ...

The mayor of Lowell, Massachusetts—which has the second-largest population of Cambodian-Americans in the U.S.—on Friday visited 10 anti-eviction activists inside Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, emerging to announce that he would lobby the government for their release. Wrapping up a five-day visit to Phnom Penh, Rodney ...

The Thai government yesterday broke its silence on charred remains found 10 days ago alleged to have been two Cambodians burned alive by Thai soldiers, saying no conclusion had been reached. Cambodia’s western neighbour has been slow to release investigative findings about what could prove to ...

Human rights group Adhoc has demanded the release of a couple and their 9-month-old child jailed amid a land dispute in Preah Vihear, calling their arrest a “grave human rights abuse”. ...