Human rights

Along Phnom Penh’s industry-heavy Veng Sreng Street on Wednesday, garment factories lay idle in observance of Khmer New Year. The dorms around them were empty, save for the few workers who could not afford the bus ticket home for the holiday, which ended Wednesday. Eight unions ...

A senior government adviser on information technology says a draft of a cybercrime law is unnecessary and could lead to demonstrations and unrest if passed as currently written. Critics say the draft law, made public last week, criminalizes online behavior in vague language open to ...

Casualties from landmines and unexploded ordnance have remarkably increased in the first two months of this year, a report of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority showed Tuesday. The country reported 40 casualties, 6 people died and 34 injured, during the January-February period this ...

More than two dozen NGOs have written to the head of the Asian Development Bank demanding the immediate release of a draft plan the ADB has drawn up to help Cambodian families evicted to make way for a bank-funded railway rehabilitation project. They also want ...

A Cambodian court on Friday sentenced 13 men to prison terms ranging from five to nine years for plotting to overthrow the government in a case that was criticized by a human rights group as a political setup. The men were members of a self-styled Khmer ...

The Zongtex Garment factory off Phnom Penh’s Russian Boulevard looks like a nondescript residential compound, hidden down a dead-end road. There are no signs suggesting that it supplied to some of the world’s leading high street names – and the US military. Taiwanese-owned Zongtex Garment Manufacturing ...

Families evicted for a rail project funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) threatened to demonstrate if the bank does not show them its plan to improve their living conditions within one week. About 1,000 families who built homes over the country’s long-neglected train tracks were ...

At the site where security forces shot dead at least four people during a nationwide strike on January 3, union leaders yesterday passed out fliers encouraging workers to join a stay-at-home strike after Khmer New Year. When workers filed out of Canadia Industrial Park’s gates for ...

Cambodia will pardon the prisoners or reduce the punishment for to mark annual Khmer New Year celebration from 14-16 April. ...

About a dozen Tuol Kok district security guards in Phnom Penh on Tuesday blocked three families involved in a long-running land dispute from building a fence around the disputed property in Boeng Kak I commune, an official said. Deputy district governor Saing Sopheak Vichet said the ...

In 2011, Oeun Phirun took out a $450 loan from the Asian Development Bank, using half to buy a used motorbike and spending the rest on a small flock of ducks and chickens he hoped to raise. His family and about 1,000 others have been evicted ...

Rong Chhun, head of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions, is making a trip through the US, seeking support to help free 21 labor activists who have been in jail since deadly crackdowns on demonstrations in January. His visit comes as another labor leader, Ath Thun, was ...

Union leaders planning a stay-at-home strike to demand a higher minimum wage for the country’s garment workers say they will press on with the strike after the Khmer New Year, despite the threat of arrest for anyone handing out leaflets promoting their plans. On Sunday, a ...

The United Nations independent expert on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, expressed concern today that the country’s National Assembly held its second session last week without the opposition representatives taking up their seat, and urged the legislature to upkeep the key principles of ...

A man was seriously injured on Saturday by an anti-personnel landmine that exploded under him as he tried to sneak across the Thai-Cambodian border to illegally log rosewood, local officials said. [O’Smach commune chief] Mr. [Phang] Sam Ath said the border area where the men ...

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Friday confirmed that Cambodia was in talks with his government to take in some of the refugees trying to reach his country’s shores, according to Australian media. Mr. Abbott’s statement was the first official admission from his administration that Australia ...

Police in Svay Rieng province yesterday afternoon arrested a union worker who was delivering flyers supporting a stay-at-home strike scheduled to begin after Khmer New Year. While delivering about 1,100 fliers to union members at Full Fortune Knitting, Kem Chamroeun, a 25-year-old Collective Union of Movement ...

Cambodia asked Thailand Friday to compensate the families of five Cambodians killed when a World War II bomb exploded in a scrap metal shop in Bangkok. The explosion on Wednesday killed a total of seven people, injured 20 others and destroyed or damaged 10 buildings. “Our ...

The Areng Chorng ethnic minority group yesterday submitted five petitions – addressed to the UN office in Cambodia and four government institutions – seeking a halt to the Sinohydro dam project in Koh Kong province. After blocking Sinohydro from entering the dam site in the Areng ...

Opposition lawmaker-elect Mu Sochua protested for her “right to freedom” for the third day running at Freedom Park yesterday and was once again forcibly ejected from the area by security forces. But the now-familiar encounter departed from the script when she left the area and went ...

Sixty-eight Khmer Krom families in Takeo province allege they are being forcibly evicted, charged by fishery authorities with illegally occupying a nature preserve. Yesterday, three representatives from the Borei Choslar district, Sangkum Meanchey village, were summonsed to court. ...

A Taiwanese woman and five associates charged with trafficking Cambodians to work in slave-like conditions on fishing boats off the coast of Africa had their case heard by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday. Lin Yu Shin, the 54-year-old owner of the now defunct Giant ...

Senior opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua walked into Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Wednesday morning, trailed by a small group of news photographers, and stopped to pose in front of about 100 municipal riot police exercising in the park. Ms. Sochua’s small act of defiance against the ...

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said yesterday that the government will not let opposition leader Sam Rainsy dodge a government ban on public gatherings by holding mass demonstrations during the campaign period before the May 18 district, provincial and city council elections. ...