Human rights

On the shore of Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district overlooking a cluster of islands, a flourishing new golf course lies vacant but for a handful of workers tending its empty greens. The Romanesque hotel behind it, replete with a bold central dome, luxury VIP suites ...

Fifty families who have lived in squalid conditions at Borei Keila in the capital’s Prampi Makara district since they were evicted and their homes destroyed have accepted City Hall’s offer of temporary shelter at the site, their representatives said yesterday. Evictee Sar Son said the 50 ...

More than 600 of the Kingdom’s inmates could be released or see their sentences reduced this Khmer New Year if the King responds favourably to a request made yesterday by the Ministry of Interior’s General Department of Prisons, officials said. Kuy Bunsorn, director general of the ...

Housing rights activists from the Borei Keila and Boeng Kak communities protested in front of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday to urge authorities to speed up proceedings in an assault case they brought against Prampi Makara district authorities last month. ...

Thousands of workers at the Wing Star Shoes Co. Ltd. on Wednesday blocked the road to the factory in Kompong Speu province for two hours. They demanded the company raise their bonuses by $5 and properly enforce labor laws after arbitration talks failed Tuesday. It was ...

Rights group Adhoc on Wednesday helped 105 communities locked in long-running land disputes across the country refile their complaints with local courts and other state agencies in a concerted effort to push the government to finally resolve their cases. Covering a broad cross-section of the country’s ...

A 44-year-old woman was run over and killed by a harvesting machine on Sunday while working on a sugarcane plantation in Kompong Speu province owned by CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat, marking at least the second death on the plantation since December. Y Mom, originally from ...

European Union Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht said he has no plans to launch an investigation into Cambodia’s much-criticized sugarcane plantations after a meeting with Commerce Minister Sun Chanthol in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. Bottom line: Cambodia’s free trade benefits to Europe are safe for ...

A lack of identification papers is the key obstacle preventing ethnic Vietnamese living in Kompong Chhnang province from enjoying the same rights as Khmer citizens, according to a survey released Tuesday. In the new report, the Minority Rights Organization (MIRO) found that ethnic Vietnamese are often ...

Thailand has denied its forces shot dead 12 Cambodian loggers who crossed the border illegally on March 5, Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said yesterday. During a meeting with Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative Long Visalo, Thai ambassador Touchayoot Pakdi said Thai soldiers had made ...

When he assumed leadership of Phnom Penh municipality in May 2013, Pa Socheatvong vowed to be a governor who would get things done. His predecessor, Kep Chuktema, oversaw the filling in of Boeng Kak lake and the mass eviction of its residents. A similar scenario unfolded ...

Dozens of ethnic minority Kreung villagers protested outside the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court on Monday, demanding the release of a fellow Kreung man presently in pretrial detention for setting fire to a pile of wood on land the community sold in 2007 but claims it was ...

A Cambodian human rights group today asked the caretaker government of Thailand to end executions of Cambodia civilians after 15 Cambodians were shot dead this month. In its statement released today, The Cambodian Center for Human Rights (“CCHR”) expresses its deep concern regarding the continued arbitrary ...

Desperate ethnic minority villagers in Koh Kong province’s Areng Valley have blocked a road that was to be used to transport heavy machinery onto their lands to start construction of the highly controversial Stung Cheay Areng dam, according to villagers and officials. Three Chinese employees of ...

European Union Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht will visit Cambodia this week, the European Commission announced, with rights groups hoping that land grabbing related to sugar plantations will be high on the agenda. Following bilateral meetings in Brussels last week between Cambodia and the EU during ...

Alleged victims in seven separate land disputes in Kampong Cham province yesterday agreed to file a petition to the provincial governor, following a meeting with rights group Adhoc. ...

The World Bank on Thursday asked Phnom Penh municipal officials to do more to help the thousands of families the city evicted from the Boeng Kak neighborhood to make way for a CPP senator’s private real estate project, and is now waiting for a reply, ...

Twelve Cambodians were shot dead by Thai security forces on March 5 after illegally crossing the border from Choam Ksan district in Preah Vihear province to log timber, Cambodian officials said yesterday. Another three illegal loggers were killed on Wednesday and two others are still missing, ...

Four days of high-level policy meetings between the European Union and Cambodia wrapped up in Brussels yesterday, after seeing “frank and in-depth exchanges” on a number of issues, including human rights, according to an EU press statement released last night. Ahead of the meeting of ...

It took three illegal border crossings, several bribed officials and six months in an overcrowded detention centre before Mohammed Ibrahim* finally arrived in Cambodia. Four years later, the ethnic Rohingya, a victim of violence and oppression in strife-torn Rakhine state in Myanmar’s west, is one of ...

Cambodian garment manufacturers and the association that governs them are failing to meet the standards set by the U.N.’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as evidenced by lethal violence against workers during garment strikes in January, when five people were shot dead and ...

The 8th EU-Cambodia Joint Committee was held in Brussels on Thursday, preceded by the subgroups on development cooperation, on trade and on institution building, administrative reform, legal and judicial reform, governance and human rights, the European bloc said in a press release. The two sides ...

Freedom Park will remain off limits indefinitely for protesters, authorities said yesterday, despite Prime Minister Hun Sen suggesting last month that a ban on public assembly was being lifted. Pich Saroeun, chief of Russey Keo district’s Chroy Changva commune, said Phnom Penh Governor Pa Socheatvong had ...

Villagers in Pursat province’s Veal Veng district, locked in an ongoing land dispute with local tycoon Try Pheap’s MDS Import Export Co Ltd, claimed yesterday that security forces and environmental officers opened fire and tried to burn down their houses and plantations on Tuesday after ...