Human rights

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday gave a talk to some 200 Cambodian youths in Phnom Penh, describing criminal investigation, especially in human trafficking and child prostitution. Various youth from across nine provinces attended the discussion, where they learned how they can participate in ...

A national legal aid system is imperative and must be established to offset a widening gap between those who can afford justice and those who cannot, the representative for the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Cambodia said on Friday. In ...

Cambodia must establish an independent, national human rights institution with the power to conduct investigations and sanction those guilty of violations, representatives of the country’s two leading local rights groups said on Friday. A consortium of rights groups met Thursday in Phnom Penh to discuss the ...

More than 10 percent of children in the country aged between 5 and 17 work as laborers, with more than 5 percent engaged in “hazardous labor,” a situation that must be addressed by the government, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in a report released ...

A US-based group of lawyers has launched an online campaign to raise funding to support a lawsuit against a UK company that bought sugar from a Cambodian plantations linked to human rights abuses. The campaign is being undertaken by the International Senior Lawyers Project, which is ...

Less than a week after she was released from prison pending a retrial on controversial criminal charges laid down last year, housing rights activist Yorm Bopha on Thursday led a march of about 500 people to deliver a petition calling on the government to end ...

More than two months of research into relations between NGOs and the government was officially presented in Phnom Penh on Thursday, with an overriding message of distrust, and concerns that the proposed NGO Law will be repressive. Following the release on Wednesday of a summary of ...

An organisation made up of current and former elected representatives from across Southeast Asia has called on the United Nations to investigate the deaths of two people shot by police during protests over the past three months. In a statement released yesterday, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human ...

The Royal Cambodian government is continuing talks with US major Chevron regarding the delayed Block A offshore project that would be the Asean member nation’s first indigenous hydrocarbon development. In August 2010, eight years after being awarded the block, Chevron issued a declaration of commerciality and ...

The opposition’s planned demonstration in Siem Reap next month could affect the tourism industry in Cambodia’s most important visitor destination, the government and industry representatives said yesterday. Cambodian Tourism Minister Thong Khon told the Post that the Cambodia National Rescue Party’s (CNRP) December 10 rally could ...

Former Environment Minister Mok Mareth on Tuesday accused the media of having “twisted the truth” in reporting on illegal logging in Ratanakkiri province, where rights groups and independent forestry monitors say the natural environment is being pillaged and ethnic minority communities impoverished by illegal loggers ...

Villagers in Kandal province alleged yesterday that officials had “tricked” them into thumb-printing a petition supporting tycoon Try Pheap’s claim that he is not involved in illegal logging and endorsing his defamation suit against two villagers. In a scathing report released last Wednesday, the Cambodian Human ...

A student who filed a complaint to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court against the city’s municipal and military police chiefs over the fatal police shooting at the SL Garment Factory protest on November 12 said Tuesday that the court has refused to investigate his complaint. Neang ...

Local communities that lost their land via economic land concessions to private companies are now being paid by those same firms to illegally fell the trees that once sustained their livelihoods, a group of five advocacy groups contended yesterday. At a press conference, the NGOs singled ...

A group of Cambodian NGOs threatened on Monday to expose more cases of forestry crime involving businessmen and the police, saying they were unshaken by a defamation suit filed by top tycoon accused of illegal logging and land-grabbing. Representatives of the five organizations told reporters Monday ...

Japan’s prime minister failed to address major issues, by leaving aside Cambodia’s political deadlock and its poor human rights record on a visit last week, rights activists say. “It was a missed opportunity for the government of Japan, which has a great deal of leverage with ...

Local NGOs on Friday urged more participation in land dispute resolution by the nation’s youth. Youth participation can mean better laws, better application of those laws and greater respect for citizens, “especially for farmers and the poor,” said Chhit Sam Ath, executive director of the NGO ...

Monks will spend days marching hundreds of kilometres to Phnom Penh from five provinces in the lead-up to Human Rights Day on December 10, the head of a dissident monk group said yesterday. Departing in groups of 20 from Kampong Speu, Kampong Thom, Kampot, Pursat and ...

The opposition CNRP has decided to move a mass demonstration to mark International Human Rights Day on December 10 from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap City, the party’s deputy president Kem Sokha said on Saturday. The CNRP will also hold mass demonstrations every Sunday at Freedom ...

Forty-two families from Preah Vihear province’s Chheb district on Sunday held a demonstration to protest their pending eviction in favor of a Chinese company that plans to establish a sugarcane plantation on the land the families have occupied for almost three years. Local authorities have told ...

Tycoon Try Pheap has filed a defamation complaint against two people quoted in an NGO report released last week that accused him of illegal logging and widespread land grabbing, summonses obtained yesterday reveal. The documents, bearing the signature of Kandal Provincial Court prosecutor Sam Rithy Veasna, ...

Impunity reigns in Cambodia on the back of two consecutive years of fatal shootings by state forces for which perpetrators have evaded justice, local rights group Licadho said Friday in a statement to mark International Day to End Impunity on Saturday. Since the start of 2012, ...

The Vietnamese Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) company, the majority shareholder of several economic land concessions in Ratanakkiri province, on Friday rebuffed accusations that it had logged forests and forced evictions, claiming that its activities improved the environment and the livelihoods of locals. Through several companies, ...

The assistant of a lumber tycoon accused of major deforestation and forced evictions rejected Thursday the findings of a recent report by local rights groups. The Cambodian Human Rights Task Force said in its report that some 1,400 families had been pushed from their land by ...