Social development

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 ...

Representatives of communities across the country who have had their lives upturned by development projects yesterday called on the government to rescind the economic land concessions at the centre of their disputes. ...

Villagers in remote western Cambodia who were infected with HIV/AIDS by an unauthorized medical worker have been hit by a wave of thefts of cows and other property, and some local residents say they police have been indifferent to their plight. ...

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. ...

A district education official in Preah Vihear may be hoarding state textbooks to sell at the market rather than distributing them to perennially book-strapped schools, according to the Cambodian Independent Teachers Association (CITA). ...

The ministries of health and interior introduced a joint strategy yesterday to curb illegal medical practices and the use of fraudulent health products. ...

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. ...

About 100 villagers prevented a company from clearing part of its land concession in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat district on Saturday in the latest confrontation in a long-running dispute in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, according to a villager and a local official. ...

Cambodia’s Grade 12 students took their final test in August 2014. Only 26% of them passed. The new Minister of Education had ordered extra security around the testing places. Students taking the test in 2015 know they will have to study hard in order to ...

Cambodia’s Grade 12 students took their final test in August 2014. Only 26% of them passed. The new Minister of Education had ordered extra security around the testing places. Students taking the test in 2015 know they will have to study hard in order to ...

A seven-month-old girl is the latest victim of Cambodia’s mass HIV infections in a remote western commune where an unauthorized medical worker reused syringes. The infant was the first to die of 16 members from an extended family of 50 who contracted the deadly virus that ...

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 ...

More than 57,000 primary school-aged children across the country are currently missing out on an education, according to the Cambodian Consortium for Out of School Children (CCOSC), a new group set up to implement a major push to get young Cambodians into the classroom. Officially ...

Eighteen more Montagnards arrived in Ratanakkiri yesterday morning, bringing the total number of the Christian asylum seekers in hiding in the northeastern province to 32, villagers and a local rights group said last night. ...

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 ...

About 20 nursing students from the privately run International Science Institute petitioned the National Assembly on Wednesday to demand action against their school, which they claim is unlicensed and providing them with a substandard education. The school opened in 2012 and currently has about 160 students, ...

Ethnic Bunong communities in Mondulkiri’s Bousraa commune will soon hold protests that will call on French industrialist Vincent Bollore to honour promises his firm made during a meeting with them in Paris in October, a representative has said. His Bollore investment group is a shareholder in ...

Eighteen Montagnard asylum seekers crossed into Ratanakkiri province from Vietnam on Wednesday morning, according to a rights group and a local villager, the fourth such group to arrive in the country this month. Chhay Thy, the provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc, said the 18 were ...

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 ...

Health Minister Mam Bunheng announced yesterday he has proposed that a reserve budget be used to help victims of the mass HIV outbreak in Battambang province’s Roka village, as he vowed to strengthen health services across the country. Speaking at a press conference following questioning by ...

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 ...