Social development
Thailand cracks down on exploitative factory
In a rare intervention, the Thai Labor Ministry has stepped in to stop the exploitation of migrant workers from Cambodia and Myanmar at a seafood factory in the country’s south, correspondence obtained by the Post reveals. The ministry found the Phatthana Seafood factory, in Songkhla province, which employs ...
Killer in Chut Wutty Case Could Be Free Within Days
The Koh Kong Provincial Court yesterday convicted a private security guard of accidentally killing the military police officer who allegedly shot dead the country’s most prominent environmental activist, Chut Wutty, and sentenced him to two years in prison. The presiding judge, Kham Sophary, then immediately suspended ...
Window closing on AHRD: NGOs
Time is running out to rid the proposed ASEAN Human Rights Declaration of clauses that would restrict peoples’ rights rather than protect and enhance them, civil society groups said yesterday. Nay Vanda, deputy head of the monitoring section of rights group Adhoc, said civil society groups needed more ...
NGOs Ask Asean for More Say on Human Rights
Less than a month before Asean heads of state are expected to approve the first-ever human rights declaration for the regional group, Cambodian and Indonesian NGOs yesterday urged member states to give their organizations a larger role in the process. In the works for more than ...
Group Says Cambodia Should Reflect After Failed UN Seat Bid
The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) issued a statement on Friday praising the U.N. General Assembly for not voting in favor of Cambodia during its bid for a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. U.N. member states cast their votes on Thursday in ...
UN Report Says Law Marginalizes Sex Workers
Police targeting of sex workers for arrest has made them vulnerable to contracting or spreading HIV, according to a U.N. report released yesterday. The U.N. report, Sex Work and Law in Asia and the Pacific-Laws, HIV and human rights in the context of sex work, states that ...
Rights Workers in Court Over Intimidation
The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has summoned for questioning two human rights workers who have lodged court complaints against local officials for disrupting their land-rights workshop in July. Pen Bonnar, provincial coordinator for Adhoc, and Chhim Savuth, a project coordinator for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), filed ...
Cambodia Unsuccessful in Bid for UN Security Council Seat
The U.N. General Assembly’s vote for the Asia-Pacific non-permanent seat on the Security Council went to the wire yesterday night, as a second ballot had to be held when none of the contenders, Cambodia, South Korea and Buthan, won a clear two-thirds majority. After the ...
Rights Activist Denies Phnom Penh Move Is Due to Charges
A Ratanakkiri-based human rights worker charged by the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court with inciting ethnic minority villagers to protest during a 2009 land dispute with a private agro-industry company has been transferred to work in Phnom Penh. Pen Bonnar, Ratanakkiri provincial coordinator for Adhoc , said yesterday ...
Health Woes Speed Fraud Appeal
After calls from their lawyers late last month to speed up the appeals process, three former advisers to Senate President Chea Sim convicted of fraud last year will appear before the Appeals Court on November 7, court deputy prosecutor Tan Senarong said yesterday. The three defendants ...
Awareness training on fake goods for officials
Cambodia lacks the resources for implementing intellectual property rights, while relevant officers lack skills to monitor the import of counterfeit products, according to an official. Var Roth San, Head of the Secretariat of National Committee for Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR) and Director of the Department of ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012101259266/Business/officials-trained-on-fake-goods.html
Hun Sen Alludes to Mam Sonando in Warning Message
Journalists, NGO workers and politicians are not immune to the long arm of the law if they flout it, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday as he distributed land titles in Kampot province. Mr. Hun Sen’s comments come 10 days after independent radio station owner Mam ...
Rights Workers Questioned by Court on 'Incitement' Charge
The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court questioned two well-known human rights workers yesterday in an incitement lawsuit brought against them by a CPP commune chief, one of those questioned said. About 200 ethnic minority Tumpuon villagers, embroiled in a land dispute with the DM Group rubber company, protested ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/rights-workers-questioned-by-court-on-incitement-charge-3712/
CAMBODIA: Rural poor lose out in land deals
Land governance policies in Asia, especially concessions made to private companies, are leaving the region’s poorest vulnerable to human rights abuses, experts say. “Land-grabbing by the rich and powerful continues,” Suson Bunsak, executive secretary of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, said at the recent Asia ...
Hun Sen Questions Motive Behind Criticism
Prime Minister Hun Sen again addressed recent criticism from [Surya Subedi] the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia , during a speech yesterday in Bateay Meanchey province that focused on land disputes. Mr. Hun Sen was speaking in Thma Puok district’s Banteay Chhmar commune, where he ...
Living with the enemy
Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted. While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families ...
Habitat Day Marked by capital's evictees
Evictees wearing small model houses on their heads to symbolize their struggles marched to the National Assembly yesterday to ask authorities to intervene to stop more forced evictions. About 400 representatives of 40 communities across the capital joined human rights activists at the former Dey Krahorm eviction site ...
Ministry of Labor Launches Anti-Fainting Campaign
The Ministry of Labor on Sunday launched an educational campaign aimed at preventing further mass faintings in garment factories, a ministry official said yesterday. Meng Hong, director of the ministry’s inspection and legal affairs department, said that the campaign would target more than 30,000 garment workers ...
First Rights Worker Questioned in Land Dispute Incitement Case
The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday questioned one of three human rights workers charged-alongside a journalist-with inciting ethnic minority villagers to protest violently against a powerful agro-industry firm during a 2009 land dispute. A representative of the villagers said yesterday that about 500 of them are planning to gather ...
Workers given lesson in how not to faint
Education garment workers and their bosses on how to avoiding fainting is the latest strategy the Ministry of Labor is using to address a problem that has plagued the industry in the past two years, a ministry official said yesterday. Labor Ministry Secretary of State Oum Mean said he ...
Relocated families appeal to Oz
Thirty families uprooted by Cambodia’s railway rehabilitation project have filed a complaint with Australia’s highest human rights body, alleging rights abuses as a result of the partially AusAid-funded rail project. The complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission was made on behalf of the families by NGOs Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive ...
Hundreds Rally to Stop Forced Land Evictions in Phnom Penh
Hundreds of families from more than a dozen communities joined local human rights groups yesterday as they rallied outside the National Assembly for World Habitat Day, calling for an end to forced land evictions in Phnom Penh. Among those protesting were residents from the Boeng ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/hundreds-rally-to-stop-forced-land-evictions-in-phnom-penh/
Education ushers women into workforce
Gender inequality in education is still palpable in Cambodia, causing women to be undervalued in the workplace and their potential to be untapped, the Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs said during the celebration of the United Nations International Day of the ...
Details on cancelled concessions sought
A week after Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that he would be cancelling an unknown number of economic land concessions in Prey Lang forest, activists called for details on the annulled concessions, saying such revocations would be meaningless unless they could be policed. On September ...