Crime and law enforcement

Mondulkiri provincial police charged four men with illegal logging and immigration crimes after they allegedly caught the suspects collecting wood in O’Raing district. Vietnamese nationals Orng Minh Chhung, 30; Le Vantieng, 38; Tvan Taktech, 33; and Thvang Vanthai, 36, were arrested while gathering freshly cut pieces ...

The number of inmates who died in the country’s prisons in the first quarter of the year dipped to nine from 15 during the same period last year, a rights group and the prison department said. From January to April, nine prisoners—five men and four women—reportedly ...

Cambodia has been cited as one of 10 countries in which torture and extrajudicial killings are common, in a submission made this week by the Hong Kong-based Asia Legal Resource Center to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. ...

Twenty-three labor activists are free from jail, but Freedom Park remains closed to the public. The park is a government-sanctioned place of protest, but it was closed after opposition demonstrations there in April. Phnom Penh spokesman Long Dimanche said there is “no threat” of protests ...

Four Cambodian nationals who had been incarcerated in Thailand for logging and illegally crossing the border were released on Monday after completing their prison terms, officials said yesterday. Touch Ra, deputy director of the Chaom-Sa Ngaom international border checkpoint in Oddar Meanchey province, said two of ...

The owner of a printing house accused of infringing on the copyright of an author who contracted him was slapped with $12,500 in fines and damages by Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday. ...

Two men were sentenced to three years in prison yesterday by Phnom Penh Municipal Court for impersonating a police officer by donning a National Police uniform, complete with a plastic pistol and fake number plate. “After stopping, checking and asking him, we knew he was ...

Before he was arrested in January, Vorn Pov and the union he created were not widely known outside of activist circles. But when he emerged from Phnom Penh’s CC1 prison on Friday, he walked away as one of the highest-profile unionists in the country, and a ...

A journalist has filed a complaint with the Pursat provincial court alleging that a soldier threatened to kill him on Sunday after he wrote a series of damning articles linking the soldier to illegal rosewood trafficking, court officials confirmed Tuesday. Both the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces ...

The Cambodian Ministry of Defense on Tuesday launched a U.S.-aided strategic planning manual with an aim to assist Cambodian strategists to design standardized and effective defense strategic plans. Major Gen. Phat Vibolsopheak, chief of international relations department at the Defense Ministry, said the 17-page instruction manual ...

China’s minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun Tuesday held talks with Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sar Kheng on boosting security cooperation. Guo, also a state councilor, said China and Cambodia have conducted fruitful cooperation on combating telecom fraud, hunting for those who have ...

As hit-and-run victim San Chan lies in a hospital bed awaiting justice for his brother’s death, officials from the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, police and traffic police are pointing fingers at one another, while the driver remains at large. A week ago today, Mr. Chan, 18, ...

Prey Lang is one of Cambodia’s few remaining large forests, covering approximately 3,600 square kilometers across four northern provinces. The forest is home to about 200,000 mostly indigenous people, who depend on it for their livelihoods, according to the Prey Lang Community Network. But, the ...

Twenty-five unionists, garment workers and bystanders were found guilty by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday for their involvement in three separate garment protest-related cases, but were handed down suspended sentences. The 22 men who had not been bailed ahead of trial were ordered ...

Verdicts will be handed down Friday in two garment protest-related cases that rights groups say were built on a weak body of evidence. The two cases occurred months apart but followed a similar narrative: Garment workers fed up with their calls for a higher monthly minimum ...

SIEM PANG DISTRICT, Stung Treng province – For the elite few granted the right to level swathes of woodland in the north of this remote province, the timber trade is worth a fortune. For the Forestry Administration—the government body charged with policing logging—business is also booming. While ...

As several hundred garment workers from the SL Garment factory pelted police with rocks during a protest near the Stung Meanchey pagoda in November, Men Sok Sambath, a 14-year-old scrap collector, decided to join the crowd. “I saw other people throwing rocks at the [police] truck, ...

More than 1,500 villagers plan to march to the Anti-Corruption Unit and National Assembly in Phnom Penh on Thursday in defiance of a fresh ban issued by City Hall prohibiting them from doing so. The villagers form a group known as the Land Communities for Peace ...

Phnom Penh’s police force has had almost a week to investigate a fatal hit-and-run on Friday night, when a Range Rover slammed into a motorbike near the Ministry of Commerce, killing two men and seriously injuring another. But local police have not conducted even the most ...

A group of 15 local and international rights groups Tuesday sent a slew of letters to the Chinese government and companies involved in the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam in Stung Treng province seeking a halt to dam construction due to serious environmental and social ...

A villager involved in a long-running land dispute in Kompong Chhnang province with the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem has accused his commune police chief of discrimination after he was refused a character statement he needed to apply for a garment factory ...

Police raided a discount store in Phnom Penh and seized more than 1,000 bottles of beauty products on Monday after receiving a tip that the shop was selling counterfeit goods, an official said. Police confiscated 872 bottles of shower gel and 280 bottles of whitening cream ...

About 150 garment workers turned out to the Phnom Penh of­fices of the United Sisterhood Alliance NGO on Sunday to watch a politically charged fashion show entitled “Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality.” Aimed to highlight “the income gap between Cambodian garment workers and the selected CEOs of ...

Eight members of Cambodia’s largest independent union were released on bail yesterday after being tried at Takeo Provincial Court over their alleged involvement in a factory protest late last week, officials said. Defence lawyer Kim Socheat said the members of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ ...