Government

The government asked Cambodians to avoid all nonessential travel to Bangkok following Thailand’s imposition of martial law. “The situation is calm and we will continue monitoring it, but travellers planning to go to Thailand should hold off for now,” Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said after an ...

Government spending increased 32 per cent last year, while increases in both domestic revenue and foreign aid helped stabilise Cambodia’s budget deficit, according to budget statements from the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF). The consolidated financial records, which were released on May 8, show Cambodia’s ...

The single-party National Assembly sat for the second day of its third plenary session Wednesday, discussing two of eight chapters of the draft law on the Organization and Functioning of the Courts. The CPP-only parliament—minus 55 boycotting opposition CNRP lawmakers-elect—convened to discuss the first of three ...

Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said that radio journalist Lay Samean, who was badly beaten by district security guards on May 2 while covering a planned opposition rally, may have provoked the violence by calling the guards “yuon’s dogs”, among other insults. The minister added, however, that ...

A mother and child were killed on Tuesday in what Russey Keo district residents described as a tornado-like storm that stripped off roofs, split trees and swept chairs and baby chicks into the skies. According to villagers, the unprecedented weather started with clouds thickening and turning ...

Employees of Caltex petrol stations in Phnom Penh are returning to work today after management offered to raise salaries by $20 a month and not withhold pay for time missed during the strike, which started earlier this month. ...

Cambodia’s progress in reducing maternal mortality was recognised internationally this week at the 67th World Health Assembly in Switzerland. Efforts to increase the number of skilled birth attendants and an increase in the number of 24-hour emergency centres available to pregnant women were both credited with ...

More than 400 people clashed with police and military police in Ratanakkiri province on Wednesday as authorities attempted to bulldoze their houses to make way for a rubber company plantation, villagers said. Authorities managed to bulldoze the houses of about 200 families, who they said had ...

The National Assembly yesterday opened debate for the first time on the first of three controversial judicial draft laws, approving in principle the first two chapters of the Law on the Organisation and Functioning of the Courts, in the continued absence of the opposition Cambodia ...

Media watchdogs on Wednesday expressed concern that the resignation on Saturday of Kem Gunawadh, long-serving director-general of state broadcaster TVK, was due to the station’s airing of an opposition campaign spot showing violent government protest repressions. In a statement, the Cambodian Center for Independent Media and ...

CPP lawmakers on Wednesday began debating the first of three judicial reform laws, ignoring an opposition boycott of the National Assembly and calls from outside legal experts for outside review of drafts they say are substandard. Critics say the draft laws will not improve the widely ...

The opposition party leader Sam Rainsy sent an open letter Tuesday to Interior Minister Sar Kheng to resume talks between the two parties to break the current political deadlock. “I would like to inform all observers that today [Tuesday] I contacted Deputy Prime Minister and Interior ...

Trials against 23 labor activists continued in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, with union leader Von Pov addressing the court to defend himself. The activists are charged with inciting violence in mass demonstrations in January. The court was shown three video clips on Wednesday, in which Von Pov ...

About 13,000 people, aged between 18 and 35 years old, have been using drugs in Cambodia, up from roughly 7,000 users in 2007, Meas Vyrith, secretary general of the National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD), said Wednesday. “It is estimated that a drug user spends about ...

Some asylum seekers at the Australian-run immigration processing centre on Nauru have been advised they will be sent to Cambodia if they are found to be refugees. The advice preempts the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Australia and Cambodia. The ABC understands some family ...

Cambodia is a promising target for Taiwanese entrepreneurs seeking cheap labor without risking the social unrest that has surged through Vietnam, according to an economics professor in Taiwan cited in our Chinese-language sister paper China Times. Riots have broken out in Vietnam against China’s oil rig ...

Negotiators for the ruling party and opposition say they are preparing for a summit to settle their differences over election reforms, following meetings this week with a team of Japanese development experts. Officials from the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party say they will still push for ...

In yet another land swap deal that will see lucrative state-owned land handed to a private business in exchange for a new building on cheaper land, the Try Pheap Group has built a new headquarters for the Women’s Affairs Ministry in Stung Meanchey commune. In return, ...

The National Assembly approved changes to the country’s customs law yesterday, in order to comply with Association of Southeast Asian Nations intergration standards. The changes demand border operations increase human resources, reduce paperwork and modernise procedures in order to simplify border exchange and facilitate trade between ...

Villagers from forest communities in nine provinces called on the government yesterday to take action after alleging that “the rich and powerful” are causing the “serious destruction” of their livelihoods. The villagers, with the support of two NGOs – the Children’s Development Association and Community Peace-Building ...

U.S.-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday released a report claiming that Washington’s ongoing support for Cambodian security forces is inconsistent with U.S. Congress directives regarding aid to Cambodia. HRW charges that last month’s 10-day Angkor Sentinel military exercise, undertaken by members of the ...

Taking the stand for the first time since his arrest at a garment worker protest that turned violent in early January, union leader Vorn Pao told the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday that he went to the protest only to make peace and was ...

When union leader Vorn Pov was finally allowed to give testimony yesterday on the third day of the trial of 23 men arrested during a garment strike in January, he found himself cut off by an attorney ordering him to answer only the exact question ...

Nearly three years after it was shut down for supposed renovations, Phnom Penh’s Chamkar Mon Referral Hospital is still not operational and former staff say they have been left out in the cold about what will happen to the site. Commune, district, municipal and national health ...