Human rights

A Cambodian court on Monday upheld the conviction of a former politician who shot and wounded three garment workers in 2012 but has yet to serve any time behind bars in a case that has prompted outrage from rights groups. Judge Taing Sun Lay also ...

The Cambodian and Malaysian governments will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) within three months that will restart the business of sending Cambodian domestic workers to the country after a two-year moratorium, a Labor Ministry official said Friday. After meeting with representatives from the Malaysian Home ...

As protests against land grabbing have increased in Phnom Penh in the past five years, so too have violent crackdowns by the authorities. Police have been criticised for their treatment of protesters – which has included beatings with electric batons and kicks to the stomach of ...

It has been one year since Cambodia announced that it was lifting its ban on intercountry adoptions beginning January 1, 2013, but despite praising Cambodia’s efforts to implement international regulations, countries that ban adoptions of Cambodians said this week that they were no closer to ...

Evictees and anti-eviction activists on Wednesday briefly scuffled with police and security guards after cutting off traffic in front of Phnom Penh City Hall to demand that businesswoman Suy Sophan compensate them for homes that were bulldozed early last year. Human rights group Adhoc said at ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday charged convicted British pedophile Richard Fruin, 36, with sexually abusing two brothers, aged 8 and 11, at a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, court officials said. While the court has yet to decide Fruin’s fate, his case—and many similar ...

Three highly venomous cobras were thrown early Tuesday morning into the Phnom Penh home of a family locked in a dispute with a private company that wants to develop the family’s land in Tuol Kok district. Ly Sreang Kheng, 58, his wife Mok Siv Hong, 51, ...

Logging tycoon Try Pheap has come under fire from two separate reports alleging that he is using his vast network of concessions and licences to decimate protected forests across Cambodia. One of the reports, an exhaustive four-month investigation by a local NGO, also looked at the ...

A group of NGOs condemned rampant abuses of sexual and reproductive health rights in Cambodia last week, just days before the government submitted a human rights progress report to the United Nations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, in cooperation with the Asia Pacific Network of ...

Cambodia failed Monday to make its deadline to submit a key human rights report—known as the universal period review (UPR)—to the U.N., said Mak Sambath, deputy chairman of the government’s Human Rights Committee. Having missed the submission deadline, the government is now hoping to get its ...

As the dispute over July’s national election enters its fourth month, a civil society umbrella organization, the Electoral Reform Alliance (ERA), is due to release a comprehensive report on widespread irregularities recorded during the ballot. The report will be followed by the drafting of a proposed ...

The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have evicted nearly 1,000 families in 14 provinces in the past five years, ostensibly to build military bases, according to a report released by rights group Adhoc yesterday. The report outlined Adhoc’s concerns over ongoing land disputes between local communities and ...

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Sunday said that the CNRP would formally appeal to the CPP this week to resume negotiations to end the ongoing political deadlock, but said that the CPP would have to meet the CNRP’s conditions for a new round of talks. “Now ...

The government will today submit its second report to the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process that takes stock of human rights progress in each UN member state. Governments are required to report to the council every four and ...

Cambodia will submit a human rights report to the U.N. today for a universal periodic review (UPR), the second time it is participating in the process, according to the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit. Under the UPR process established in 2006, the Human ...

The government needs to do more to protect migrant workers, ensure that women have access to legal aid, bring cases of violence against women to court and draft an anti-discrimination law, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) said in a ...

As demonstrations continued in Phnom Penh, Cambodian-Americans in Washington said this week that the international community can no longer stay out of Cambodian affairs, lest the political deadlock turn to violence. At a discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, held by the Khmer People’s ...

More than 100 people on Thursday protested and stopped a bulldozer belonging to businessman Try Pheap from clearing their land next to a rubber plantation he owns in Preah Vihear’s Rovieng district, villagers and local officials said. Oeun Sitha said he was among more than 100 ...

The owner of the popular local ABC radio station on Thursday urged university students to call his station and inform listeners if their teachers discuss information that could be deemed critical of the government. An ABC radio employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity as ...

Danish beer giant Carlsberg, a partner in Cambodia’s largest brewery, Cambrew, said it is not concerned by a call to boycott its popular Angkor Beer brand over a partner company’s investment in a Laos dam. Ben Morton, vice president of Carlsberg’s international media relations and issues ...

Human Rights Watch yesterday took the key donor governments of Japan, Australia and France to task for congratulating Prime Minister Hun Sen on his official election victory in a strongly worded statement that called on them to support an independent investigation into July’s disputed poll. The ...

More than 10,000 opposition CNRP supporters marched from Freedom Park to the U.N.’s human rights office in Phnom Penh on Wednesday to deliver a petition urging signatories of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement to intervene in the country’s current political deadlock. The march marked the climax ...

Cambodian opposition supporters have taken to the streets for a second day, after thousands of protesters marched to the United Nation’s human rights office in the capital, Phnom Penh. They are urging the world body to intervene in the country’s political deadlock, and opposition leader Sam ...

More than two decades after the Paris Peace Agreement, which was meant to open the way for peace and multiparty democracy in Cambodia, legal experts and hu­man rights advocates said Tuesday the government has largely abandoned the vision of the accord. Speaking at a conference on ...