Law and judiciary

Seven people from the capital’s Borei Keila community allegedly injured by baton-wielding security forces last month, a pregnant woman among them, filed a lawsuit against Prampi Makara district authorities yesterday. The seven were among a group of dozens of families violently removed from a building on ...

Phnom Penh Municipal Court has reopened an investigation into the high-profile slaying of union leader Chea Vichea in 2004, a court official said yesterday. Prosecutor Sok Roeun said the court’s head prosecutor began reinvestigating the case early last month in response to an order from the ...

The Mondolkiri Provincial Court on Tuesday charged 15 Vietnamese nationals with illegally crossing the border and logging protected forest, four days after the group was de­tained by members of the ethnic Bunong minority in a community forest 20 km from the border. Ya Narin, director of ...

A handful of stores in Phnom Penh’s City Mall closed up shop yesterday morning, draping large curtains over their storefronts rather than face an impending police raid on businesses allegedly selling pirated movies there, police and other vendors said. The aborted raid came less than two ...

Cambodia’s garment sector has the highest rate of unionization of any industry in Asia, Cambodia Federation of Employers and Business Associations Van Sou Leng said Tuesday. “Major efforts are needed to improve the quality of workplace relations,” Van said in a statement posted on the Camfeba ...

The Kompong Chhnang provincial government has set up a new committee to help settle a long-running land dispute between local farmers and a company owned by the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem, but a representative of the villagers has not been invited ...

Two civil society organisations are calling on Prime Minister Hun Sen to publish three long-gestating draft laws on judicial reform to allow ample time for “genuine, inclusive and meaningful participation in the drafting process”. Hun Sen said in a speech last Wednesday that the three laws ...

Road traffic accidents are killing more Cambodians per year than those who died annually as a result of war during their country’s more than two decades of armed conflict, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday. Speaking in Battambang province’s Bavel district at the inauguration of the ...

The Kratie Provincial Court on Sunday charged three villagers with illegally clearing community forest, and six more for clearing state-owned land, officials said Monday. The three people were arrested in Snoul district’s Khyoem commune and accused of clearing protected forest while the other six were arrested ...

Journalists need to be more professional in their reporting, which is the best way to protect themselves, a media educator says. “Like any other profession, journalism can be risky, but if journalists follow their professional codes of conduct and ethics and work with responsibility, there should ...

Freedom Park was placed under lockdown and a march by land rights activists was blocked Saturday morning as Phnom Penh’s security officials were out in force to ensure that peaceful rallies on International Women’s Day could not go as planned. Prime Minister Hun Sen on February ...

Emerging from a meeting on electoral reform Monday, senior ruling party lawmaker Cheam Yeap said that the government is considering modifying Cambodia’s nationality law to ban those with dual citizenship from running for the office of prime minister. Mr. Yeap, who represented the CPP at the ...

The International Labor Organization said it would launch on Wednesday two reports outlining ways to improve the investment climate in Cambodia. The first report, by the ILO, analyses Cambodia’s performance in 17 areas and contains a national survey of workers and employers. Key areas include ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has summoned 10 witnesses, including several police officials and one reporter, as it begins investigating the brutal murder of Nguyen Vann Chean, an ethnic Vietnamese man who was beaten to death by an angry mob in Meanchey district last month. The ...

A team of ethnic minority Banong villagers in Mondolkiri province detained a group of Vietnamese men on Saturday, who they suspect of illegally logging inside their community forest, and have handed them over to local police. Khut Chanra said he was among about 60 fellow Banong ...

The Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia says it appreciates and supports government action to enforce the union registration provision of the Cambodian Labor Law. In a statement released Friday, GMAC noted that Article 269 of the law stipulated that administrators and managers of professional organizations had ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Friday warned that a union-led public forum scheduled for Freedom Park on Saturday morning would not be allowed to proceed, adding that a fresh wave of union marches next week are also banned. The security minister’s comments came during a talk ...

As International Women’s Day is marked around the world on Saturday, calls are being made for more rehabilitative opportunities to be made available to female prisoners in Cambodia and, separately, for cultural norms that rank women below men to be challenged and overcome. Local rights group ...

Cambodia has provided examples of “best practices” in the fight against human trafficking for a forthcoming Asean convention against the trafficking of people, experts said Friday at the close of a two-day conference in Phnom Penh on irregular migration and human trafficking. The Asean region is ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Police held a special training at the capital’s Olympic Stadium on Thursday afternoon in preparation for any future demonstrations. More than 2,000 policemen, armed with shields and batons, joined the half-day training, Gen. Chuon Sovann, chief of the Phnom Penh Municipal Police, ...

The government now requires union leaders to prove that they have no criminal record before registering new branches of their organization, according to a statement from the Ministry of Labor, a decision that comes less than a week before planned nationwide strikes in the garment ...

Suy Sophan, the owner of development firm Phan Imex, has been ordered to repay $2.7 million to a Korean company over an uncompleted sale of land at Borei Keila, from where hundreds have been violently evicted, a court document reveals. In a decision handed down in ...

Promising to dramatically open up the region’s airways, the planned Asean Single Aviation Market (ASAM) will bring with it fierce competition and price wars, experts said yesterday during a seminar on the subject at the Phnom Penh Hotel. The seminar brought representatives from the majority of ...

A spirited debate on human rights in Cambodia was heard in the Australian parliament this week after an opposition Labor Party MP introduced a motion calling on the government to condemn state violence against striking garment workers and ask authorities to release detained protesters. Clare O’Neil, ...