Human rights

Cambodia’s transformation from war-torn basket-case to one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies is being overshadowed by a backwards lurch in human rights and land policies that critics say are entrenching poverty. ...

Hang Serei Oudom told his 7-month pregnant wife that he was going out to meet a source. A journalist for Vorakchun Khmer Daily, he was investigating illegal logging for luxury woods in the jungles of Cambodia’s northeastern Ratanakkiri province. Three days later, on Sept. 11, he ...

Activist groups are planning to hold two separate forums this week in Phnom Penh to call attention to human rights issues and other problems in Asean countries as a meeting of regional and world leaders begin in the city. The assembly will meet ahead of ...

Anti-eviction protesters set up camp in front of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh for a second day yesterday, but ended their protest in the early evening when a petition to U.S. President Barack Obama was taken into the diplomatic mission by an embassy guard. “The ...

A company owned by a board member of the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce has been accused of illegally destroying more than 80 houses in Kampot province’s Chhouk district, a claim vigorously denied by the firm and local authorities. Chan Pheng, a villager from Chi Bak village ...

Two land activists from forced evictions in Phnom Penh will not be released on bail as they await trial on incitement charges widely seen as an attack on free speech. The two women, Yorm Bopha and Tim Sak Mony, were arrested in early September and accused ...

The Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), a coalition of the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party, stands to gain about 30 percent of the vote if it decides to stand against the ruling CPP in next year’s national elections, the Committee for Free ...

Twelve families from Koh Kong province on Nov. 6  filed a complaint with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s youth volunteers and the Department of Land Management, requesting assistance in a land dispute with businessman, Heng Huy. Pok Yon, the families’ representative, said that earlier this year, Heng ...

More than 100 moto-taxi and tuk tuk drivers who are part of a little-known workers union submitted a letter to the U.S. Embassy and the European Union Delegation yesterday, asking them not to intervene in the case of Boeng Kak activist Yorm Bopha. It is not ...

With less than two weeks until Asean leaders meet in Phnom Penh to consider approval of the region’s first human rights declaration, international NGOs yesterday urged them to postpone passing what they are calling a “deeply flawed” document.  “In the current form, the [Asean Human Rights] ...

At the ceremony yesterday making the official start of the National Election Committee’s new mandate, NEC chairman Im Suosdey criticized the U.N. human rights envoy to Cambodia for taking an exceedingly harsh view of the country’s much derided electoral system. In a July report to the ...

Officials in Laos announced that construction of the controversial Xayaburi dam will begin with a kickoff ceremony at the construction site Wednesday. Protests from human rights activists and environmental groups have delayed the project for 18 months, but the joint Laotian and Thai project is apparently ...

In its first official response to a highly critical resolution on Cambodia from the European Parliament, the government has rejected all criticism and instead accused the Parliament in Brussels of playing politics and interfering in Phnom Penh’s affairs. In its resolution approved October 26, the European ...

The government approved the Lower Sesan 2 dam project in Stung Treng province without any prior consultation with the most affected communities in Sesan district, where at least 5,000 people stand to be displaced, rights groups and villagers said yesterday. A study published earlier this ...

A week after the European Parliament issued a damning resolution on Cambodia’s human-rights situation and called for a revoking of trade privileges, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has shot back. “It is essential for the EU parliament to study and better understand the situation before passing ...

Boeung Kak lake land evictions protester Tep Vanny has been honoured for years of activism by receiving an award from an international organisation that recognises the role of women in promoting human rights. Vanny, 32, who has been imprisoned, assaulted and threatened for fighting evictions at ...

Bloggers from across Asia came together in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap this weekend to discuss blogging, technology and Internet freedom at 2012’s Blogfest Asia festival, a gathering of over 160 opinionated and distinctly geeky participants. Tops on the agenda? Internet freedom.  The Cambodian contingent ...

About 80 ethnic Bunong villagers living in Mondolkiri’s Pech Chreada district staged a protest against the Socfin-KCD rubber company Monday, demanding that the firm honor its long-standing pledge to return 1,000 hectares of farmland located inside its concession. Socfin-KCD, a join venture between Socfin, a ...

Soldiers should not have been deployed in support of a warrant to arrest land dispute protesters in Kratie province in May—an operation that led to the killing of a 14-year-old girl by armed forces, a Japanese human rights group said in a new report. The report ...

The collective power of agricultural co-operatives could bring huge benefits to poor, small-scale farmers, a Phnom Penh conference for international World Food Day heard on Friday. The sentiments were shared by the director of Cambodia’s General Directorate of Agriculture, So Khan Rithy Kun, who said farming ...

Drawing from a long list of human rights abuses, the European Parliament has urged the Cambodian government to stop forced evictions, called on the European Commission (E.C.) to investigate the country’s controversial land concessions policy, and raised the prospect of sanctions. In a resolution passed Friday ...

The European Parliament, representing one of the country’s largest donors, on Friday called for a moratorium on forced evictions, an overhaul of elections and even went so far as to suggest to the European Union that it suspend tariff-free imports of agricultural goods linked to ...

The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday questioned the first of two human rights workers who are suing local officials for allegedly disrupting a July meeting they were hosting for villagers in Lumphat district. Deputy court prosecutor Ros Saram said he questioned Chhim Savuth, program officer for the ...

The owner of a labor firm repeatedly accused of human trafficking, who is also the sister of one of the country’s top police officials, has been appointed head of the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies (ACRA). Grave concerns have been expressed by rights groups over the appointment of Ung Seang ...