Social development

A peaceful Labor Day demonstration of workers calling for better living conditions and independent courts was violently dispersed Thursday morning by district security guards, municipal police and men in plain clothes, who beat protesters, journalists and bystanders with batons, wooden sticks and crude metal poles. Shortly ...

Telecommunications companies say they are being left in the dark on the controversial draft law on cybercrime, despite provisions in the proposed law allowing prosecutors to order internet service providers to preserve data for them as part of criminal investigations. Three large telecom firms providing internet ...

A raging fire in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district destroyed 22 homes early Wednesday morning as local villagers struggled to quell the flames and firefighters scrambled to gain access. At about 1 a.m., an electricity line snapped and sparked the fire, Phnom Penh Fire Department bureau chief ...

Revenue among insurance firms increased 14 percent in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, according to figures released Tuesday by the Insurance Association of Cambodia (IAC). From January to March, insurance premiums generated $13.86 million compared to $12.15 million the year before, ...

The Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Hong said that Cambodia is committed and willing to improve the country’s human rights and democracy record. Namhong said during a meeting yesterday with Ms. Flavia Pansieri, the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, at Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ...

A Senior Cambodian official has said his country has tentatively agreed to accept asylum-seekers who had been seeking to settle in Australia. Foreign Ministry Secretary of State Ouch Borith told reporters there was an agreement in principle to take the asylum-seekers, who are being held in ...

Cambodian authorities on Wednesday refused permission for the 18 opposition-aligned trade unions and associations to celebrate an International Labor Day event on May 1 at the capital’s Freedom Park. “The Phnom Penh Municipality does not allow the trade unions and associations to organize this event at ...

Cambodia announces today a new Intellectual Property Rights laws drafted to protect the country’s artists and musicians and their works from counterfeiting in accordance with interntional IPR standards. An event held at Ministry of Commerce was attended by newly-appointed Sun Chanthol, Minister of Commerce, who has ...

A new auto-mechanics training school at the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia (NPI) that aims to train select Cambodian youth and support a shortage in the labour market officially commenced construction yesterday. In partnership with the Ministry of Labour, joint sponsors the Korean International Cooperation Agency ...

The government has agreed to review its resettlement agreement with families relocated from railways as part of an Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded rehabilitation project, but has refused a recommendation to set up a debt-relief scheme for the evictees, according to an action plan released by ...

The manager of Giant Ocean International, a now-defunct recruitment firm notorious for abuse scandals, was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in jail for trafficking hundreds of Cambodian fishermen to work in slave-like conditions overseas. Taiwanese national Lin Yu-shin, who ran the firm, was arrested in May ...

Chea Mony, president of the opposition-aligned Free Trade Union (FTU), said Tuesday that his union, one of the largest in the country, will not be joining other labor groups planning to rally on International Workers’ Day because he has been sick and traveling in the ...

In the wake of a speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen denouncing civil society’s criticism of the way that three judiciary laws sailed through the Council of Ministers without outside input or transparency, NGOs released an open letter yesterday calling for the Kingdom’s renewed commitment ...

At least three Cambodians who have travelled to work as maids in Singapore since August last year as part of a pilot scheme have complained to worker welfare groups there about employer abuse and poor working conditions, including molestation and the slapping of a worker. In ...

Cambodian deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong on Tuesday met with two United Nations senior officials to discuss relations and cooperation between Cambodia and UN on social and economic development and human rights.     The two officials are Haoliang Xu, assistant to the UN secretary ...

ANZ’s financing of ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat’s controversial sugar plantation has come under fire once again, this time in an investigation by NGO Oxfam into Australia’s big four banks and their links to rights abuses in developing countries. In a report titled “Banking on ...

All but four garment factories in Svay Rieng province were closed yesterday, as a strike of thousands of workers there continued into its second week, a labour union official said. The strike, estimated to involve about 20,000 people across the province’s Tai Seng and Manhattan special ...

Nearly 200 people from 25 different communities converged on the Mondolkiri Provincial Hall Monday to file complaints and petitions calling for an end to illegal logging and environmental degradation. The action comes two days after armed commune police blocked 16 rights workers and journalists from visiting ...

A family locked in a longstanding land dispute with a powerful real estate tycoon claims company guards late on Sunday night once again attempted to burn down their Tuol Kok home. The alleged attempted arson is the latest in a slew of bizarre at­tacks on the ...

Five men in Koh Kong province could be prosecuted for stealing from a construction crew after the group allegedly seized tools in January, preventing the construction team from building fences in their village. Police summonsed the villagers from Kiri Sakor district’s Prek Khsach commune for questioning ...

Opposition lawmaker-elect Lim Kim-Ya filed charges with Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday morning against a government official he claims led an attack on a peaceful crowd at Freedom Park last Monday. Ket Khy, a Cambodia National Rescue Party lawyer, told the Post that Kim-Ya was seeking financial compensation ...

The U.N.’s deputy high commissioner for human rights, Flavia Pansieri—who is on a week­long mission in Cambodia —has been asked to address an arbitrarily enforced ban on public assemblies, which has been in place since January. In a letter dated Monday, Muth Chantha, secretary-general of the ...

The government is refusing to compensate up to 1,000 families forced to wait for income restoration measures after being relocated from their homes for an Asian Development Bank-funded railway rehabilitation project, a previously unreleased action plan from the ADB reveals. The ADB Management Action Plan, released ...

About 50 residents evicted from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood in 2008 and 2009 to make way for a senator’s real estate project once again protested in front of City Hall Monday to demand better compensation. They are among some 3,000 families who were forced ...