Social development

The South Korean Embassy on Wednesday denied a news report that it had lobbied Cambodian military authorities to “crack down on protesters” in a bid to shield Korean investments in the garment industry, prior to Friday’s killing of five protesters and the wounding of more ...

Authorities in Phnom Penh and at least three provinces have begun to clamp down on teachers conducting piecemeal strikes for higher wages, with one union representative being asked to sign an anti-strike agreement and another called in for police questioning. In Kandal province’s Kien Svay district, ...

As garment workers continued to return to their factories Wednesday after several days of strikes that turned deadly last week, some of their employers have wasted no time in suing the unions behind the strikes, demanding compensation. Phnom Penh Municipal Court chief clerk Prak Savouth said ...

Notification that her son is being detained at Correctional Centre 3 in Kampong Cham came as a relief to Touch Sart yesterday, after spending nearly a week wondering whether he was even alive. Since her son, Theng Saroeun, was arrested along with 22 others at demonstrations ...

Union leaders say workers will continue to strike over low wages, despite a violent crackdown by authorities last week and threats this week from factories who say they will be forced to move to other countries if strikes continue. Five different union say their workers will ...

The whereabouts of 23 people arrested last week during a crackdown on demonstrations in Por Sen Chey district remained unknown yesterday, with prison officials and police refusing to divulge the information to family members and rights groups. ...

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), along with local rights groups Licadho and Adhoc, denounced the Friday shooting of protesting garment workers by police in a joint statement released in Paris on Monday. “The killing of demonstrators by government authorities is totally unacceptable. The government ...

Teachers around the country will recommence a labor strike today, demanding a raise in salary to $250 per month, teachers and the Cambodian Independent Teachers Union (CITA) said Tuesday. Teachers in Phnom Penh and at least five provinces on Monday began piecemeal strikes after CITA leader ...

Hundreds of families in Banteay Meanchey province’s Thma Puok district filed a complaint yesterday to rights group Adhoc, claiming their community farmland is being bulldozed by a company under the protection of soldiers. ...

The Global Fund has backed down on its threat to cut or reduce health grants to Cambodia worth more than $100 million, saying they considered the fraction of misused funds that have been returned thus far a sign of sufficient good will. In a letter sent ...

Twenty families from Ratanakkiri’s Kon Mom district are seeking intervention after a private company allegedly encroached on 10 hectares of their land. The unnamed company produces furniture from wood acquired from embattled Vietnamese concessionaire Hoang Anh Andong Meas, and over the course of the last two ...

Unions behind last week’s garment factory strikes said their members had largely gone back to work this week, although they have not ruled out resuming protests for a higher minimum wage later this month. Tens of thousands of workers went on strike starting on December 24 ...

As teachers in several provinces continue to strike over low wages, the Ministry of Education declined to say yesterday whether it would follow through on threats to enact harsh punishment on those who have walked. In a statement issued on Friday and obtained yesterday, Pin Chamnarn, ...

The government must act now in order to avoid a “tsunami” of tobacco-related deaths in the coming years, according to the co-author of a new report on smoking that appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Wednesday. Research for the study, Smoking prevalence ...

A senior member of the Garment Manufacturer’s Association in Cambodia (GMAC) on Sunday endorsed the use of deadly force by military police against striking garment workers, which left five dead and more than 20 with gunshot wounds. “GMAC condemns the use of violence, period,” he ...

The U.N. and local human rights groups have condemned the government’s violent eviction of CNRP supporters from Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Saturday, as well as its indefinite ban on public protests in the city. On Saturday, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court also summonsed opposition leaders ...

More than 100 villagers from eight ethnic communities in Mondulkiri province on Friday symbolically burned two chainsaws allegedly used to illegally log community forest before delivering four others they had confiscated to the provincial forestry administration, participants and Adhoc said yesterday. ...

The five people killed by AK-47 gunfire from military police at a protest along Pur Senchey district’s Veng Sreng Street on Friday were all striking garment factory workers, a union official confirmed Sunday. Military police officers opened fire on the factory-lined street on Friday morning during ...

The sight of traffic moving easily and people milling about along Veng Sreng Boulevard in the capital’s Meanchey district yesterday was a far cry from two days earlier, when the street was occupied by makeshift roadblocks, bonfires and military personnel carrying automatic rifles. While visible evidence ...

Garment workers have begun leaving the area surrounding embattled Veng Sreng street en masse, following the outbreak of clashes early on Friday morning. An estimated 80 per cent of the more than 10,000 workers who live and are employed in the Meanchey district suburb have vacated ...

Two ethnic Kuoy villagers in Preah Vihear province’s Tbeng Meanchey district are in hiding after rumours circulated yesterday that police were seeking to arrest them for participating in a protest against two Chinese plantation firms last week. ...

At 11:30 a.m. Saturday, municipal security guards and men in plainclothes, wielding steel bars, metal pipes, batons, sticks and axes, forcibly cleared hundreds of demonstrators from Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park, where the opposition CNRP has been protesting against the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen ...

About 100 former residents of the Borei Keila community on Friday morning marked their violent eviction two years ago by authorities from their former neighborhood and demanded that their homes be rebuilt. “We are the families of Borei Keila, and with this ceremony we mark the ...

The Cambodian Ministry of Interior on Saturday called for the people to stay calm as all forms of demonstrations were prohibited so as to restore social security and public order after a deadly clash on Friday. “The ministry urges all the people to keep calm and ...