Social development
Cambodian Activists Call for International Sugar Boycott
Human rights monitoring groups and Cambodian activists are calling for an international boycott of Tate & Lyle and Domino Sugar, who do business with sugar suppliers accused of participating in government-sanctioned land grabs and illegal evictions throughout rural Cambodia. According to the Cambodian League for the ...
Businesswoman calls on government to return land
High-profile Phnom Penh businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary has called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to return 33 hectares of prime land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district to her company, which lost the rights to it when the government claimed the land in July. Sokountheary said she ...
Land Rights Talks Held With Japanese Envoy
Japanese Ambassador Kuroki Masafumi met with human rights workers on Friday to discuss land rights in Cambodia, particularly implementation of the law and the use of force in evictions, two of the participants at the meeting said. Adhoc President Thun Saray, Licadho President Pung Chhiv Kek and ...
Villain or victim? Protesters divided over Bopha
Imprisoned Yorm Bopha has either been unjustly targeted for her role in Boeung Kak lake eviction protests or is responsible for the vicious beating of two motodops, depending on which protesters’ chants were true yesterday. It was land evictees versus motodops in the capital as two ...
Police Block Boen Kak Anti-Eviction Protesters
Police in Phnom Penh blocked all attempts by anti-eviction protesters to march out of the city’s Boeng Kak community yesterday, but made no attempt to stop a counter-demonstration against the marchers by a little-known association of tuk-tuk and motorcycle-taxi drivers. About 150 residents of the Boeng ...
Fellow villagers pray for land rights activists
Borei Keila protesters, including many who live in squalor under staircases at the site, have already been compensated for losing their homes and have no right to demand more, Suy Sophan, the owner of developer Phan Imex, told the Post yesterday. About 200 supporters from the ...
Boeng Kak Arrest Not Linked to Evictions, Says Local Man
The Phnom Penh man who filed a complaint against a woman deeply involved in the Boeng Kak community’s anti-eviction protests called a press conference on Friday to insist that his dispute with the woman, which led to her arrest last week, was a personal matter ...
Rights activists concerned about status of human rights under AEC
Despite so much excitement in the run-up to the inception of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) in 2015, experts and activists on human rights and democracy are ambivalent about what AEC’s repercussions will be on human rights and democracy. They have expressed concerns about AEC’s negative ...
UN Housing Envoy Wants Eviction Activists Freed
The U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, Raquel Rolnik, has waded in to the furor surrounding the imprisonment this week of two anti-eviction activists from Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities, posing with a poster calling for the release of the two women. Yorm Bopha, 32, ...
Court Hears Borei Keila Evictees' Complaint
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday questioned three Borei Keila residents about a complaint they filed six month ago against the property development firm Phanimex from evicting them from their land. In March, a group of Borei Keila residents filed their complaint against Phanimex’s owner ...
Land, Borders Reemerge as Top Issues for 2013 Elections
With national elections less than a year away, ruling party officials have begun a publicity campaign to show they are tackling tough issues facing the country, such as border delineation and land grabs, but opposition leaders say the Cambodian People’s Party cannot claim it has ...
Soft loan from Sweden
Sweden loaned Cambodia US$57 million yesterday for economic country development and cooperation for the duration of 2012-2013. The agreement was made between Cambodia’s Economic Minister Keat Chhon and Swedish ambassador to Cambodia Anne Hoglund at the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) yesterday morning. Keat Chhon ...
May Kunmakara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012090658528/Business/soft-loan-from-sweden.html
Maid ban to remain until safety improves
The ban on sending Cambodian women for employment as maids in Malaysia will be lifted once certain safety and training precautions for workers are established, a senior government official said yesterday. Seng Sakada, the director general of the Ministry of Labour, said that his office is ...
Indigenous Forest Protection Group Again Told to Disband
Members of Bunong ethnic minority forest group in Kratie province who accused local police of barring their community patrols in search of illegal logging were told by a Forestry Administration official yesterday that they had no authority to operate. Mr. [Peit] Kun Pedor [head of ...
Pay delay frustrates disabled community
More than one year after the government passed legislation to bring in a pension for people with disabilities living in poverty, a preliminary committee to workshop how to locate such disabled people has still not been formed, officials said yesterday. In June last year, the ...
Second Eviction Protester Jailed In Two Days
Police and court officials yesterday questioned, charged and imprisoned elderly woman involved in the long-running land dispute at the Borei Keila community in Phnom Penh, a day after an anti-eviction protester from Boeng Kak community met a similar fate. In both cases, police and court officials ...
Another Activist in Prey Sar
A 65-year-old woman who has spent months sleeping under a staircase at Borei Keila yesterday became the second land-rights activist sent to Prey Sar prison in little more than 24 hours. Phnom Penh Municipal Court investigating judge Ly Leabmeng questioned villager representative Tim Sakmony for almost ...
New report evaluates decade of Better Factories Cambodia
A new report – 10 Years of the Better Factories Cambodia Project: A critical evaluation – has been released by Clean Clothes Campaign and Community Legal Education Center. Started in 2001, the goal of the Better Factories program is to improve the working conditions in ...
http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/apparel-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=115382
Questions over bonuses
Unions and labour groups fear a solitary sick day could cost garment workers their entire month’s attendance bonuses – about 15 per cent of their base wage – under a new scheme meant to make life easier. The Kingdom’s 600,000 garment and footwear workers will receive ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012090558510/National-news/questions-over-bonuses.html
B Kak Woman Arrested
Prominent Boeung Kak villager and protester Yorm Bopha was yesterday jailed in Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, after she and her husband – en route to check for their names on a voting register – were pounced on by police in plain clothes in what ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012090558509/National-news/b-kak-woman-arrested.html
Gov't Reports $25M From Rents in Six Months
The government earned just over $25 million in rental fees from state land leased to private companies in the first six months of the year, according to new figures from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. While the data shows that earning have risen, critics say ...
Needs compared with the UK
Cambodia’s needs and how they overlap with the UK’s strengths are an important issue in trade and investment relations between the two countries, according to British Ambassador Mark Gooding during a presentation to the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce (CCC) yesterday. Bilateral trade is mainly driven by ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012090458466/Business/uk-to-diversify-trade-ambassador.html
Japanesee NGO Admonishes Forced Evictions
A okyo-based human rights group has called on the government to cease forced evictions and branded the use of armed forces against ordinary citizens defending their land as an :unforgivable human rights violation.” Human Rights Now (HRN), which in June sent a team of Japanese investigators ...
Garment Factory Monitoring Needs to Improve
The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) program must overhaul its monitoring practices before it can meaningfully improve working conditions in the garment sector, accoring to the authors of a new report. the new report by Community Legal Education Center and the Netherlands-based ...