Crime and law enforcement

Garment factory owners failed to turn up for what was supposed to have been a tripartite meeting with the government and worker unions on Thursday to help break an impasse in negotiations to increase the minimum wage for workers, officials said. The International Labor Organization (ILO) ...

The appointment of General Sok Phal to head the Interior Ministry’s newly formed department to monitor migrant workers has raised concerns over his close familial connection to a labor recruitment industry fraught with human rights abuses. Gen. Phal’s sister, Ung Seang Rithy, is the owner of ...

Twenty-one labor activists who have been detained in Kampong Cham province since their arrests in January were moved to the main prison outside Phnom Penh on Wednesday. Supporters say the 21 are being detained as a lesson to other would-be demonstrators, after a brutal crackdown ...

Two union leaders were summonsed and questioned by a municipal court prosecutor yesterday over allegations they illegally detained the boss of a packaging factory in Por Sen Chey district’s Choam Chao commune during a strike. According to Phnom Penh Municipal Court deputy prosecutor Ek Chheng Huoth, ...

Members of a Lao ethnic community in Ratanakkiri province allegedly burned down three makeshift houses belonging to a rubber plantation on Monday. The 250 villagers in Veun Sai district’s Hatpak village accuse Indian-owned SK Company of encroaching on the forest and ignoring markers demarcating village farmland, ...

Police in Kompong Speu province on Monday night stopped three container trucks on National Road 4 bound for Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, seizing more than 100 logs of illegal luxury wood, officials said. Provincial economic police chief Nhem Sao said that his officers and police from Chbar ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday ordered embattled union leader Ath Thorn to stay away from the SL garment factory and its workers and to avoid any public gatherings that could “damage public order,” drawing a tight circle around one of the country’s most ...

Cambodia on Tuesday revealed two suspected hackers, who have attacked in large scales on the information technology networks of the national institutions, the National Police announced in its website. Bun Kingmongkol Panha, 21, and Chou Songheng, 21, both are the third year information technology students at ...

Embattled union leader Ath Thorn yesterday said that he had begun a fundraising effort, trying to come up with $25,000 in bail money by the end of the week. Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), said union members would begin ...

Forestry officials arrested four men and confiscated two pickup trucks containing illegally logged luxury timber en route to Vietnam on Sunday in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district before releasing both the men and the timber after fining them thousands of dollars, officers and a rights group representative ...

The U.N.’s human rights office in Cambodia expressed concern Monday that 22 detained protesters may not be allowed to attend their trials on Friday, while the government insisted that the prisoners will be transported to the court. Two minors were arrested for intentional violence for their ...

Military police and local forestry officials in Stung Treng province confiscated more than 90 pieces of luxury-grade Thnong wood from a private farm on Sunday, but only after the suspected owner escaped, according to officials. Provincial court prosecutor Chroeng Khmao said a joint force of military ...

Seven Borei Keila community activists were summonsed to Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday to back up a complaint they filed accusing high-ranking Prampi Makara district officials of assault for their role in the violent dispersal of demonstrators in February. ...

Nearly two years have passed since Cambodia’s leading forestry activist, Chut Wutty, was gunned down in the Cardamom Mountains. After a long wait, more than 100 activists, supporters and monks will finally make the pilgrimage on Saturday to the spot where he was killed to pay ...

A police officer who has been implicated in a fatal hit-and-run has been asked by local police in Kandal province to come to their office and negotiate a settlement for the victims’ families, police said Sunday. Ek Sovannara—the son of Ek Krit, a former Kandal provincial ...

The Club of Cambodian Journalists has condemned the alleged beating by military police of three journalists while were covering illegal logging and called for the government to open an investigation and take legal action. In a statement published on Friday, the CCJ voiced its concern for ...

The Club of Cambodian Journalists (CCJ) released a statement on Friday expressing concern over three recent cases of reporters facing harassment while attempting to document illegal logging in Preah Vihear, Pursat and Kompong Cham provinces. Sorn Mongkul, a reporter for Kampuchea Thmey newspaper based in Preah ...

Svay Rieng provincial police Thursday publicly defended a district police official accused of corruption after conducting their own investigation into the claims. According to a report published by the local news website CEN on April 7, Svay Chrum district deputy police chief Meas Soeun embezzled money ...

Most garment factories did not open for business Thursday, choosing to extend the Khmer New Year holidays—which officially ended Wednesday—rather than face industrial action in the form of a planned nationwide stay-at-home strike. However, a number of workers interviewed Thursday said they knew nothing about the ...

Traffic accidents killed 38 people over Khmer New Year, with a further 306 injured, officials said yesterday. National Police spokesman Kirth Chantharith said that between Monday and Wednesday, 148 traffic accidents were recorded across the country. ...

Cambodian land advocates face some of the most threatening and deadly working conditions in the world, according to a new report by UK-based environmental watchdog Global Witness. Since 2002, 908 reported killings linked to land activism have occurred across 35 countries – with 13 taking place ...

Mu Sochua, a lawmaker-elect for the opposition CNRP, announced Thursday that she will on Sunday morning resume her campaign to enter Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park. Last month, Ms. Sochua appeared at the park alone for four straight days—each day being physically barred by authorities—in an effort ...

Security guards at the center of a yearlong land dispute between families in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak community and the Khun Sear Import Export Company on Wednesday accused the families of attacking them during a late-night Khmer New Year drinking party. Nuon Sokhannara, one of the ...

A senior government adviser on information technology says a draft of a cybercrime law is unnecessary and could lead to demonstrations and unrest if passed as currently written. Critics say the draft law, made public last week, criminalizes online behavior in vague language open to ...