News

In keeping with authorities’ indefinite ban on assembly, security forces yesterday morning dispersed a small gathering of nine youth activists who had planned to call for new elections and justice on behalf of recently slain protesters while singing songs about nonviolence in Freedom Park. Hoping to ...

A group of eight opposition CNRP youth supporters sang a single song near Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park before police deployed nearby had a chance to break up their concert on Thursday, a musical test of the new ban on public gatherings in the wake of ...

The leader of an organisation of monks from Kampuchea Krom, the part of southern Vietnam that once belonged to the Khmer Empire, accused security officials at the recent crackdowns at Freedom Park and last Thursday’s garment protest of singling out Kampuchea Krom monks for arrest ...

Cambodia’s garment and shoe industry has lost roughly 275 million U.S. dollars due to outlawed garment strikes in the past two weeks, Van Sou Ieng, President of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), said Monday. The garment and shoe industry comprise more than 900 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cambodian opposition leaders said Sunday that they will appear at the court upon the summons issued by the Phnom Penh municipal court after a bloody clash on Friday. According to the summons signed by the court’s deputy prosecutor Heang Sopheak, Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha ...

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 ...

Cambodia’s opposition leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha went into hiding Saturday as the government stepped up its crackdown on protests against Prime Minister Hun Sen following deadly violence. A day after police shot dead four people during workers’ protests for higher wages, the government ...

Dozens of ruling party lawmakers have signed a letter calling opposition demands for a re-election or the resignation of Prime Minister Hun Sen an attempted coup. The letter, signed by 54 Cambodian People’s Party lawmakers including senior MP Cheam Yeap on Friday and released to the ...

Although International Human Rights Day ended in the forceful eviction of protesters from outside the US embassy last night, monks and their supporters who spent days marching to the capital met with no opposition in the morning as they defied a ban on marching to ...

The government will deploy double the usual number of armed security personnel on the streets of Phnom Penh on Tuesday to keep control of the large number of rallies planned in the city to celebrate International Human Rights Day, a military police official said Monday. “We ...

The long journey on foot from the provinces to Phnom Penh began yesterday for hundreds of villagers and monks who intend to mark December 10’s International Human Rights Day by protesting outside the National Assembly. Parades of people, expected to grow in size the closer they ...

As two volunteers guided a man unsteady on his feet into a medical tent on the second day of a three-day pro-opposition demonstration at Freedom Park yesterday, Chan Bun Han instructed another to get the patient a bottle of water after they laid him on ...

As hundreds of riot police conducted protest suppression drills in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park on Monday morning, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s mansion in the center of the city was the focal point of a demonstration by some 2,000 garment factory workers. Municipal police, along with 16 ...

A Cambodian trade unions leader on Saturday called on garment workers not to participate in the opposition party-planned mass demonstration next week against the results of July’s election that handed victory to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling party. “I would like to appeal to all workers ...

About 1,000 members of the Cambodian Grassroots People’s Assembly—a network of communities throughout the country that includes farmers as well as land and labor activists—will rally at Freedom Park on Monday to demand an end to the current political impasse. The ruling CPP and opposition CNRP ...

Two monks living a remote pagoda in Kampong Speu province’s Oral district said yesterday that a shot had been fired at their living quarters last Tuesday in what they suspected was a threat motivated by their conservation efforts and participation in an opposition rally. Venerables Sam ...

Interior Minister Sar Kheng has chastised the opposition CNRP for holding its demonstration in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park last week for longer than authorized, and blamed the party for the deadly violence that took place near Monivong Bridge. A 29-year-old construction worker was shot dead while ...

In an apparent bid to reassure jittery visitors watching the country’s political scene, the Cambodia Association of Travel Agents (CATA) said in a statement yesterday that post-election tensions would not harm tourists. Addressing its members – tour operators and travel agencies – as well as national ...

With only about 10 per cent of its 1,000-person workforce at their stations by 8am yesterday, management at Hoyear (Cambodia) Garment Ltd cut its losses and announced that the factory would close for the next two days. Thousands across the capital opted out of work ...

Despite the demonstration at Freedom Park, razor-wire barricades, blocked streets and clashes between citizens and police in the past two days, it appears that the camp-in and security presence in the city are merely a novelty for some tourists. On Monday afternoon, one couple, Australians John ...

Security barricades and razor-wire installations set up around Phnom Penh yesterday were supposed to maintain order as the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party kicked off what it promised to be three days of mass protests. But the show of force and control had more of an ...