News

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to stand down during an event attended by CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha in California on Saturday night. Speaking at a CNRP fundraising event, Ed Royce, a Republican ...

Cambodia must establish an independent, national human rights institution with the power to conduct investigations and sanction those guilty of violations, representatives of the country’s two leading local rights groups said on Friday. A consortium of rights groups met Thursday in Phnom Penh to discuss the ...

A group of NGOs released a statement Thursday calling on the CPP government of Prime Minister Hun Sen to begin its program of promised post-election reforms by ending the practice of overcharging for motorcycle parking outside of local markets. The Affiliated Network for Social Accountability-Cambodia, a ...

The chief executive of SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) yesterday said the factory has agreed to reinstate 19 dismissed union leaders and activists, a sticking point which could end a strike that has lasted more than three months. Hours after the Ministry of Labour announced the garment ...

Chea Serey, the daughter of National Bank Governor Chea Chanto, has been promoted to director-general of the central bank, she confirmed this week. Ms. Serey will replace Nguon Sokha, who said that she left the National Bank about a month ago after being appointed as a ...

Four trade unions on Tuesday demanded that Cambodia’s garment and footwear manufacturers raise the minimum wage of their workers and provide them with additional benefits, threatening a nationwide strike and demonstrations if they do not comply. In a joint letter to the Van Sou Ieng, president ...

A group of Cambodian NGOs threatened on Monday to expose more cases of forestry crime involving businessmen and the police, saying they were unshaken by a defamation suit filed by top tycoon accused of illegal logging and land-grabbing. Representatives of the five organizations told reporters Monday ...

Japan’s prime minister failed to address major issues, by leaving aside Cambodia’s political deadlock and its poor human rights record on a visit last week, rights activists say. “It was a missed opportunity for the government of Japan, which has a great deal of leverage with ...

A land dispute between a development company and residents in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district boiled over late Friday night, with villagers setting fire to an excavator that they say company staff were using to raze a crematorium on the disputed plot of land. Villagers say ...

The Ministry of Environment on Thursday denied that a private agro-industry firm had been issued an “unofficial” land concession inside Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, as stated on Monday by the provincial governor. In response to claims by local officials that Daun Penh Agrico Co. Ltd. ...

The government is set to start re-deploying student volunteers to measure and demarcate plots of land across the country as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme, which was briefly suspended ahead of July’s national election. The program was announced by the prime minister in ...

An “unofficial” land concession granted earlier this year to an agro-industry firm that has logged luxury hardwood in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary is in violation of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 2012 moratorium on new economic land concessions (ELCs), a government spokesman said Tuesday. Phay Siphan, ...

The Kompong Cham Provincial Court on Saturday charged the chief of Srei Santhor district’s social affairs office with corruption following his arrest by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Friday for withholding pensions and other bonuses from retired teachers, a court official said Tuesday. Provincial court deputy ...

The government has ordered the SL Garment factory to rehire 19 worker representatives, following a brutal crackdown on demonstrators outside the home of Prime Minister Hun Sen last week. In a letter to the company, Khun Chinken, undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Labor, said ...

Phnom Penh City Hall’s plans to undertake the largest redrawing of the city’s administrative boundaries in decades, by creating five new districts before May’s district and city-level council elections, is likely an effort to gerrymander voting constituencies, a senior opposition party member said Monday. Municipal government ...

Officials at the Ministry of Labor who mediated talks Wednesday between the management of SL Garment Factory and union leaders who have led a three-month-long strike at the factory said that they would send the results of the meeting to Prime Minister Hun Sen to ...

The younger sister of Prime Minister Hun Sen is the owner of a private security firm that has been hired to protect the SL Garment Factory from its workers, who have been on strike for more than three months, officials at the firm said Wednesday. Hun ...

In an industry rife with labor strikes, the workers at the SL Garment Factory in recent months have been strident, and sometimes violent, in their efforts to have their demands for better working conditions met by factory bosses. Tuesday’s clash with police near Phnom Penh’s Stung ...

Sixty-six National Assembly members of the ruling CPP on Tuesday unanimously approved Cambodia’s $3.56 billion draft budget for 2014 without debate and without even the hint of an opposition, whose 55 lawmakers-elect are boycotting parliament in protest over July’s still-disputed national election result. The ruling party ...

Minister of Water Resources and Meteorology Lim Kean Hor said Monday that he would seek an investigation into a $1.5-million haul of river sand exported to India in April in spite of a ban on the export of dredged sand handed down by Prime Minister ...

A huge haul of river sand dredged in Cambodia has been quarantined at the southern Indian port city of Cochin since its arrival in April despite a ban on sand exports instituted by Prime Minister Hun Sen in 2009. India’s Deccan Chronicle news­paper reported on Tuesday ...

The country’s draft $3.4 billion national budget for 2014 proposes yet another $920 million in new debt to make ends meet, the same amount taken on this year, according to a copy of the spending bill obtained Thursday. The draft budget calls for nearly $400 million—or ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen signed off on a directive last week to trans­fer 11 government bodies, previously overseen by Cabinet Minister Sok An, to relevant ministries and institutions, further cutting the expansive portfolio of the deputy prime minister in the wake of July’s national election. ...

The National Assembly’s 12-member permanent committee will take its first look at the country’s $3.54 billion draft budget for 2014 on Monday, though officials are still refusing to offer a breakdown of how the money will be spent. The draft, which allocates more than $400 million ...