News

Major labels that have clothing manufactured in Cambodian factories have written an open letter expressing concern for the recent shootings of workers demonstrating for higher wages. Adidas, Gap, H&M, Levi’s and Puma were among those that signed the January 7 letter to the Phnom Penh government, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cambodia’s capital on Thursday, arresting five monks and 10 others in a display of force that has been described by a rights group as unprecedented. The soldiers from Special Command Unit 911 were deployed to crush the demonstration over minimum wages near the Yak Jin ...

Five years after first ratifying the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), Cambodia remains delinquent in honouring some of its commitments under the treaty, UN representatives said yesterday. Under the OPCAT, Cambodia was obliged to create an independent National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) to ...

KANDAL PROVINCE – At Kandal provincial prison on Monday, about 100 male and female prisoners and pretrial detainees assembled to play games and receive fruit and drinks from rights group Licadho, which is visiting 18 prisons around the country this week in a bid to ...

Cambodia ranked third worst in “global suffering” last year—behind Bulgaria and Armenia—a significant increase from 2011, when it ranked 14th worst, ac-cording to the worldwide polling group Gallup. A poll released last week on Gallup’s website says 34 percent of Cambodian respondents rated their lives as ...

More than 80 monks and activists marching to Phnom Penh for International Human Rights Day blocked National Road 5 in Kampong Chhnang town yesterday evening after local authorities allegedly pressured a pagoda to deny them permission to rest there. Independent Monks Network head But Buntenh claimed ...

Prisons across the country will soon be referred to only as “correctional centres” to change a public perception that they are places where people are simply locked up, the Ministry of Interior announced yesterday. Nuth Sa An, secretary of state at the ministry, said the change ...

Two teenagers charged with intentional acts of violence, damage to public property and insulting public officials in clashes with police during a demonstration by SL Garment Factory workers last month were denied bail Monday. The suspects, 14-year-old Meas Non and 17-year-old Vanny Vanan, were charged by ...

After nearly two years of silence on its draft NGO Law, the Ministry of Interior on Sunday said it was aiming to have the highly contentious piece of legislation ready for the Council of Ministers early next year and voted on by July. Meas Sarim, deputy ...

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 ...

Impunity reigns in Cambodia on the back of two consecutive years of fatal shootings by state forces for which perpetrators have evaded justice, local rights group Licadho said Friday in a statement to mark International Day to End Impunity on Saturday. Since the start of 2012, ...

Seeing is believing—particularly in a country where the government controls the broadcast media and current affairs news, aired on pro-ruling par­ty TV and radio, is of­ten at odds with the country’s few independent media outlets. But in the aftermath of a violent clash between striking garment ...

A woman was killed and at least six others shot yesterday morning when police fired live ammunition into a crowd of hundreds of rioting garment workers in the capital’s Stung Meanchey district. UN reports said police also arrested 37 people, including seven monks, as a result ...

The government will spend a total of $13.7 million in the next three years to build new appeal courts outside of Phnom Penh along with free accommodation for judges and prosecutors across the country, according to the draft budget law for 2014, which is scheduled ...

More than two weeks since some 850 inmates were evacuated from Banteay Meanchey prison after floodwater caused a wall to collapse, the move is illuminating just how overcrowded their destinations are, an NGO worker has said. Sharon Critoph, a prison consultant for rights group Licadho, said ...

Opposition CNRP lawmaker-elect Mu Sochua last night emerged from a meeting with Phnom Penh City Hall representatives proclaiming that she had the assurance of the Municipal police chief that there would be no roadblocks in or around Phnom Penh during the opposition’s three-day demonstration starting ...

Kneeling outside a motodop and car battery store on Monivong Boulevard in the capital, a 15-year-old boy spends his days piping acid into batteries with his bare hands. His employer says she has no idea that Cambodia, as well as having an Acid Control Law – ...

Eight-year-old Sokun* spent almost the first seven years of his life in prison. Unlike other Cambodian children who have the freedom to play and run free, countless hours of his early life were spent in a hot, squalid and teeming cell in the prison where his ...