ព័ត៌មាន​

A track of land once farmed by 1,000 families in Kratie province — families violently evicted amid claims they were part of a separatist movement — is now home to a military base. Unit 9 Royal Cambodian Armed Forces base, which will be finished later this ...

The convicted ringleader of a so-called secessionist movement in May in Kratie province, who is currently in self-imposed exile to avoid a 30-year prison sentence, has said that he will soon return to Cambodia to organize a large-scale demonstration against the government. Bun Ratha—who was sentenced ...

Phnom Penh authorities have ordered 12 newspaper kiosks to leave a major road in the capital, saying they need them to relocate for 12 months for construction but giving them no other place to go. Owners of the kiosks, which are popular in the sale of ...

The Phnom Penh Court of Appeal ruled Friday that Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando should continue serving his 20-year sentence for sedition. On October 1, the radio station owner was sentenced to 20 years in jail and fined 10 million riel in relation to a ...

The European Union’s ambassador to Cambodia yesterday urged the government to heed the advice of the U.N.’s visiting human rights envoy, who has come under increasing rebuke from officials for his unflattering reports. Addressing a crowd of about 3,000, mostly garment factory workers, at Phnom Penh’s ...

Human rights groups in Cambodia fear a new south-east Asian declaration of human rights could conversely offer the government in Phnom Penh a figleaf to clamp down on dissent. Cambodia signed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) human rights declaration on Sunday, two days ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and visiting U.S. President Barack Obama met here on Monday to discuss a number of issues including old debt, human rights, democracy and forced evictions in Cambodia, a senior Cambodian official said. Hun Sen also raised the issue of old ...

U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Prime Minister Hun Sen on the government’s human rights record during a closed-door meeting between the two leaders in Phnom Penh yesterday, calling for fair elections and the release of all political prisoners. In the first visit to Cambodia by a ...

President Barack Obama arrives in Cambodia on Monday having just won four more years in office, but that is nothing compared to his host, Hun Sen. The 60-year-old Cambodian prime minister has held power since Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and says he’s ...

THE ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is used to fending off “interference” by the West in the internal affairs of some of its members. In recent years the human-rights record of the regime in Myanmar has been the tenderest of these sore spots. ...

The US “pivot to Asia,” which will be punctuated next week with the Cambodian visit of US President Barack Obama, will likely put Cambodia in a tough spot in the region, caught between the renewed focus of the United States and the increased influence of ...

Human Rights investigator Chan Soveth has returned to Cambodia more than two-and-a-half months after leaving in the face of a criminal charge that is thought to be linked to an alleged insurrection that took place in Kratie province in May. On August 14, the court charge ...

Some of the U.S.’ most senior lawmakers are urging Barack Obama to speak out on what they called Cambodia’s deteriorating human rights situation when the U.S. president makes what will be the first visit to the country by a sitting American leader later this month. ...

Cambodia’s transformation from war-torn basket-case to one of Asia’s most promising emerging economies is being overshadowed by a backwards lurch in human rights and land policies that critics say are entrenching poverty. ...

Hang Serei Oudom told his 7-month pregnant wife that he was going out to meet a source. A journalist for Vorakchun Khmer Daily, he was investigating illegal logging for luxury woods in the jungles of Cambodia’s northeastern Ratanakkiri province. Three days later, on Sept. 11, he ...

In its first official response to a highly critical resolution on Cambodia from the European Parliament, the government has rejected all criticism and instead accused the Parliament in Brussels of playing politics and interfering in Phnom Penh’s affairs. In its resolution approved October 26, the European ...

Before its owner was arrested in July on charges of insurrection, Beehive radio had hit the consciousness of few outside Cambodia. While international rights groups and press watchdogs were quick to jump on a story of political posturing and the quashing of free speech in the ...

Mam Sonando, the independent radio station owner whose jailing for 20 years earlier this month provoked international condemnation of the country’s courts, has launched an appeal, his wife and a prison official said yesterday. Mr. Sonando, the owner of Beehive Radio, was convicted by the Phnom ...

Journalists, NGO workers and politicians are not immune to the long arm of the law if they flout it, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday as he distributed land titles in Kampot province. Mr. Hun Sen’s comments come 10 days after independent radio station owner Mam ...

Officials from four government bodies along with a personal adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday urged two US government-funded radio stations to be more professional and law-abiding during a closed-door meeting at the Council of Ministers. While little information was forthcoming regarding the content of ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday lashed out at critics of the Mam Sonando verdict, saying outsiders shouldn’t be seeking the release of a prisoner. Speaking to hundreds of villagers at a land title ceremony held in Chhuok district of Kampot province, Hun Sen defended the guilty verdict handed ...

Evictees wearing small model houses on their heads to symbolize their struggles marched to the National Assembly yesterday to ask authorities to intervene to stop more forced evictions. About 400 representatives of 40 communities across the capital joined human rights activists at the former Dey Krahorm eviction site ...

Members of the Association of Democrats, the group led by jailed activist and Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando, rallied in front of the Royal Palace yesterday to deliver petitions appealing for his release. Huon Phannary, the deputy secretary-general of the association, said yesterday that nearly 100 ...

In a bluntly worded statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has shot back at critics of the Mam Sonando verdict, stressing that there were no political motivations to the case and accusing “outsiders” of trying to pressure a sovereign court. “Mr. Mam Sonando is the mastermind of ...