The Cambodia Daily
Workers at Honda Plant Given Back Their Jobs
A factory in Phnom Penh that assembles motorcycles for Honda decided on Friday to reinstate four workers who had been fired in December for creating a new trade union. About 300 workers at the Honda NCX Company in Pur Senchey district had been on strike since ...
Evicted M’kiri Families Can’t Afford Trip Home
Some of the 200 families evicted from a village in Mondolkiri province’s Koh Nhek district last week said yesterday that they were taking up temporary residence in nearby villages and forests because they could not afford to go home, or had no land to return ...
Online Mapping Project for Cambodia Gets Under Way
Students, NGO workers and map enthusiasts came together Saturday in Phnom Penh to contribute information to an online map of Cambodia as part of a worldwide mapping effort, the event’s organizers said yesterday. The global project, known as the OpenStreetMap Project (OSM), uses a similar concept ...
President Obama Expected to Attend Summit in Phnom Penh
A senior White House official has again indicated that U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to attend the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh in November. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell reiterated Mr. Obama’s plans to attend the ...
Court Accuses Advocate Monk of Incitement
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has accused the well-known monk and human rights advocate Loun Sovath of incitement for unspecified actions committed in Cambodia and abroad, according to court documents obtained Friday. The court documents, signed by Investigating Judge Duch Kim on Feb. 14, were sent ...
Municipal Court Sentences 13 Boeng Kak Protesters to Jail
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday charged and then immediately sentenced 13 women embroiled in a long-running land dispute with CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin’s private company to two-and-a-half years in jail. The women, which included Heng Mom and Tep Vanny, were among the leaders of ...
Conservation Efforts Boost Crab Production
Improved quality coupled with growing international demand has sent crab prices escalating over the past year, officials said on Wednesday. In some provinces, the price has jumped as much as 66 percent during the past 12 months. Lang Kery, chief of the Koh Kong provincial Fishery Administration’s ...
Families Forced Out of Homes Ahead of Gov't Deadline
Security forces and employees of a Vietnamese-owned rubber plantation in Mondolkiri province continued to drive families out of their homes yesterday ahead of today’s government-imposed eviction deadline. Officials and villagers say most of the roughly 200 families have already left. With more than 300 security personnel posted ...
Factory Says Buyers Will Go to Burma if Protests Continue
A representative of a factory that produces clothing for international clothing brands H&M, Gap and Levi Strauss warned yesterday that its buyers will place orders elsewhere if the strike for higher wages and benefits in its two factories continues. An official at the American Center for ...
Aun Pheap and Dene-Hern Chen, P. 24
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Land Evictions Cause Mass Protests and Arrests to Escalate
The number of protests over land disputes increased in 2011 as forced resettlement, restrictions on freedom of assembly and the harassment of peaceful protesters continued to tarnish Cambodia’s human rights record, Amnesty International said in its annual report released yesterday. Noting the huge impact of economic ...
KFC in Cambodia Makes Losses in First Quarter
The Malaysian company that operates the KFC fast food restaurants in Cambodia has announced the venture made losses of more than a quarter of a million dollars in the first three months of this year. In its first-quarter report to the Malaysian stock exchange, QSR Brands ...
Commodities Prices a Risk, Bank Says
Despite offering an uplifting outlook for Cambodia’s economy this year, economists at the World Bank said yesterday that it could still succumb to volatile commodities prices, particularly food and gas. Speaking to journalists after the release the bank’s East Asia and Pacific Economic Update for 2012, ...
Honda Factory Workers Strike To Reinstate Union Officials
About 300 workers from a Phnom Penh factory that assembles Honda motorcycles went on strike yesterday to rally for the reinstatement of their union representatives, in accordance with an order by the Arbitration Council, union representatives said yesterday. Yoeurng Sopheara, a legal officer at Cambodia Labor ...
Book Outlines Best of Both Worlds for Cardamom Mountains
The protectionist bent of conservation groups and the development agenda of the government can come together in Cambodia to create a green economy. That is the message of a new book Conservation International (C.I.) launched yesterday in Phnom Penh, outlining practical options for saving the environment ...
Arrested Villagers Questioned in Kratie Secessionist Case
The Kratie Provincial Court wrapped up initial questioning yesterday of eight villagers charged in connection with what officials have claimed was a secessionist movement, court officials said. The eight were questioned on Tuesday and yesterday, and face between one and eight counts each of insurrection against ...
Factory Workers Continue to Strike for Higher Wages
About 4,000 garment workers from factories that produce clothing for international brands H&M, Gap and Levi Strauss continued protesting yesterday in Phnom Penh for higher wages, union representatives said. Singaporean-owned SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd. parked three large trucks in front of their Meanchey district factories ...
Discussions Over South China Sea Document Continue
In its role as Asean chair, Cambodia hopes that a draft of a long-awaited legal document to govern how disputes are settled in the contentious South China Sea will be completed and adopted this year, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday. ...
Police Begin Dismantling Mondolkiri Village Involved in Dispute
As the eviction deadline looms for residents of a Mondolkiri village embroiled in a land dispute with a Vietnamese-owned rubber plantation, police have begun to dismantle vacant homes in the village, an official and a villager said yesterday. Sin Seng, 43, a resident of the remote ...
Australian Gov’t Ordered Railway Investigation
The Australian government yesterday said it has been aware of poor working conditions and inappropriate surveying methods used on Cambodia’s railway rehabilitation project since February and had ordered that the project’s partners investigate the matters. “The Australian Government was alerted to possible concerns about workplace health ...
World Bank Raises GDP Outlook for 2012
The World Bank yesterday raised Cambodia’s gross domestic product outlook for 2012 by 0.1 percent to 6.6 percent, saying that last year’s flooding and the global economic slowdown did not affect Cambodia’s economy as much as first expected. According to the World Bank’s East Asia and ...
Police Surround Homes in Search of Alleged Secessionists
Dozens of police in search of two Kratie province “secessionist ringleaders” surrounded the homes of two of their relatives in Kompong Cham province for nearly 12 hours yesterday while threatening those inside, a relative of the two men said. The alleged secessionist movement has been used ...
Construction Woes Plague Railway Project
The rehabilitation of Cambodia’s dilapidated railway network has encountered delays due to poor construction work and inappropriate surveying methods when making plans to lay down tracks, according to a draft review of the ongoing $140 million project conducted by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and ...
Police Buildup Continues as Families Face Eviction in Mondolkiri
An additional 200 armed police officers have moved into a village in Mondolkiri province where families locked in a land dispute with a Vietnamese-owned rubber plantation have been given until Friday to clear out, police and villagers said yesterday. Police had already moved about 100 officers ...
Ministry Meets Striking Union Representatives
Ministry of Social Affairs officials yesterday conducted a meeting between the owners of a factory, which produces clothing for H&M, Gap and Levi Strauss, and its workers, but threatened to file a complaint against the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (CCAWDU), union representatives ...