Crime and law enforcement

Kampong Cham police officials arrested 10 suspects on Sunday for illegally fishing the Mekong River in Koh Sotin district. “Seven are Vietnamese and other three are Muslim Cambodians. They used illegal equipment to fish in the Mekong River, such as four motor boats, trawls and two ...

Cambodian authorities unlawfully detain hundreds of drug users and others deemed “undesirable” in centers where they face torture, sexual violence, and forced labor, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch called for the immediate closure of the country’s eight detention ...

Authorities issued an arrest warrant last week for the director of a local NGO involved with an operation that allegedly bilked thousands out of money by claiming the company could find them work in South Korea. Warrants for the arrests of Theun Samnang, head of NGO ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday issued a statement ordering that anti-graft education be incorporated into the national schooling system as part of a wider effort to stamp out corruption in the country. The statement, released in the lead-up to International Anti-Corruption Day, which falls today, ...

Injecting methamphetamines is on the rise in Cambodia, particularly among younger addicts, as recreational users have begun to switch from smoking and pill-popping to mainlining, a report by the Australian National Council on Drugs suggests. The report, released yesterday, details how amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) and their ...

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 ...

The Ministry of Interior’s general department of prisons has been advised to address prison overcrowding and transportation issues between prisons and courts as it begins to tackle its 2013 to 2018 strategic plan for the country’s jails. The advice was given at the start of a ...

A semiannual study of defendants’ rights in Cambodian courts released this week found an alarming prevalence of pre-trial detention in cases involving juvenile suspects, who are routinely blended with adult prison populations. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights’ sixth semiannual report of trial rights, which cited ...

Cambodian authorities frequently hold suspects, especially the young, in detention pending trial, even though the law could allow them to be released on bail while awaiting the completion of their judicial proceedings, according to a report released Wednesday. Minor crime suspects are also provided a “worryingly ...

Well-known timber magnate Try Pheap is preparing to expand cross-country with a scheme that already gives him exclusive rights to buy all the wood felled on economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, a spokesman for the businessman said. The Agriculture Ministry’s Forestry Administration in February ...

More than six years after the slaying of Free Trade Union president Hy Vuthy, one of the men convicted of his murder, Chan Sophorn, 35, appeared in court yesterday for a retrial. Sous Sam Ath, the judge presiding over the case at the Phnom Penh Municipal ...

The privately-operated International Ship Registry of Cambodia (ISROC), a South Korea-based company that owns the rights to register foreign vessels under the Cambodian flag, told ship owners last year that it was not monitoring their observance of international maritime laws, and that it was their ...

Villagers in Mondolkiri province filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc on Friday, saying that they had discovered loggers illegally felling trees in their local community forest who claimed to be working for businessman Try Pheap. Mr. Pheap, who owns plantations, mining concessions and special economic ...

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 ...

Stung Treng Provincial Court yesterday questioned six men apprehended while allegedly transporting more than 17 cubic metres of illegal Thnong timber by boat in Sesan district, said Y Ek Savtey, director of the provincial forestry administration. Hou Sam Ol, a provincial coordinator with rights group Adhoc, ...

The deputy director of the Preah Sihanouk provincial tax branch who was arrested for corruption last week was on Friday charged with the misappropriation of public funds, an official confirmed Sunday. Phy Rith, who was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) on Wednesday, was charged by ...

Three staff members of a local NGO that campaigns against resource exploitation were charged yesterday with extorting money from loggers in Stung Treng province. The three staffers from the Natural Resource and Wildlife Preservation Organization (NRWPO) stand accused of extorting groups of loggers out of at ...

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday gave a talk to some 200 Cambodian youths in Phnom Penh, describing criminal investigation, especially in human trafficking and child prostitution. Various youth from across nine provinces attended the discussion, where they learned how they can participate in ...

Local watchdog groups say they have been forced to take forest protection into their hands, due to a failure of government to do so. “As we have seen: the National Assembly, the Senate and the government do not work,” Ouch Leng, head of the Cambodian Human ...

A national legal aid system is imperative and must be established to offset a widening gap between those who can afford justice and those who cannot, the representative for the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Cambodia said on Friday. In ...

Dozens of Cambodian prisoners were released by Thai authorities yesterday after serving 20-month prison sentences in Thailand for crossing the border illegally to log rosewood. The group of 37, all arrested within Thai territory on March 12 last year, were released through the Chaom Sangman checkpoint ...

As part of the investigation into the shooting of bystanders and unarmed protesters in Stung Meanchey two weeks ago, the weapons used by police officers at the protest will be collected and compared to the bullets extracted from victims’ bodies, municipal police chief Chuon Sovann ...

A US-based group of lawyers has launched an online campaign to raise funding to support a lawsuit against a UK company that bought sugar from a Cambodian plantations linked to human rights abuses. The campaign is being undertaken by the International Senior Lawyers Project, which is ...

An organisation made up of current and former elected representatives from across Southeast Asia has called on the United Nations to investigate the deaths of two people shot by police during protests over the past three months. In a statement released yesterday, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human ...