Government

The Joint-Committee on Electoral Reforms, established during a meeting between senior officials of the ruling and opposition parties last month, convened its first meeting on Monday to discuss topics for electoral reforms toward free and fair elections in the future. The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP)’s ...

British Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy Lord Puttnam will visit Cambodia from March 4 to 7 to strengthen bilateral trade and investment relations, according to a press statement from the British Embassy here on Monday. During his visit, Lord Puttnam will call on Prime Minister Hun ...

Austalian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has responded to one of her predecessors, Gareth Evans, who accused her of failing to deliver a “robust critique” when she met Hun Sen on February 22 in a Friday op-ed that excoriated Cambodia’s political leaders for abuses. In an interview ...

The Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit (PQRU) on Friday published an extended criticism of a speech made by opposition leader Sam Rainsy last week in which he promised his supporters that the political change that swept Ukraine’s president from power​​ would soon ...

Auditors from the Coca-Cola Company visited Oddar Meanchey province on Friday to investigate allegations of land grabbing against sugar plantations that supply the global drinks giant, but called off a community meeting because of a heavy police presence, an NGO said Sunday. Chun Bora of the ...

The leaders of 18 unions and union confederations this week will invite ruling and opposition party members to take part in a public forum where labour relations issues will be discussed. Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Confederation of Unions (CCU), yesterday said the letters have ...

Three parties – the Cambodian People’s Party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party and Funcinpec – were registered for the May 18 municipal, district and provincial council election as of Saturday, according to the National Election Committee. “As the deadline will close on March 3rd, I think ...

Authorities in Svay Rieng town are ignoring locals’ complaints over a Chinese firm that has allegedly been filling in a river in preparation to build a canal, villagers said yesterday. More than 130 families in Svay Teu commune, Svay Rieng province, have delivered petitions to provincial ...

Australia-based energy company Star8 officially launched operations on Friday at its solar-powered factory just outside of Phnom Penh. The ceremony marked the commencement of production on solar-powered tuk-tuks, the mainstay of the company. Hun Many, the youngest son of Premier Hun Sen, and Alison Burrows, the Australian ...

While a bipartisan election reform committee meeting today is meant only to discuss technical reforms and leave key political concessions to future top-level talks, observers yesterday said a lot more is likely to be on the table. That hope comes despite public barbs having been traded ...

Cambodia rejected a report of the US State Department, which attacked the government of Prime Minister Hen Sen for widespread abuse against human rights. The 31-page report highlighted a flawed and poorly managed electoral process in July’s general election process. The report raised a number of ...

Cambodia on Saturday began a one-month intercensal economic survey, aiming to update basic statistics on establishments and enterprises in the country.     Planning Minister Chhay Than announced the survey launching and called for cooperation among the public, particularly enterprise owners and local authorities in order to lead ...

The U.S. State Department on Friday released a damning assessment of the conduct of Cambodia’s elections and also took note of the “arbitrary and possibly unlawful” killing of a bystander by government forces and other human rights concerns in a report on human rights around ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday sentenced three men of six suspects to prison terms for their role in the September 15 clashes on Monivong Bridge between police and stone throwing youths, during which a man was killed and several were wounded by police ...

Cambodia and Britain signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to fight against cross-border crimes. “The MOU focused on cooperation between the General Commissariat of National Police and Britain’s National Crime Agency to fight against crimes and related violations,” said Kirt Chantharith, national police spokesman. ...

Two union representatives said that they were detained and “educated” Thursday for distributing leaflets calling on workers to participate in a nationwide strike next month. Yin Saroeun, secretary-general of the National Trade Unions Coalition, said police detained him and his colleague, Chuob Noek, at about 11 ...

A Phnom Penh municipal judge is expected to announce a verdict this morning for six people arrested in connection with a September clash at the Kbal Thnal overpass, a week after the verdict was originally expected. Authorities took the six men into custody at the overpass ...

Cambodia’s national election in July ranked 69th out of 73 elections held worldwide between mid-2012 and the end of 2013 for electoral integrity, an election research group based at the University of Sydney and Harvard University has found. The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP) collected assessments from ...

Though an occasional mango or pineapple can be spotted on Eung Uy Kheam’s sleepy farm in Kampot province, it’s the 130 durian trees that the fourth-generation farmer calls his cash crop. In Kampot, on Cambodia’s southwest coast, a pilot project led by the provincial Department ...

Phnom Penh’s murder rate was halved in 2013 as compared with 2012, but the same could not be said for crime cases across the board, which jumped a whopping 62 per cent last year, municipal police announced yesterday. “There were a total of 775 cases of ...

Cambodia is entering a new phase of economic growth in which the development of a skilled workforce will be critical to social stability and regional competitiveness, government officials and economists said Thursday at the 2014 Cambodia Outlook Conference. Delivering the keynote speech at the conference, Prime ...

A Chinese-owned company in Preah Vihear’s Tbeng Mean­chey district stumbled across an 8th-century sandstone carving of the Buddha while excavating land there on Wednesday, the provincial culture department said yesterday. Oug Vireak, a deputy with the culture department, said the firm Lan Feng had been bulldozing ...

Days after warning that his ruling party was as capable and willing to protest as the opposition, and threatening a barbed-wire fence in Freedom Park to divide the two groups, Prime Minister Hun Sen was yesterday talking multi-party reform. Speaking at the Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom ...

The Labor Ministry in a statement Thursday insisted that unions were still free to register as entities recognized by the government, a day after a ministry spokesman said that union registration had been effectively suspended for the foreseeable future. Free Trade Union (FTU) president Chea Mony ...