News

The government says it seized less rosewood from illegal loggers in Banteay Meanchey province in 2014 than the year before thanks to stricter enforcement, following a meeting Wednesday to review its anti-logging activities in the area. ...

Dozens of NGOs are planning to boycott a workshop Monday to discuss the new election law, saying that the CPP and CNRP have not given them enough time to review the draft and that they do not want to give the event a veneer of ...

As police closed in on Montagnard asylum seekers hiding in the forests of Ratanakkiri province last week, Klan Hoeun, 42, said Wednesday that he knew he had to at least try to get the group to Phnom Penh, to safety. ...

The government has failed to meet its obligations in upholding civil and political rights, human rights groups have alleged. A report, released yesterday ahead of a UN Human Rights Committee session later this month, documents what the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and local rights ...

Thirteen Vietnamese Montagnards have been recommended for refugee status by Cambodian authorities, pending approval by the Minister of the Interior. Spokesman Khieu Sopheak added that the refugee status for the remaining 13 now will be considered for official confirmation. ...

A group of 36 Montagnard asylum seekers who went missing last week after they left their hiding places in the forests of Ratanakkiri province have been arrested and deported back to Vietnam, the U.N. and local villagers said Sunday. ...

A group of nine Montagnard asylum seekers hiding out in Ratanakkiri province had a close brush with law enforcement officials yesterday, even as a new group of the Vietnamese ethnic minority crossed the border into Cambodia, a rights group and a villager helping the hiding ...

Although the number of migrant workers who crossed to Thailand through the Poipet International Border Checkpoint decreased slightly from 2013 to 2014, the number of people who died while working in Thailand appeared to increase, a provincial official said this week. ...

A new group of six Montagnards from Vietnam have arrived in northeastern Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province to seek political refuge, as a United Nations team tries to locate and assist other refugees in hiding, a villager who provided shelter to the Montagnards said. The villager, who declined ...

Nearly two-thirds of surveyed survivors of human trafficking in Southeast Asia show symptoms of depression, while another 40 per cent suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a new study. ...

Rights group Adhoc is investigating the death of an opposition party activist this weekend in Banteay Meanchey province’s Poipet town. ...

Government spokesman and four-star General Khieu Sopheak has threatened to sue an NGO worker over his “false allegations” about Montagnard asylum seekers. Sopheak said authorities had only arrested “illegal Vietnamese immigrants”, and called on Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc and the ...

A rights group has asked the Cambodian government to stop harassing Christian Montagnards from Vietnam who are seeking refugee status in the country following the arrest of a family of five Montagnards in a northeastern province. ...

The number of Cambodian women caught in abusive marriages in China is increasing dramatically, according to rights groups, which last year helped repatriate nearly 50 brides who had been either trafficked abroad or lured by the promise of a better life. Local rights groups Adhoc and ...

Rights group Adhoc on Tuesday urged the government to work harder to help Cambodian domestic workers still suffering abuse from their employers in Malaysia or from the Cambodian recruitment agencies that sent them there, including 63 women the organization says have effectively disappeared. At a press ...

Hundreds of indigenous families from Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district have demanded the government cancel the economic land concession of a Vietnamese rubber company that they say is illegally prospecting for gold. About a dozen people representing 384 families handed a petition to CNRP lawmakers yesterday requesting ...

Sixteen local NGOs released a joint statement Thursday calling on Prime Minister Hun Sen to publicly repudiate National Military Police Commander Sao Sokha’s January 15 speech in which he said he learned strategy from Adolf Hitler. ...

Five sand-dredging operations in Ratanakkiri province – one owned by the provincial director of Public Works and Transportation – have been in business illegally for some 20 years, the rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Adhoc said that it uncovered the operations in Veun Say, Lumphat and ...

Human rights group Adhoc has demanded the release of a couple and their 9-month-old child jailed amid a land dispute in Preah Vihear, calling their arrest a “grave human rights abuse”. ...

The European Union will speak to Cambodia’s government on behalf of two communities in Battambang involved in land disputes, according to the rights group Adhoc. ...

Yet another Cambodian woman returned home from China yesterday after allegedly escaping her trafficker and the man she was forced to wed. ...

Representatives of 273 ethnic Bunong families from Mondolkiri province submitted a petition on Thursday to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s cabinet in Phnom Penh, seeking the cancellation of an economic land concession they say has infringed on their ancestral lands. ...

More than 200 ethnic families in Mondulkiri’s Sen Monorom town filed complaints to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s cabinet and the provincial court yesterday, asking for the cancellation of Villa Development’s land concession and demanding $500 million for allegedly destroying their resin trees. The complaint is the ...

A report from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has decried the killing of journalists with no consequences, listing Cambodia as one of several countries where members of the press have been killed since 2004 “with complete impunity”. From 2004 to 2013, 370 journalists ...