News

The UN and human rights groups called on the government Friday to honor its obligations as a party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and thoroughly investigate the disappearance of 16-year-old Khem Sopath, who was last seen lying ...

Workers at the center of a land dispute between villagers in Kompong Chhnang province and a company owned by the wife of the mines and energy minister on Thursday pressed forward with a campaign against the release of five villagers who were imprisoned over violence ...

Local rights group Adhoc on Thursday called on Prime Minister Hun Sen and other government officials to hold regular meetings with NGOs in order to better understand the human rights situation in the country. ...

Ny Chakriya, senior official from human rights group ADHOC, said that freedom of assembly is hostage in hand of politicians. When they get along well with each other, the freedom of expression and assembly is widely opened. Chakriya said Thursday during a ceremony held to announce ...

To get his teenage daughter and niece on a plane yesterday after 10 months of alleged abuse and forced marriages in China, Kim Vicheat* said he had to bury his family in debt because the Cambodian consulate refused to fund their repatriation. The two 19-year-olds told The ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday lashed out at the rights group Adhoc, angered by comments rights workers have made about land grabs in recent years. During a speech in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen called a rights worker from the group “insolent and an idiot.” ...

Local NGOs are urging the new National Assembly to pass term limits for the prime minister, to prevent a “dictatorship” in Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun Sen has ruled Cambodia in some capacity for 30 years, but following discussions in Phnom Penh, rights groups and development NGOs ...

The number of people charged in land disputes across the country so far this year has already surpassed the number of charges in all of 2013 in what rights group Adhoc on Tuesday called an “alarming” increase in legal action against those wrapped up in ...

Hundreds of housing rights protesters and evictees clashed with security forces outside Phnom Penh on Monday, leaving at least nine people with minor injuries. The clash was one of the first since major violence over Freedom Park in the capital in July. Protesters gathered outside the National ...

Military police in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district on Monday were duped into letting a detained immigration official walk free just hours after he was arrested for alleged involvement in the cross-border illegal timber trade, police said yesterday. District military police chief Sok Min said yesterday that ...

Three men embroiled in a land dispute with a company owned by the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem were arrested Tuesday while marching with about 50 fellow villagers from Kompong Chhnang province’s Lor Peang village to Phnom Penh. The villagers planned to walk ...

An immigration official at the Ministry of Interior’s office in Ratanakkiri province was arrested yesterday, accused of illegal logging, district police said. O’Yadav police chief Sok Min said provincial court prosecutor Liv Sreng led military and police officials on a car chase that ended with the ...

Five hundred villagers in Preah Vihear province protested yesterday outside the office of FP Malaysia Plantation Company, which they say is attempting to take their land. Rith Sothon, a village representative in Preah Vihear’s Kulen district, said the villagers filed a complaint after the company placed ...

Phnom Penh city officials on Tuesday for the first time met face to face with former residents from the Borei Keila neighborhood, who have regularly protested since their forced evictions in 2012. Phnom Penh Governor Khun Sreng said the forum will work toward sorting out “real ...

Cambodia says it has asked China to restrict the number of visas it issues to single Cambodian women, to prevent the brokering of marriages to Chinese men. The appeal comes as an increasing number of Cambodian women are finding their way into Chinese marriages and becoming ...

The Foreign Affairs Ministry on Friday defended the Cambodian Embassy and consulates in China, which have been accused of ignoring female citizens in peril there, and said it has made efforts to cut off the flow off women being sold into brothels or forced marriages. In ...

More than a year after Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling program was suspended in the lead-up to the 2013 national elections, it has still not begun again despite government claims that the program would resume following the poll. The unfinished work left by student volunteers, who ...

Try Chamroeun, a 19-year-old student, was planting soybeans on Sunday along with fellow villagers on a two-hectare (half-acre) plot in Preah Vihear province, when soldier Poeun Tash demanded that he stop, claiming the land belonged to his military boss, according to London-based environmental advocacy group ...

Border police in Banteay Meanchey province were unable to stop 30 Thai farmers from plowing land inside Cambodia territory on Monday and had to wait for Thai officials to arrive and order the farmers back across the border, according to local officials. Prak Sarath, deputy commander ...

In what is the government’s latest pledge to hold tycoons and foreign investors to account for their business practices, the Ministry of Environment will begin assessing existing and proposed economic land concessions (ELCs), cancelling or rejecting those that have negative social or environment impacts, a ...

More than 200 residents from seven villages in Ratanakkiri province’s Taveng district have filed a complaint to the local Administrative Fisheries Department and two right groups over claims that rival anglers in the area are collecting fish in their protected lot by poisoning the catch. ...

Amid promises reiterated by the government yesterday that it will take a tougher stance on economic land concessions, logging tycoon Try Pheap minimally reduced his sweeping natural resource empire, returning more than 20,000 hectares of undeveloped forestry. It was unclear what kind of arrangement prompted Pheap ...

Desperate to cut down on illegal logging, Kampong Thom forestry officials are trying out a new strategy: disarming loggers before they can get to the trees by cracking down on chainsaw dealers and other sellers of equipment used to fell trees. On Sunday night, the Baray ...

A Cambodian woman who went to China to marry a man there was repatriated on Thursday after escaping from her husband’s house and finding refuge at the Cambodian consulate in Guangzhou. Yoeng Sreymom arrived at Phnom Penh International Airport at about 3:30 p.m. in the company ...