News
Detainees not being used for leverage: Yeap
A senior ruling party lawmaker has rejected allegations that the group of 21 activists, unionists and workers arrested during protests last month and denied bail for a second time yesterday are being used as a political tool by the government to force the opposition party ...
Meas Sokchea
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/detainees-not-being-used-leverage-yeap
Union reps fired after strike
Despite Cambodia’s labour law forbidding employers from taking action against workers for engaging in union activity, more than 100 labour union representatives have been fired from at least 12 factories this month for encouraging workers to strike for a $160 monthly minimum wage. The firings came ...
Sean Teehan and Mom Kunthear
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/union-reps-fired-after-strike
Impoverished Cambodians for sale
Many Cambodian women arrive in South Korea or China for marriage, only to find themselves being chosen as mistresses, say labour rights activists. While young Cambodian men, who travel to Thailand to work on fishing boats, often fall prey to drug abuse. Loss of land, debt, ...
Michelle Tolson
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/impoverished-cambodians-sale/
NGOs push for more international pressure
Civil society groups yesterday urged the international community to put more pressure on the government to ensure the safety of prisoners arrested in recent crackdowns and to prevent further police and military violence against civilians. At a press conference yesterday morning, images of soldiers beating and ...
Sean Teehan and May Titthara
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ngos-push-more-international-pressure
Despite bail, 15-year-old still in jail
A juvenile accused of destroying a police car during a violent strike by SL Garment factory workers in November remained in Prey Sar prison yesterday, despite the Court of Appeal having granted him bail. Sary Bothchakrya, a lawyer from the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC) representing ...
Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Daniel Pye
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/despite-bail-15-year-old-still-jail
Lawyers Prevented From Seeing Protest Detainees at CC3
Lawyers and human rights workers were prevented from entering Kompong Cham province’s Correctional Center 3 (CC3) prison on Thursday when they attempted to meet with some of the 23 protesters, union leaders and garment workers detained last week after protests were lethally suppressed by government ...
Kuch Naren
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/lawyers-prevented-from-seeing-protest-detainees-at-cc3-50395/
Police still mum on protesters
The whereabouts of 23 people arrested last week during a crackdown on demonstrations in Por Sen Chey district remained unknown yesterday, with prison officials and police refusing to divulge the information to family members and rights groups. ... ...
Sean Teehan
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/police-still-mum-protesters
Activist Monks, NGO Workers Held After Preah Vihear Protest
Prominent activist monk But Buntenh, head of the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice, was arrested in Preah Vihear province on Thursday, along with another monk and three NGO staffers who had traveled to the province to support a group of ethnic Kuoy villagers protesting ...
Julia Wallace and Khy Sovuthy
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/activist-monks-ngo-workers-held-after-preah-vihear-protest-49962/
Signed up for work, forced into marriage
An NGO is working to free two Cambodian women forced into marriage in China, a representative of the organisation said yesterday. Huy Pichsovann, program officer at the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC), said that the two women, aged 22 and 27, were enticed from their Kampong ...
James Hall and Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/signed-work-forced-marriage
Small-scale protests continue
A day after authorities carted away 11 protesters intending to camp out in front of the United States embassy, a similarly ad hoc group of citizens struggled to deliver petitions to three embassies in the capital yesterday. The group of about 50 were blocked by police ...
Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Sean Teehan
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/small-scale-protests-continue
A minor melee mars day’s events
A day of peaceful demonstrations gave way to an evening of unrest last night as a handful of protesters were removed from a small patch of land across from the United States embassy and a grup of uninvolved people threw Molotov cocktails towards riot police ...
Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Sean Teehan
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/minor-melee-mars-day%E2%80%99s-events
SL to reinstate fired unionists
The chief executive of SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) yesterday said the factory has agreed to reinstate 19 dismissed union leaders and activists, a sticking point which could end a strike that has lasted more than three months. Hours after the Ministry of Labour announced the garment ...
Sean Teehan and Mom Kunthear
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/sl-reinstate-fired-unionists
No consensus on next move in SL drama
After the management of an embattled garment factory this week refused to follow a government order to reinstate 19 dismissed union leaders and activists, unionists and observers are at a divergence of opinion over how the state should respond. “It’s fairly unprecedented,” Dave Welsh, country director ...
Sean Teehan and Mom Kunthear
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/no-consensus-next-move-sl-drama
Coca-Cola To Probe Seven-Year-Old Cambodian Land Grab Case
Declaring that it has “zero tolerance” towards land grabbing, Coca-Cola has agreed to investigate a long running case in Cambodia where villagers are seeking court action against a company accused of seizing their land to make way for plantations linked to the supply of sugar ...
Eurasia Review News Staff
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09112013-coca-cola-probe-seven-year-old-cambodian-land-grab-case/
Still at Large, Chhouk Bundith Has Case Sent to Appeal Court
Although the Svay Rieng Provincial Court announced the ex-governor’s sentence in June and ordered his immediate arrest, he has remained elusive to the authorities. His lawyers filed an appeal in July to the Appeal Court challenging the provincial court’s verdict. Sun Bunnarith, Chhouk Bundith’s lawyer, claimed ...
Khy Sovuthy and Dene-Hern Chen
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/still-at-large-chhouk-bundith-has-case-sent-to-appeal-court-40914/
NGOs Say ‘Rose Revolution’ Case Is Baseless
Rights groups on Monday urged the government to drop its incitement charges against four people arrested last week and accused of plotting to topple the government by handing out yellow roses to security forces and urging them to turn their guns against Prime Minister Hun ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ngos-say-rose-revolution-case-is-baseless-40188/
Workers paid out on doorstop of election
A month-long battle to secure back pay waged by 750 garment workers has ended only days before the national election – with the government footing the bill. The $450,000 payout to the Pine Great (Cambodia) factory workers – whose factory owner skipped town in April – ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/workers-paid-out-doorstop-election
UK Lawsuit Against Sugar Firm Heading to Trial
A lawsuit filed by families in Koh Kong province accusing U.K. sugar giant Tate & Lyle of wrongfully profiting off land stolen from them is heading to trial after efforts to mediate a settlement fell through earlier this month, according to those involved. Law firm Jones ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/uk-lawsuit-against-sugar-firm-heading-to-trial-35233/
Ministry, NGOs Meet Over Trafficking Report
Ministry of Interior officials held a closed-door meeting Monday with NGO representatives to contest Cambodia’s recent downgrade on the U.S. State Department’s Global Trafficking in Persons Report, which the ministry will discuss in a meeting with the U.S. Embassy this week. The annual report, released last ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ministry-ngos-meet-over-trafficking-report-32932/
Underage, Overworked
Child labour is being used at a footwear factory owned by the same Taiwan-based company as Wing Star Shoes – where two workers were killed in a ceiling collapse this month – numerous employees have told the Post. ... A former Ying Dong employee said the ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013052965915/National/underage-overworked.html
Trafficked numbers rising
Their stories have become all too familiar – Cambodian fishermen enslaved on fishing boats after being promised lucrative jobs overseas. They’re also becoming increasingly common. Anti-trafficking NGOs told the Post this week that they have noticed an exponential increase in the number of trafficking complaints from ...
Danson Cheong
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013052265773/National/trafficked-numbers-rising.html
Wage Hike Leads To Rent Fears
Cambodian Confederation of Unions president Rong Chhun yesterday appealed to landlords with properties close to garment factories not to take advantage of the industry’s minimum wage increase by raising rent prices. The minimum monthly salary in the garment sector – Cambodia’s biggest export industry – officially ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/2013051065555/National/wage-hike-leads-to-rent-fears.html
Sugar Firm Files Defense in Cambodian Lawsuit
British sugar firm Tate & Lyle has denied knowing of the alleged abuses at two Cambodian plantations accused of illegally driving hundreds of families off their farms and says that the families have no right to ask the company for compensation, according to the firm’s ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/uk-sugar-firm-files-defense-in-cambodian-lawsuit-21913/
Duty-Free Sugar Exports to EU Hit $13 Million
The European Union (E.U.) last year continued to import millions of dollars worth of duty-free sugar from Cambodian plantations that have forced hundreds of families off their land despite calls from European lawmakers for the trade benefits to end, according to the latest E.U. data. Thailand’s ...
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/duty-free-sugar-exports-to-eu-hit-13-million-18114/