News

U.N. representatives from Japan, the European Union and Australia called on Cambodia to heed recommendations made in a report on human rights and economic land concessions by the U.N.’s envoy Surya Subedi at the Human Rights Council in Geneva Tuesday. While the E.U. commended Cambodia ...

Just two weeks after a journalist’s bludgeoned corpse was discovered in Ratanakkiri province, a human rights group yesterday identified two more recent cases of violence or intimidation against reporters in the northeastern province. The report from Adhoc said the pressure from local journalists has occurred alongside an increase ...

While protesters demonstrated outside, urging land and human-rights reform, members of the donor community met with the government yesterday at the Council for the Development of Cambodia in Phnom Penh to sign off on a series of development targets that bore only a faint resemblance to those ...

More than 100 NGOs and human rights groups yesterday urged foreign donors to flag issues regarding land policies, democratic processes and human rights during today’s Government-Development Partner Coordinating Committee (GDCC) meeting.   Intended as a preparatory meeting for Cambodia’s main government and donor summit, the GDCC is generally ...

An international rights group yesterday said the situation of human rights in Cambodia was continuing to worsen and accused the government of being “at war” with its own citizens over access to land. In its briefing paper, the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) also said that Cambodia was ...

More than 200 motorcycle-taxi drivers gathered in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park yesterday, for the third time, to protest against human rights groups who have characterized the recent arrest of two anti-eviction activists as politically motivated. The little known taxi drivers’ union, Cambodia for Confederation Development Association ...

Japanese Ambassador Kuroki Masafumi met with human rights workers on Friday to discuss land rights in Cambodia, particularly implementation of the law and the use of force in evictions, two of the participants at the meeting said. Adhoc President Thun Saray, Licadho President Pung Chhiv Kek and ...

A okyo-based human rights group has called on the government to cease forced evictions and branded the use of armed forces against ordinary citizens defending their land as an :unforgivable human rights violation.” Human Rights Now (HRN), which in June sent a team of Japanese investigators ...

A Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge yesterday approved a proposal to delay the case against human-rights worker Chan Soveth, according to his employer, Adhoc. Soveth has been accused of providing assistance to “specific perpetrators”. Although the court did not provide names, an anonymous court official recently ...

International human rights groups continued to rally around the local rights worker Chan Soveth on Friday, two days after it emerged that the Adhoc staff member summoned by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on charges of aiding an unnamed perpetrator with an unidentified crime. In a ...

A day after well-known human rights worker Chan Soveth was summoned by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court over charges of aiding an unnamed perpetrator in an unnamed crime, human rights groups issued a statement branding the charged as politically-motivated and intended to intimidate government critics. “We ...

Two local human rights groups filed lawsuits yesterday at the Ratanakiri Provincial Court accusing commune and village officials of defamation and intimidation after they disrupted land-rights training session last month. On July 26, a group of armed officials stopped Adhoc and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) ...

As questions linger over the fate of the independent Beehive Radio station in the wake of its owner’s arrest, a government official yesterday insisted there were no plans to stop it from broadcasting, despite its often critical stance toward the ruling party. “No plan to shut ...

The Foreign Affairs Ministry yesterday said Asean would not postpone its plans to approve a controversial human rights declaration for the region by November, and would publicize only “key provisions” of the draft beforehand. Disappointed by the lack of openness and concerned that the declaration will ...

A lawyer representing the three victims of the Feb. 20 shooting of workers at a special economic zone (SEZ) in Svay Rieng province has written to investigators asking to be allowed to participate in the case. Chin Lyda, a lawyer for human rights group Licadho who is representing the three ...

The Kratie Provincial Court has released on bail five of the eight people charged after a military-style operation by security forces on a small village alleged to be the home of a secessionist movement, a court official said yesterday. On May 16, a 14-year-old girl was ...

Relatives and neighbors sang, cried and pleaded outside the Ministry of Justice yesterday for the release of the 14 women and one man arrested last week for protesting against CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin’s controversial Boeng Kak real estate project. Worried by reports that the World ...

Ninety-one NGOs put their names to a statement yesterday condemning the government’s escalating use of armed force against peaceful protesters and urged the authorities to engage with them to “break the current cycle of violence and impunity.” Joined by local human rights groups such as Adhoc ...

About 200 people, including activist monk Loun Savath, rallied outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh yesterday in support of the 13 Boeung Kak women sentenced to prison in a three-hour trial last Thursday. Supporters of the women, including villagers, unions and human rights groups, called ...

The Svay Rieng Provincial Court on Friday questioned three female factory workers who were shot, allegedly by Bavet City Governor Chhouk Bundith, during a protest inside a special economic zone (SEZ) in February, the plaintiffs said. More than 20 union leaders and labor activists also gathered ...

Kratie city – Soldiers and military police yesterday blocked all access to a village where a 14-year-old girl was shot dead by security forces on Wednesday while the authorities launched a massive operation to evict hundreds of families from the area under a cloak of ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday issued a moratorium on economic land concessions, temporarily halting a long-standing policy of granting land to private companies and those with powerful political connections that has sparked growing concerns from national and international human rights groups. The prime minister’s announcement comes ...

Human rights groups yesterday decried the result of the government’s investigation into the murder of forestry activist Chut Wutty and military police officer In Rattana, saying that there were many holes in the official finding. On Saturday, the government committee charged with investigating the killings in ...

More than 300 demonstrators yesterday marked the third anniversary of the forced eviction of Phnom Penh’s Dey Krahorm community, one of the city’s most violent land evictions. Five international rights groups also sent a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen urging the government to stop land ...