News

The Constitutional Council is planning to meet later this week to discuss amendments to the Constitution, including changes to an article guaranteeing the right for citizens to form organisations and political parties. ... ...

More than 30 families living in Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district yesterday protested against the work of a Special Economic Zone company owned by tycoon Ly Yong Phat. ... ...

At least three local NGOs have been called for questioning by the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s Taxation Department to clarify their tax payments, amid an aggressive tax collection campaign that has recently gone after media outlets the Cambodia Daily, Voice of America and Radio ...

Twenty-four inmates in Kampong Speu’s provincial prison – where five prisoners escaped earlier this week – are reportedly experiencing a combination of respiratory difficulties, coughing, skin rashes and swollen legs. ...  ...

Two human rights activists, who were summoned to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday over allegations that they incited an attack on two Daun Penh district security guards in October, asked the court to have the real perpetrators arrested. ... ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court issued a warrant yesterday summoning human rights activists Am Sam Ath and Chan Puthisak to court today on charges that they incited an attack on two Daun Penh district security guards during a World Habitat Day protest on October 10. ...

The Labor Ministry says that it is investigating fresh allegations of widespread child labor at the country’s brick-making factories, but claims to have found no evidence as of yet. The ministry made the announcement on Friday, hours after the release of a new report by local ...

Rhona Smith, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia, will start her 10-day visit to the Kingdom today, with plans to meet government officials, opposition party activists and civil society workers. Am Sam Ath, a senior coordinator for rights group Licadho, said he was ...

Ten former Borei Keila residents who were relocated to a site in Kandal province’s Ponhea Leu district known as Phnom Bat filed a petition with the Ministry of Land Management yesterday requesting they either be given $5,000 and moved back to Phnom Penh or be ...

Two days after Prime Minister Hun Sen told Phnom Penh municipal authorities to either improve the city’s notorious Prey Speu detention center or shut it down, a spokesman said on Thursday that officials had concluded that the “indispensable” facility would remain open. ... ...

Between 2009 and 2012, the Ministry of Environment went on nationwide leasing spree, signing over vast swaths of the country’s nominally protected areas to private companies for rubber plantations and other agribusiness ventures. ...  ...

Eight human rights officers and activists clad in black were arrested on Monday during “Black Monday” protests in Phnom Penh, the first in a campaign to free four fellow rights workers and an election official who were jailed late last month on charges widely believed ...

Human rights group Licadho has criticised the Cambodian Telecoms Law that came into effect in December of last year, saying it “poses a severe threat to freedom of expression”. ... ...

Authorities in Sihanoukville followed through with their long-threatened eviction of vendors from the end of the popular O’Chheuteal beach on Saturday afternoon, demolishing nearly 100 structures along the 2 km strip known locally as Ariston. ...  ...

The newly appointed minister of land management and urban planning, Chea Sophara, has announced a working group to handle petitions and complaints lodged by land dispute victims. ... ...

The nearly 1 million hectares of newly protected forests the Environment Ministry wants to create by the end of the year will add nearly a third more land to the portfolio of an agency already struggling to manage the 3.2 million hectares it has. And ...

The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications has defended the controversial new Telecommunications Law following a biting legal analysis by rights group Licadho, which says the legislation is a veiled tool to silence critics and potentially criminalize private expression. ... ...

Forestry crimes fell by around 9 percent last year compared to 2014, according to an annual report released by the Ministry of Agriculture on Friday. ... ...

Six senior police officials were last week promoted to the rank of four-star general, the highest possible title bestowed to a member of the security forces by the Ministry of Interior. ... ...

The Cambodia Confederation Development Association (CCDA), a well-known tuk-tuk and moto-taxi association, plans to lodge complaints against local rights group Licadho next week over a statement the NGO co-signed with 33 other civil society groups regarding the association’s involvement in a Saturday protest at the ...

The president of a tuk-tuk and motodop drivers’ association, whose members were recorded on video brutally beating protesting bus drivers over the weekend, said he would file complaints against prominent union and civil society leaders for sparking the violence his own group was accused of ...

Three local NGOs have filed a com­plaint with international sug­ar industry group Bonsucro for re­admitting Thai sugar giant Mitr Phol even though thousands of fam­ilies forced off the company’s for­mer plantations in Oddar Mean­chey province have yet to be fully compensated. ... ...

The Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction issued a statement on Saturday defending its track record and denying that Germany ended its support for the ministry’s land rights program due to a lack of transparency and sluggish reform pace. ... ...

Villagers in Cambodia’s Pailin province are accusing authorities of allowing a powerful local police officer to grab nearly two hectares of mountainous public land for his own use. ... ...