News

Ahead of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s planned visit to Cambodia this week, local and international NGOs have urged Mr. Kerry not to sign any new bilateral agreements unless Cambodia vows to improve its human rights and democracy efforts. ... ...

Ministry of Interior officials will meet to discuss the internationally condemned Law on Associations and Non-governmental Organisations (LANGO) with representatives of the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia (CCC), officials said yesterday following a letter sent by the group to Interior Minister Sar Kheng last week. ... ...

Riot police and municipal security guards shunted a group of would-be mourners around Phnom Penh’s southern industrial precinct on Sunday morning as they attempted to mark the second anniversary of the day military police marched along Veng Sreng Boulevard firing assault rifles into crowds of ...

A rights group claimed yesterday that four additional people have been arrested over recent violent garment worker protests in the Svay Rieng province town of Bavet, although police officials vigorously denied the claim. ... ...

For many Cambodian victims of sexual assault, justice can be hard to find. Not only can it be difficult culturally to report rape and other crimes, but police and the courts are not necessarily well trained to deal with sensitive crimes. Add to that judicial ...

A Vietnamese woman imprisoned on child sex trafficking charges in 2009 received a humanitarian royal pardon last month, but only after she had been dead for more than a month, the rights NGO Licadho said yesterday. ... ...

Rights group Licadho says it is canceling its annual prison visits on international Human Rights Day, which this year falls on Thursday, for the first time in two decades in protest over what it says are new government restrictions. ... ...

Countless rape victims, many of them children, have been failed by widespread flaws in Cambodia’s justice system, which have led to a “disturbingly low” number of convictions, a new study by the rights group Licadho has found.In its report, Getting Away With It: The Treatment ...

Survivors of rape in Cambodia are being failed by a judicial system mired in corruption, where perpetrators can pay to have charges dropped and some victims have to marry their attackers, according to a report released Sunday. ... ...

Minister of Urban Planning and Construction Im Chhun Lim ordered all governors to check construction sites in their provinces to ensure that none are encroaching on public land, and to take action against those that do. ... ...

The government has handed out the first 250 land titles to the more than 3,000 families in a World Bank-funded project for poor Cambodians that has been criticized by a local rights group for sticking many of those families with unusable land. ... ...

The Ministry of Social Affairs yesterday announced that it would form a committee to address the lack of services available to the homeless and mentally ill. Yesterday’s meeting was precipitated by the revelation this week by rights organization Licadho that two more residents at Prey ...

More than a year after a Cambodian man accused of sorcery was stoned and beaten to death by a mob in his home village, his widow still struggles to understand the reasons for his murder and works to finish building a house he had dreamed ...

The Environment Ministry has reduced the terms of six economic land concessions (ELCs) to 50 years from between 70 and 90 years after seven of eight carbon credit investment projects were revoked. ... ...

Around 1,500 protesters marked World Habitat Day on Monday by marching through Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh and calling on the government to put a stop to forced evictions in the Southeast Asian nation. ... ...

Cambodian authorities are refusing to allow doctors from the human rights group Licadho to visit a jailed opposition lawmaker held at Prey Sar prison in the capital Phnom Penh, claiming the facility already provides adequate care, sources said. ... ...

The Svay Rieng Provincial Court has sentenced three community activists to five years in jail for clearing trees on state land claimed by several dozen local farmers. ... ...

Rights advocates in Cambodia allege government violations of the country's constitution are largely responsible for land disputes harming tens of thousands of families. ... ...

Cambodians authorities have cracked down on villagers in three forest communities, arresting them or forcing them to stop clearing land for subsistence agriculture, while companies, military personnel and the government continue to encroach upon the areas, according to commune leaders and rights group officials. ... ...

Rights group Licadho has called on the government to make available statistics on the full extent of economic land concessions (ELCs) in response to data collected by the organisation over five years. ... ...

More than 30 non-government groups have recently applied to register with the state or asked for changes to their current registration records, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry that hailed the requests as broad endorsement of Cambodia’s highly controversial new NGO law. ... ...

A deputy police chief of Koh Kong province on Thursday defended the decision by authorities to arrest four human rights workers and 13 other people during a peaceful protest on Wednesday and said they were prepared to do so again—and next time would not let ...

Police in Koh Kong province on Wednesday arrested 17 people—including four rights workers—near the provincial courthouse as protesters continued to call for the release of three jailed environmental activists, according to officials. The group was released shortly after 6 p.m. ... ...

Seventeen members of a Cambodian rights group and environmental NGO were briefly detained by authorities in Cambodia’s southeastern Koh Kong province Wednesday as they observed protests calling for the release of three activists held for interfering with sand-dredging operations, sources said. ... ...