News

Soldiers should not have been deployed in support of a warrant to arrest land dispute protesters in Kratie province in May—an operation that led to the killing of a 14-year-old girl by armed forces, a Japanese human rights group said in a new report. The report ...

A Chinese factory manager sparked a near-riot in Phnom Penh yesterday morning after publicly destroying two photos of the late King Father in front of hundreds of workers. More than a thousand employees of the Top World garment factory launched an immediate strike, and threatened to ...

A Ratanakkiri-based human rights worker charged by the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court with inciting ethnic minority villagers to protest during a 2009 land dispute with a private agro-industry company has been transferred to work in Phnom Penh. Pen Bonnar, Ratanakkiri provincial coordinator for Adhoc , said yesterday ...

Officials from Prime Minister’s Hun Sen’s cabinet yesterday accepted the petition of 110 Preah Vihear villager representatives seeking intervention in a land dispute with defunct NGO DARPO. Hun Sen cabinet member Nov Ra told villagers who protested in front of the prime minister’s house to return ...

Under dazzling white strip-lights, a production line of young Cambodians stitch, iron and fold their way to the day’s target of 820 two-piece children’s pajamas. These garments are destined for the shelves of Los Angeles, shop price $9.97. The workers, mostly women, start at 7:30 ...

Residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Borei Keila neighborhoods yesterday sprinkled a concoction of chili, salt and black rice into flames of a small fire in front of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to “curse” the court officials they accuse of unjustly charging and ...

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 ...

Throngs of protesters gathered at the Olympic Stadium yesterday, at times straining against a mix of police force barriers and riot shields in their effort to show support for jailed Beehive Radio director Mam Sonando, whose trial was beginning just down the street at Phnom ...

Police in Phnom Penh blocked all attempts by anti-eviction protesters to march out of the city’s Boeng Kak community yesterday, but made no attempt to stop a counter-demonstration against the marchers by a little-known association of tuk-tuk and motorcycle-taxi drivers. About 150 residents of the Boeng ...

More than 350 villagers from Preah Vihear province protested in front of the National Assembly on Friday, asking for support from lawmakers in their dispute with military veterans. The villagers, representing some 370 families in Kulen district’s Srayong commune, said that the land on which they ...

Prominent Boeung Kak villager and protester Yorm Bopha was yesterday jailed in Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, after she and her husband – en route to check for their names on a voting register – were pounced on by police in plain clothes in what ...

Dozens of women and children from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Woman’s Affairs yesterday to demand that the minister recant her claim that they had attacked police during a June 27 protest in which one of the women ...

It’s been marked by violence, fervent protests and a stream of recriminations, but now bureaucracy is hampering efforts to resolve the seven-week-long strike at the Tai Yang and Camwell factories, which supply Levi’s and Gap, a trade-union advocate said yesterday. Dave Welsh, country director of the American ...

Villagers from Svay Rieng province’s Krasaing commune have vowed to continue their protests to preserve a patch of community forest earmarked for clearing, despite receiving an official warning yesterday. Residents said it would affect over 2,700 people. ...

Garment factory owners have agreed to provide workers with an additional $9 in monthly benefits for transportation, housing and attendance in order to reduce growing protests in the sector, Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC) officials said yesterday. “We will provide $3 in attendance bonuses and ...

Thousands of workers from factories owned by Tai Yang Enterprise in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district blocked National Road 4 for more than seven hours yesterday to push the company to meet their demands. May Sopheaktra said workers decided to block the road after the companytried ...

After years of futile protests demanding their land back, villagers forcibly evicted by sugarcane plantations connected to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat launched a boycott campaign yesterday targeting the international firms that sell his sugar. Thousands of families accuse the senator’s plantations of forcing them off ...

More than 170 villagers in Banteay Meanchey province locked in a land dispute with a local company protested yesterday in front of the provincial hall, seeking land titles in compliance with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s recent titling project. The families say they had been granted a ...

Roughly 4,000 garment workers at a factory supplying clothes for U.S. brands Gap, Levi Strauss and Old Navy went on strike yesterday and threatened to march in Phnom Penh on Thursday to demonstrate against poor pay. The demonstration took place at Tai Yang Enterprises in Kandal ...

A dispute over territory in the South China Sea is once again set to hang over talks when China and the U.S. join in on a week of high-level Asean meetings that start in Phnom Penh on Friday. So far, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has ...

The U.S. has called on the Cambodian government to give fair legal treatment to the 13 women recently jailed for demonstrating against their evictions from the Boeng Kak area, according to a U.S. State Department spokeswoman. Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong met with U.S. Secretary of ...

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday gave authorities six months to end a spate of land disputes pitting developers against villagers that have sparked increasingly violent protests. Hun Sen ordered officials to visit contested areas and issue deeds to families facing illegal evictions, a move ...

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 ...

Violent land evictions, unlawful prison sentences, shooting deaths and crackdowns on peaceful protests are all on a list of allegations a human rights group is voicing concerns about this week. The Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee condemned the incidents in a statement released on Tuesday, calling ...