News

The Finance Ministry has sent a letter to well-known businesswoman Choeung Sopheap thanking her for paying her taxes on the highly controversial filling in of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak lake, and holding her firm up as an example of corporate professionalism. Though Shukaku Inc., which is ...

Representatives of nearly 200 ethnic Kreung families living in Ra­tanakkiri province’s O’Chum district on Tuesday filed a complaint with local rights group Adhoc, accusing a Vietnamese rubber company of clearing their ancestral land, local officials and a rights worker said. Chhay Thy, provincial investigator for Adhoc, ...

Amid reports that a second Cambodian has been killed this year by Thai armed forces while illegally logging in Thai border territory, officials had little detail yesterday on a government directive that is aimed at ending the international demand for rosewood from Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun ...

Economic land concessions remain a major concern, with more than 230 people arrested in 2012, an increase of more than 150 percent from the year before, according to an annual report by the rights group Adhoc. That means land conflicts have increased, Thun Saray, president ...

The National Assembly on Friday passed a law approving the government’s revenue and spending in 2011, drawing criticism from the opposition, which claimed the amount taken in by the government during the period was too low. All 77 CPP lawmakers present voted in favor of the ...

Rights group Adhoc has requested that the government cancel economic land concessions held by two Vietnamese companies in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, on the grounds that the firms are logging and exporting wood illegally. “Adhoc calls on the Royal Government of Cambodia to immediately cancel the ...

With Thailand threatening to oust undocumented workers, Asean must do more as a region to protect its migrant workers, a leading rights advocate says. More and more workers are crossing the borders between Asean countries, and the region looking to lower trade barriers, so workers need ...

After 28 years in the capital, eating like “a king” and enjoying the perks one receives as the son of high-ranking CPP officials, Sophal’s* move to the countryside was as jarring as it was eye-opening. Until the day in June when he traded his designer threads ...

More than 100 families face the loss of their rice fields over a social land concession that was granted to the families of military veterans in Stung Treng province, local authorities and villagers said yesterday. Seven families, who depend on their rice and mango harvest in ...

More than 250 ethnic Jarai families living in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district filed a complaint with rights group Adhoc yesterday, after local officials demanded that the villagers apply for private land titles to protect their property from two Vietnamese rubber companies currently clearing their land, ...

On the second day of his two-day visit to Ratanakkiri, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday cajoled indigenous minority members about their ready adoption of new technology amid the shift away from traditional ways of life, and extolled the benefits of rubber plantations over their ...

More than 100 people in Kratie province staged a peaceful protest on Sunday after excavators mobilized by a South Korean timber firm tried to clear and demarcate concession land, a commune official said yesterday. The company, Think Biotech, was granted 34,000 hectares of land on May ...

The Thai military shot dead two Cambodian soldiers from Preah Vihear province on Friday after they crossed illegally into Thai territory to log for luxury rosewood, officials said yesterday. Three soldier based in Choam Ksan district’s Sra Em commune crossed into Thailand’s Sisaketh province to search ...

The only man convicted in relation to a murder case that made global headlines, the killing of environmentalist Chut Wutty and military police officer, In Rattana, walked free on Friday, less than two weeks after his sentencing, rights group Licadho said. Ran Boroth, who was ...

The entirety of three protected forests are now classified as private land, an investigation from rights group Adhoc has found, along with tens of thousands of additional hectares of what has once been state public land In three cases, Adhoc’s findings show that entire protected forests ...

The number of new land disputes reported in the first six months of this year decreased by 38 percent compared to the same period in 2011, according to data released by rights group Licadho last week. According to the figures, which represent 15 of the country’s ...

Complaints of rights violations of migrant workers had increased more than 500 per cent in the first four months of 2012 compared with the same period last year, rights group Adhoc said yesterday. The number of individual victims of rights violations, mainly migrant workers in Malaysia ...

Rights group Adhoc yesterday said it had seen a spike in complaints from families of migrant workers since last year’s government-ordered freeze on recruitment agencies sending maids to Malaysia. At a press conference in Phnom Penh, Adhoc said it had received 141 complaints from the relatives ...

Seventeen villagers from Banteay Meanchey province’s O’Chrou district filed a complaint yesterday with the rights group Adhoc after their homes were allegedly unlawfully bulldozed in June last year. ...

Two Cambodian women escaped Thailand on Friday a week after being trafficked across the border and sold into sex slavery in a Thai karaoke parlour, according to the rights group Adhoc and Anti-Human Trafficking and Juvenile Protection officials. Tan Kimrany, an officer for Adhoc’s Women’s Rights ...

Sixteen ethnic minority families in Ratanakkiri province have claimed that they are being forced from their land after a commune chief signed it away, and that commune borders have been redrawn to dispossess them. On Friday, the families, who have been living on 30 hectares of ...

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a conviction against a staffer from the rights group Licadho for allegedly distributing leaflets insulting government leaders and the king, but changed the charge against him from disinformation to incitement. Leang Sokchouen was convicted in August 2010 for allegedly distributing ...

A rights group has raised concerns that up to 100 Cambodian migrant workers at a Thai seafood processing factory will be stranded abroad in less than a week without any income because they cannot afford to pay a passport fee demanded by their employer. Of the ...

The Cambodian Legal Education Center (CLEC), a rights group, is investigating a mother’s claim that her daughter is being abused and held against her will by her employers in Malaysia, Moeun Tola, head of CLEC’s labor program, said yesterday. ...