Chao Ratanak, Candlelight’s top candidate in Poipet commune, where her father once served as an opposition councilor, had no political experience until recently. If elected, she says she’ll draw on lessons from her father and her family’s migrant worker experience.
Kung Raiya has gone to jail for seeking a “color revolution” and later for selling Kem Ley commemorative T-shirts. The prison stints initially deterred him from being politically active, but with three weeks to go for the June election he is running for commune chief in Kampong Cham.
Twenty-five years after Brother Richie Fernando’s death, the floor tiles in Kandal marked by the grenade blast that killed him have been relocated. But the Filipino missionary, who has been touted for sainthood, is still remembered for his acts of kindness.
Through prison guards and unnamed NGOs, the wives and brother of three jailed dissidents have been told their imprisoned relatives have Covid-19, amid outbreaks in at least four of the nation’s prisons, the extent of which has not been revealed by the government.
Just over a week after Phnom Penh began a widespread easing of Covid-19 restrictions, Preah Sihanouk province has lifted red zones, Prey Veng is publishing photos of people who tested positive with Covid-19, and some provinces appear not to be releasing new infection numbers at all.
Foreign embassies and rights advocates have decried the sentencing of three members of an environmentalist group to more than a year in prison over their activism, with some, including the group’s founder, saying they should be released and their calls for environmental protection supported rather than criminalized.
With schools shut nationwide for the third time since the start of the pandemic, and university enrollment down slightly last year, students say they have struggled with finances and months of online learning, with some deferring their studies or calling for tuition reductions.
The World Health Organization’s representative to Cambodia said Tuesday that the country’s six laboratories processing Covid-19 tests were working at about 175 percent of their “sustainable testing capacity” of 4,000 tests per day amid the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak to date.
As Covid-19 infections spike and deaths begin to accumulate in Cambodia, a healthy dose of fear of the coronavirus, and rational responses to that fear, may help the country avoid the worst of what the global pandemic has to offer, writes Matt Surrusco.
Tenants of a Phnom Penh condominium complex spoke of daily life and frustrations during a monthlong Covid-19 lockdown, just as restrictions were lifted late Friday for most of the 800 people stuck inside. One floor remains locked down following a positive test two weeks ago.
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