Banteay Meanchey environmental authorities arrested three people as they tried to distribute food donations to families embroiled in a land dispute in a protected area, where a local official referred questions about the dispute to the prime minister’s cabinet.
About 2,000 factory workers blocked National Road 6 over the weekend in Kampong Cham province, asking that they be given Covid-19 tests, be allowed to quarantine at home, and be paid 50 percent of their wages, according to provincial officials.
About 60 investors protested in Phnom Penh on Monday over money they allegedly lost to an embattled investment firm that once advertised links to business and ruling-party elites.
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.
Afraid of getting locked down inside a bicycle factory, an estimated 2,000 workers fled out of rear entrances, overwhelmed a deputy governor asking them to stay, carried their motorbikes through a pond, and scattered.
A prisons department spokesperson on Wednesday confirmed there were Covid-19 cases in Phnom Penh’s PJ prison but would not say how many, while the mother of a prisoner there said her daughter had heard of widespread transmission.
An Interior Ministry official said it closed a sexual abuse investigation against a Kampong Thom police chief after the accusers did not go to court, defending the ministry for failing to respond to three high-profile sexual assault and harassment cases in the past year.
Tbong Khmum, the nation’s youngest province, has faced a sharp crackdown against opposition supporters in the last several months, with at least nine activists in jail. But family members of imprisoned CNRP supporters say they will not be silenced.
An under-construction resort in Banteay Meanchey province allegedly began clearing an adjacent protected wetland and its flooded forests — designated as shelter for breeding fish — leading to the arrests of 11 workers, local police said.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday denied bail to five members of activist group Khmer Thavrak and two members of the Khmer Student Intelligent League Association, as the defendants urged that they had already been in jail for as long as nine months.
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