Factory workers in Phnom Penh’s Pur Senchey district gathered outside their village chiefs’ homes on Friday, petitioning to receive the documentation needed for a Covid-19 vaccine so they can be allowed back to work.
UPDATED 12:26 p.m. — Three Mother Nature environmentalists were sentenced to jail for 18 to 20 months for incitement over their activism, while two others, including the group’s founder, were also found guilty in absentia.
A woman in poor health had difficulty getting the care her family wanted in Phnom Penh over the weekend and later died with Covid-19 on Monday in a Kampong Chhnang hospital, only for her body to be turned away once again from a pagoda after villagers protested her cremation.
Only state media and journalists invited by the government can report in Phnom Penh’s Covid-19 red-zone areas, the Information Ministry said on Monday, explaining that public health was the first priority.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has suggested the country will move toward targeted lockdowns in small areas rather than citywide or provincial-level restrictions, as Phnom Penh’s lockdown nears the end of its third week, according to a government spokesperson.
Another 100 people in a Phnom Penh red-zone commune protested for food aid Friday morning, saying they were fast running out of food, only hours after a separate group nearby made similar demands.
Phnom Penh continues to see the bulk of new cases: 2,934 were announced in the past week. And Pur Senchey and Meanchey districts remain the worst-hit areas in the capital, recording 852 and 656 new cases for the week, according to City Hall data compiled by VOD.
About 100 residents in a Phnom Penh lockdown zone protested for food on Thursday night, according to a witness, as the local commune chief labeled the protesters an “opposition group” who are “not poor” and “give the authorities headaches.”
Orn Ratha, 23, a resident of Sen Sok district’s Phnom Penh Thmey commune, says he feels liberated after his area entered “yellow”-level lockdown from Thursday.
“They warn us that they will confiscate our cyclo and they intimidate and threaten us,” an 82-year-old cyclo driver said. “They do not know how poor we are — this is one issue. And another is starvation.”
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