Thai fighter jets carried out airstrikes on O’Smach town in Oddar Meanchey province on December 8, 2025, hitting areas long linked to online scam operations, according to local workers and witnesses.
Kep provincial officials cut down around 30 trees along the beachfront in the city and said this was done to beautify the area ahead of the Southeast Asia Games in May.
The ruling Cambodian People’s Party dropped a second lawsuit against former senior Candlelight adviser Kong Korm, days after he quit the opposition party.
More than 70 students at a Pursat high school have fainted over the last week, with some officials attributing the incidents to unhappy spirits at the school, whereas health officials said they believed the students were likely caused by minor health issues.
A former CNRP commune chief who was blocked from leaving the country last year had a retrial at a Phnom Penh court after she was convicted in absentia for incitement.
An Oddar Meanchey Candlelight official left the country with her children last year after she claimed security personnel attempted to take her life on three occasions.
The coming year will see hot and stormy weather for Cambodia, with the prospect of wars and disease across the world, according to the annual almanac.
Two people have died and three were injured after Sihanoukville’s Julie & Anna Entertainment Club caught fire on Monday night in Sihanoukville’s Bei commune.
Prominent unionist Rong Chhun joined the Candlelight Party on Tuesday, months shy of the national election and he expected a “big achievement” for the party in July.
Officials are studying the “legal aspects” of compensation with a Poipet casino after a fire killed at least 26 people while those trapped inside reported a lack of alarms, sprinklers and safety measures.
China is scrapping its travel bans starting Sunday, and Cambodia’s tourism industry is looking ahead to a return to the brisk trade seen pre-pandemic.
Bavet police have arrested four men for gun possession, including a suspect who works at an oknha-owned casino in the city.
Residents at a housing development in Phnom Penh say they have not been given land titles for homes and land they purchased from a real estate developer, alleging the company pawned their properties.
At least 19 bodies have been pulled from a Poipet city casino, including Cambodian, Malaysian, Thai and Vietnamese workers — and the death toll could double, provincial authorities said Thursday afternoon.
As Cambodia touted recovering trade and GDP growth, thousands took to the streets this year over repression at work or struggles in the market.
A man was “severely tortured” in a forest, extorted for $80,000 and required 15 stitches on his abdomen in a Sihanoukville attempted murder case, authorities said.
Mondulkiri prosecutors are questioning four people arrested after a confrontation between authorities and residents over an alleged land grab in Keo Seima district.
More than a quarter of high school seniors failed their final examinations in results posted across Phnom Penh and Kandal campuses on Thursday.
State security officers took photos of overseas protesters to find their families in Cambodia and question them — “and this is not a threat,” Prime Minister Hun Sen explained in a speech inaugurating a new road in Preah Sihanouk province.
A former singer at Phnom Penh’s infamous Rock Entertainment nightclub has been charged with financial crimes and could face years in jail over a tong tin savings scheme she claims went awry.
The Cambodian economy has recovered to pre-pandemic levels in several areas, but instability around the world threatens its outlook, a World Bank report said today.
The second of two defamation and incitement cases against a political commentator has resurfaced and was heard today in court.
Opposition party leader and agriculture expert Yang Saing Koma and a colleague met with Prime Minister Hun Sen to discuss plans to recover the agriculture sector, with a ministry official saying he will be offered a secretary of state position in the government.
Before NagaWorld union president Chhim Sithar was arrested for violating bail conditions by traveling abroad, she had already been on two overseas trips, with her lawyer unaware of the restriction.
New reports detail online violence, particularly targeting female journalists, globally, as well as increasing poverty in Cambodia due to the Covid-19 pandemic and economic slowdown.
The Banteay Meanchey police detained and demanded an apology from a civil servant who criticized the government for weak rice prices in the country’s northwestern provinces, days after the Agriculture Ministry warned against any critical social media posts about rice prices.
The body of a Chinese man was found in a local stream after the man’s girlfriend posted online that he went missing from Poipet city, offering a $100,000 reward to find him.
Footwear unionists in Takeo were summoned and questioned by military police after attending a Women’s Crisis Center training in Phnom Penh, saying officers asked who was behind them and warned them of illegal protests.
The anti-cybercrime police said it was investigating complaints of fraud against a football-themed investment that allegedly lured people to send money before cutting off their withdrawals, and urged caution around online investments.
The Environment Ministry has ordered provincial officials to fire the Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary chief in Mondulkiri province over alleged abuses of power, including threatening local people who were collecting firewood.
Though a five-year political ban is set to end on Wednesday, former opposition officials will likely have little opportunity to make a difference in the upcoming election, the politicians as well as analysts say.
Prime Minister Hun Sen is returning home from Indonesia after testing positive for Covid-19, he said this morning, noting he has no symptoms but will miss meetings with Chinese and French leaders.
Two NagaWorld unionists have been questioned in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court over breaking and entering, intentional damage and unlawful confinement — but they still don’t know what the casino company is accusing them of, they said.
Phnom Penh police are investigating a traffic accident that led authorities to find 200 kg of drugs inside a military pickup truck.
The Koh Kong court is questioning six suspects over the kidnapping and detention of a Malaysian woman, as local police said some foreign nationals and crime-linked operations were moving into the province as they “evacuate” from Sihanoukville.
Jailed forest activist Chorn Phalla’s wife said Phalla was getting sick in prison and asked for his release, though a prison official disputed the account saying there were doctors inside and the activist was fine.
A small group of hunger strikers was down to only one activist — fasting at home — due to security concerns and exhaustion by the time their protest action ended along with the Asean Summit.
Land protesters have begun camping out at a controversial lake, activists are undertaking a hunger strike, and unionists will continue their casino protests despite threats of legal action for gathering during the Asean Summit.
Hundreds of residents in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh protested this week over displacement due to an Angkor resettlement plan, the sand-filling of Boeng Tamok lake, and a road expansion project in the capital’s Russei Keo.
A soldier fatally shot a man on a Phnom Penh sidewalk after joining police officers in chasing an alleged thief, police said.
U.N. secretary-general António Guterres will discuss the climate emergency at the Asean Summit in Phnom Penh, while a new coal-fired power plant lights up Sihanoukville.
Female filmmaking trainees are speaking out about alleged sexual harassment at a Bophana Center training program — including inappropriate conversations on field trips and touching they felt uncomfortable with — saying they don’t want it to keep happening to other women.
Hundreds of hectares in Mondulkiri were sold to a major tycoon’s family for as low as 600 riel per square meter, a government document suggests, and is facing protests from existing residents.
Defense lawyers demanded the judicial police identify where Facebook comments used as evidence were posted from, in order to show they were really made by defendants in an ongoing opposition mass trial.
Workers say their scam companies moved before and during police raids of compounds, allowing businesses to escape the law — and some workers to escape detention.
An elderly lobby group is asking the government for free health services and financial support after retirement.
Indonesian nationals rescued from a Phnom Penh scam compound say they were targeting Facebook users every day to cheat them out of thousands of dollars. Most are relieved to have gotten away from the criminal work and threat of violence that hovered over them.
Officials have ordered the owners of about 57 souvenir and restaurant stalls near Angkor Wat to take down their stands and leave the complex by Friday, but vendors petitioned for relocation inside the park.
A Vietnamese man jumped from the second story of a Bavet city building and died trying to escape a compound on Tuesday, but it was not “detention,” police said.
CPP Ratanakiri lawmaker Bou Lam died on Monday of chronic illness, said a National Assembly spokesperson.
A Land Ministry official said development of Boeng Tamok in northern Phnom Penh was a higher priority than the water body’s preservation, adding that only a lake like the Tonle Sap was worth preserving.
The Ratanakiri Provincial Court has dropped forest-clearing charges against four indigenous forestry activists after a crime was not found, according to a rights group supporting the activists.
Candlelight Party commune officials in Prey Veng’s Svay Antor district said ruling party chiefs are not assigning them any work.
The website of human rights group Licadho was temporarily hacked, while the three Kampong Thom military police officers have been charged with manslaughter for a death in custody.
The Appeal Court upheld the conviction of nine people from two activist groups and the disbanded CNRP, who were convicted for incitement for their participation in protests following the arrest of prominent unionist Rong Chhun.
China Nationalist Party lawmakers in Taiwan have asked their government to do more to assist citizens trapped in scam operations in Cambodia, as rising reports of trafficking and forced labor push local legislators and governments to act across the region.
Protesting NagaWorld workers were able to breeze past police barriers usually set up to block them and were allowed to resume their protest outside the casino complex, as a visiting UN official observed them.
At least 13 former CNRP activists who were convicted in March for their involvement in the formation of the overseas CNRM opposition movement and for comments about the Covid-19 response appealed their sentences at the Appeal Court on Tuesday.
A train hit a car in Pursat province with no parties injured; four opposition parties unite to push reforms at the National Assembly, NEC and Interior Ministry.
Over 300 vendors from O’Russei Market in central Phnom Penh petitioned Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday to intervene to reduce their stall prices amid persistent economic effects of the pandemic.
The family of a Kampong Thom deputy village chief, who allegedly died in custody last week, has asked for a speedy investigation into the death, with around a dozen officers being questioned last week.
A Phnom Penh court tried former CNRP president Sam Rainsy in absentia for a 2013 video showing the opposition leader promising to uphold the rights of indigenous minorities residing in Mondulkiri, Ratanakiri, Stung Treng and Kratie.
The NagaWorld protests again turned violent as workers tried to move police barricades blocking them from getting to the casino complex, with one worker left with a bloody nose after the tussle.
Kem Sokha’s treason trial hearing on Wednesday was cut short by a judge after the prosecution and defense lawyers disputed each others’ behavior and tactics in court.
Officials introduced new plans to combat human trafficking in response to the U.S.’s decision to drop Cambodia to the lowest ranking in anti-trafficking efforts, in a meeting chaired by Interior Minister Sar Kheng.
Former CNRP commune chief and leaders were sentenced by a Phnom Penh court, while two Thai women appealed sentences for smuggling drugs.
Eleven Kampong Thom military police officers have been detained for an investigation into the death of a deputy village chief that occurred during a crackdown at an alleged online lottery cafe, said the provincial military police commander.
A prominent union leader has been warned for allegedly forcing NagaWorld casino workers to continue their protests, with the Labor Ministry letter threatening “punishment” if she continued her “illegal activities.”
The Forestry Administration issued a statement justifying rampant razing of Phnom Tamao forest, claiming the forest was inconvenient and a new zoo will be built in exchange.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday sentenced a senior Kampong Chhnang police officer to four years in prison for illegally clearing flooded forests around the Tonle Sap lake between 2011 and 2021.
Phnom Penh officials said they will begin reconstructing a road that collapsed into the Tonle Sap River in Chroy Changva district earlier this year, another instance of the riverbank collapsing due to erosion.
Police are preparing inspections of all foreigners’ accommodations to look for criminality and illegal migrants after the U.S. dropped Cambodia to its lowest rank for human trafficking, Interior Minister Sar Kheng said.
The Anti-Corruption Unit closed its investigation into a Kampong Chhnang ex-governor whose vast tracts of protected flooded-forest land were confiscated amid a crackdown on illegal encroachment.
Kratie residents sold cows and took out loans in a frenzy to invest in a get-rich-quick scam run by a local man claiming to be from a development NGO, losing tens of thousands of dollars before they detained the man themselves and handed him over to police, according to local officials.
A Phnom Penh Candlelight official was assaulted on Sunday and sustained a serious head injury, with CCTV footage showing potentially six assailants.
Nine Chinese men stood trial on Monday for alleged crossed-border drug trafficking to Australia and New Zealand.
Dozens of Boeng Tamok residents staged another rally near their lakeside shacks Thursday to protest looming evictions by the vanishing body of water.
Village residents in Siem Reap have sued four environment department officials for alleged destruction of property and encroachment, an allegation made last week against them and military officers.
Four Vietnamese nationals have been arrested for shooting and injuring a police officer in Sihanoukville last night, while the city saw a second roadside shooting around 1 a.m., according to police.
The army’s Region 4 has been accused of using nature protection to grab Siem Reap land, while Koh Kong villagers protested the questioning of a representative.
The Anti-Corruption Unit is looking into a complaint by an environmental group alleging irregularities in the privatization of forest land at Phnom Tamao in Takeo province.
A Vietnamese man died at a Bavet casino run by a Hun To associate, while 22 Indonesians were rescued from a few locations around the border town, police said.
Amid U.S. reports alleging Cambodia is giving space to the Chinese military at the Ream Naval Base, Defense Minister Tea Banh on Wednesday inaugurated construction on a major ship-maintenance facility there.
O’Smach commune was the exception to the ruling party’s near-sweep of Oddar Meanchey province in 2017. Even the sitting CPP commune chief admits: “People here think differently. If they have a problem with their leaders, they want to change them.”
Ongoing casino workers’ protests diverged slightly from its usual routine on Wednesday as the demonstrators were able to rally outside Phnom Penh’s NagaWorld casino for around 20 minutes before being forced on buses and taken away.
The Interior Ministry said on Wednesday that the Candlelight Party’s appointment of vice president Son Chhay earlier this year failed to follow the party’s own procedures.
A Kandal province factory is continuing to refuse to reinstate workers whom it fired as they were trying to start a union, and workers now want to take up the issue with the factory’s international clients.
The top NGOs registered to observe next month’s commune election have evident links to state officials — one headed by a prime minister’s son, another by a deputy prime minister, and a third by a ministry’s secretary of state.
Two ambiguously worded letters from CPP Phnom Penh members calling for polling station staffers to attend training have sparked concern from opposition parties saying the letters appeared to be inviting NEC officials to receive ruling party guidance.
If the Cambodia Reform Party were to win commune positions, it would work to empower the grassroots and ensure there is no corruption in the delivery of public services, said party founder Ou Chanrath. He had to contest this election because an uncontested ballot risked turning Cambodia into a “second China,” he said.
Labeled a “great achievement” for Cambodia’s post-pandemic recovery, the country’s biggest goldmine also exemplifies some of the challenges facing indigenous communities seeking to protect traditions. “It’s something very dangerous to lose culture, lifestyle and traditional practices,” one Bunong lawyer said.
Election campaigning will kick off on Saturday for the two weeks ahead of the June 5 vote, during which parties will be allowed two rallies per contesting commune as long as they stay within boundaries and give three days’ notice.
Prime Minister Hun Sen asked supporters to tolerate a shoe thrown at him in Washington, but pondered why U.S. officials didn’t respond to a violent action.
A sexual harassment trial against the publisher of the Khmer Times newspaper was held in absentia at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday morning after neither defendant T. Mohan nor a defense lawyer appeared for the hearing.
Phnom Penh police are investigating the death of a woman who fell from the 22nd floor of the Prince Central Plaza building early morning Monday in an incident that has shocked nearby vendors and residents.
The ongoing Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam were only the second time Cambodian athletes competed at the games in kickboxing, and the fighters had to learn to avoid using their elbows and knees — as they were trained in another sport, local martial art kun khmer.
A Phnom Penh factory shut down, fired all workers, failed to pay compensation, and began moving valuable equipment to another factory nearby, workers allege.
The opposition Candlelight Party told candidates to carry on competition against the ruling party amid lawsuits and disqualifications at a party congress on Sunday.
Cambodians abroad can vote in their country’s elections at embassy voting booths like Thai and Philippines nationals, suggests CEROC president Sophoan Seng.
A group of people have taken to social media wearing tax department uniforms and are suspected of attempting fraud, the department said on Thursday.
Candlelight commune chief candidates from Koh Kong and Pailin provinces have asked courts to delay proceedings into complaints filed against them, which the party has called intimidation tactics.
Cambodian authorities were tight-lipped over a raid in a Sihanoukville compound, but it was busy with police work and people gathered in its courtyard last week. Videos emerging amid the operation suggested Vietnamese nationals were waiting for rescue.
The watchdog group within World Bank sister organization International Finance Corporation (IFC) will assess a wide swath of the Cambodian microfinance sector after accepting a complaint alleging these lenders’ practices have caused social harms, civil society groups announced today.
Four women activists say they joined the frontline of Cambodian demonstrations after witnessing different injustices, finding both stresses and pride in their work.
A former CNRP official sentenced for allegedly taking part in gatherings to support exiled leaders of the former opposition group on Wednesday morning appealed what he called an unfair conviction.
A wildlife protection group says it is concerned by potential plans to clear hundreds of hectares of forest in a wildlife sanctuary for development.
Prime Minister Hun Sen wants health officials to consider relaxing mask mandates. The NEC released final commune registrations, with the CPP the only party to contest all 1,652 communes.
Unvaccinated travelers will only have to quarantine for one week, while the Tourism Ministry announced $275 million in New Year travel revenue.
Defense lawyers for treason-accused opposition leader Kem Sokha will ask foreign country representatives to appear in court and answer questions about allegations that Sokha conspired with foreign powers.
Retail at the facade of Angkor Wat is changing, as vendors transition from hawking at traditional shop stalls to an organized but stricter shopping center.
A group of convicted plotters appealed their sentences on Wednesday, arguing that an electronic device portrayed during their trial as a bomb detonator was insufficient evidence that they had violent plans.
A British man’s Cambodian wife said in court on Wednesday that her previous testimony accusing him of molesting their 13-year-old niece had been given out of jealousy and she now wanted justice for him.
A police official in Siem Reap province who is believed to have slipped into a crocodile pool when he got up in the middle of the night died from his injuries Tuesday afternoon, according to police.
A leader in a Malaysian political party estimated there are more than 300 of her country’s citizens still trapped inside online scam operations in Cambodia, as recently rescued Malaysian nationals began returning home.
Cambodian National Heart Party founder Seam Pluk is at a “safe place” as police investigate forgery charges, while a land activist fled a death threat.
Anger erupted in an Oddar Meanchey village as three youths aged 15 to 18 were arrested for allegedly raping and murdering a 17-year-old girl during the night after a New Year village dance party, police said.
About 200 factory workers protested on Phnom Penh’s Veng Sreng Blvd. for about an hour Tuesday morning after they learned that their struggling factory had removed valuable equipment from its premises.
Local police claimed soldiers were on holiday, not shooting at patrollers in a Kampong Speu community forest, as residents allege they were again targeted by soldiers last week.
Millions traveled around the country this New Year holiday as provincial officials and hospitality workers spoke of being surprised by larger-than-expected crowds returning for the first time in three years.
Police are investigating the suspected murder of a 17-year-old girl after she was found dead in a stream over the weekend with scars on her body, local authorities said.
Community forests and a timber company overlap on the land east of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, leading to competing interests and allegations of impropriety.
Within days of a rape allegation surfacing against a district police chief in Banteay Meanchey, the provincial police has issued a brief statement that it “completely denies” the “public confusion.”
Traditional games and dances, three major concerts, performances on the river, golf and boxing competitions — Siem Reap is bringing back the Sangkran festival next week, with one organizer expecting more than 1 million participants over five days.
Kampot education must build a “culture of gratitude” with a photo of Prime Minister Hun Sen in every classroom and a daily routine of bowing to it and giving thanks for the roofs under which students learn, the provincial governor has said.
Cambodian students are failing at Khmer language and Math at significantly higher rates post-pandemic — with bigger drops for boys and city dwellers — an official survey has found.
A former doctor in Pailin is facing two lawsuits after becoming head of the Candlelight Party in the province.
Activists who served jailtime delivered a petition to the Russian Embassy asking for peace in Ukraine, signaling their intent to continue speaking out.
The floating communities in Phnom Penh have been allowed three more years on the water, but the majority ethnically Vietnamese families say they have few options on Cambodian land.
The opposition Candlelight Party has been entirely stripped of candidates in 11 communes, but the national elections body is now done removing nominees for the June election, a spokesperson said on Monday.
NagaWorld protesters have entered a brief hiatus on protests until renewed labor negotiations this week, as social activists filed a petition with two ministries calling for an end to authorities’ violence against strikers.
Cambodian provinces could begin easing requirements to wear Covid-19 face masks, Prime Minister Hun Sen suggested in a speech on Monday, citing costs for people and the reality that many gatherings are already taking place without masks.
Every two days, a doctor comes to visit Heng Sophy to clean the acid burns covering her face, chest and arms, allegedly given by a husband who threw acid at her in mid-March after years of harassment.
After a Banteay Meanchey woman was charged for killing her husband, local police say they knew he abused her, providing an insight into domestic violence and lacking intervention methods.
The stalemate between NagaWorld executives and laid-off workers continued as a fourth negotiation meeting at the Labor Ministry failed to deliver a resolution.
More than a decade after they were put on halt, international adoptions are in the process of resuming, with adoptions pending to the U.S. and Italy, a Social Affairs Ministry official said on Tuesday.
Phnom Penh City Hall issued a statement insisting that images and videos shared on social media depicting authorities using violence on protesting NagaWorld unionists are “fake news.”
Four of five union negotiators returned to a meeting with NagaCorp and the Labor Ministry on Wednesday afternoon — all but union leader Chhim Sithar.
A video report alleging a Battambang timber factory was illegally processing luxury wood has landed a local journalist in court.
The mother of a 13-month-old girl has complained that a Siem Reap police officer bit and abused her child, according to provincial police.
NagaWorld union representatives said they will not attend the third negotiation meeting to resolve their dispute on Wednesday because the casino corporation refuses to discuss reinstatement of workers.
NagaWorld union leaders said the casino company was reluctant to discuss their demand for reinstatement of around 200 laid-off workers on Monday, as protestors continued to get detained over the weekend.
Japan hopes to continue “friendly” visits to Ream naval base, a spokesperson said; a mass trial of at least 40 defendants associated with the CNRP resumed Monday.
The National Election Committee has delisted 11 candidates for the June local election from two opposition parties, allegedly because they were illiterate.
Meanchey and Chamkarmon districts have started cleaning sewage systems last week, days after environmental activists identified seven locations in three districts where trash had clogged these canals.
Hundreds of people across three provinces and Phnom Penh gathered for protest this week, seeking official intervention for their respective challenges.
Union leader Chhim Sithar said she might have compromised too much in a letter made public this week asking workers to stop protesting to resume negotiations, which had been met with “disappointment” by union members.
In Kampong Speu, a forest-dwelling monk hoots to mimic animals’ cries and talks of living in harmony with nature. But the community forest where he lives has been handed to the military, and nearby residents are camping among the trees to protect the land.
At least eight NagaWorld workers were released from prison Monday night, according to local rights groups, hours after letters from them requesting bail were made public.
Eight jailed NagaWorld workers, including union leader Chhim Sithar, sent letters to the Labor Ministry asking its intervention to get them bail and called for their colleagues to suspend the strike to enable negotiations, according to the ministry.
Murders, kidnappings, corpses on the beach — news reports out of Sihanoukville paint a picture of violent and serious crime in the coastal city. But authorities are increasingly shutting down information about police work and pressuring journalists over negative stories, crime reporters say.
Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng is expected to head a high-level meeting on Wednesday to discuss the nearly three-monthlong NagaWorld protests.
Public and official attention on gender issues in Cambodia has followed a boom and bust cycle: Viral cases of abuse lead to temporary political goodwill, with little sustained progress. But citizens’ voices can move powerful people, writes researcher Theang Soriya.
A web of powerful interests surrounds sites of trafficking and forced labor in Sihanoukville: Its notorious “Chinatown” area is dotted with businesses linked to prominent tycoons and high-ranking officials; another heavily guarded compound is owned by a ruling-party senator.
In Kampong Speu’s Sre Ken village, an 18-year-old’s alleged murder of his stepfather was met with sympathy. “Nobody disliked him,” a resident said of the 18-year-old. “But mostly we wished [the stepfather] would die.” The older man had been suspected of using black magic.
Daily Covid-19 cases hit 500 on Monday as Phnom Penh officials set off to remind restaurants to keep up health precautions on Valentine’s Day evening. No significant changes in health measures have been announced so far.
Cambodia has opened its arms to foreign businesses through special economic zones, which offer investors space, tax incentives and relatively cheap labor. As such zones expand, unions are trying to access the factories behind SEZ gates, as labor compliance sometimes falls by the wayside.
Kampong Speu resident Sam Sokha — who spent four years in prison for throwing a sandal at a CPP billboard — paid about $2,500 in court fines on Thursday and will not have to return to prison, said a court prosecutor.
Under a white and yellow tent in Phnom Penh’s Chbar Ampov district, female dancers clad in traditional attire danced as part of a blessing ceremony at the party congress of the beleaguered royalist Funcinpec party.
Three NagaWorld protesters who were arrested on Saturday have been charged for obstruction under the Covid-19 Law. Three U.N. rapporteurs said they were concerned over the killing last November of a CNRP activist in Phnom Penh.
Global unions and federations expressed their support and protested the arrest and termination of NagaWorld workers on Monday, as daily rallies came to a halt after authorities ordered all workers to isolate for seven days.
UPDATED 9:52 p.m. — At least two NagaWorld union members have been arrested Saturday evening, according to police, following Covid-19 testing of more than 200 protesters.
Police blocked NagaWorld strikers from leaving their daily rally late Friday afternoon, saying they needed to be tested for Covid-19. An earlier positive test for a woman — who said she has not attended the protests since January 15 after finding out she was pregnant — led to a strong health response on Friday.
The sale of cosmetics is booming online. But the Health Ministry is routinely alerting the public of the risks of unregistered products that have not been tested for their toxicity, while medical professionals warn of long-term risks.
The government continued its land privatization drive by allocating more than 400 hectares of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Tamok to businesspeople and the National Election Committee, leaving little of the lake.
The U.N. raised concern about the upcoming national internet gateway, while the World Bank urged Cambodia to shift economic policies to diversify and become more productive.
Salt flats workers say they are barely earning enough to keep their children in school, fueling fears that they will have to pull their children from school — much like their parents did decades ago.
The Grassroots Democratic Party has promised to cut down the number of ministries and bureaucrats to cut costs in a new policy document released ahead of the commune elections.
In a monologue debating against unnamed analysts, Prime Minister Hun Sen dismissed criticisms that Cambodia was not fully at peace due to ongoing social injustices.
Three community representatives involved in a long-running dispute with the energy minister’s wife were taken into police custody over the weekend in relation to a separate dispute, residents said.
On paper, the protected biosphere reserve around Tonle Sap lake is a flooded forest. But across vast tracts in Kampong Chhnang, there are only rice fields or uncultivated wetlands, bare of any substantial trees. Decades of encroachment have only accelerated in recent years.
Five Banteay Meanchey farmers appealed their five-year prison sentences over encroachment of nearly 2,000 hectares at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, though major elements of the case remained unclear even during the appeal.
An outburst quickly turned into apology in a Siem Reap constituency where a deputy commune chief was not elevated to run for the chief position in the June local elections.
CNRP leader Kem Sokha’s defense team argued in court on Tuesday that the prosecution’s repeated use of video evidence did not prove the charge of treason and was only prolonging the trial.
An Interior Ministry official said Cambodia was studying foreign interference laws, pointing to Cham invasions of ancient Cambodia, while a human rights advocate worried about “color revolution” labels.
A French Appeal court indicted senior Bodyguard Unit generals Hing Bun Heang and Huy Piseth for their involvement in the 1997 grenade attack targeting a Sam Rainsy rally.
Speculation has been rife about whether the resumption of Sokha’s trial — nearly two years after it was stopped due to Covid-19 — signaled an imminent political deal that could see the former CNRP president return to politics.
Nine of the 10 trucks that enter one Takeo village daily are still dumping trash in a 1 hectare field, despite a deal struck earlier this month between the district and company to first incinerate everything in a furnace, residents said.
Currently, five Cambodian ambassadors are women. Those like Pech Puthisathbopeaneaky, who is general consul in Hong Kong, are at the frontiers of equitable foreign policy, changing perceptions of diplomacy as a man’s job, writes Marie Kepler.
The Interior Ministry said an international lawyer assisting CNRP-linked Seng Chan Theary had damaged Cambodia’s honor when attending her trial. The lawyer says he was only attending a friend’s trial hearing.
As a treason trial against former opposition leader Kem Sokha resumed on Wednesday after a delay of nearly two years, lawyers attacked each other over the postponement, while the defendant said he had believed a reconciliation was in the cards.
International labor groups criticized NagaWorld’s “long-standing failure” to respect workers’ rights and authorities’ “undue interference” of a legitimate strike, as one representative said the groups would bring the dispute before the ILO and Asean, and affiliated workers overseas would also look to exert pressure.
Less than five months to commune elections, the ruling CPP and minor opposition parties are pointing to agriculture as key planks of their agendas, many echoing a desire to increase investment in farms and “find markets” for exports.
A woman sentenced for 16 years for trafficking women to work in Malaysia appealed her sentence on Tuesday, while a Takeo prosecutor urged the Appeal Court to issue heavier sentences for two men convicted of raping their under nieces.
A recording between reformed ruling party celebrity Thy Sovantha and former CNRP South Korea leader Yin Sinorn is old and not related to the court’s decision to drop Sinorn’s charges, he said.
Som Sophea witnessed NagaWorld grow from a cruise ship to a sprawling casino complex. The company recognized her for two decades of service, but fired her during year 26. One month into a labor strike, Sophea says she wants respect for longtime employees.
After almost two years of break, VOD looks back at coverage of former opposition leader Kem Sokha’s trial for alleged attempts to topple the government with foreign assistance.
The Mekong river endured three years of drought and its lowest-ever water levels due to minimal rainfall as well as the actions of upstream hydropower dams, which had spillover effects for the Tonle Sap lake and Cambodia’s fishing industry that relies on it, according to a new report.
NagaWorld workers started submitting petitions to embassies, asking 14 foreign delegations to monitor rallies and raise the labor dispute and unionists’ arrests to high-level Cambodian officials, as participants say they’re experiencing strike fatigue.
A two-star police general and two associates who were sentenced to 18-months in prison for having drinks during the Covid-19 lockdown last April pleaded for sentence reductions at the Supreme Court on Monday.
While a government news agency touted Prime Minister Hun Sen’s visit to Myanmar, Singaporean and Malaysian officials were unsettled by the Asean chair’s interaction with the military regime.
Active employees of NagaWorld on strike are getting phone calls from the casino asking them to return to work. Audio recordings of the calls heard by VOD reporters have casino management calling it the “last call.”
The Supreme Court has asked a lower court to reconsider a seven-year prison sentence handed to a former military police officer who was convicted for killing a person outside a mini-mart in Phnom Penh.
His brother and mother were understanding when he came out, but some friends told him to change. For Kamsort, 23, the teasing questions have become tiresome. He says a gay marriage law will help change mindsets, as Rainbow Community Kampuchea embarks on a campaign for change.
A Chinese businessman wanted a child in 2017 and paid a Chinese company to find him a surrogate. The surrogate, who was in Cambodia, gave birth to the child. But after the businessman arrived here to receive the baby, he was arrested for trafficking and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The Appeal Court on Tuesday upheld one-year jail sentences against two former opposition activists for incitement and insult after they criticized the distribution of Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccines in Cambodia before they were approved by the WHO.
Alleging renewed large-scale illegal logging, environmentalists around the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary said authorities should take action to stop deforestation before it was too late, just as officials had reclaimed 60,000 hectares of protected flooded forests around the Tonle Sap lake.
NagaWorld union members admonished the Labor Ministry during an impromptu press conference on Monday, accusing labor officials for disregarding calls to release jailed union leadership as a precondition to restart negotiations.
The Health Ministry announced fourth-dose Pfizer booster vaccinations for select groups starting Friday at national hospitals.
Even with top union leadership imprisoned on incitement charges, the NagaWorld labor strikers who continued their protest this week have shown no signs of backing down. Part of that comes down to basic scheduling.
Protesters in Myanmar have turned their ire against Prime Minister Hun Sen by bombarding his Facebook page with abusive comments and burning images of him as he visited the country on Friday.
The CPP has long heralded “Victory Over Genocide Day” as the second birthday of the country after the dark rule of the Khmer Rouge. But the lack of a public event on a day also branded as pro-Vietnamese hints at changing politics in addition to Covid-19 precautions.
Hun Sen is set to meet with Myanmar’s military junta leadership on Friday even as pressure mounts on the Cambodian prime minister to refrain from taking unilateral actions as the chair of Asean.
NagaWorld union leader Chhim Sithar spent the days before her arrest getting the people around her ready. “The most concerning is my mom’s feelings. She might get sick, but sorry, mom, that will not stop me,” she said of not backing down. “They worry but they know what I’m doing is the right thing to do.”
A press conference Tuesday morning at the Phnom Penh Municipal Police headquarters about NagaWorld workers’ arrests barred reporters from several news organizations, including VOD.
UPDATED 6:03 p.m. — Just before 4 p.m., Chhim Sithar was arrested by police officers on National Assembly Road, outside the Australian Embassy, as she entered barricades cordoning off the workers’ rally.
The government is in debt to the Ly Chhuong construction company due to a series of infrastructure projects given to the company without a bidding process, with payments deferred in a “build first, settle later” racket, the prime minister said.
Striking casino workers resumed their protests outside Phnom Penh’s NagaWorld casino this afternoon following the arrests of 10 people on New Year’s Eve, as police appeared to make several immediate arrests again on Monday.
Authorities arrested a ninth NagaWorld union members late Friday, with authorities and armed security personnel attempting to make more arrests but were prevented by casino workers who formed a human shield to block officials.
Police have detained at least eight NagaWorld union members on the evening of December 31, nearly two weeks after the casino workers’ union initiated a strike against alleged unfair dismissals and violations of the Labor Law.
Fishers say their daily catch has plunged again. According to researchers, disturbances to Mekong water flows due to hydropower dams and climate change have disrupted fish habitats, breeding grounds, abundance and diversity.
As accusations of forced labor and confinement at scam operations across Cambodia come to the fore, two Thai nationals spoke to VOD about how they were detained and duped into scamming other people at sites in Poipet and Sihanoukville.
As a strike at Phnom Penh’s monopoly casino enters its second week, NagaCorp will take into consideration the workers’ demand to reinstate nearly 300 employees, including top union leaders, a union representative said on Friday.
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s eldest son and deputy military commander will be the ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s next prime ministerial candidate when his father decides to relinquish power, the party decided on Friday, according to the Information Ministry.
Ruling party also expected to choose two new vice presidents, possibly hear members of recently proposed, younger cabinet-in-waiting.
As the mass trial of CNRP officials continued Thursday, National Police investigators called to testify repeatedly tried to avoid answering basic questions about how they built a case against defendants, claiming the process was “technical” and that revealing it could jeopardize national security
The second day of negotiations between NagaWorld union organizers, the management of the Hong Kong-listed company and Phnom Penh city officials ended with no results as workers wrapped up a fifth, foggy day on strike in front of the casino complex.
On Wednesday, a judge rejected appeals from two plaintiffs and four defendants imprisoned through their connection to the failed biofuel venture headed by British businessman and alleged fraudster Gregg Fryett.
A CNRP member and one party activist appealed their incitement and insult convictions at the Appeal Court on Tuesday, after they were convicted in July for comments made about Covid-19 and vaccines.
Military police officials arrested 12 individuals linked to a robbery at the home of an online cosmetics seller in Phnom Penh, with local media reports identifying small party founder Sok Sovann Vathana Sabung as one of the arrested people.
Accusations of foreign influence made against a local casino workers’ union mirror rhetoric deployed by government officials over the last few years to justify charges of treason, foreign interference and of a purported color revolution against the political opposition, activists and civil society groups.
Breaking its silence, NagaCorp released a statement on Sunday and claimed that a workers’ strike in Phnom Penh, which has lasted three days, would not affect the casino’s operations.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday announced the “end” of the February 20 community transmission, which has resulted in more than 3,000 reported deaths, even as the Omicron variant of the virus registered two more cases in the country on Sunday.
Cambodian civil society figures say they have had limited to no interaction with Facebook over the past few years, despite the social media platform claiming it has a network of NGO contacts in the country.
Around 200 workers have resumed their strike against alleged labor rights violations and mass terminations at NagaWorld casinos in Phnom Penh.
Nagaworld’s union called for an investigation into a Facebook account that accused the casino workers’ union of being backed by foreigners and said these claims were fake.
Casino workers returned to protest outside NagaWorld 1 on Sunday but have been blocked by local authorities who have barricaded all streets leading to the casino.
A former Cambodian consul general to China was convicted of money laundering Friday morning for purchasing and not declaring a condominium in Phnom Penh, adding to an existing prison sentence for corruption-related offenses.
A lawyer representing two former Cambodia Daily reporters was hopeful the Tbong Khmum Appeal Court would uphold a lower court decision to drop incitement charges against them after a prosecutor said there was no new evidence to reinstate the charges.
Just one of 13 summoned defendants was present at the fifth hearing in a trial involving more than 40 former opposition members charged with plotting and incitement, as questioning again fell into a familiar pattern about links to the CNRP and overseas trainings.
Following Prime Minister Hun Sen’s command two weeks ago to stop the Tonle Sap’s destruction, provincial governors say they have retaken thousands of hectares of protected flooded forests but are still working on investigating perpetrators.
Eighty tons of ketamine precursors have been found following a fatal shootout and seizure of 1.4 tons of the drug that led authorities to a Kampong Speu lab, where a prominent agroindustrial company said it was merely leasing facilities within the same compound.
With their case reaching a French appeal court today, a Bunong community says their claims to land are in contention, while villagers say debt and wage labor are supplanting their traditions.
An international rights group has criticized the local Australian Embassy for participating in an event involving the military’s Brigade 70, which has been accused of being part of a grenade attack in 1997 against Sam Rainsy, among other alleged rights violations.
Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered the military to inventory all U.S.-origin weapons currently in use and to either store or destroy them, a quick reaction to the U.S. placing an arms embargo on Cambodia.
The United States was not against engagement with Myanmar’s junta, said a senior State Department official Friday evening, though it had to be a “purposeful” engagement.
Prime Minister Hun Sen added further intrigue over his plans to transfer power to his son by calling for a CPP congress in late December to select a “successor” and to approve future cabinet members.
An Interior Ministry employee, jailed for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government with the CNRP, pleaded his innocence on Thursday and reaffirmed his “love” for the government, as a Phnom Penh court resumed a trial against opposition members.
The United States imposed an arms embargo on Cambodia for alleged rights violations and increasing Chinese military influence in the country, specifically targeting a military intelligence unit run by the prime minister’s son.
Prime Minister Hun Sen doubled down on plans to visit Myanmar in January, insisting that he wanted to return the Asean regional block to 10 members and for that he needed to deal with the junta-led government.
The funeral of Norodom Ranariddh, the first prime minister of Cambodia, passed smoothly Wednesday morning with pomp, circumstance and little participation from the public.
Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Tuesday posted an unsigned letter to his Facebook page supporting any CPP decision on the party’s next prime ministerial candidate, but did not explicitly name Hun Sen’s son and heir apparent Hun Manet.
As Prime Minister Hun Sen mounts bilateral talks with the Myanmar junta, analysts are skeptical a so-called “win-win” approach will find any traction amid Myanmar’s post-coup turmoil.
Families from Kandal’s Ampov Prey commune protested outside the commune hall demanding that they receive compensation for communal land that is now being used by the new Phnom Penh international airport development.
Sar Kheng has not endorsed Hun Manet as Prime Minister Hun Sen’s likely successor, making him the lone holdout among the 10 deputy prime ministers. His nine peers have all signed onto public statements of support for Hun Sen’s eldest son.
Two CNRP mass trials involving dozens of defendants are set to be heard at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court this week after being delayed by the “February 20” Covid-19 outbreak earlier this year.
The king will light the fire for late Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s cremation Wednesday after funeral ceremonies for the former prime minister.
Hundreds of congratulatory messages supporting Hun Sen’s decision to anoint Hun Manet as the next prime minister flooded Fresh News, including letters of support from cabinet ministers down to district governors.
A Thai lawyer assisting detained Cambodian monk Bor Bet said Thai officials had indicated that they would not immediately deport him and that he was still in immigration detention.
In his most clear comments about succession, Prime Minister Hun Sen said his oldest son and army commander Hun Manet would take over from him, while shooting down any chances of rumored prime ministerial hopeful and Interior Minister Sar Kheng’s ascension.
Bor Bet urged Thai authorities to respect his refugee status. He asked his supporters to remain resilient and that he had not lost hope.
Kem Sokha’s comments stirred a flurry of speculation and commentary online, with armchair political analysts in and outside the country trying to make sense of what this meant for the CNRP — once the most credible political threat to the CPP’s stranglehold on power.
Four defendants linked to British businessman Gregg Fryett appealed their prison sentences and fines on Tuesday, claiming that they had nothing to do with the forgery of documents.
Hun Sen launched into a tirade on Sunday against alleged “anarchic deforestation” along the Tonle Sap lake, even ordering the use of the “infantry, navy, and helicopters” to crackdown on land grabbing and encroachment.
Omicron, which was first detected in southern Africa earlier this month, has shown signs of quickly spreading through populations. The WHO was notified of the variant on Wednesday based on a sample collected in South Africa on November 9.
“Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha are not the same person,” Sokha’s Facebook post said, asking that Rainsy and his colleagues stop using him to push their campaigns.
Funcinpec leader and former prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh died Sunday morning, according to the Funcinpec Party, capping off a turbulent political career that coincided with the country’s emergence as a fledgling democracy in the early 1990s.
While Licadho wanted platforms like Facebook to provide more access to safety features for Khmer-language users, the tech giant said these services were already available to Cambodians.
Mondulkiri has been a hotbed for illegal land grabs and land speculation. Interior Minister Sar Kheng in October warned local officials from engaging in land grabs and corruption.
Court documents show that Botha was arrested at the Phnom Penh International Airport in September 2016 after traveling from Brazil to Cambodia, via Dubai and Thailand. He was found with nearly 600 grams of cocaine in his stomach.
An imprisoned man who has maintained his innocence for nearly a decade after being convicted for the murder of his uncle again denied the charge against him during his retrial Thursday morning at the Appeal Court.
Military police say they caught a man who confessed to killing a CNRP youth activist outside Chroy Changva’s Wat Chas over the weekend, but questions remain over the accused’s motive.
ABA Bank suffered widespread outages in its services on Thursday, especially its popular mobile and payment application, after a scheduled system upgrade went awry Wednesday night.
A group of young Cambodian women and diversity movements is highlighting a wide range of gender violence and equality issues over a 16-day campaign using surveys and social media storytelling.
NagaWorld workers and union leaders who have refused to accept termination are planning rallies and urging a strike next month, vowing to continue until the casino company’s management addresses their current and unsolved grievances.
Military police spokesperson Eng Hy said Cambodian and Thai authorities had rescued 103 Thai nationals from a Pursat province special economic zone on Tuesday morning and brought the individuals across the border on Wednesday morning.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Tuesday he would deal with “extremists” – a thinly-veiled reference to the CNRP – before considering handing over power to the “younger generation.”
A former CNRP commune chief was extradited from Thailand and sent to pre-trial detention over an incitement charge, despite having being recognized as a refugee.
Poor students were forced to find work to help their families through the pandemic. Now that schools have reopened, some may never step into a classroom again.
UPDATED 2:45 p.m. — An opposition activist was killed around 1 a.m. Sunday in Phnom Penh, with a witness saying she saw him running from near Wat Chas as assailants slashed his body with a sword.
Police rescued a woman from a quarantine center for Try Pheap’s Special Economic Zone in Pursat on Wednesday night. But she had merely wanted to leave “because it was too quiet,” an official said, without answering why police intervention was needed.
A remote, city-like compound owned by U.S.-blacklisted tycoon Try Pheap is housing online scam operations of thousands of workers rife with forced labor, detention and unexplained deaths, trafficking victims and rescuers allege.
In a rejection of a provincial leader’s push for hardline monitoring of journalists, the head of the Ministry of Information this week denounced the arbitrary detention of two reporters and urged authorities to more closely cooperate with media workers.
Fourteen opposition activists and members, many of them arrested early last year over Covid-19 posts and private conversations, were denied bail during a hearing this morning.
Residents react to the fourth anniversary of the dissolution of the country’s main opposition party, the CNRP.
Dozens of families in a Kandal village have been marked for eviction to develop Phnom Penh’s new international airport, and have petitioned Prime Minister Hun Sen complaining of the state’s compensation offer that they say is a mere 10th of market prices.
Three raids in Sen Sok, Boeng Keng Kang’s Street 302 and a condo on Koh Pich netted nearly 86,000 pink ecstasy tablets, 155,000 grey tablets and 50 kg of powder.
Poipet health workers are accusing the director of a referral hospital of siphoning money meant for Covid-19 salaries by listing employee names as falsely working on Covid-19 treatment.
A man convicted of murdering his neighbor in Preah Vihear province pleaded with the Supreme Court to acquit him, with his defense lawyer saying there was no physical or DNA evidence to tie him to the murder.
UPDATED: Citing around $2 million in unpaid penalties, the courts announced that the outlawed CNRP’s former headquarters would be placed on sale. “The CNRP HQ is the symbol of democracy for the majority of the people of Cambodia,” Mu Sochua responded.
Alongside piles of wood are huge bales of multicolored fabric scraps. A long chimney shoots out from the roof of a Kandal brick kiln, and has elicited the ire of some villagers who say it releases noxious smoke.
Prime Minister Hun Sen dropped quarantine requirements and overnight PCR tests upon arrival for all vaccinated travelers from Monday, going beyond Thailand’s reopening to dozens of countries early this month.
Chinese nationals, as young as 15 years old, are being trafficked and forced to work in online gambling and scam companies in Sihanoukville, according to pleas for help sent to a group of Chinese volunteers that rescues victims of human trafficking in Cambodia.
Cambodia aspires to reduce 42 percent of its expected 2030 emissions not through stopping coal-powered energy but with trees. More specifically, the country will offset a majority of the total emissions it releases through Redd+.
Over the past week, increasing pressure on Cambodia coincided with the suddenly approved release of at least a dozen political prisoners.
Friday afternoon saw the release of prominent unionist Rong Chhun, Khmer Thavrak’s Chhoeun Daravy and a reduction in sentences for six other activists, who will be released soon.
Human Rights Watch said the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had intervened after Voeung Samnang and Voeun Veasna’s arrests, and both men were registered refugees under UNHCR protection.
Khmer Thavrak activist Hun Vannak and CNRP activist Pen Chan Sangkream were released from Prey Sar Prison, and Khmer Thavrak’s Chhoeun Daravy is also expected to be released today.
Unionist Rong Chhun, two CNRP activists and one political party leader had their prison sentences reduced by the Appeal Court Friday morning. All four could be released soon.
Two journalists arrested for covering a Kampot land protest were released on Thursday after being detained earlier this week, while three others who were part of the land dispute were released from detention.
On patrol in Keo Seima, community members clash over deforestation and chainsaws. At the front line of a multibillion-dollar global climate-change program, Mondulkiri’s volunteer patrollers say they feel powerless as their reports of logging are ignored.
Opposition CNRP activists Voeung Samnang and Voeun Veasna were arrested by Thai authorities in Bangkok this week and handed over to Phnom Penh authorities, confirmed a government official on Thursday.
The activist was arrested during protests in 2020 against the arrest of unionist Rong Chhun, who was arrested for claiming Cambodia was ceding territory to Vietnam.
Overnight, the U.S. sanctioned two more Cambodian military figures, announced a review of Cambodia’s trade benefits, and warned U.S. businesses of exposure to rights-abusing, criminal and corrupt Cambodian entities, as the country had made “no meaningful changes” to repeatedly raised concerns.
Environment Minister Say Samal made no commitments to achieve net-zero emissions at the Wednesday session of the COP26 Climate Conference.
Two journalists from Los Seng News, who were arrested for filming a land dispute in Kampot, made a public apology on Wednesday but were then sent to court for further questioning.
Forest activist Chorn Phalla was convicted to five years in prison on Wednesday for illegally clearing forestland in Ratanakiri province.
The Appeal Court ruled that CNRP activist Pen Chansangkream’s 18-month jail sentence would be reduced to 10 months and 20 days, but that he will remain under probation for three years.
As mega-developer OCIC completes the filling-in of Phnom Penh’s new island, Koh Norea, nearby Chbar Ampov residents are staring at a mound of sand anxiously unsure if they will be evicted by the development or driven out by real estate speculation.
Cambodia was among a minority of countries who did not sign a pledge to conserve and expand its forested ecosystems at COP26 last week despite forest loss being the country’s highest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
The boy, released to a throng of journalists and supporters outside Correctional Center 2 on Wednesday morning, knelt down in front of his mother to pay respects before hugging each other and receiving a bouquet of flowers.
According to a provincial police report from Tuesday, four suspects were arrested on Sunday in Chhuk district’s Trapeang Phlaing commune for violence against the owner of a property and incitement, calling it a red-handed crime.
Lao Annie, who heads several real estate companies in Cambodia, according to company records, said on Tuesday that she was “shocked” when she read news about all the important people who had land near her in Preah Sihanouk.
More than 300 trafficked Cambodian women were returned from China in the first nine months of the year, mostly after being scammed into marriages, according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Hundreds of Phnom Penh families protested in the capital on Monday, highlighting two ongoing and long-standing disputes in the city.
Chhay Loeum, a Cambodian migrant, was rounded up by police from Thailand’s Labor Ministry along with seven other workers making an appeal over unpaid wages. Rights advocates say the incident illustrates the Thai government’s broken promises and indifference to one of the most vulnerable groups in Thai society.
Eng Malai is the sixth activist to be released since Friday, with two of her Khmer Thavrak colleagues, Hun Vannak and Chhoeun Daravy, expected to be released this month.
Prime Minister Hun Sen took serious umbrage to criticism his government has faced for filling lakes throughout the country and justified the moving around of ministries through land swaps.
Weddings in Phnom Penh with up to 200 guests will be reallowed starting today, while KTVs and discotheques are set to reopen from November 30.
Despite the cordial tone in his Facebook post, Hun Sen said earlier in the day that there was speculation the Australian foreign minister would pressure Cambodia during the visit but that he would not allow that.
The 16-year-old son of Kak Komphear was jailed in June over digital messages he sent on Telegram criticizing the government. He was sentenced last week for incitement and insult to four months and 15 days in prison.
Their defense lawyer, Sam Sokong, said that while the activists have completed their reduced sentences for the earlier incitement charges, they’re now being held in pretrial detention for the additional plotting charges.
Nguon Nhel, the first vice president of the Cambodian National Assembly, died Friday morning at Khmer-Soviet Hospital in Phnom Penh.
All five activists were arrested last year in relation to protests in support of jailed unionist Rong Chhun, who had issued a report that Cambodia was ceding land to Vietnam
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced two men to eight-month suspended jail sentences over their involvement in unlicensed clinics in Phnom Penh, where authorities found genitals stored in bottles.
The exact amount of compensation is confidential, but it is equivalent to the gross profit that ANZ earned on its loan to Phnom Penh Sugar, said a representative for Inclusive Development International.
Sixty-six houses are marked for measurement to make way for the airport construction, according to a letter issued by the Kandal Stung district governor. The survey would collect data on affected families in preparation for compensation.
Courts in Phnom Penh and Ratanakiri had a flurry of cases and appeal hearings this week, some of which were delayed without reason. Here is a roundup of five cases from Wednesday and Thursday this week.
Workers with disabilities say the construction of a national disability center has ruined access to their wheelchair workshop in Kandal province.
King Norodom Sihamoni signed into law constitutional amendments mandating that Cambodians with dual citizenship were disqualified from occupying four senior government positions.
Across Cambodia, energy drink marketing is inescapable. The sugar-packed drinks, linked to stress, aggression and poor health, are advertised for their health benefits. This is misleading and threatens health, writes Future Forum research fellow Sorn Sovannara.
Two-star general Soy Chansoeun was denied bail Wednesday by the Supreme Court for allegedly beating up and confining a woman in January. The defendant’s lawyer described the altercation as a “little clash”, a characterization the judge rejected.
Cambodia’s Energy Minister declared last week that Cambodia would not build any new coal-fired power plants, but the announcement appears to have little or no impact so far on Cambodia’s current plans for developing coal-fired power plants through 2030.
Hundred of tons of fabric used in Cambodia’s garment industry ends up as waste, which then either ends up a landfill or is used to fuel other businesses, such as brick kilns.
Hundreds of Khsach Kandal district residents are enraged about a small group of brokers who have promised to “restore” a lake with few details about their plan and local officials claiming to know nothing of the issue.
Kem Sokha has been looking to sell his Phnom Penh villa since 2020, said a close colleague, with plans to move to the city’s outskirts or to a different province.
Kratie city’s military police chief has been charged for alleged torture, violence and death threats against two 12-year-old girls working at his house for purportedly causing the death of his puppy, while another officer was charged with intentional violence.
Increasingly used as a laser-focused tactic, a weapon to intimidate, instil fear, and paralyse the work of journalists, illegal surveillance puts sources at risk and impedes journalists from providing us with information to expose crime and corruption, and to speak the truth about power.
Kem Sokha, Cambodia’s ex-opposition leader still awaiting the resumption of his treason trial, has put his six-bedroom Toul Kork district home on the market for $2.4 million.
Prime Minister Hun Sen announced the reopening of the country at a vaccination event on Monday, and did not detail if there would be further relaxing of existing quarantine measures but said he was considering lifting restrictions on “high-risk” businesses.
Prasac Microfinance Institution claimed to the Supreme Court that a critical Facebook video was defamation against it, while the defendant claimed he was telling the truth about a bad deal.
Chim Phan is one of few Cambodian athletes with a disability who have represented, and continue to represent, the country at international para-athletic events. The athlete has had a long career and hopes to retire soon. He is 52 years old.
More than 200 officers demolished dozens of Phnom Penh houses to make way for the $2-billion Sihanoukville expressway, part of China’s Belt and Road initiative, as residents rejected what they said was inadequate compensation.
The conference generally pitches wealthy, high-emitting and highly-industrialized nations against low-emitting and less-industrial countries, especially those in the Pacific Islands that first feel the strain of rising water levels and temperatures.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court handed an eight-month sentence to a teenager, whose father is an imprisoned CNRP activist, and suspended the sentence to four months and 15 days.
CPP official Kong Kheang was arrested and charged with incitement and defamation this week for making serious allegations against Deputy Prime Minister Chea Sophara.
NagaWorld built its business — which earned more than $1.7 billion in yearly revenue before the pandemic — in part through the CEO’s use of his offshore companies and a series of loans that lifted the casino company’s value, according to documents and emails released in a major leak of offshore enterprise documents.
VOD identified nine offshore companies connected to Cambodian nationals or Cambodia-based business owners in the sweeping leak of offshore company files known as the Pandora Papers. A deeper look at the business history hints at further connections to powerful individuals for some of the companies included, while others are little-known.
The investigation is based on a leak of confidential records of 14 offshore service providers that give professional services to wealthy individuals and corporations seeking to incorporate shell companies, trusts, foundations and other entities in low- or no-tax jurisdictions. The entities enable owners to conceal their identities from the public and sometimes from regulators. Often, the providers help them open bank accounts in countries with light financial regulation.
Thousands of families have been evacuated from along the swollen Prek Tnaut river in southern Phnom Penh. As evacuees huddle up in tents set up on roads at the edge of floodwaters, many speak of getting little help even as the flooding gets worse year by year.
The three remaining districts — Chroy Changva, Prek Pnov and Daun Penh — will commence their booster-shot campaigns on Saturday at nine locations.
Siem Reap province, which is typically the country’s leading travel destination, is not yet part of the Tourism Ministry’s “vaccine tour” program but will be included with other destinations in early 2022 as the country reopens further.
The draft legislation would scale down operations of the hybrid court, which officially commenced in 2007, with a transition period of two to three years.
A Cambodian man says he was not involved in drug production — a charge for which he was convicted in 2017 — and wants the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction based on testimony from a co-accused who said he was not part of the operations.
A representative of 241 families involved in a land dispute with a prominent developer in Phnom Penh’s Chbar Ampov district was arrested and sent to Prey Sar Prison on charges of trespassing and illegally destroying property.
VOD Weekly UpdateOctober 20-27 Features Kuy Villagers Reclaim Preah Vihear Sugar Plantation Residents were in dispute with Rui Feng since 2012, when communal lands were
The trucks are not carrying sugarcane. There is no sugarcane for kilometers. Instead, the cleared land is filled with rice paddy ready for harvest. Kuy villagers in Preah Vihear are moving back onto plantation land from which they were once evicted.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has promoted 25 people to be his official assistants, including a bodyguard who has received land on Phnom Penh’s Boeng Tamok lake and another who was nearly scammed online by a 14-year-old.
A dispute with two Chinese-owned telecommunications companies — delicensed by the government last year — is headed to an international arbitration body, government documents show.
Youth activists and former opposition members were convicted for incitement on Tuesday morning for their participation in protests last year calling for the release of jailed unionist Rong Chhun.
In Cambodia, mental health workers say they’ve seen a spike in adolescents seeking help. Surveys have shown bouts of anxiety and depression among young people. The recent reopening of schools could be a relief, but it might not be an easy transition.
Kampot governor Mao Thonin held a public forum to address citizens’ grievances, mostly stemming from land disputes in the coastal province, with the governor coming highly recommended for his ability to resolve land conflicts.
The sister of disappeared activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit was summoned to a prosecutor’s office on Monday. Though it’s a first for Sitanan, criminal prosecution has become a routine reality for hundreds of Thais taking a stand in the country’s pro-democracy movement.
Bankruptcy is a seldom used legal provision in Cambodia, even though it has been part of regulations since the passage of the 2007 Law on Insolvency. This issue is most likely seen in the media in the context of garment factories going bankrupt and selling assets to pay creditors and employees.
A Chinese national serving a seven-year sentence for organizing illegal surrogacy argued on Monday that he was just staying at a friend’s house and didn’t know why there were dozens of pregnant women there.
Direct flights from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are allowed again, the Health Ministry announced over the weekend, though it is still unclear when flights will resume.
Salt fields on lucrative Kampot coastland are being promised the backing of a new governmental working group to aid in competition against Thai and Vietnamese imports, but salt farmers are skeptical.
The Thai government on Thursday announced that vaccinated arrivals from 46 countries, including Cambodia, will not have to undergo quarantine starting November 1.
The symbolism used to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Paris Peace Agreements is one of reconciliation. But the road to that moment was long, more than a decade in the making and intertwined with tectonic shifts in the geopolitical arrangements that helped usher in the Khmer Rouge in the first place.
Anniversaries of the Paris Peace Agreements were not always prominent affairs. Largely overlooked by local newspapers until the landmark 20th anniversary, the day rose in visibility and contentiousness alongside the emergence of the popular opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, a look through newspaper archives shows.
The Education Ministry has announced that schools of all levels will be reopened from November 1 with health precautions remaining in place, expanding on the reopening of high schools last month.
Provincial police chief Sith Los said the two suspects, Sin Sao Sun, 36, and Kao Chhong, 35, were arrested on Monday and Tuesday for illegal detention, extortion and human trafficking.
A Siem Reap district police officer is under investigation by provincial supervisors after an anonymous letter alleged he was extorting illegal gambling establishments and his subordinates.
Prime Minister Hun Sen granted the Interior Ministry permission to sell 100 hectares of Boeng Tamok lake that it was granted earlier this year so the ministry can fund a reconstruction of its existing office building.
The spiraling descent exploded into public view this week when supplements seller Srey Knhong took a new tack to solve her financial problem: file for bankruptcy to escape all the debt, then ask her fans to donate money to bring her back to riches.
A Battmabang man initially convicted of killing his wife and sentenced to life in prison denied the murder and asked the Supreme Court to release him and find the real killer.
Sitanan Satsaksit is being summoned in Thailand for violating the country’s Covid-19 laws by speaking about her brother Wanchalearm’s disappearance in Phnom Penh and the ensuing investigation.
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.
Cambodia’s head start in vaccinations has the potential to give its embattled tourism sector a leg up amid the imminent reopening of travel. This is an opportunity to diversify the country’s offerings, writes La Trobe University research fellow Markus Bell.
The government’s e-visa portal announced the resumption of tourist visas starting October 19, signaling the state’s intentions to kickstart the tourism sector, which has languished for the last 20 months of the pandemic.
An Appeal Court hearing for three jailed Mother Nature activists on Tuesday had heated exchanges between the defendants and prosecution, as the environmentalists defended their activism.
Sok Kimly, 45, was previously found guilty of two attempts on her boyfriend’s life in 2015 and 2016. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court overturned her conviction in the first failed assassination, involving a gun, and sent her second case — a grenade attack in central Phnom Penh — for retrial at the Appeal Court.
The documents, released on Monday and all signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, are dated between August 4 and September 2 and continue the recent flurry of land privatization across the country
At least 373 migrants have been detained in under two weeks during 12 raids on Cambodians crossing into Thailand, a sign of demand for work and confusion over Covid-19 border rules, a labor group said.
Starting Monday, vaccinated arrivals from abroad will only have to quarantine for seven days, with even shorter times for some groups, a document issued by the Health Minister says.
Amid a call to save heritage buildings, a survey of Phnom Penh sites found volleyball courts in a French colonial police station, smartphone billboards wrapped around historical architecture, and a family of teachers keeping watch over a former U.S. Embassy building.
The six stops, some only for a few hours, followed a similar pattern: A suit-clad Sar Kheng arrived at the provincial hall, did the performative handing over of the provincial seal, then proceeded to give a speech before zooming off to the next inauguration ceremony.
Floodwaters are rising on a small group of Chroy Changva residents who say they have suffered two months of unprecedented flooding after officials filled a nearby canal earlier this year.
The country’s daily Covid-19 case count reflects the number of patients who are symptomatic, said a Health Ministry spokesperson, suggesting that those who are positive and asymptomatic are not included in case numbers.
The outlawed opposition party is attempting to disrupt the upcoming commune elections in 2022, alleged Interior Minister Sar Kheng, calling for local officials to be vigilant.
UDG, a massive Chinese-owned, U.S.-sanctioned development in the coastal province, has been embroiled in disputes with residents for years, with more than 1,000 families forced off about 10,000 hectares, and 1,500 houses dismantled and cleared, according to past research reports.
Interior Minister Sar Kheng advised Mondulkiri’s new governor and his officials to stay away from corruption after 10 predecessors were implicated in illegal land grabbing, even as at least half of those 10 remain in their jobs.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday afternoon delayed announcing a verdict against a CNRP activist’s 16-year-old son, who is charged with incitement.
The provincial administration told VOD no payments should have been asked of families of the Covid-19 dead, and police were now investigating the case. It also noted in a statement that more than half of the province’s Covid-19 corpses had yet to be cremated.
A production company run by local tycoon Leng Navatra is pulling a music video that shows people dressed as schoolgirls carrying weapons after it was criticized on social media.
A woman convicted of masterminding a 2016 grenade attack in central Phnom Penh targeting her cheating boyfriend made an appeal at the Supreme Court that she had only sought for him to be threatened.
An anti-logging activist was on Tuesday convicted of assault against an alleged timber trader, as rights groups linked the verdict to ongoing harassment and intimidation against environmentalists in the country.
Phnom Penh kicked off a third-dose vaccination drive this week with close to 100 locations across the city where residents who are fully vaccinated can go and get a shot of the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine.
Long boats will not race down the Tonle Sap in front of the Royal Palace this year after the government decided to again cancel the annual Water Festival. The announcement coincides with the start of a third-dose vaccine campaign in 11 capital districts.
Drug cases are continuing to fill the courts as sentences heard on Monday ranged from three and a half years for a man caught with 1.29 grams of meth to 26 years for a Chinese national convicted of production.
Almost $1 million in compensation remains to be paid out and a perpetrator has yet to see jail time over a Kampong Cham scam that ensnared 180 families, the Supreme Court heard on Monday.
Cambodia’s one-party government is pushing ahead with a Constitutional amendment to ban individuals with dual citizenship from holding top positions in government, purportedly to avoid foreign interference and as a sign of devotion to the nation.
Weeks after a 2019 European parliamentary election, Kalwaryjski and his boyfriend moved from the city of Poznan to Berlin — joining a growing number of LGBT+ Poles who have fled homophobia at home by settling in the German capital.
As the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in August, images of glamorous models adorning beauty parlours were painted over — in some cases by business owners fearing reprisals.
“People like to come to wish for good luck,” Sok Chea says. “If they want to sell their property, like land, they will come to wish to make a deal happen sooner and to get a good price for their land.”
Nino, a 25-year-old lesbian from Georgia, no longer feels at ease when she leaves the house. Since violence forced a Pride march to be cancelled earlier this year, she is afraid of being verbally abused or chased in the street.
When Douglas Latchford died, he left unresolved a tantalizing question: What happened to the hundreds of stolen items he had traded? The answer lies in part in previously undisclosed records describing secret offshore companies and trusts that Latchford and his family controlled.
Three in four people living in the world’s 20 major economies believe nature and the Earth’s climate are approaching potentially abrupt or irreversible changes due to human action, according to a survey.
As Africa’s No. 2 economy seeks to break its near-total coal dependence, climate experts say Mpumalanga could serve as a test case for developing nations seeking to cut emissions while also benefitting their people — a so-called just transition.
Six entertainment workers told VOD of forced pregnancy tests, pressure to terminate and the experience of self-induced abortions while trying to hold onto jobs. As the women experience potential trauma, the motivation among employers often comes down to superstition: Pregnant women are “four-eyed girls” bringing bad business.
“I feel ashamed and anxious all the time. My partner left me and even my family won’t talk to me. I thought it was a safe and private way to make money, but virtual sex ruined my life,” said Otieno, whose name has been changed to protect her identity.
A Sihanoukville casino has seen a Covid-19 outbreak of more than 200 cases and turned into a makeshift quarantine center, where authorities denied workers’ claims of forced labor.
The Supreme Court heard three cases on Friday morning, where lawyers grappled with unclear evidence and information, and raised more questions than were answered during the hearing.
Cambodia saw a sharp decrease in Covid-19 cases after Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered a scaling back of rapid testing, as Siem Reap province ended QR code scanning at its borders and Preah Vihear lifted its red zones.
Making sure that all children receive quality education in Covid-19’s “new normal” will require changes in mindset, new soft skills and consideration of economic, political and cultural dimensions, writes educator Neak Piseth.
Prime Minister Hun Sen instructed provincial officials to be more judicious in the use of rapid Covid-19 tests and to test only those who exhibited clear symptoms of the disease, according to an audio clip sent by the prime minister and heard by VOD.
At least 100 cases of Covid-19 have been reported at a Preah Sihanouk special economic zone since Sunday, with officials downplaying the outbreak which they say is smaller than previous transmissions.
A Koh Kong journalist was sentenced to a year in prison for incitement on Thursday — without a lawyer and just two days after being questioned by police — over a report that the deputy governor was “cruel and abuses citizens.”
Two former CNRP officials were arrested on Wednesday – one from Preah Sihanouk and the other from Phnom Penh – and have not been released as yet.
Yim Sinorn, who stepped down as president of the CNRP in South Korea in June, submitted a letter dated Wednesday to Hun Sen asking that authorities drop all charges against him and his colleagues.
Some 1,333 families in Koh Kong are being offered 1 to 3.5 hectares each over a decade-old land dispute with the Union Development Group, as some families say they reject the deal and will fight to stay on their old land.
A teenager whose father is an imprisoned former CNRP member was tried on Wednesday for incitement and insult, giving contradictory answers and having his mental health questioned — and dismissed — by court officials.
The association last week issued a statement condemning lawyer Phan Chansak’s actions. The lawyer had posted in a Telegram group called CLO Opinions, “Sell 1 ballot for $1,000,” the association said, without specifying when the message was posted.
As of Tuesday, residents in 38 communes were affected, according to the committee. Two health centers and 26 schools were also flooded, while 25,223 hectares of rice was inundated, it said.
Ung Ratana, director of the Ratanakiri provincial health department, said that as of Tuesday, more than 200 positive cases had been found at the Phat Dao plantation out of about 1,000 workers.
Preah Sihanouk authorities have issued a statement that hotels and casinos that detain, traffic or sexually exploit workers can have their business licenses revoked and cases sent to court.
The Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom courts on Tuesday delayed expected verdicts against members of activist group Khmer Thavrak and a Prey Lang environmentalist charged with attempted murder.
An audio recording, shared with VOD, appears to show Defense Minister Tea Banh instructing Koh Kong officials to take action against journalist Youn Chhiv. Several government-aligned media outlets have reported on Banh’s instructions, including some that quoted from the recording.
Higher education institutions will be allowed to reopen after 18 months of disrupted learning, with the Education Ministry setting out guidelines such as mandatory vaccinations, Covid-19 testing and smaller classes to ensure social distancing.
Chbar Ampov residents are complaining about real estate developer Borey Peng Huoth filling in their farmland, an area they say was previously in dispute with the late Suy Sophan’s Phanimex company.
The new wage was voted on after four rounds of weekly negotiations between unions, which initially suggested a $22 raise; employers, which wanted to see the minimum wage cut by $4; and the Labor Ministry.
The royalist Funcinpec party fired three senior officials after they filed a complaint with the Interior Ministry alleging that a former wife of party president Prince Norodom Ranariddh took and misused the party seal.
Siem Reap officials say they are seeing a drop in Covid-19 cases in the city after 10 days of red-zones in some communes and villages, while working to meet food shortages amid restrictions.
Cambodian tourism business owners expressed cautious optimism over the prime minister’s plans to entice foreign travelers back into the country and resuscitate the sector’s fortunes.
Four suspected traffickers have been arrested and sent to court after Preah Sihanouk police found 36 Thai nationals illegally working at a casino, officials said, while denying that the workers had been confined against their will.
Three Commerce Ministry officials have been accused of corruption by a Banteay Meanchey transport company owner for asking her to pay informal fees to transport goods across the border.
A former Pailin governor and a real estate developer have received land that was formerly designated as state forest but had already been cleared, cultivated and sold by individuals, local officials said.
About 10 community members patrolled O’Reang district’s Sen Monorom commune on Wednesday and found about 100 hectares of the sanctuary and 12 hectares of community forest being cleared by machinery
The two-week Pchum Ben festival has been postponed this year two days into the holiday due to large gatherings and the risk of Covid-19 transmission.
Observers say the process of compensating evictees in development projects needs to be cleared up to avoid increasing mistrust, poverty, fear and injustice among the population.
Chab Yem, 74, says she hasn’t seen her son since authorities arrested and defrocked him more than a year ago. She lives in Siem Reap province, and Koeut Saray is now in Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar Prison.
“People who come during Pchum Ben bring food, some money, especially onsom cake. I feel happy. Even though it’s Covid-19, it’s OK. We take precautions like wearing masks and using alcohol spray. This feels comfortable.”
Cambodia’s economic growth this year is expected at 1.9 percent, down from an earlier estimate of 4 percent, the Asian Development Bank said on Wednesday, as services continued to contract amid Covid-19 disruptions.
A big piece of a so far untouched area in the middle of Boeng Tamok lake has been granted to the Interior Ministry, while businesswoman Say Sorphea — understood to be the wife of a high-ranking Brigade 70 military official — has received a further two plots on the lake.
Some 276 garment factory workers, mostly women, were injured in traffic accidents in the sector’s notoriously dangerous commutes on the backs of trucks in the first half of this year.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday decided to drop an arrest warrant against Thailand-based social analyst Seng Sary after Prime Minister Hun Sen made the suggestion in a Facebook post on Monday.
Nine airport protesters jailed last week have been released on bail by the Kandal Provincial Court, with a family member saying they were being pressured to accept the compensation on offer and stop protesting.
Environmentalist Chhorn Phalla has been arrested by Ratanakiri police after they called him in to update the address on his identification card, his lawyer said.
A l’bokator master’s wife is compiling her late husband’s writings into a book; pagodas are opening their gates to Cambodia’s ancient, spirituality-infused martial art; and officials are looking for world-heritage status and pushing a modernized version as an Olympic sport.
After more than 200 protesters blocked National Road 5 between Pursat and Kampong Chhnang provinces on Sunday, provincial authorities said they would go to the Interior Ministry to try to resolve the land dispute.
Backtracking from a warning made Friday, Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday asked the courts to consider dropping an arrest warrant against Thailand-based political analyst Seng Sary, saying he now understands the analyst’s comments as acceptable.
Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned two political analysts over criticizing the government’s foreign policy, one by name and the other by saying there was already a warrant out for his arrest.
A Phnom Penh resident made a public confession and apology for allegedly insulting traffic police officers in a video posted to social media platform TikTok.
New research shows that hundreds of tons of plastic is carried away daily from Phnom Penh along the Mekong, Bassac and Tonle Sap rivers, choking critical waterways and hurting aquatic life and human well-being.
Between official documents, residents’ accounts and visible evidence of filling, reporters have found five seafilling projects on the Kampot coast — some of them spanning hundreds of hectares. Affected fishers have been told there could be twice as many in all.
Cambodian workers are increasingly looking to illegally cross back into Thailand for work, a labor rights group said on Thursday, after a report showed more
En Soth and Yous Sophorn were jailed last month under Covid-19 charges of obstructing the enforcement of health measures and face up to three years in jail. They were both previously fined around $1,000 each under Covid-19 regulations for organizing a protest against the proposed compensation.
Four land activists in a long-running dispute with the Energy Minister’s wife say they were questioned by prosecutors at the Kampong Chhnang Provincial Court for attempted murder after trying to prevent illegal fishing in the area.
Prime Minister Hun Sen did in fact enter a CNRP Zoom call uninvited last week, he said on his Facebook page Thursday, but only to remind the “traitors” that he would not negotiate with them and to stop insulting him.
Banteay Meanchey officials have forwarded allegations of rape against a deputy village chief to the provincial court, a local official said Wednesday.
While students were meeting friends and reconnecting, most expressed two major concerns about returning to school: their parents’ reluctance to let them return, and whether they had learned enough in the last year to meet the challenges of a new grade.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday waded into the ongoing dispute between investors and investment firm GoldFX — which is linked to senior CPP officials’ family members — asking investors to continue their negotiations or file a lawsuit.
Seng Sovannara was removed from his Justice Ministry position in 2019 following accusations that he had taken control of 990 hectares in a wildlife sanctuary and threatened indigenous Bunong villagers to hand over 472 hectares of their land.
Nine Kandal villagers arrested at a protest on Sunday have been charged with intentional violence, obstructing public officials and incitement under aggravating circumstances.
Children aged 6 to 11 will be vaccinated in the next phase of Cambodia’s inoculation drive in order to reopen primary schools in the country, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Wednesday.
Piseth was named winner of the Orizzonti best actor award on September 11 for his role in the White Building movie, an honor he hopes will help him find more opportunities in the Cambodian film industry.
Villagers said 21 of 30 people arrested at a protest against the new Phnom Penh airport in Kandal were released Tuesday evening, with nine others charged with violence.
Widely shared video and audio clips seemingly showing Prime Minister Hun Sen gatecrashing an opposition CNRP Zoom call to lecture the outlawed party are digital fabrications, a ruling party spokesperson said.
Fourteen foreign nationals are being treated in quarantine and later will be sent to the Sihanoukville Provincial Court for allegedly possessing firearms, kidnapping one individual and extorting money, according to provincial authorities.
As schools begin to reopen across the country, principals talk of splitting classes to keep classes small and safe, while parents and teachers say there will be a lot of catching up for students.
The teenager, whose family says he has autism, was arrested June 24 over online messages that allegedly insulted public officials. His father, Kak Komphea, has been repeatedly jailed for participating in opposition politics.
Provincial governor Va Thorn said on Monday that authorities had gone to investigate the area, in Chet Borei district’s Chang Krang commune, and found encroachment on about 500 hectares.
As Cambodia hit 100,000 recorded Covid-19 cases on Monday, Phnom Penh residents spoke of facing repeated disruptions over 20 months and how, for many, the future remains clouded with uncertainty.
A citizen journalist was detained on Monday and later released after filming a police station and preparing to interview family members of 30 Kandal villagers arrested in a land dispute over Phnom Penh’s new international airport.
In a speech inaugurating a new Phnom Penh stadium on Sunday, which came during a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Hun Sen reiterated the bonds of “steel” between China and Cambodia.
In a statement issued Sunday, Kandal provincial administration said that around 10:30 a.m. on Sunday airport protesters brandished sticks, threw stones, used rubber slingshots, hurled gasoline, insulted officers and burned tires.
Around 30 people were arrested in one morning amid violence, villagers and local officials said, as unrest around Phnom Penh’s new international airport development project in Kandal province continued to escalate.
A NagaWorld union representative said the Arbitration Council refused to adjudicate on the validity of the mega casino’s decision to layoff more than 1,300 workers, with a labor advocate saying the council wants a labor inspection procedure to decide the matter.
Hun Sen’s adviser, Duong Dara, posted online that officials need to stop filing fake reports on land disputes to the prime minister, while also lecturing a VOD reporter about journalism when asked about his Facebook post.
A Ratanakiri military police official was charged with insult and intentional violence for criticizing the provincial governor and for punching a person during his mother’s funeral last week.
More than 20 families in Koh Kong province, where authorities have been razing villagers’ farmland, are asking officials to formalize their ownership as they fear the land clearings will continue.
Several family members of jailed opposition politicians staged a small rally outside the U.S. Embassy on Friday, aiming to bring attention to the country’s political prisoners.
Ngorn Srey Nich was struck in the head by police officer Mat Pisey on Wednesday night while riding a motorbike with her brother without wearing helmets. Phnom Penh Municipal Police said Pisey was arrested and sent to court, but Srey Nich demanded more justice.
Fish are scarce again and wells are running dry, Siem Reap fishers say, as some measurements track the Tonle Sap at another record low this year.
Phnom Penh City Hall announced Thursday it will allow public and private secondary schools to reopen starting Wednesday, September 15, potentially ending nearly 18 months of on-and-off schooling for the capital’s students.
A Phnom Penh court has convicted and sentenced seven former opposition activists in absentia for Facebook posts accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen of hiding Covid-19 deaths in 2020 and other posts about his time as a former Khmer Rouge district commander.
The government has allocated three plots totaling nearly 100 hectares in Kampot, Kandal and Preah Sihanouk provinces separately to the prime ministerial bodyguard unit, a businesswoman and 22 families, according to sub-decrees released this week.
Phnom Penh City Hall once again extended Covid-19 preventative measures for two weeks until September 23, including restrictions on alcohol, bars, massage parlors, gyms and gatherings over 15 people.
Indigenous communities say speculators have accelerated illegal land sales and Covid-19 restrictions are preventing members from patrolling the protected area.
Local businessman Duong Chhay, who was seen beating his wife in CCTV footage released earlier this year, blamed his behavior on financial pressures and his ex-wife’s refusal to let him meet their children, as police officials would not comment on the status of the assault investigation.
Covid-19 is not the only pressing public health issue for migrant workers and their families. The pandemic is raising the risks of other, indirect health impacts that can have lasting effects even after the outbreak ends, writes Future Forum fellow Thong Sariputta.
A mother and son contesting the development of Phnom Penh’s new international airport in Kandal province were detained on Wednesday for taking photos of their rice field being cleared by the developer, but were released after agreeing to stop protesting.
September has seen a turnaround in some migrant workers’ fortunes, but they said they still weren’t vaccinated and feared infection, and their earnings had merely returned to barely getting by.
The government has allocated more than 200 hectares of land in Pursat province to the military’s Region 5, according to a sub-decree issued in August.
Koh Kong villagers said that authorities have been clearing their crops since last week in the province’s Botum Sakor district, with authorities saying the people were encroaching on the Botum Sakor National Park.
Seven Banteay Meanchey officials claimed they did not know if a provincial hospital director accused of extortion had been relieved of his position, despite local media reporting the termination.
The standoff, in which the two sides exchanged words but remained nonviolent, was the latest in an escalating dispute related to compensation for farmland on the airport development land.
Tuesday’s meeting, held by video conference, was the first of four weekly sessions planned for the tripartite negotiations, according to a document signed by the Labor Minister Ith Samheng.
A Banteay Meanchey deputy village chief is suing a family who accused the official of allegedly raping their underage daughter in February, with health officials now conducting a forensic medical examination months after the alleged incident took place.
The Banteay Meanchey provincial health department is investigating the conduct of a public district hospital for allegedly extorting patients after the provincial governor railed against the hospital for asking money before the surgery of a prime ministerial bodyguard.
A Kampong Cham monk chief was reinstated after being arrested and defrocked last week for allegedly violating Covid-19 measures.
Another 4.6 hectares of Boeng Tamok was given to a private citizen who previously received land about six months before.
The mother of a longan farmer who was imprisoned for criticizing the government’s procurement procedures said her son should not have been arrested or charged with incitement because his comments were a true reflection of the situation.
A community in Tbeng Meanchey district’s Prame commune said they patrolled the sanctuary’s forest for two nights and three days on August 17-19, and identified 101 forestry crimes.
After a year in prison on an incitement conviction for his music, 22-year-old rapper Kea Sokun was released from a Siem Reap prison on Friday and returned home with no regrets about his songs or his refusal to apologize for the lyrics in court.
A military police official pleaded innocent to drug charges at a trial on Friday, saying he was framed and alleging that a karaoke proprietor, who is the co-accused, was the only one dealing drugs.
A tanker company says it is concerned over its arrested crew’s human rights as Cambodia pursues the return of some 300,000 barrels of allegedly stolen crude oil, but the government said the matters will simply “take their legal course” and are “neither political nor commercial.”
Boeng Tompun residents whose homes were demolished by Phnom Penh authorities last month to make way for a reservoir said they are rebuilding sections of their homes because they have no other alternative.
A Kampot fishing community’s attempt to set up a radio station to keep its members informed has been caught up in red tape, with funding allocated for the project now expired.
Crimes are up 18 percent in the first eight months of the year in Banteay Meanchey as drunkenness, violence and theft have risen with Covid-19 hitting hard in the Thai-border province, the provincial police chief said.
As satellite city developments spring up on water bodies all across the country, the government last week rebuffed one such request on 1,000 hectares of a Kandal province lake, a cabinet document shows.
In the first eight months of the year, Cambodian rice exports are tracking 23 percent below the same period last year, though non-rice exports have more than doubled in that time.
Most schools in Tbong Khmum and Prey Veng are preparing to reopen on Monday, while Stung Treng has already begun in-person classes in select districts, provincial officials said on Thursday.
Migrant workers at a quarantine center in Siem Reap province are unhappy being placed with Covid-19 patients at the same facility, with one worker saying he has not been released from the center for two months despite testing negative.
There is no official market at Kour Srov, but vendors from Phnom Penh’s Doeum Kor wholesale market have turned it into a makeshift market. As Covid-19 restrictions remain at many of the city’s major markets, vendors have spread out to the city limits to sell their wares.
KANDAL STUNG DISTRICT, Kandal — Villagers in dispute with Phnom Penh’s new, under-construction airport protested after Kandal authorities destroyed a road leading to their homes and farmland with the aid of a heavy security presence.
NagaCorp, the Hong Kong-listed parent company of Phnom Penh’s exclusive-operating casino NagaWorld, reported losses for the first time since the company was publicly listed, amid the pandemic and an ongoing labor dispute with more than 300 laid-off employees.
Ten additional land disputants in Oddar Meanchey province have been summoned for court questioning amid a conflict on more than 1,000 hectares that was once a sugar plantation.
Visitors on the Kampot riverside are greeted to the intense stench from raw sewage pumping directly into the river, but authorities and ADB had separate understandings of how the problematic pipe would be fixed.
Activists on trial asked for their release, fair judgments, and requested a judge spend time at a meditation center, at the close of the trial of protestors supporting unionist Rong Chhun.
The country is seeing 100 tons of solid waste produced daily from Covid-19 quarantine and treatment centers, with 50 incinerators in 21 provincial towns specially disposing of the trash, while a Phnom Penh medical waste manager said the capital was struggling to dispose of biohazardous trash.
The Agriculture Ministry has launched a lumpy skin disease vaccination campaign for cattle starting with priority provinces after more than 30,000 animals have contracted the disease, an official said.
Prime Minister Hun Sen pushed for rural schools in areas with little Covid-19 to be reopened even ahead of ending nationwide school closures.
Two Facebook broadcasters were detained overnight after filming inside the gates of a villa where they variously alleged that 100 foreigners who entered the country
Two Svay Rieng land dispute representatives have been charged again for violating Covid-19 law; separately, Mondulkiri province indigenous families file a land clearance complaint against a Takhmao city resident.
Thousands of hectares of a long-contested Kampong Speu economic land concession will be redistributed to residents of nine villages, according to government sub-decrees published this month.
Cambodia is ready to accept 300 Afghan refugees fleeing a Taliban-led government takeover before they head to a third country for resettlement, a spokesperson said.
Civil society groups are refusing consultations with the government and U.N. on establishing an independent national human rights body, saying they should not be talking about a new committee without showing genuine interest in promoting and protecting human rights.
A representative for residents disputing land on the site of Phnom Penh’s future international airport says a provincial governor has vastly understated how many people are still holding out for a better deal.
A group of residents in Oddar Meanchey’s Samraong city say they fear arrest and losing their land after the provincial court summoned 11 of them for questioning early next month over a land dispute.
Some migrant workers, returning from Thailand to escape a Covid-19 surge and joblessness there, say they are finding the transition back to their hometowns challenging due to quarantine, debt and difficulty finding opportunities.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday held an incitement trial against seven opposition activists over Facebook posts accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen of hiding Covid-19 deaths in March last year, as well as making other claims against him.
The Battambang Provincial Court sentenced a man to 10 months in prison for incitement over his video post and comments criticizing the government over its efforts to buy longan from languishing farmers.
A 35-year-old Phnom Penh man allegedly set up a fake checkpoint in Dangkao district pretending to be an official, stopping vegetable trucks to extort money, municipal military police said.
The Indonesian navy has seized an oil tanker that allegedly stole 290,000 barrels of crude oil from Cambodia and KrisEnergy, AFP reported on Wednesday.
A “simple person” with two villas and an estimated tens of millions of dollars worth of land in Siem Reap forest has been granted 451 hectares of state land, according to a government document and local commune chiefs.
More than 35,000 people were stopped for violations of curfews and other Covid-19 measures during three weeks of restrictions that ended last week, the Justice Ministry said.
Families who built their stilted homes on Kiri Sakor district’s estuaries decades ago say their lives revolve around the antics of the Union Development Group, locked in a stalemate as they repeatedly rebuild the structures that the company’s guards dismantle.
With fewer families flocking Phnom Penh’s riverside and parks, the street vendors selling snacks and treats say they struggle to survive day by day.
While some CNRP-linked minor parties are eyeing consolidation to challenge the ruling party in the upcoming elections, one such party is choosing to try its own luck rather than joining the path of others.
As Interior Minister Sar Kheng embarks on a “private” trip to France, Cambodia’s outlawed opposition is raising hopes of a meeting with the minister whom it routinely raises as a supposedly democracy-friendly foil to Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Military police raided a Chamkarmon district condominium building in the capital around midday Saturday and arrested more than 100 Chinese nationals, a spokesperson said.
Some 21 police and Interior Ministry officials have died from Covid-19 out of 2,198 infections, the ministry said over the weekend.
A Banlung city deputy police chief says some people who made donations of bottled water were allowed to skip Covid-19 vaccination lines, but a woman who made a Facebook post about the practice “impacted” police and needed to be summoned and educated.
Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan took the stand for the last time this week to say he was worried for the future of the country during an appeal against his conviction for crimes against humanity.
A first-of-its-kind, 10-year study tracking the lives of 128 Cambodian sex trafficking survivors reveals frequent shock and re-exploitation as they try to reintegrate into the community, and fears and intimidation while navigating the justice system, according to a series of research reports published this week.
A further 20 hectares of Boeng Tamok, one of Phnom Penh’s “last lakes,” is being granted to a private individual, with mapping coordinates appearing to show the plot is on an area that is already being made landfill.
A Labor Ministry directive issued this week tells factory owners to test all workers at least twice before September 10 as precautions for the coronavirus Delta variant.
Following three weeks of nationwide Covid-19 measures, the government is advising that the country’s 25 provinces and capital continue precautions and restrictions based on situations in their local jurisdictions.
A December social media post about putting a chicken coop in a state of emergency due to a spreading virus was penalized with an 18-month prison sentence by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
Thousands of Cambodians have continued to return to the country in the past three days from Thailand’s major Covid-19 Delta-variant outbreak, as provincial authorities along the border have increasingly locked down markets and villages due to the spread of the new viral strain.
A National Police document issued this month outlines a working group made up of top intelligence and security officials to “research, investigate and build legal cases” against the unrest caused by land disputants’ incitement.
Police are questioning a journalist from the online news outlet BCP TV who was caught violating curfew and carrying a gun.
A three-day teardown deadline handed to 69 families living along a canal in Boeng Kak I commune passed without a clash on Thursday, but after authorities previously allegedly ripped out their gardens and descended on their homes with axes, residents say they don’t believe an official’s offer that they will be allowed to resettle there if they temporarily move out.
Nine-hundred-eighty-four geckos being shipped out of Preah Vihear province were rescued from a vehicle in Siem Reap, according to officials, who said they had cracked down on gecko trafficking before but didn’t know its purpose.
A tuk-tuk driver has been arrested in Kandal province for allegedly distributing pamphlets to neighbors that contained death threats against Prime Minister Hun Sen, though his wife said he had mental issues and was not politically involved.
Mondulkiri’s plan to build a special economic zone with casinos and warehouses in an area one official described as filled with evergreen forest has yet to progress after six months, as provincial leaders say they are still waiting for a response from the central government.
Rong Chhun, a long-time activist and unionist, was sentenced on Wednesday to two years in jail and ordered to pay 400 million riel, or about $100,000, alongside two others at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
A week after Thailand blocked the exports of Cambodian longan in Battambang due to Covid-19 fears, a trader says hundreds of tons of the local fruit are at risk of spoiling.
Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan’s lawyers on Tuesday appealed against his convictions for exterminating Vietnamese people as lacking in evidence and the regime’s forced marriages as not policy but isolated violations.
Investors in GoldFX, a financial firm run by ruling party scions that says it was cheated out of $20 million by ex-board members, have sought the intervention of Prime Minister Hun Sen, saying they cannot accept the company’s offer of 30 percent compensation for their lost investments.
A Banteay Meanchey fishing community is preparing a complaint against local officials they accuse of selling off state-owned flooded forests.
Cambodian returnees from Thailand have surged since the reopening of borders on Friday, local officials said, with migrants trucked in from checkpoints to expanded quarantine centers.
Two more former officials of the outlawed opposition party have been pardoned from their ban on political activities.
District authorities deleted photos on reporters’ cameras and made them leave a public area as authorities demolished residents’ homes, allegedly without compensation, near the Boeng Tompun lake development.
A lion that was granted special permission to live in the middle of Phnom Penh escaped for a short time this morning, after which his owner told reporters that he was building a higher fence to prevent future escapes.
For Cambodia’s blind students, school closures and the pandemic have added new difficulties to their studies. Video chats have left them with only portions of lessons, Khmer-language screen reading technology has been lacking, and one of the country’s only braille publishing houses has been temporarily shut due to Covid-19.
Hundreds of migrant workers poured back into the country on Friday as its borders to Covid-19-hit Thailand reopened, and the flow is expected to continue in the coming days as many Cambodians face difficulties in the neighboring country.
This moment should be used as an opportunity to re-evaluate Cambodia’s policies around taxation — most specifically the income tax, and the rate at which the wealthiest Cambodians contribute to national coffers, writes Future Forum researcher Nith Kosal.
A district police chief in Kampong Speu has been suspended after complaints from subordinates that he played games rather than assign work, and invited them three times to drink in Preah Sihanouk province without considering the potential for Covid-19 infection.
Opposition activists who fled to Thailand after the CNRP was dissolved fear they could be targeted, followed and attacked for their politics and associations.
Poipet city’s casino industry has been shuttered since late April as they became Covid-19 hotspots, and it’s been more than three months of scraping by for many of the thousands of casino workers who found themselves out of work.
Border province officials say they have prepared new quarantine facilities as Cambodia is on the cusp of reopening its border to jobless, Covid-wary migrant workers in Thailand.
A former district police chief in Koh Kong province is under investigation for allegedly bulldozing 87 hectares of forest around the Dang Peng multiuse protected area.
A new opposition party by ex-CNRP officials has taken another step toward becoming formally registered with the Interior Ministry after submitting 4,000 supporters’ thumbprints, as it eyes alliances with other minor parties ahead of next year’s commune elections.
Hammered by years of debt, drought and desperation, Cambodia’s smallholder farmers have long supported themselves by sending family to work in Phnom Penh factories. But the pandemic has upended the arrangement, forcing unemployed workers back to failing farms.
Village officials pressured some Svay Rieng residents to accept less than $0.25 per square meter to give up their land for a state reservoir, two community representatives allege, though a village chief denies there was any coercion.
Saing Beth, 17, says he’s already abandoned his dream of becoming a police officer. Driving a taxi, as he’s doing now, is not as rewarding, but his family need the money. “Where could they get the money for me to finish school, since they have no income?”
A three-fold rise in human trafficking cases handled by the Interior Ministry could be one of the costs of the Covid-19 pandemic’s pressure on jobs and livelihoods, government and civil society officials said.
Restrictions in border provinces and elsewhere will remain in place for at least another week to try to curb the spread of Covid-19’s Delta variant, while Phnom Penh restrictions including its curfew have also been extended.
Two companies are planning ecotourism developments in Kampot province estuaries amid growing concerns among local fishing communities as a consultation forum was canceled amid Covid-19.
Subcontracted workers say they frequently lose money somewhere along the web of bosses above them who manage constructions, with labor advocates saying pay disputes appear to be increasing during Covid-19’s economic challenges.
Garment and footwear unions asked brands to make their Cambodian suppliers pay workers that they say were short-changed during lockdowns, suspensions and permanent closures, in effect asking brands to intervene on the way the Labor Ministry and factories interpret the law.
A “rain betting” game that involves driving around with walkie-talkies has landed five men in police custody in Battambang city.
Four inmates briefly escaped Kandal prison on Saturday after officers opened its gate to let prisoners exercise outside, its prison director said.
Oknha Heng Huy has filed a lawsuit for defamation and incitement against a villager who posted on Facebook that the Koh Kong sugar tycoon should work to clear his name.
According to a document circulated on Friday, the Health Ministry issued a directive that public and private health centers must accept all arriving patients after reports that numerous sick people were turned away.
Authorities across the country levied $11,000 in fines and apprehended 428 people in one day for violations of Covid-19 restrictions, while Phnom Penh arrested 51 violators during a week of curfews.
Some 1,061 cases of “fake news” have been identified by the Information Ministry this year, according to a ministry report — 910 of them for inciting criticism of the government or insulting the country’s leaders.
Both Nhung, 61, and Sok, 46, have lived their whole lives in Cambodia except to escape Khmer Rouge purges against ethnic Vietnamese. Now, alongside hundreds, they have been evicted from floating homes here, some told to cross a border blockaded by Vietnamese ships.
Police are searching for a man alleged to have hit a health officer on the forehead during Covid-19 vaccinations due to a delay in the data entry system.
Four protesters seeking compensation from Phnom Penh’s new international airport development have been put in Covid-19 quarantine without cause, allege their wives, who accuse authorities of trying to silence the protests.
More than 2,000 people have visited a Phnom Penh mental health clinic in seven months, a doubling from last year, many of them suffering insomnia and developing unhealthy habits from worrying that they have Covid-19.
Srey Bandaul, 49, one of the founders of world-renowned art school Phare Ponleu Selpak, died from Covid-19 on Wednesday evening. “He passionately believed in arts as a tool to heal. Arts healed him and made him a more peaceful person. He truly embodied the arts,” the school’s director said.
Two land dispute representatives have been fined about $1,000 each for Facebook posts showing a crowd of protesters in a Svay Rieng rice field, a gathering deemed by authorities to be a violation of Covid-19 measures.
Phnom Penh police detained 21 people and confiscated a further 132 vehicles Tuesday night as they tightened their crackdown on Covid-19 curfew violators.
Hundreds of Cambodians have been put in tents in the Thai border area, with many more arriving every day, as some have attempted to cross uncleared minefields amid border closures due to Covid-19, a local official said.
An online journalist says he received an anonymous call that he took to be a threat after reporting on land clearing in Siem Reap province.
A 16-year-old son of a jailed CNRP official was denied bail by the Appeal Court following his arrest in June for incitement and insulting public officials over his digital activities.
Phnom Penh Municipal Police say officers will get serious about enforcement of the capital’s curfew starting tonight, after meting out only “soft punishments,” including confiscating 1,053 vehicles, over the first four days of renewed Covid-19 restrictions.
Crowds of residents armed with sticks blocked an ambulance from bringing a Covid-19 corpse into two villages in Prey Veng province for burial, forcing authorities to take the local ethnic Cham resident’s body to his family’s hometown in Tbong Khmum province.
Nine defendants were jailed for 12 to 20 months for incitement for their involvement in protests outside the Chinese Embassy last October, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court ruled on Monday.
Sre Ambel residents have long dealt with land issues related to infamous sugarcane plantations nearby. Activity on those plantations appears to be waning, but they are now bracing for more problems as an opaque state program privatizes swaths of protected areas across the province.
With just over a year left on a political ban for opposition officials, Prime Minister Hun Sen said he would hand out “rehabilitation” pardons only if it “makes me pleased,” while saying he would stay in power until he “no longer wants to do it anymore.”
Heng Sreynop says she lives in a red zone in Thailand, and fears Covid-19. She says she understands why the borders need to be closed, but it adds to the pressure. “If we wanted to escape, we couldn’t escape. We don’t know where to escape.”
A prolonged and contentious trial involving unionist Rong Chhun and two others ended on Friday, with a verdict expected on August 18.
As Phnom Penh officials handed out notices around town about the new two-week ban on dining in at restaurants, food vendors said that despite the seemingly endless Covid-19 disruptions, takeaway-only could still be OK for business.
Provincial prosecutors issued three documents this week detailing the actions against the 21 total suspects, plus an unspecified number of unarrested accomplices, related to illegal marble mining in the province.
More than 300 Cambodians came through the O’Smach checkpoint in Oddar Meanchey — almost as many as had returned this whole month — ahead of the closing of borders with Thailand, while other border provinces prepared curfews and lockdown restrictions.
Sin Koeu, police chief in Chhuk district’s Doun Yay commune, said on Thursday evening that so far seven people had died from suspected wine poisoning.
Commune authorities said on Thursday they would ban dining in at restaurants but allow alcohol sales for drinking at home, as a Phnom Penh councilor explained the need for heightened vigilance against the looming Covid-19 Delta variant despite a lull in local infections.
Phnom Penh is banning gatherings with alcohol or with more than 10 people, as well as going out after 9 p.m., following a nationwide order for municipal and provincial authorities to implement the measures to stop the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, while eight border provinces will also enter three-tiered lockdown tonight for two weeks.
The Cambodia Democracy Act of 2021 was introduced this week and considered by the committee on Wednesday.
A new U.S.-funded fact-checking outlet for Cambodia has been challenged over methodology and an apparent email mishap in its first published assessment: that an international rights organization’s claims of concern over the government’s Covid-19 QR-code tracking system were “false.”
Fifteen individuals are being questioned by prosecutors following their arrests for the alleged illegal mining of marble in Stung Treng province.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced a former opposition party activist to a year and half in prison for comments posted in a video clip calling the government soft against the country’s Vietnamese minority, which were made during a rally for jailed unionist Rong Chhun.
As much as 25 percent of migrant workers coming back from Covid-stricken Thailand are testing positive, according to provincial authorities, as some returnees said they believe they are contracting the disease in crowded quarantine centers along the border.
Youth activists who were charged with incitement over their participation in protests for the release of jailed unionist Rong Chhun defended their innocence in their second trial hearing on Tuesday, saying their actions amounted to freedom of expression.
Thirty-six Chinese nationals and two Cambodians have been placed in Covid-19 quarantine after a more than 2,500-km journey over six days by sea from China to Koh Rong Sanloem, where they were arrested for alleged illegal entry to the country, authorities said.
Violence committed by the state against Cambodians — or “these things” as one shooting victim put it — is not infrequent. But amid villagers’ decadeslong struggle against land grabs, many are finding courage in filming and broadcasting authorities’ abuses live, across the country.
Several Phnom Penh communes say they have recorded a rise in non-Covid-19 deaths this year, while a clinic and hospital say their patient numbers are down significantly as people choose self-treatment amid pandemic fears.
As part of a massive government campaign to privatize land, ostensibly for poor families, Cambodia has cut off nearly 127,000 hectares from Koh Kong’s protected parks. In part one of reports from the province, Tuol Koki commune residents laugh off the prospects of benefiting from the campaign.
After 15 months with sparse international tourists, handicraft vendors in Siem Reap say they’re barely covering their expenses and fear the future if tourism doesn’t return.
A military officer’s development company has been fined about $200,000 for extracting red dirt in Kampot province without a licence, in what a Mines and Energy Ministry spokesperson said was the only major fine imposed by the ministry this year.
Malaysia-based Telecom provider Smart Axiata admitted Friday there was one case where a customer’s existing number had been transferred to a new subscriber, after the Telecommunications Ministry warned of punitive action against the service provider for transferring active numbers.
Leung Sophon, rights group Central’s Thailand-based project officer, said routine testing at workers’ residences — which have been hotspots in the country’s ongoing Covid-19 surge — haven’t been reported for over a week.
A social media uproar ensued after a Kun Khmer boxer lifted and slammed his opponent onto the mat, with hundreds of people commenting on the perceived foul play, including Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The petition, dated July 12, said Cholkiri district governor Hay Monorom “behaved badly,” acting as if he were a big and powerful person and using inappropriate words against village officials and residents.
A former opposition commune chief in Kampong Speu province was arrested and jailed on Thursday for a crime of incitement dating back to January 2019, the provincial governor said.
Excavators have started digging a waste-water treatment reservoir off a wastewater canal in Boeng Tompun I commune, with Phnom Penh authorities telling the land’s claimants they had no claim to the land.
Three journalists who were attempting a live broadcast from a land protest at Phnom Penh’s Boeng Tompun lake area were taken to a police station and made to sign an agreement that they would not make the same mistake again.
A communal lake was in the process of being filled in Kandal’s Kien Svay district, while 30 hectares of flooded forest was cleared in Kampong Chhnang over the past week, authorities said, but no perpetrators have been arrested for the violations.
In a move a labor group said was unprecedented, NagaWorld is calling on governmental labor inspectors to authorize the dismissal of a group of union leaders as part of the casino’s mass layoffs, overriding the legal protections unionists enjoy unless they have committed serious offenses, a workers’ representative said.
Three Mother Nature environmentalists arrested last year and already serving jail terms for incitement have been handed two further charges, insulting the king and plotting, which carry maximum jail sentences of five and 10 years respectively, their lawyer said.
Touch Vibol, executive director of the Student Movement for Democracy (SMD), said in a statement this week that critics had been twisting the group’s words using abusive language, curses and insults.
Around 30 construction workers protested at the Hui W Travel Agent construction site — a firm connected to Chinese payment service Huione — after they were not paid salaries, with a resolution reached hours later.
As tens of thousands of Covid-19 cases mount across the country, lives inside Cambodia’s pagodas have become marked by caution and practical concerns — more cooking and fewer ceremonies — while creating a void of Buddhist teachings for the nation, monks said.
Whether they have the virus or not, Cambodian workers in Thailand say they’re struggling as Covid-19 surges at construction sites and other workplaces packed with migrant laborers.
About 100 villagers in Banteay Meanchey province protested at a flooded forest where they allege 120 hectares of public land was sold by local officials to private interests.
Less than a year to elections, the country’s former main opposition party says it has no plan it can share with the public about rebuilding a political presence in the country.
Twenty-six female inmates at the Siem Reap Provincial Prison have further tested positive for Covid-19, as family members of jailed rapper Kea Sokun as well as opposition activist Mao Sarin said they hadn’t seen their jailed relatives in months and were concerned for their health.
Former CNRP lawyer and board member Choung Choungy has applied for political rehabilitation — after being banned by the Supreme Court in 2017 — but an Interior Ministry spokesperson said his reentry into politics could be hampered by an unresolved court case.
Authorities have been claiming victory over illegal logging for years, including in 2016 following the establishment of a national anti-logging task force. Taskforce spokesman Eng Hy told the Cambodia Daily at the time that “illegal logging has been completely stopped,” despite the seizure of 5,431 cubic meters of luxury wood in one haul in Kratie province.
A journalist working for Siem Reap Breaking News and arrested on Wednesday was charged with incitement and violations of the Covid-19 Law, the latter punishable by up to three years in prison.
Cambodia’s vaccination campaign will be extended to adolescents as young as 12 for greater immunity and with an eye on reopening schools, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Friday, as a government document also advised businesses to randomly test employees for Covid-19.
A reporter has been arrested in Battambang over alleged incitement related to his Facebook activity, according to military police.
Two trash collectors have died and another seriously injured in a traffic incident as workers and family spoke of Phnom Penh’s new waste management companies putting them on unfamiliar shifts, not providing equipment and lacking union representation.
In an announcement this week, the Health Ministry said the change to a 21-day interval was made based on a report from a Covid-19 commission and approval from Hun Sen. Vaccinations have already been underway for five months, and more than 5 million people have received doses.
More than 800 residents in Banteay Meanchey accused local officials of selling 120 hectares of flooded forest and state land to private interests, affecting their access to fishing waters and firewood.
A Phnom Penh fisher who was flung from his boat after a crash with a sand barge on Sunday, destroying his boat and motor, said he has received $1,500 in compensation, though he never learned the company’s name.
A cable company digging around a Siem Reap high school fence found a cache of old unexploded grenades, alerting demining experts who have since recovered more than 400 grenades, still full of powder, from the site.
Dissident Kung Raiya said he preferred to focus on business and family instead of speaking out and facing risk, a compromise faced by many opposition members after the CNRP’s dissolution.
Cambodia has seen a high case rate for the last two weeks, averaging more than 900 cases daily, with a similar spike in Covid-19 deaths. With the rising number of deaths, select pagodas across the city are working overtime to ensure the dead are given formal ceremonials.
Mosquitoes, leaking roofs and no toilets — amid a surge of returnees from Covid-19-stricken Thailand, quarantine centers along the border in Oddar Meanchey province are facing a shortage of facilities, migrants and the provincial administration say.
Health officials have reiterated that vaccines prevent Covid-19 deaths but not transmission, as they blamed members of the public for the country’s ongoing surge.
The Covid-19 patients who find themselves in provincial and Phnom Penh quarantine centers say they have struggled with the stress, boredom and lack of information and doctor attention during their stay, but several people said dance breaks and meditation helped them power through the confusion and anxiety.
News publisher Los Seng, of Los Seng News, says he is under pressure over covering land disputes related to Phnom Penh’s new international airport in Kandal province, warned to stop his reporting and told that a case against him was headed to court.
Though a killer was tried and sentenced to life in prison in 2017, Bou Rachana, wife of slain political analyst Kem Ley, says she is still in pain, raising their children alone in Australia, and has no faith in receiving true justice.
A fisherman is waiting for sand-dredging company officials to respond after his boat and home was severely damaged in a crash with one of the barges hauling new land for Phnom Penh’s developments.
A pagoda’s sale of unused marshland in Kandal’s Akrei Khsat commune for $400,000 will be investigated as a potentially illegal sale of state land, the provincial governor and Religion Ministry said.
Political analyst Kem Ley’s murder of July 10, 2016, ignited one of the last outpourings of mass civic and political expression seen in an increasingly repressed nation. Recollections from Phnom Penh residents, Ley’s colleagues and others are pieced together in this account of the historic day and the weeks that followed.
Police confiscated 759 kg of drugs and arrested 7,246 people in drug cases in the first six months of the year, according to National Police anti-drugs chief Mok Chito, who said traffickers were trying to take advantage of Covid-19 disruptions.
Cases have now been announced in at least nine of the country’s 28 overcrowded prisons, as the Justice Ministry discusses measures to reduce inmate numbers by releasing those close to the end of their sentences. Ministry spokesperson Kim Santepheap said on Monday that Justice Minister Keut Rith was considering the decision.
Health Ministry spokesperson Or Vandine posted a speech on Thursday saying that 2.13 million people had been vaccinated with at least their first doses in Phnom Penh — or 99.2 percent of the city’s population. She also raised the possibility of securing third doses for people in the future.
Following years of complaints about poor service, Cintri was put under state management in 2019, and as of July its work split up among three companies. Promises to keep all employees on the payroll were broken when 1,176 workers were terminated as of July 1.
Some NagaWorld casino workers who rejected voluntary termination packages — arguing that the company’s dismissals illegally targeted union activists — have now been fired and had thousands of dollars wired to their accounts.
Amid a spate of rice wine deaths in July, winemakers share some of the production shortcuts that can make the tradition profitable — but hold higher risk of yielding a poisonous batch.
Koh Kong villagers claim that hundreds of hectares of forest in the province’s Dang Peng multi-use zone have been illegally destroyed and claimed amid a major land reclassification campaign in the province.
Union activists say hundreds of laid-off Cintri workers still haven’t received new jobs, violating a promise from Phnom Penh City Hall, as the beleaguered trash collection company disposed of more than 1,000 workers amid a transition for the city’s waste management.
Fifteen people have died since Friday in a village in Kampot province — 11 in another case of rice wine poisoning, and a further four others from “fainting” and other supposedly unrelated causes, local officials said.
The director of human rights group Adhoc has resigned after five years living abroad following the arrests of his staff members, a decision seen as both an “opportunity” for new leadership in civil society and a new chapter for the NGO.
Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered authorities to return a lion to the Chinese owner who kept it as a pet, siding with celebrities’ and public support for the luxurious life the owner claimed to provide for the declawed and defanged animal.
Fourteen defendants — at least 12 of them linked to the banned CNRP — were convicted by a Tbong Khmum court on Friday for alleged incitement, with their families saying the $500 to $1,000 fines imposed are too big a cost for their indebted households.
Six Cambodian West Point cadets have lost U.S. funding for their studies because Cambodia curtailed cooperation and therefore “lost its eligibility,” a U.S. Embassy spokesperson said, suggesting the Cambodian government should pay the tuition itself.
With under a year until next year’s local-level elections, political analyst Em Sovannara predicts that the country’s opposition parties might be able to win a total of five to 10 communes out of more than 1,600.
A trash collectors union said its members could be facing unemployment as Phnom Penh began its new collection regime on Thursday, splitting former sole-operator Cintri’s jurisdiction into three areas.
A second trial hearing was held on Thursday into protesters charged with incitement after a rally outside the Chinese Embassy last October on the anniversary of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements. They were submitting petitions to embassies around the capital about upholding the accord’s goal of bringing multiparty democracy to the country.
As Covid-19 cases reach record highs, Prime Minister Hun Sen spoke for over two hours about rapid test kits being hoarded in warehouses, ventilators going unused, using Chinese herbal medicines for prevention and buying up 80 percent of all coffins in stock around the country.
2017’s political crackdown ousted more than 5,000 opposition commune councilors from their elected seats. Now with less than a year until the next commune elections, two former CNRP commune chiefs speak of the desolation of the current opposition landscape.
Covid-19 is spreading across the country’s provinces as daily cases and deaths both hit record highs on Wednesday, as a governmental committee considers the situation to have reached a “red line,” a spokesperson said.
The Mondulkiri Provincial Court has charged six military personnel and three police officials for their alleged part in a conspiracy to export illegal timber to Vietnam.
Elections are set to return to Cambodia in June next year, but the country’s political landscape remains shattered and largely lifeless. In part one, Ouch Sony speaks to several minor party leaders about the daunting task of trying to build up a political movement from nothing.
Indigenous Bunong protesters have filed a complaint to the Interior Ministry saying local officials and traders sold off nearly 20 hectares of state mountain land to Phnom Penh police chief Sar Thet and former Ratanakiri military police commander Kim Reaksmey.
NGO staff members are posting photos of themselves online in a social media campaign calling for the release of arrested environmental activists.
Preah Sihanouk police arrested and released six people accused of selling vaccination cards, though neither police nor the provincial administration would give any details of the accused individuals, including whether they could be local officials.
A new NGO report on debt struggles in 14 communities — including reports of pressured land sales and threats — has been met with renewed objections from the local microfinance industry and largely a lack of response from its international development funders.
KAMPONG PHLUK, Siem Reap — Families living on the banks of the Tonle Sap lake say they are concerned about the currents feeding into the lake, which has been slow to rise again as the fish spawning season arrives.
Nine officers stormed the house of a jailed opposition politician on Thursday night, arresting his 16-year-old autistic son who was previously assaulted in public with a brick in April, according to the politician’s wife.
The northeastern province of Ratanakiri is reporting around 30 to 40 cases of Covid-19 a day, said a local official, resulting in close to 250 cases this week.
The Land Management Ministry has announced it will aim to distribute 30,000 hectares to the country’s poor in the third phase of a World Bank-funded project, which previously came amid controversy over the bank suspending loans to Cambodia over forced evictions.
Camera traps have captured images of the giant muntjac, a critically endangered deer, for the first time in Cambodia, an Environment Ministry spokesperson said.
Several Phnom Penh residents spoke in support of the arrested Mother Nature activists, but a common theme was growing fear around expressing themselves.
Actor, former “Mr. Asia” male pageant finalist and award-winning model Yith Meas Aussa was charged for domestic violence after a former girlfriend filed a complaint accusing him of violence and rape that she later withdrew.
Mother Nature activists were “gathering strength for an uprising” as evidenced by a Zoom conference where they insulted government leaders and the king, while three arrested activists acknowledged they wanted people to rise up, the Interior Ministry said.
The British Embassy on Wednesday declined to say whether the U.K.’s visiting foreign secretary raised concerns over the arrests of three Mother Nature environmentalists charged with plotting and insulting the king.
They feel intimidated by authorities, and a village official was detained and questioned over the weekend for standing up for the community, but residents protesting the new airport have built a small barricade of branches and cursed the developers in a ceremony.
International rights groups and embassies raised concerns over the recent arrests of Mother Nature environmentalists, as a government-aligned media outlet posted alleged evidence of a Zoom meeting where the activists appear to discuss a cartoon sketch of Prime Minister Hun Sen wearing a crown.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has set a July 1 trial date for incitement charges against nine defendants involved in a rally outside the Chinese Embassy last year.
Three Mother Nature environmentalists were charged on Monday and placed in pretrial detention at Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, as the mother of one of the activists said she was in shock but buoyed by support on social media, including from celebrities.
An Interior Ministry investigation refuted a string of Battambang police explanations of an alleged torture death — first that the detainee was beaten by villagers, then that he had a traffic accident, and third that he died from a drug overdose.
Ratanakiri authorities say they are running out of rapid tests as they track the remote province’s first major Covid-19 outbreak, imposing a curfew across the province after more than 100 cases were found in one day.
As the pandemic spreads through workplaces, income loss and mounting debt are shocking households now and could hold longer-term adverse effects for Cambodia’s economy, according to a series of reports.
Some Cambodian workers are caught in a wave of Covid-19 at their workplaces in Thailand and under pressure to maintain their livelihoods, while many others have fled back to Cambodia to escape the disease and the risk of difficulties in getting treatment or poor deals from employers.
Four activists arrested this week are all from environmental group Mother Nature, a rights group has said — as an Interior Ministry official alleged the “rebellious” group was using foreign money to try to topple the government.
In under three weeks, a senior U.S. official pressed Prime Minister Hun Sen over a controversial navy base; a defense attache cut short a visit to the base, saying he was denied full access; and USAID diverted millions in funds away from the Cambodian government.
Fourteen defendants — six of them in absentia — were tried for incitement at the Tbong Khmum Provincial Court in a full-day hearing that saw questions over messages on T-shirts and rallies in Phnom Penh, family members said.
An apparent outbreak of hundreds of cases — at a factory where workers say 80 percent were vaccinated — is a reminder that ending the Covid-19 pandemic is not a simple matter, health experts say.
Three of four environmental activists arrested on Wednesday are accused of plotting, a crime punishable by five to 10 years in prison, according to National Police.
Prach Chan, a ruling party lawmaker, former governor of Battambang and Tbong Khmum, and an ex-Interior Ministry official noted as a close aide to Interior Minister Sar Kheng, is set to become head of the National Election Committee.
Cambodia has in recent months privatized more than 120,000 hectares of land, lake and sea, according to a review of decrees published this year. In Kandal, developer Khun Sea has received a Mekong island, where some inhabitants are previous evictees of Phnom Penh’s Diamond Island.
The U.S. says it is ending aid to government entities under Greening Prey Lang, a project aimed at protecting the sanctuary, as the government silences local communities and civil society partners while “not adequately” prosecuting and putting an end to illegal logging.
An NGO officer said three young environmental activists were taken into custody in Phnom Penh and a fourth detained in Kandal province on Wednesday, but authorities have not confirmed the reported arrests, with National Police referring reporters to a Covid-19 committee.
Kea Sokun, a young Siem Reap rapper jailed for incitement over his nationalist lyrics, had his yearlong prison sentence upheld by the Appeal Court in Battambang on Wednesday.
Siem Reap province is seeing a 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew, fines for not wearing masks properly, and lockdowns in targeted areas as precautions over rising Covid-19 case numbers, officials in the province said.
Phnom Penh’s vaccination campaign has reached the city’s last three districts, while provinces are gearing up to be next in line for jabs as the Health Ministry announced it had hit the 3 million mark for first doses out of a target of 10 million people vaccinated nationwide.
A community representative in a Preah Sihanouk land dispute was arrested in a case in which three Coalition of Cambodian Farmer Community members were also sentenced to jail last year, and which has previously been reported as involving Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly.
NagaWorld union representatives met with the Labor Ministry on Monday as the workers accuse the Phnom Penh casino of trying to destroy the union through mass layoffs targeting top labor leaders and those active in support.
Public markets have been allowed to reopen all stalls — not only essential items — in a late-night announcement by Phnom Penh City Hall, as shoppers on Tuesday welcomed a return to relatively normal routines.
Covid-19 outbreaks of hundreds of workers are continuing to hit garment factories in and out of Phnom Penh, as factories navigate whether to suspend operations or keep up production.
If authorities do not see empathy as reason enough to halt the eviction of hundreds of families on Phnom Penh’s rivers, they should do so because it is what’s best for the health of the city, and the health of the country at large, writes Quinn Libson.
Ten to 20 percent of inmates at infected prisons — likely thousands of prisoners — were found with Covid-19, as a prison official said that weeks of concealing the extent of the outbreak was about preventing riots and protecting prison guards.
A former opposition senator has been appointed to a government position after returning from exile in Sweden, where she was evading an 18-month prison sentence for accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen of ordering the assassination of political analyst Kem Ley.
Floating fish farms floated 5 km north temporarily, those without fish worked to dismantle their homes, and some moved onto a wooden platform on shore, as the deadline for Phnom Penh floating communities’ evictions passed this weekend.
The Defense Ministry has further responded to a U.S. complaint on Friday that a defense attache was denied “full access” to Ream naval base during a tour, saying it had shown the U.S. delegation new constructions of concern.
Poor residents of Phnom Penh, Kandal’s Takhmao city and Sihanoukville have another week to apply for emergency cash aid to alleviate the impacts of Covid-19 lockdowns, the Planning Ministry has announced.
Cambodian Freedom Fighters commander Richard Kiri Kim, jailed for life for leading an armed attack on government buildings in 2000, died of Covid-19 on Thursday, a prisons official said.
The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh said a defense attaché was not granted “full access” to Ream Naval Base during a much-hyped visit on Friday, after a senior U.S. State Department official questioned the alleged presence of Chinese military personnel at the base.
More than 100 villagers have planned to block the entrance to the Kandal province construction site of Phnom Penh’s new international airport, as they hold out to be compensated at market prices while the governor threatens legal action.
After City Hall threatened to evict residents living on floating houses with less than two weeks of notice, the families are torn on what to do, some rapidly disassembling their floating houses and others stalling for time ahead of Saturday’s deadline.
Local authorities, accompanied by security forces, started clearing land in Chroy Changva district’s Prek Leap commune without any notice on Thursday, affecting one resident’s fencing and fish pond, near a satellite city being developed by the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation.
The financial firm, run by Ke Suonsophy and Sar Channet, the daughter and niece of two deputy prime ministers, suspended operations in April, blaming three ex-board members of cheating the company out of $20 million.
A repeatedly delayed incitement trial for 14 activists in Tbong Khmum province has been scheduled again for next week, with families pleading for movement in the case — but a court spokesman said further potential delays would be up to the discretion of the judge.
Kampot province, seeing a recent surge in Covid-19 cases, burned two bodies at the foot of a mountain this week because its facilities aren’t yet
Organized crime groups — with individuals commonly from China and Taiwan — are “increasingly targeting” Cambodia for the production of meth and ecstasy and the trafficking of ketamine, with international syndicates’ signature tea bags used for smuggling found in the country, a new report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime says.
Kep officials have decided that public advertising billboards in the province could be better used to disseminate Covid-19 safety guidelines, this week ordering the removal of private ads for safety announcements.
In a long-planned ceremony, Defense Minister Tea Banh presented Cambodia’s first drop of oil, extracted from deep under the sea at the country’s offshore Apsara oil field, less than a week after the company behind the project announced liquidation amid financial woes.
The case, which sparked a social media outcry month, has previously raised issues of power imbalances in the entertainment industry as well as Cambodia’s long history of women facing abuse at the hands of powerful men.
An inmate of Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, currently dealing with a Covid-19 outbreak, died from pneumonia at the Khmer-Soviet hospital on Monday, according to his wife, who said he did not have Covid-19 but the prisons were slow to treat him.
A man who was on the run from Phnom Penh police for a year after allegedly attacking a former partner with acid was caught in Covid-19 quarantine in Tbong Khmum on Saturday.
Eight people have been charged for extortion in Preah Vihear province after allegedly extorting the owner of a woodworking workshop as journalists.
A man who was shot and injured in a clash between soldiers and residents in Kandal province’s Ang Snuol district says he has now left Phnom Penh’s Calmette Hospital but wants compensation for medical expenses and settlements for villagers involved in the dispute.
Mock elections across all provinces will be held on June 20 to trial a new vote-tallying system involving technology funded by Japan, the E.U. and China, ahead of upcoming 2022 commune elections that are scheduled for next June.
Seven NagaWorld union representatives submitted a petition with 2,049 thumbprints — from employees both employed and newly jobless — to the Labor Ministry on Tuesday, contesting NagaWorld’s decision to lay off more than 15 percent of its staff.
Health authorities have announced a rise in imported Covid-19 cases as Cambodian police say they are increasingly concerned about illegal crossings to and from Thailand amid pressures on people’s livelihoods.
Choeung Sokuntheavy, the tycoon overseeing Vital water and Mee Chiet noodles, gained the title of “neak oknha” earlier this year, a step up from the unembellished “oknha” title that has attracted controversy this year.
A prospective rubber plantation is clearing land near an ancient ironworks site in Preah Vihear province, raising concerns over heritage protection.
KrisEnergy announced that it has filed a “winding up” petition just six months after producing Cambodia’s first drops of oil, citing low production in Cambodia’s beleaguered Apsara block and the company’s compounding debt.
New inmates arriving to Banteay Meanchey and Svay Rieng provincial prisons tested positive for Covid-19 — in the latter case, after being in contact with nearly 50 people — with the disease now having spread to at least seven prisons.
Seven women handing a petition to the U.N. human rights office for the release of their jailed activist family members say they were surrounded by 30 to 40 officers, shoved into a flower bed, and told their small gathering required prior permission.
An armed forces spokesperson said on Friday that the group of soldiers that fired when confronted by farmers in Kandal province, hitting and wounding one, were from a Defense Ministry technical school, though he did not clarify whether they were trainees.
A year after Wanchalearm Satsaksit vanished, authorities say there is no proof he was abducted in Phnom Penh. A joint investigation reveals details of the Thai dissident’s escape from Thailand, life in exile in Cambodia and the last days before he disappeared.
Four provinces outside Phnom Penh saw more than 100 daily Covid-19 cases each, four among the most affected administrations have stopped posting daily counts, and several previously little-affected areas are seeing an uptick in cases.
ANG SNUOL, Kandal — Some among 50 soldiers fired at the feet of a dozen farmers on Thursday, hitting and injuring one, as the Defense
Casino workers from NagaWorld are collecting thumbprints to file a complaint with the Labor Ministry after the gambling behemoth began the process of laying off more than 1,000 workers last week, allegedly targeting union leaders and members.
Eleven people in the capital were jailed for allegedly violating harsh Covid-19 measures put in place since April, a police spokesperson said, and hundreds of others had been fined or sent to quarantine, but eventually released, for not following the city’s lockdown rules.
Two residents of a wildlife sanctuary and three men who tried to give them rice as charity have been charged for forestry crimes in Banteay Meanchey province.
A long-standing land dispute involving a CPP lawmaker, jealous neighbors armed with slingshots, and the alleged presence of shadowy land brokers in the background ignited into protest and a man’s arrest this week in Kandal province.
Phnom Penh’s vaccination campaign will be finished this month as progress has been faster than planned, the Health Ministry said, with districts reporting vaccination rates that project to more than half of their populations having received first doses on average.
A senior U.S. diplomat asked the Cambodian government to release political prisoners and restore democratic norms ahead of the 2022 and 2023 elections, she said during a conference call Wednesday.
Six men have been arrested and 100 kilograms of drugs seized in a crackdown on a network of eight drug production and distribution sites across Phnom Penh and Kandal province amid an ongoing rise in drug trafficking in the country, authorities said.
Kampot has imposed a province-wide curfew and ban on alcohol sales after more than 200 Covid-19 cases were found at a casino along the Vietnamese border, with an official saying there were fears that visitors who were in potential contact had spread across the province.
An inmate has died of Covid-19 and more than 100 have the virus at the Kampong Speu Provincial Prison, the provincial governor said on Tuesday while denying he knew exactly when the outbreak started.
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.
Battambang provincial authorities have warned a medical factory over acidic wastewater discharge that has contaminated the Sangke river and which they say is impacting public health and the environment.
A spokesperson for the Justice Ministry and Cambodian Human Rights Committee hit back at criticism over lack of transparency about Covid-19 cases in the country’s prisons by turning the issue into a matter of privacy.
A standoff between residents on land earmarked for Phnom Penh’s new international airport against developers and authorities continues, as the gulf between the land’s rising value and authorities’ insistence on paying only pre-development prices as compensation widens.
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.
Some 100 Preah Sihanouk villagers protested in support of six families whose land is being claimed by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nephew, as the nephew said he had a legal title to the land while the local commune chief said he didn’t know how Hun Chea had obtained it.
Senior NagaWorld union leaders all received dismissal notices amid the casino’s plan to lay off more than 1,000 employees, a union official said, in what some labor and civil society observers labeled an attempt to eliminate the active union from the workplace.
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.
Provinces outside Phnom Penh had more than 2,000 new Covid-19 cases in the week to Thursday, the most on record, as coronavirus numbers continue a gradual resurgence.
Activists and civil society organizations called for an investigation into more than 200 tons of endangered wood seized in Hong Kong about a month ago, as the agriculture minister said he had yet to receive the exporter’s details from Hong Kong authorities.
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.
Phnom Penh City Hall has designated parts of two villages in Pur Senchey and Russei Keo districts as “orange zones,” shutting down travel and businesses in a return to restrictions for a factory area and a dense urban neighborhood.
“Most people don’t even know we exist. We deal with Covid-19 all day every day and yet people just think of doctors when they think of frontline workers,” Nguon Sokheng says, smile vanishing. “Nobody asks where the waste goes.”
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.
NagaWorld workers are being offered over $1,000 in compensation for layoffs, they said, with some accepting due to financial difficulties and others rejecting the offer saying they want to stand in solidarity with their union.
At least 10 people have died and more than 30 were hospitalized after drinking tainted rice wine at a Kampot province funeral, leading to the arrest of two winemakers, authorities said.
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.
The Interior Ministry prisons department, Preah Sihanouk provincial administration and Phnom Penh City Hall this week would not offer clarification on a human rights group’s claim that there are “hundreds” of Covid-19 cases in the country’s prisons.
NagaWorld has begun its proposed layoffs of 1,329 total workers, according to the casino’s union, which also alleges that long-serving union members are bearing the brunt of the cutbacks.
Some vendors spent Monday cleaning their stalls in anticipation of opening for sales on Tuesday, but amid persistent Covid-19 fears as well as precautions — which restrict reopenings to only sellers of essential foodstuffs — the return of market activity was a trickle rather than a rush.
Civil society observers welcomed the justice minister’s call to root out corruption in the courts, but said challenges could remain to remove politics from the country’s judiciary.
Kampong Speu business owners have about a week to pull down the beer billboards commonly found outside restaurants all over the country, as the province hopes the move will beautify its roads and sidewalks.
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.
Prisoners at Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar Correctional Center I will not be taken to court for hearings for the time being after 18 inmates tested positive for Covid-19 this week.
Phnom Penh’s public markets will reopen from Monday, City Hall has announced, as workers protested on Veng Sreng Blvd. near former red zones despite the further easing of restrictions, this time over lack of pay.
Through my grandmother who raised me, I learned about the challenges of unpaid household work, stigma against women, poor social services and the absence of government support — you name it. Thirty years later, I still see women, particularly working moms, struggling to fight for equal treatment, writes Sopharith Sin.
After a police raid this week netted about 300 grams of illicit drugs and other chemicals at a Phnom Penh condo, 45 suspects were being held by authorities and tested for drugs on Thursday, a police official said.
Phnom Penh’s “red zones,” the areas of the capital with the most restrictive Covid-19 lockdown measures, were removed effective Thursday, leaving most of the city in yellow-designated areas with about a dozen “orange” pockets remaining.
Eleven people have died from apparent methanol poisoning after consuming wine produced by a Kandal province factory now shuttered by authorities.
Storm surges this month have ripped through a fishing community on the riverbanks of Phnom Penh, sinking boats, belongings and stores of food. Amid warnings of intensifying storms amid climate change, the families, who live on boats along the shore, speak of their anxieties about the future, and say they can only endure.
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.
One of the country’s key trucking routes linking the capital to Sihanoukville’s coastal port is set for widening in a $100-million, World Bank-financed project starting next year, as a parallel expressway under construction is also now about 50 percent complete, the Transport Ministry said.
A former vice president of the outlawed opposition CNRP has broken with the strident wing of the party in asking the government to be reinstated to politics this week, a course of action that a party co-founder has previously criticized as effective betrayal.
Cambodia’s Covid-19 numbers appear to be on the decline, but authorities stressed the need for continued vigilance as outbreaks have emerged across the region, and say they are keeping particularly close watch on factories and dense urban areas.
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.
Prime Minister Hun Sen is setting the stage for heightened repression with his message over the weekend that there are opposition plans “to sabotage the upcoming elections,” civil society groups say.
“Is this how things are supposed to happen in Cambodia?” Mean Pich Rita, who has accused an oknha of attempted rape, asks her mother in a widely circulated video. It is painful and frustrating to have to give a simple but true answer to this question: Yes, this is the way it has been, writes Future Forum researcher Theang Soriya.
Kandal province villagers have erected tents to stand guard over their rice fields on the site of Phnom Penh’s new airport development, as two bulldozers arrived and began to clear the area.
Six defendants who were arrested for protesting outside the Chinese Embassy on Paris Peace Agreements Day in October, as well as two others at large, faced trial on Monday for incitement at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
The daughter and son-in-law of tycoon Heng Sier — who is accused of attempted rape by a university student — were arrested after recruiting lookalikes to make a video reenactment of the businessman’s encounter with her, and also shared pornographic images allegedly of the student.
The Environment Ministry has told all provincial governors to immediately stop the issuing of land certificates in protected areas such as biodiversity corridors, saying 70 sanctuaries in 11 provinces were facing encroachment.
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.
A survey of vulnerable communities in Phnom Penh has found a large majority of respondents reporting difficulties with food shortages, loss of incomes and feelings of helplessness during the city’s lockdown.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court ordered the “urgent” release of a university student and TV presenter arrested for alleged theft and violence against an oknha — whom she has since accused of attempted rape, sparking a social media outcry.
In Stung Meanchey III commune, about 300 people gathered at a red-zone barricade on Thursday morning to protest and call to be allowed out to get vaccines or withdraw wages from the bank, according to residents.
Police detained an informal-workers union official and placed him in two-week quarantine in Banteay Meanchey province as he was gathering names of members facing economic difficulties amid the nation’s ongoing Covid-19 outbreak.
In another case of violence against people linked to the upended opposition CNRP, a Phnom Penh activist was surrounded by four men at a Chroy Changva market and beaten with metal rods in broad daylight.
The government has renewed its promise to give cash aid to low-income people living in the capital’s most restrictive “red zone” lockdown areas, of about $39 to $78 for families and $40 to garment workers, following a string of protests over livelihoods.
A student and television presenter who was detained after a tycoon accused her of theft has filed a complaint against the tycoon alleging he tried to rape her, leading to calls for justice for the woman across social media.
A Kampot province port and seaside sand-filling project has gone quiet after the senator leading the project died amid disputes with two marine fishing communities, though the late politician’s assistant says the development has not been abandoned.
Hong Kong Customs reported it had seized seven containers containing HK$1.1 million (US$140,000) worth of wood that arrived from Cambodia between April 29 and May 5, saying it was the largest cache of protected wood the department had caught in the last five years.
After a month of fasting, Phnom Penh’s Muslim community would normally gather at mosques for meals and prayers through the night. But as Ramadan this year nears its end, mosques remain shuttered as a public health measure, and members of the community say they will celebrate alone.
Phnom Penh has further eased lockdown zones, limiting red zones to only parts of eight communes, with the changes to take effect from Thursday.
Hundreds of Kampong Chhnang residents blocked a national road in Pursat province on Tuesday so they could resume farming on land they say they have tended for decades, as authorities confiscated a recorder and deleted photos belonging to a VOD reporter covering the protest.
Over 100 drivers and red-zone residents on dozens of vans were stopped from leaving Phnom Penh, and two of them later tested positive for Covid-19, authorities said.
The gates of the Grand Twins International garment factory were crowded with security guards, drivers and other Choam Chao III residents hoping for a vaccine Tuesday morning, as workers looked to vaccinations to address their health and employment concerns.
More than 30 inmates at the Preah Sihanouk provincial prison have tested positive for Covid-19, and the country’s prisons department says it is facing an emergency and is at risk of a serious outbreak.
About 100 red-zone residents stood on Veng Sreng Blvd. on Monday morning demanding reduced rent, as increasing numbers of police officers and city officials gathered around them.
Former CNRP officials and their families say they are worried that assaults against them will continue, “again and again,” and remain unsolved by police, following last month’s attack against a 15-year-old — whose mother says she was “neglectful” for not making him wear a helmet outside.
The Health Ministry is withholding Covid-19 case details under leaders’ instructions, as they are kept at the provincial level, preparing them nationally could take too long, neighboring countries also give only broad totals, and officials want to do more analysis, a spokesperson said.
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.
Gold exports through “private transactions” jumped some 676 percent, from $388 million to $3 billion last year, with some attributing the surge to investors selling their holdings due to a price rise, and others suggesting a potential link to gold smuggling to Vietnam.
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.
Some provincial authorities are taking extra precautions with the hopes of preventing Covid-19 transmission after the government relaxed lockdowns in Phnom Penh and Takhmao and crowds departed the cities on Thursday.
Casino staff in Poipet say workers in the sector get little support or protection from Covid-19, and amid the lockdown living is getting tough.
Garment factories outside the strictest lockdown zones are looking to reopen with half their workforce and Covid-19 preventions as Phnom Penh eases lockdowns, but the restrictions have still had an impact on cash flow and production for several garment industry players as well as workers.
Several communes in Phnom Penh and most of Takhmao City will have lockdown restrictions eased starting Thursday, authorities have announced.
A Cambodian man accused by police of impersonating a law enforcement officer and transporting a Chinese man outside a locked-down Covid-19 “red zone” in Sihanoukville was sent to the provincial court on Wednesday, a court official said.
A shopping mall, hotel, casino, warehouses and mixed-use areas are proposed to be built on a wildlife sanctuary near the Vietnamese border under a request made by the Mondulkiri provincial administration to the Interior Ministry.
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.
Journalists broadcasting from red zones, following ambulances or making misleading conclusions “without clear background” will face legal action, the Information Ministry said on Tuesday, as a spokesperson explained that the measures were needed as some had made reports without first verifying with relevant parties.
Kandal provincial authorities have told farmers to stop posting photos of vegetables spoiling in their fields without a market amid lockdowns as they were affecting morale, an official said.
The government late Monday announced an end to the lockdowns of Phnom Penh and Takhmao city starting Thursday, to be replaced with measures to be decided by municipal and provincial governors.
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.
The Defense Ministry has been put in charge of a red-zone vaccination drive set to begin on Saturday and which aims to inoculate more than 800,000 people in Phnom Penh districts hit hard by Covid-19.
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.
The question of reducing rents for spaces at closed-down markets is stalled amid an ongoing surge of Covid-19 cases, with the Phnom Penh governor telling vendors to hold off on paying until the outbreak is stopped and authorities can negotiate with owners.
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.
More than 1,600 workers from 206 factories have tested positive across the country, the government said at a press conference Wednesday, with thousands of others placed in quarantine.
Cambodia’s first oil field is estimated to produce only a “small fraction” of expected oil, according to an independent review, putting its developer, KrisEnergy, in further financial peril, the company said.
The 15-year-old son of a former opposition official was struck in the head with a brick by unidentified attackers this week while picking up his mother, a “Friday Women of Cambodia” protester, from buying food, she said.
“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.”
Following hundreds of arrests, at least 102 people are facing court charges for Covid-19 violations, including more than a dozen put on trial without a lawyer after the accused chose to represent themselves in their misdemeanor cases, according to court officials.
NagaWorld earned $102.3 million in net profit last year despite the pandemic and expects a rosier outlook in 2021, according to its latest annual report, though a union leader said workers are concerned about whether they can keep their jobs or receive financial assistance during the pandemic.
UPDATED April 30 — Phnom Penh City Hall added two villages in Toul Kork district to its list of red zones and two villages in the same district to orange as of April 29.
UPDATED 11:48 a.m. — The government has extended Phnom Penh and Takhmao city’s lockdowns until May 5, it announced in a decision issued late Monday.
Nine years to the day after environmentalist Chut Wutty was shot dead while investigating illegal logging in Koh Kong province, activists vowed to continue his work and keep watch over the country’s dwindling forests.
Tens of thousands of workers in Phnom Penh’s worker dormitories say they concerned about Covid-19, but also strained by hunger and boredom a week into their homes becoming “red zones.”
All public and informal markets in Phnom Penh are to be closed from Saturday, City Hall has announced, though some remained open — and were drawing many shoppers — as of the morning.
Sihanoukville became the second city to designate a “red zone,” putting five villages under stringent lockdown measures for 14 days starting Friday, as the coastal province sees an uptick in Covid-19 cases.
Brick walls and barbed wire divide Pu Rang village now, says Tha Vy. When an outsider buys up the peak of a hillside, the local predominantly Bunong residents often can no longer even get to their traditional farmlands.
Phnom Penh has been at the center of the recent Covid-19 outbreak, reporting more than 2,000 cases in the past week, according to Phnom Penh City Hall data. The outbreak has spread rapidly through the city’s markets and factories — leading to the country’s first lockdown and the creation of “red zones.”
Some vegetable growers in Kandal province say their produce is rotting in their fields as Phnom Penh markets are shut down for the Covid-19 lockdown and traders face a crackdown by continuing to sell in violation of public health measures.
Just over 100 people were arrested and fined in Phnom Penh in one day as authorities introduced canes for beating lockdown violators, a police official said on Wednesday.
Vegetable sales in Stung Meanchey, now declared a “red zone,” was happening secretly in houses, sellers said, while a commune chief said he was cracking down on the 60 Meter wholesale trade, confiscating carts and taking “serious action” to prevent public disorder.
Five people have been sentenced to one year in prison in Kampong Cham and Takeo provinces for violating the Covid-19 Law after drinking in groups against public health protocols, amid a slew of arrests across the country for parties, illegal travel, not wearing masks and breaking curfew.
Local-level authorities are navigating the enforcement of Phnom Penh and Takhmao city’s tightening lockdown rules amid an ongoing Covid-19 surge, saying commuters need permits but delivery drivers do not, and limited outdoor exercise is being allowed while preserving safety.
Phnom Penh City Hall declared four communes and three villages in the locked down capital as “red zones” under a new decree made public on Monday, requiring that even food sellers are closed down.
At least three people have been arrested across the country for violating Covid-19 measures, while Kandal’s provincial governor said he was ramping up restrictions in Takhmao city just two days into a two-week lockdown.
Hundreds of questions flooded a messaging group set up by Phnom Penh City Hall after the city was put under lockdown, with some answers provided about traveling for vaccines, cycling around neighborhoods, and necessary documentation.
Recent research and manufacturer guidelines say some of the Covid-19 vaccines available in Cambodia are likely more effective when individuals wait longer for their second shots, as vaccines have been distributed in some cases at an interval as short as two weeks.
UPDATED 8:56 a.m. — Phnom Penh residents are restricted from leaving their homes except to buy food three times a week or for work and emergencies, and business activities must be curtailed except for those that provide for “daily needs” or are conducted online, Prime Minister Hun Sen declared just before midnight.
“I love this fishing boat so much. Every time I sleep on it I feel like I have [another] house,” says Suong Rang in Kampong Phluk. But the fisherman has recently turned to making flower pots instead amid declining water levels and fish stocks.
Hundreds of people have been caught violating the countrywide inter-provincial travel ban, landing them in quarantine, including one man fined $250 after fleeing quarantine in Kandal and traveling to Pursat.
Phnom Penh casino NagaWorld plans to lay off more than 1,300 workers this month amid its temporary closure due to Covid-19 — a plan its union will contest as a violation of the Labor Law.
Phnom Penh health authorities were only prepared for Covid-19 patients in the “hundreds,” local officials said Tuesday, leaving more than 1,300 currently waiting at home to be assigned a treatment center.
Phnom Penh extended a night curfew mandate by two additional weeks, preventing all non-essential movements from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., as the city grapples with a growing number of active Covid-19 cases.
Illegally felled timber is still flowing through provinces despite travel bans and increased scrutiny of traffic due to the Covid-19 outbreak, activists alleged, raising suspicions of officials’ involvement in the trade.
Phnom Penh’s Din Han Enterprise garment factory, which has seen hundreds of workers test positive for Covid-19, is struggling to pay last month’s paychecks to workers placed in lockdown.
Cambodia’s Culture Ministry called out Vice News and a photo editing company after the media outlet featured photos of S-21 prisoners edited to have smiling faces, which Khmer Rouge survivors and family members called traumatizing.
Exiled opposition politician Sam Rainsy urged Cambodians to receive the currently available Chinese vaccines to protect themselves from Covid-19, though Prime Minister Hun Sen doubted Rainsy’s sincerity amid a global vaccine shortage.
Phnom Penh City Hall has told businesses to stop selling alcoholic beverages, just days before the Khmer New Year and after Cambodia recorded its single highest daily tally of Covid-19 infections on Friday.
Violators of Covid-19 public health measures should be arrested one day and put on trial the next, Prime Minister Hun Sen said, ordering the creation of a special court to crack down on those who flout travel bans and other orders.
Covid-19 has been spreading through Phnom Penh restaurants, markets, small businesses, private gatherings and parties, and Cambodia stands “on the brink of a national tragedy” unless the outbreak is stopped, the World Health Organization said in a statement issued Saturday.
Phnom Penh City Hall issued orders late Friday night to lock down seven villages and two communes for fear of Covid-19 transmission following the emergence of hundreds of new cases in the capital.
In a speech Saturday morning, Prime Minister Hun Sen said the country had recorded 483 more Covid-19 cases following a record 576 new cases announced on Friday.
UPDATED 10:07 a.m. — More than 250 Covid-19 cases were found at a Meanchey district garment factory, Phnom Penh City Hall announced late Friday, as workers spoke of fears and alleged delayed action.
UPDATED at 6:32 p.m. — The Health Ministry on Friday afternoon reported 576 new cases of Covid-19, a new record by far, with most of the cases in Phnom Penh. The ministry urged people who had visited four markets in the capital as well as family members of workers at a Meanchey district factory to self-isolate or come forward for testing.
New data from an international forest monitoring program shows a slight increase in deforestation in Cambodia last year, with new spots of forest clearing moving deeper into Cambodia’s remaining dense forests.
Three youth activists for environmental group Mother Nature stood firm in the closing of their incitement trial on Thursday as the presiding judge pressed them that the group’s Facebook page was illegal, the government filling in lakes would improve traffic, and the activists’ research was insufficient.
Three men have been released — with possible fines on the way — after their arrest on Sunday for meeting up to drink and sing through loudspeakers despite Phnom Penh’s ban on gatherings amid a Covid-19 outbreak.
Fish catch and exports dropped during the first quarter of the year, according to an Agriculture Ministry report, with fisherfolk attributing the drop to changing weather patterns, low water levels and illegal fishing practices.
Garment workers who aren’t vaccinated for Covid-19 could eventually be barred from factories and lose their jobs, Labor Ministry spokesperson Heng Sour said on Wednesday.
A Kampong Chhnang shoe factory is threatening workers’ jobs as they try to unionize, the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions and its local representative said.
Increasing travel by people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, the emergence of new Covid-19 variants, and a global vaccine shortage are among factors that are prolonging the pandemic and will lead to further coronavirus outbreaks in the region, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.
UPDATED 10 p.m. — Travel between provinces has been banned for two weeks from Wednesday through April 20, spanning the Khmer New Year holidays amid the country’s worst Covid-19 outbreak to date, the government announced in a statement late Tuesday.
KrisEnergy has warned that its current production rate at Cambodia’s Apsara offshore oil block has yielded only around half the company’s projected peak rate, and it has extended debt repayment deadlines and brought in an engineering firm to assess the situation amid “material uncertainty … to continue as a going concern.”
Three men drinking and singing through loudspeakers in a rented room in Phnom Penh late Sunday afternoon have been arrested for allegedly violating the city’s Covid-19 measures, which include a requirement for social distancing in all public and private areas except for people who live together and certain other exemptions.
Sangkran events are canceled across the city and residents should gather only within households and avoid splashing water or lighting firecrackers as part of celebrations, Phnom Penh City Hall said on Monday, further tightening Khmer New Year public health measures.
An investment firm run by a daughter and niece of two deputy prime ministers is suing ex-board members who it claims cheated the company out of $20 million — though some customers say they want the company to take the responsibility for the loss of their investments.
The Health Ministry on Saturday reported 99 new cases of Covid-19 across the capital and six provinces, adding that four people died from the virus on Friday.
The Health Ministry is discouraging people from traveling to high-risk Covid-19 areas during the Khmer New Year and suggests reducing gatherings, drinking, dancing and singing, stopping short of banning festivities amid the country’s worst coronavirus outbreak to date.
Five demining dogs who have finished basic training are primed to start learning to sniff out Covid-19, even in crowds, the Cambodian Mine Action Center says.
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.
Three former opposition CNRP youth members have defected to the ruling party, including a woman who previously presented the nightly news on party co-founder Sam Rainsy’s Facebook page and, according to Rainsy, had received refugee status after fleeing to Thailand to escape incitement and plotting charges.
An 8 p.m. curfew announced Thursday by the Phnom Penh municipality will apply to anyone out on the city’s streets — whether on foot or motorbike, governor Khuong Sreng said.
Some of the country’s Covid-19 patients are developing respiratory problems too quickly for doctors to address, the Health Ministry said on Thursday as it announced five deaths in two days from the disease, including a 28-year-old woman.
Three Mother Nature environmentalists — arrested while preparing a video campaign against the infilling of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Tamok lake — disputed the alleged criminality of their actions while on trial on Wednesday, arguing that raising concerns is not “incitement” as charged, their lawyer said.
Newly arrived Sinovac vaccines will be given to 745,000 preregistered people, mostly government officials, doctors and employees at selected workplaces, starting Thursday, the Health Ministry said.
Phnom Penh governor Khuong Sreng has announced an 8 p.m. curfew in the capital from Thursday through April 14 amid the country’s worst Covid-19 outbreak to date, ordering a halt to gatherings and road traffic at night.
Amid Cambodia’s current Covid-19 outbreak, authorities are advising against travel for Qingming Festival and outlining quarantine measures, and those in the Chinese-Cambodian community are finding ways to celebrate at home.
Three communes in Kampot province have been turned into “Bokor city,” a new administrative area slated to become the province’s second municipality located in the midst of the 150,000-hectare Preah Monivong Bokor National Park.
Preah Sihanouk province has opened up Covid-19 vaccinations to members of the general public below the age of 60, with commune authorities preparing to organize registrations for anyone 18 to 59 years old.
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.
Phanimex director Suy Sophan, known for her close links to some of the country’s most powerful women and for controversies surrounding violent evictions at her company’s inner-city Borei Keila development, died aged 62 on Monday morning, the Cambodian Red Cross said.
In the two countries long marked by U.S. involvement in their media sectors, Chinese training programs, partnerships and media ownership in recent years have added a new dimension to the under-pressure media environments.
A man with a high fever took a Covid-19 test and hoped for treatment, but died on Saturday before the test returned and a space could open at Phnom Penh’s health centers.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday expressed hopes for “large-scale” vaccinations in the country soon with a target of 1 million people vaccinated a month.
The lawyers and family investigating Wanchalearm Satsaksit disappearance in June released a copy of the exiled Thai dissident’s Cambodian passport as investigations in both countries stagnate.
The Health Ministry on Saturday reported 179 new Covid-19 cases — the most announced in a single day to date — with the majority found in one commune in Preah Sihanouk, and other cases identified in the capital and four other provinces.
Locked-down casinos in a Kandal province commune have seen more than 100 Covid-19 cases, including 64 new ones on Friday, but the commune chief said the danger is sealed off from the rest of the community.
Cambodia has replenished its Covid-19 vaccine stores with 1.5 million doses of China’s Sinovac-produced vaccine, the first vaccine purchased by the government rather than being donated.
The World Bank projected 4 percent GDP growth for Cambodia this year as the region starts to recover from the global pandemic-induced economic downturn, but noted continuing issues with the country’s tourism- and garment-driven economy as well as a high risk of lasting income inequality.
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.
Six youth activists were detained for a night for collecting thumbprints — despite the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak — for a petition calling on the government to ease citizens’ costs of living, the Phnom Penh governor said.
Cambodia’s latest Covid-19 deaths include a 38-year-old Cambodian DJ who was found to be positive just over a week before he died on Thursday, and a 43-year-old Chinese man with a registered address at a Kandal casino who tested positive two weeks ago.
A prisons official acknowledged that social distancing was impossible in the country’s overcrowded cells, but said officers were maintaining hygiene, checking prisoners for fevers and quarantining new arrivals for two weeks as Covid-19 prevention measures.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday charged a man under the nation’s new Covid-19 law over a social media video in which he tells factory workers not to take Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines, officials said.
Phnom Penh and the provinces of Kandal, Preah Sihanouk, Prey Veng and Siem Reap have been designated as Covid-19 outbreak areas where masks and social distancing are required.
In an open letter, forestry activists said they were “appalled” by USAID recently claiming to “work directly” with them, saying they had been turned down from participating in USAID-run conservation projects, and the American agency “never supported us.”
The government is asking property developers to show leniency toward people struggling to pay installments on their gated homes and condominiums, even as a spokesman said a separate youth-led campaign calling for suspending microfinance repayments was illegal.
The Culture Ministry has announced that NagaCorp’s proposed $350-million theme park and resort near Siem Reap’s Angkor temples cannot be built as proposed, with an official adding that the “huge scale” development would disturb religious activity.
UPDATED — The Health Ministry has announced that people must wear masks in public gatherings of two or more people in areas facing an outbreak, as the Phnom Penh governor said authorities would begin working on educating residents about the rules before handing out penalties.
The government stopped short of postponing the Khmer New Year holidays amid the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak, announcing that businesses can choose to delay the three-day Khmer New Year holidays until Pchum Ben or another time later in the year but government offices would be closed April 14-16.
More than 1,000 NagaWorld workers have joined an online campaign against suspended salaries after the casino closed due to Covid-19 infections among employees, workers and a union representative said.
UPDATED — The Prince Central Plaza condominium complex in Phnom Penh was ordered locked down again late Sunday, and a second tenant was announced as having tested positive, just two days after it was reopened for all but one floor after a nearly monthlong Covid-19 quarantine. The building was again reopened Monday evening.
A 75-year-old retired doctor who was chair of the National Olympic Committee’s sports science commission died of Covid-19 on Monday just a day after testing positive, the Health Ministry said.
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.
UPDATED — All schools, technical training institutes and cinemas have been ordered closed nationwide by government institutions as health authorities announced 102 new Covid-19 cases this weekend, raising the number of active cases higher than they’ve ever been.
The Health Ministry reported Cambodia’s third death from Covid-19 late Friday, a 46-year-old Cambodian man who died in the capital’s Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital.
UPDATED — In a joint statement, the Health Ministry and World Health Organization on Friday called on the country’s residents to take Covid-19 health precautions seriously, warning of potential lockdowns and overwhelmed health facilities if the current outbreak is not stopped, resulting in large-scale transmission.
When domestic violence is studied or discussed in Cambodia, it doesn’t usually look like this. We probably picture violence affecting women living in poverty in rural areas, not in the luxurious homes of elite families.
Cambodia reported its second death from Covid-19 on Friday, eight days after its first official death was announced on March 11 and about a month into the largest community outbreak the country has seen.
The Health Ministry reiterated Thursday that social distancing, masks, washing hands and avoiding large gatherings are still necessary despite vaccinations to stem the spread of Covid-19, after three soldiers tested positive despite receiving inoculations.
Kvim Mok, 31 years old and due to give birth, lay in the Ratanakiri provincial hospital for 21 hours, receiving little care, as her condition deteriorated, her brother says.
All Covid-19 cases genetically sequenced in the ongoing “February 20” outbreak in Cambodia — which has seen more than 1,000 patients total — have been the more contagious B.1.1.7 variant, believed to be the only variant currently circulating in Cambodia, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Phnom Penh said Thursday.
The case of a tycoon’s domestic violence against his ex-wife, caught on home security cameras and shared online, is now in the hands of Phnom Penh Municipal Police as the man’s “oknha” title was revoked on Thursday by royal decree.
Imagine trying to trace a cluster of Covid-19 cases centered around sex workers and expecting them to report themselves to authorities for testing. Under current policies, there is zero incentive for sex workers to comply. This is why decriminalization is the answer.
The Interior Ministry has authorized the establishment of a new opposition party founded by a former lawmaker of the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party — as long as the new Cambodia Reform Party changes its motto so it’s not identical to that of the CNRP.
Some residents of locked-down Kandal province villages say they must stay home and are being checked by police and health officers daily after more than 80 Covid-19 cases were found in two days and the district ordered all businesses to close.
Makeup entrepreneur Deth Malina posted an hourlong video of her ex-husband, tycoon Duong Chhay, attacking her in their home. Chhay said on Tuesday that the violence was because she had restricted his freedoms.
Casino workers who were placed in quarantine at their Kandal province casinos a week ago have tested positive for Covid-19 en masse, as local authorities defended the locations’ security as being completely sealed off by soldiers and guards.
A Siem Reap-based journalist says he fears he is being targeted by illegal loggers after being beaten at night as he slept in a hammock outside Beng Mealea temple.
Prime Minister Hun Sen asked all provinces to suspend wedding ceremonies following Covid-19 scares in several locations, while the government issued another sub-decree outlining penalties for violating health measures.
The Health Ministry on Monday reported 20 new cases of Covid-19, all in the capital, and a record 83 recoveries as two new quarantine deaths emerged in the provinces.
Hundreds of workers crowded outside Phnom Penh’s NagaWorld casino as many returned for their second Covid-19 tests following the discovery of several cases there, a workers’ boycott and the suspension of operations last week.
As crowds have packed some hospitals in hopes of getting Covid-19 shots, the Health Ministry suspended vaccinations for people aged 59 and under, saying remaining Sinopharm shots would be used as second doses for people who have already received one jab.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling for “overdue” sanctions against Cambodian leaders responsible for rights violations, and for E.U. nations to suspend bilateral aid to Cambodia, adding that Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling CPP “should not be considered the legitimate ruling party.”
Amid disquiet over a policewoman being made to apologize for breastfeeding at work, police explained that she had failed to ask permission before posting a photo to social media and “it does not look good.”
At least 10 taxi and truck drivers have been detained by Sihanoukville authorities while trying to smuggle people out of Preah Sihanouk province in violation of a Covid-19 government travel ban, the provincial administration said.
Two youths who were filmed smacking an unidentified foreign cyclist on the back of the head while they drove a motorbike past him were sent to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday to set an example for other wayward youth, a police official said.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said about 300 military doctors would be mobilized and two more hotels turned into hospitals as the country deals with its worst Covid-19 outbreak to date, including the first official death recorded on Thursday.
Cambodia has confirmed its first death from Covid-19, a Health Ministry statement said on Thursday, with a spokesperson saying the man had been put on a ventilator for two days.
The “February 20” Covid-19 outbreak is fanning out in the provinces, with a village of 300 households in Kandal province locked down, schools closed in parts of Siem Reap and Prey Veng, and parties, weddings and other gatherings suspended in Kampong Speu.
Fifteen Covid-19 cases in Phnom Penh’s Olympic commune, 30 in Kandal province, and eight in the capital’s Sen Sok district who have yet to be placed at a treatment center were among 64 new cases announced by the Health Ministry on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Tuesday that in the event of the death of Covid-19 patients, the bodies will need to be cremated. He ordered that Phnom Penh and provincial authorities make sure they have crematoriums ready in preparation.
Hundreds of quarantined returned migrants were transported away from border provinces on Tuesday following an order from the prime minister to relieve the pressure on Covid-19 quarantine centers.
Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered border authorities to send new arrivals coming in through land borders straight to their home provinces to quarantine if they aren’t showing symptoms, as one border province said it was struggling to feed the thousands of people in quarantine while returnees increased.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said in an audio message late Monday that the country had found 49 more Covid-19 cases, and called for state institutions to work largely from home and private businesses to reduce staff numbers in their workplaces.
It’s a blind spot that you probably aren’t expecting to hear about on International Women’s Day: Not enough attention is being paid to the roles that men could play, or are playing, either in pushing the gender equality movement forward, or holding it back.
Updated 3:51 p.m. — The country recorded 24 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, putting the total found since the start of the pandemic at 1,011, as Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered that patients be transferred out of the Phnom Penh Quarantine Center where a man died on Thursday and some patients spoke of poor care.
In recognition of International Women’s Day, we gathered our own experiences, and the perspectives of several other women and men in newsrooms, to open a discussion about equity in journalism — whether the issues are about newsroom culture or punishable by law.
Covid-19 patients in Cambodia have been treated with hydroxychloroquine, a health official said, even though medical researchers last year dismissed the drug as a treatment for Covid-19, and the WHO this week said it should not be used to prevent or treat coronavirus.
A Covid-19 law with penalties up to 20 years in jail for intentionally spreading the disease was passed by the National Assembly on Friday and heads to the Senate, as two hotel security guards accused of allowing people to leave quarantine finished their own two-week isolation and were detained by National Police.
More than 700 out of 5,000 workers at a Phnom Penh garment factory have been tested after a single Covid-19 case was found among employees, but work continues in eight of nine buildings and crowds keep packing the factory grounds during breaks.
A new report from the Prey Lang Community Network links increasing deforestation in the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary to a yearlong ban on independent patrols, as forest activists were this year again stopped from activities in the forest and conducting their annual tree-blessing ceremony.
A Chinese man with Covid-19 died in quarantine in Phnom Penh on Thursday, the Health Ministry said, but ruled his death “due to drug overdose” after an autopsy. In a Facebook post, the ministry further clarified that “there was no drug use” and the death was caused by serious withdrawal symptoms and not Covid-19.
Preah Sihanouk suspended transport in and out of the province, while authorities on Thursday extended school closures, and Prime Minister Hun Sen said the “February 20” Covid-19 outbreak could last past Khmer New Year next month.
Cambodia has rolled out two Covid-19 vaccines, each requiring two doses, with an about 80 percent efficacy rate in trials. From WHO approval to age eligibility and efficacy against new variants, here’s how the Sinopharm and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines compare.
Prime Minister Hun Sen received the country’s first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday, the morning after calling for either a travel ban or widespread vaccinations in Preah Sihanouk province amid a rise in Covid-19 cases there.
Amid Cambodia’s worst Covid-19 outbreak to date, provinces outside the cluster’s urban epicenters of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville are keeping a close watch on arrivals, hoping to prevent the disease’s spread across provincial borders.
Two ex-CNRP members have been found guilty of insulting the king and sentenced to three years in prison with two years suspended, Phnom Penh Municipal Court spokesperson Y Rin said on Wednesday.
Representatives of the U.S., E.U., U.K. and Australia this week raised concerns over the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentencing nine CNRP opposition leaders to 20 to 25 years in prison for a planned “attack” on the state.
A doctor who died of a heart attack the night after receiving a Sinopharm Covid-19 shot and a migrant worker who died of kidney failure after returning from Thailand did not die because of the vaccine or coronavirus, authorities said this week.
The Health Ministry on Wednesday announced 34 new Covid-19 cases, all related to the “February 20” cluster, including two women who had been quarantined at a hotel in Svay Rieng province, the first confirmed cases found there.
Attention has turned to a young man who posted dozens of photos of himself in soldier’s uniform as the “mastermind” behind a planned kidnapping after military police shot dead four alleged would-be kidnappers in a shootout at a Phnom Penh gated housing complex on Monday.
After NagaWorld workers began a work boycott over the weekend about employees being kept in the dark about Covid-19 cases at the casino, its owner NagaCorp announced it would act “responsibly and swiftly to volunteer to temporarily suspend its business.”
More than 10,000 Phnom Penh residents are in Covid-19 quarantine, with 74 buildings locked down, following widespread contract tracing and testing into the “February 20” cluster, Phnom Penh governor Khuong Sreng said on Tuesday.
Updated at 4:42 p.m. — The Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced opposition leaders living abroad to 20 to 25 years in prison and stripped them of their right to stand in elections with only a Bar Association-assigned lawyer’s secretary present for the defense, according to a lawyer and court spokesperson.
Sihanoukville has recorded 17 new Covid-19 cases in relation to the “February 20” cluster, the Health Ministry announced on Tuesday, as a Preah Sihanouk spokesperson said there were now more than 50 cases in the province.
The Information Ministry has issued a letter saying it should be notified before all journalism trainings, with a spokesperson saying it can help find trainers and speakers from various government institutions.
Thousands of NagaWorld union and nonunion workers stayed home from work at Phnom Penh’s sole casino and hotel complex over the weekend and on Monday as some workers said they had tested positive for Covid-19, but little information was made available by the company, workers said.
PassApp says tuk-tuk rides on the company’s app were down 40-45 percent at the end of last week amid the latest Covid-19 outbreak, as Phnom Penh residents spoke of restricting outings to avoid unnecessary contact and using their own transport.
The Health Ministry on Monday reported 15 new cases of Covid-19, a small drop in the number of daily cases reported since the February 20th cluster was first reported.
Police manning Covid-19 quarantine centers have been equipped with face masks, metal detectors and electric-stun batons, while security along the country’s borders has also been tightened to prevent illegal entries that circumvent quarantine, officials said.
A petition from 258 families asks the Justice Ministry to intervene after the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court ordered a halt to constructions and sales on more than 200 hectares of land claimed by several different parties.
A prison officer in Kandal province has been provisionally detained — in the same prison where he works — over allegedly taking a bribe to speed up the release of a prisoner.
As the country continues to grapple with Covid-19, domestic tensions are rising, women are facing heightened risks, and, when cases of abuse arise, the problems are often still being swept under the rug, advocates say.
Authorities have been unable to locate two people who tested positive for Covid-19 for three days since their results came back, Health Ministry spokesperson Or Vandine said on Friday.
The Health Ministry announced 44 more Covid-19 cases on Friday, bringing the total to more than 250 in a week, while authorities suspended all organized sports and gatherings for exercise and Taiwan put Cambodia on its “medium-risk” list, slightly raising travel restrictions.
Hundreds of people are in lockdown in a casino in Kandal province and a hotel complex in Sihanoukville as provincial authorities are preparing more treatment and quarantine centers amid the country’s largest Covid-19 outbreak to date.
A Chinese journalist was set to be put on a plane and deported Thursday night after publishing an article online saying that China-donated Covid-19 vaccines were being offered for sale.
A major Phnom Penh lake development involving several oknha and senators threatens livelihoods and wetlands, as well as rivers with sewage contamination, and puts 1 million people at risk of flooding, the U.N. said in a letter to the Cambodian government — which in turn responded with seven pages summarizing assessments of the development.
Sixty-five more cases of Covid-19 were announced Thursday morning, including 58 directly linked to the “community spread” of the February 20 cluster, and six other Chinese nationals who tested positive in Sihanoukville while looking to travel home.
A senior Health Ministry official said on Wednesday that Phnom Penh hospitals were currently at capacity for handling Covid-19 patients, and new patients would be sent to Kandal and Kampong Speu provinces while the ministry prepares more space for them.
Siem Reap police seized nearly five dozen dogs destined to be slaughtered for meat on Saturday, as part of the city’s ban on selling canines for consumption.
A Kampong Thom province village chief has been removed after allegedly taking a woman’s IDPoor payments over several months, one of more than 14,000 irregularities authorities have found since June in the country’s anti-poverty program that was expanded amid the global pandemic.
Community patrollers of the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary say local authorities are pushing them to sign contracts that they cannot patrol the forest, a year after they were banned from activities to monitor the protected area.
The Health Ministry on Wednesday reported 40 new cases of Covid-19, a new high for Cambodia.
A national government survey of 10,000 households, released on Tuesday, shows increased debt burdens as well as fewer households owning land, more cultivation of fruits and nuts, and the disappearance of video tape recorders and radios.
More than 20 further locations have been announced as linked to the new Covid-19 outbreak in the capital, with guards and management locking down buildings across Phnom Penh as the number of active coronavirus cases climbed to 118 as of Tuesday morning.
Updated 10:15 a.m. — Prime Minister Hun Sen has ordered all schools in Phnom Penh and Kandal province to close down for at least two weeks as the Health Ministry announced 25 more Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including two who are not in hospital because they either could not be found or refused treatment, and three carrying the more contagious U.K. variant.
Two security guards have been arrested for their alleged involvement in allowing four Chinese women to leave Covid-19 quarantine earlier this month, sparking the latest
The Cambodian Youth Network says it was denied permission to patrol the Preah Roka Wildlife Sanctuary in Preah Vihear province over the weekend with a local community that reported the transport of sawn timber from the protected area.
Updated 11:50 a.m. — The Health Ministry on Monday reported 35 new cases of Covid-19, including 31 cases connected to the “February 20th” cluster, bringing total active cases to 93, the highest the country has seen so far.
The Health Ministry on Sunday announced 17 new cases of Covid-19 as well as three recoveries, with 15 of the new cases part of the “February 20” cluster linked to a Phnom Penh nightclub and four Chinese women who left quarantine.
UPDATED 7:35 p.m. — Cambodia reported 32 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday morning, part of a new community cluster linked to a Phnom Penh nightclub and four women, two of whom were found to be positive, and who were allowed by hotel security to leave quarantine.
A Justice Ministry official issued a warning at a Health Ministry press conference on vaccinations on Friday that sharing “fake news” on social media violates the country’s incitement laws.
Unesco expressed concern over the impact of NagaCorp’s resort project just south of the Angkor Archaeological Park area in Siem Reap province.
The government raised fines for people escaping quarantine from 1 million to 5 million riel, and for private health facilities failing to notify authorities about evaders from 10 million to 50 million riel, or about $250 to $1,250 and $2,500 to $12,500, respectively.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court questioned two opposition activists over a leadership workshop in Malaysia in 2019 as well as comments made about regional protest movements by CNRP co-founder Sam Rainsy.
A provincial land management department director — formerly of Stung Treng, currently of Ratanakiri — has been charged with the forgery of public documents for allegedly issuing certificates to clear 77 plots of forestry land.
UPDATED 3:45 p.m. — “It was basically something that was a relevant institution to set up 10 years ago and has been made completely obsolete by modern technology,” one technology expert said.
An expert police witness was questioned at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday about extracting contacts’ numbers, photos, social media account details, voice messages and more from the phones of defendants in an incitement trial against unionist Rong Chhun and two supporters.
Though the country has so far weathered the pandemic without massive viral outbreaks, the risks are piling up on Cambodia’s real estate market after years of rapid growth and high profit, according to an international property research and sales firm.
The finance and defense ministries are looking into the case of a Banteay Meanchey province soldier who died by suicide after his car, which he used for work, and which put him thousands of dollars in debt, was confiscated by the customs and excise department.
Villagers occupying state land on a Mekong river island in Phnom Penh’s Chbar Ampov district are refusing to back down amid confrontations and negotiations with authorities, pointing to nearby mansions and land claimed by a senator and police chief who aren’t getting similarly harassed.
Two former CNRP members in their 60s pleaded guilty on Tuesday to insulting the king during a phone call to each other, with no explanation given during the trial about how the charge applies to private conversations.
The Environment Ministry is studying whether to hand 272 hectares of a biodiversity conservation corridor in Mondulkiri province to the CEO of borey developer Peng Huoth.
Four factories in the Sihanoukville SEZ were last year put under investigation for or found to be falsely shipping Chinese plywood, cabinets and pipe fittings to the U.S. as if they were Cambodian-made, according to U.S. Customs documents.
Amid denials of links to various politicians and opposition figures, one activist on trial at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday for incitement spoke of receiving a $1,000 donation for office rent from a Cambodian-Australian MP who is also a defendant in the case.
The World Health Organization on Tuesday announced its approval of the AstraZeneca/Oxford-developed Covid-19 vaccine, one of three coronavirus vaccines Cambodia has authorized for use in the country.
The government for the first time reported cases of a more virulent coronavirus variant, as Prime Minister Hun Sen suggested increased fines for eluding quarantine, and a man returning to the country through an illegal border crossing was seriously injured by a landmine.
An anti-trafficking police officer is under investigation after allegedly asking a KTV worker to sleep with him, getting rebuffed, punching the KTV’s owner and guards, pulling out his gun, then suing the owner’s son for posting video of the incident.
An under-investigation military general and a Defense Ministry official are battling in court over a plot of land in Phnom Penh that the official allegedly acquired through a proxy to sell to a ruling party lawmaker despite it already belonging to the general.
A mismatch between younger generations’ changing views of marriage and the slower rate of society-wide change is causing real problems within some marriages, writes Future Forum researcher Theang Soriya.
Traffic jams in Phnom Penh’s Pur Senchey district around 7:30 p.m. Thursday evening led to an altercation that turned lethal, with two people shot dead and another seriously injured, police said.
A factory in an industrial park in Svay Rieng province shipped China-made pipes to the U.S. as Cambodia-made to evade duties, U.S. Customs said this week, with investigators finding production machinery “unused, dry, and covered in spider webs.”
Another ex-CNRP official, this time from Kandal province, was summoned to an incitement trial this week at the provincial court, but the hearing was delayed as his lawyer was tied up with the ongoing mass trials in Phnom Penh.
The Cambodian Embassy in Vietnam this week cautioned Cambodians living in the neighboring country to abide by its Covid-19 procedures or face fines and potentially up to 12 years in prison.
The principal of a Takeo province high school says he has sued five former students for defamation as a warning after they posted critical comments on a Facebook video of him drinking and singing karaoke.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday announced it was sending back a Johnson & Johnson-linked orphanage’s child abuse case to an investigating judge.
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s son Hun Many and son-in-law Dy Vichea missed out on their Covid-19 jabs due to health issues as four participating hospitals in the country’s vaccination rollout gave out 339 shots on the first day — toward an ultimate target of 10 million people vaccinated.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday sentenced the leader of the minor Khmer Win Party to 20 months in prison for incitement after he protested last year in support of jailed unionist Rong Chhun and visited the Vietnam border area that Chhun claimed was under threat.
An award-winning environmentalist detained over the weekend said upon his release that he had seen about 100 tractors carting wood away from the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary — a claim rejected by local environment authorities and a nearby reforestation project as lacking in evidence.
Defense lawyers for nine senior opposition leaders gave conflicting closing statements on Tuesday, with a Bar Association-appointed lawyer requesting a minimum sentence — due to defendants’ age and inability to carry out their plans — as if they had pleaded guilty.
The abduction of Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit by “four unidentified armed persons” in Phnom Penh in June, and five other cases of Thai opposition activists disappearing since 2016, “point to a pattern of disappearances,” U.N. experts said in a letter released on Tuesday.
Senior government officials and journalists have been put at the front of the line for Covid-19 vaccinations starting Wednesday at four state hospitals, with the Health Ministry saying some with preexisting health conditions should not be vaccinated.
Volunteer community patrollers along the Mekong aim to stop a rise in illegal electric fishing, which harms river ecosystems and livelihoods that rely on protected fisheries. But the sale of outlawed gear allows the dangerous practice to continue.
A Chinese inmate of Prey Sar prison, described as a drug “mastermind,” escaped from the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital on Sunday night while awaiting surgery, officials said.
Five detained forestry activists, including Goldman Prize-winning Ouch Leng, were released on Monday morning after days of questioning. A local villager told of entering the Prey Lang sanctuary with the group on Friday to put up banners saying “Please preserve our forests.”
Prominent environmentalist Ouch Leng and four other forestry activists were arrested by Kratie provincial environment officers Friday afternoon, local officials said.
A 70-year-old man in Kampong Speu province confessed to stabbing his second wife to death because she had fallen deeply in debt, borrowing from private lenders to pay microfinance institutions and vice versa, local police and a commune chief said.
CNRP president Kem Sokha can get his wish for a speedy trial if he goes back to jail, as the courts are prioritizing cases for those detained in the country’s overcrowded prisons, Justice Ministry spokesperson Chin Malin said on Friday.
Defense Minister Tea Banh had already received his Covid-19 vaccine jab ahead of the planned rollout of 600,000 doses of Sinopharm shots next week when Prime Minister Hun Sen backed out Friday evening, saying he was advised he was too old.
Security guards blocked some protesters outside the Phnom Penh Municipal Court from buying breakfast, and told a street vendor of noodles, meatball soup, pork and rice to not sell to them, the protesters alleged on Thursday while rallying on an empty stomach.
Military police arrested a former general in the prime minister’s bodyguard unit and nine others who clashed with an investment company over land in a dispute-ridden area of Preah Sihanouk province, local officials said.
Around a third of truck drivers on the road could be unlicensed, Transport Minister Sun Chanthol said on Thursday, comparing total registrations of trucks versus licenses over 30 years.
Tapped private phone conversations were debated in court on Thursday as evidence of former opposition party members organizing a plan to topple the government, in the latest hearing in a series of ongoing trials against the outlawed CNRP.
The ministry overseeing salaries and promotions for the country’s more than 200,000 public servants is growing and needs more space, its spokesperson said, as the government granted 40,000 square meters of Boeng Tamok lake to build a new headquarters.
As garment factory workers age, their contracts are less likely to be renewed, they struggle to be hired, and they’re cast out with little training to take on anything new, workers and advocates say.
Another tense hearing in the trial of prominent unionist Rong Chhun saw two supporters, who are also defendants, arguing they are merely a market vendor and tuk-tuk driver and not political activists despite participating in protests.
The country’s fire chief claimed firefighters had taken no bribes for 10 years, after Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Tuesday criticized the practice of officers arriving at a fire only to negotiate a price to put it out.
Singaporean and Chinese companies will handle two of three trash collection zones in Phnom Penh under the city’s long-awaited restructuring of waste management, while Cintri will continue to service central and southern city areas, company representatives said.
About 150 families encroaching on Sihanoukville’s 7 Makara St. and refusing to make way for roadworks could face jail time and hefty fines, according to local authorities.
The ministries of defense and finance have formed a committee to identify soldiers who have gone too long without promotions, with military spokespersons explaining that they will be looking for ways to boost salaries and make sure ranks match up with responsibilities.
Preah Sihanouk provincial authorities ordered a coal ash plant in Stung Hav district to close in two weeks after nearby residents frequently complained of struggling to breathe amid the potentially poisonous dust, officials said.
A 21-year-old woman says she feels like a “newborn” after arriving home to Phnom Penh last week, rescued from China alongside nine other sex-trafficking victims. The woman was 17 when she left Cambodia hoping for a good job, but became entrapped in years of abuse.
The country’s top academic, tired of illegal logging in his institute’s sanctuary, railed against the excess of tycoons: “An oknha’s stomach can eat up lakes, mountains and forests.” The honorific of “oknha,” amid persistent scandals, has acquired a tarnished reputation.
General Hing Bun Hieng, the head of the Prime Minister Bodyguard Unit sanctioned by the U.S. for alleged human rights abuses, has been accused by a Johnson & Johnson-linked orphanage of attempting to take over its prime waterfront land.
Prosecutors on Friday showed statements, recorded speeches and social media posts from senior opposition leaders — including comments made during a meeting in Lowell, Massachusetts in 2019 — as evidence that nine defendants charged with attacking the government had planned a coup.
An online cosmetics tycoon who poses with a Lamborghini and boasts of lavish donations to the state has been served a court summons for defamation amid complaints of insulting people in her livestreams.
Phnom Penh Municipal Court judges on Thursday grilled opposition defendants in ongoing mass trials over the meaning of their social media posts, including how they defined the words “liberate,” “dictator,” “struggle” and “democracy.”
Nearly 90 hectares of forested state land in Preah Sihanouk’s Bit Traing commune was privatized late last year and conceded to two private firms, including a company led by a businesswoman who was caught building illegal houses on Koh Kong’s Koh Sdach island.
In her rural village in Kampong Speu, 61-year-old Khin Pheap is known as the local medic. For more than two decades, she has provided medical treatment and sold medicines to neighbors who live far from formal health care facilities.
Six case files against 153 CNRP defendants, split into four trials, make up a web of ongoing prosecutions against the outlawed opposition’s senior leaders and grassroots supporters.
A CNRP activist was arrested in Phnom Penh on Tuesday after being seen participating in small ongoing protests against the jailings of opposition supporters, with a rights group saying nearly 70 political and environmental activists have been imprisoned since the start of last year.
Garments exports dropped 9 percent last year, the manufacturers association estimated this week, amid a brutal year for the industry in which the Labor Ministry says more than 70,000 jobs were lost.
Former opposition leader Kem Sokha’s trial for treason, now suspended for 10 months, should be resumed and further delays avoided, his lawyers said in an appeal to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
The Interior Ministry has said it is investigating an anonymous complaint accusing Takeo provincial deputy police chief Hin Sok Kheng of extortion.
A Phnom Penh police order instructing officers to prevent journalists from filming and interfering with police work comes as fewer reporters have attended protests, court trials and other politically sensitive events.
District security, police and military police officers have been stationed at a Phnom Penh land dispute site where two groups of disputants — one Khmer, one Vietnamese — are pushing back against authorities in an area that borders land claimed by a senator and the national police chief.
Five days after returning from Thailand, a 53-year-old man died from a heart attack on Friday during his quarantine period, Banteay Meanchey provincial authorities said.
Cambodian boys who are victims of sexual abuse find it hard to speak out because of social pressures, a workshop about reporting on sexual abuse heard on Friday.
About 40 Boeng Tamok residents on Sunday staged an appeal to be granted land titles for their houses on the edge of the Phnom Penh lake, saying they are nervous following evictions nearby and are only asking for 5 hectares for 300 families.
A growing number of men are becoming stay-at-home dads, a job that advocates say is undervalued, underappreciated and entangled with traditional gender expectations in the country.
Opposition members on trial at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday complained of being arrested at gunpoint without explanation; a private call and messages used as evidence for inciting social insecurity; being threatened to attest to their testimony; and their supposed testimony containing words they did not say.
Phnom Penh is expanding, and it is no different from many countries in using landfill to meet the demands of development, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Friday as he rejected criticism over transferring public lake areas to developers.
A Takeo fisherman who suffered severe head injuries after allegedly being beaten by fisheries officers died at his family home on Thursday, after almost two weeks lying on a wooden bed unable to speak and his family unable to afford treatment.
Interior Minister Sar Kheng has issued a warning against a Kandal province deputy police chief over an accusation that the deputy abused his power to interfere in a local land sale.
One of Cambodia’s biggest conglomerates was handed some 6 hectares of beach and lake on prime Sihanoukville land after the company made a donation to the city’s road renovation.
The director of a closed Korean-language training center denied the fraud and trafficking charges against him in court on Thursday, saying his school only taught dozens of workers who paid him $80,000 in total, and he had not acted as a migrant labor recruiter — but he was willing to return their money.
Sihanoukville’s centrally located administrative buildings are being relocated to the city’s outskirts in a move that will open up parcels of land each worth a few million dollars.
Nine people have been arrested after a man was beaten to death at a drug rehabilitation center in Phnom Penh.
A Takeo fisherman, who witnesses say was beaten by fisheries patrol officers and is now near death at his home, was about to drown after jumping into the water and getting struck by a propeller, a Fisheries Administration official said on Wednesday.
Royalist party Funcinpec announced the return of former co-prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh as party president following a 2018 car crash that severely injured him and killed his wife just before a national election.
A former Pailin deputy provincial governor says two under-secretaries of state at the Justice Ministry and Council of Ministers defrauded him of $100,000 over a Phnom Penh land deal as the two men were handed preliminary charges and summoned to court.
A man returning from Thailand and about to be taken into Covid-19 quarantine slipped and hit his head while peeing, had two beers, then died in hospital on Monday, the second quarantine- and head trauma-related death announced by authorities over the past year.
A Cambodian woman who was rescued in China after posting on Facebook about her two years as a sex trafficking victim might not be allowed to return home till March, her mother said she was told, though authorities denied there was a fixed date.
A controversial chief monk is accused of racking up $220,000 in debt for constructions while destroying ancient property at a famous Kratie pagoda, and his reappointment on Monday caused leading monks in the province to issue a letter threatening to resign.
“The engine died. There were three of us on the boat, including Toem Vi, but they didn’t ask questions. They just started swinging sticks,” recounted Saroeun. Vi lay on a bamboo platform set outside his home, blood congealed around an open head wound.
The Malaysian billionaire owner of the NagaWorld casinos received Cambodian citizenship in October, according to official documents, opening an opportunity for the tycoon to become a sole owner of land in the country.
Environmental advocacy group Mother Nature Cambodia is known for their confrontational videos, with activists exposing crimes against nature. But with three members jailed, and others facing harassment, the group has decided to conceal their identities.
Defense and government lawyers, and even the judge, exchanged fiery accusations over alleged prejudgement, criminal intentions, lack of evidence and use of a controversial ethnic slur in a tense first trial hearing against labor leader Rong Chhun on Friday.
In a former political bastion of Kem Sokha, president of the outlawed opposition CNRP, silence prevails over political discussions — though some ex-supporters quietly betray continuing hope for the opposition’s promise of change.
Wives of two former CNRP councilors say their husbands, who were arrested and sent to court on Thursday following a mass trial hearing of officials and supporters of the outlawed opposition, had made sacrifices for the nation while alluding arrest.
A military general has countersued a family for $13,000 following a car crash that police blame him for and which killed the family’s 3-year-old boy.
Kith Theang, the brother of tycoon Kith Meng, was absent from a new drug trial at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday, with a prisons official saying Theang was in hospital.
Three men who were separately setting up home clinics in Kampong Speu province have apparently fled after they applied for medical licenses using fake diplomas in response to an inspection by provincial authorities.
The Kampot Provincial Court on Wednesday morning ordered a reinvestigation into a building collapse case more than a year after the incident killed 36 people, including six children, and injured 23 others, mostly construction workers.
Two Korean language training school directors stood trial on Tuesday over charges of fraud — involving dozens of workers who each lost thousands of dollars — by falsely promising to send them to work in South Korea. Some were never sent, while others were sent to Dubai instead, the court heard.
In the past several months, some of the most powerful people in Cambodia have been granted Preah Sihanouk land that boasts stunning ocean views and proximity to key tourist developments. Much of the area sits empty, and interviews with hired guards and local officials suggest there is a web of elite landholdings as many hold onto the plots while their value steadily climbs.
Authorities confiscated 60 large and noisy motorcycles this week after Interior Minister Sar Kheng complained about their noise, but after a wave of online criticism police have temporarily suspended the crackdown.
A small number of remaining old masters are fighting to preserve Cambodian martial arts l’bokator after surviving the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Through their passion, the martial art is slowly regaining its popularity — with some of its ritualistic and violent traditions transformed as they are passed onto younger generations.
A small number of remaining old masters are fighting to preserve Cambodian martial arts l’bokator after surviving the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Through their passion, the martial art is slowly regaining its popularity — with some of its ritualistic and violent traditions transformed as they are passed onto younger generations.
Environmental activists say illegal logging in Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary is happening almost every day, as foreign researchers released new data indicating high levels of selective logging in the deep forest.
Prime Minister Hun Sen this week issued a decision to establish a committee to produce a television drama series, “The Son Under the Full Moon,” about his life story.
In a voice message, a 14-year-old girl said she was pregnant after four months of abuse by her Chinese “husband,” and was now stuck at a Chinese police station for three weeks hoping Cambodian authorities would bring her home.
The Mines and Energy Ministry is seeking bids to dredge sand from more than 2,000 hectares along the coasts of Koh Kong and Preah Sihanouk provinces, saying the work is needed to “restore waterways.”
The Interior Ministry this week warned TikTok users against unwittingly committing crimes of breaching social ethics and laws through illegal “impersonation videos or gesture comedy.”
Cambodian anti-drug police made more than 21,000 arrests and seized 3 tons of drugs, almost 3,000 motorbikes, 26 assault weapons, five residential properties and a warehouse, pointing to domestic production as well as a continued rise in trafficking across Southeast Asia.
A year after a fatal building collapse in Kep province, the trauma and the effects of workers’ injuries linger, but one surviving worker is returning to construction despite opposition from others in the family.
Thai authorities have informed Cambodian authorities of a plan to suspend the entry and exit of goods into Rong Kluea market near the Cambodian border starting this weekend, citing Covid-19 precautions as the disease spreads in Thailand.
About 20 monks and nuns gathered in protest in front of their Phnom Penh pagoda on Wednesday to stop earthworks on a plot they claim belongs to them, pointing to orders from the Council of Ministers and a deputy prime minister.
More than 1,000 African Swine Fever outbreaks across the border in Vietnam last year have kept up the pressure on pork prices here, as over 5,000 pigs died or were also culled in Cambodia in 2020 due to the disease.
Two state land-swap deals involving a notorious tycoon and the allocation of 30 hectares of Boeng Tamok lake land for infilling were invalidated by a Council of Ministers order dated Monday.
Police have arrested the alleged driver of a man who shot dead a police officer following a traffic accident near the Phnom Penh airport.
Nearly 300 Foodpanda drivers protested in front of the company’s offices on Monday, saying their delivery fees had dropped without notice, while the company blamed a “technical issue” and “recent revision” to their rider payment scheme for the dispute.
The government is siphoning another 22 hectares of reclaimed land from Boeng Tamok lake, this time for military police families and a new branch of a public hospital, raising the known total area allocated from the natural lake to over 900 hectares.
For farmers in the area, there’s little hope for this year’s dry-season rice harvest. They irrigate in desperation, but they can already see there won’t be enough water. They are bracing to write off their crops, fall deeper into debt, and maybe lose their land, several said this week.
Exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy received another two convictions and a combined prison term of four years on Wednesday alongside other dissidents sentenced in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court’s ongoing series of incitement trials against CNRP members and outspoken individuals.
At least 12 activists and CNRP supporters have been arrested this week, according to National Police, in at least one case for incitement for “supporting the betrayal” of the outlawed opposition party’s continued activities.
KrisEnergy extracted the first drops of oil from Cambodia’s Block A, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced on Tuesday, achieving a decades-old goal despite the company’s ongoing financial woes.
The government cut another 295 hectares of Boeng Tamok to private individuals, with some exchanged for city center land, raising the total area sliced from the natural lake to at least 880 hectares.
Dozens of supporters gathered at former opposition leader Kem Sokha’s Phnom Penh house over the weekend as he continues to toe the line around his ban on political activities.
After a Preah Sihanouk province land conflict took a violent turn and resulted in eight arrests last week, a Royal Cambodian Armed Forces spokesperson said officials would investigate a high-ranking military official claiming the land in Prey Nob district.
A general contractor in Texas who has never set foot in Cambodia is among more than a dozen foreign citizens called up to a mass trial of the banned main opposition party. Their experiences suggest Thai authorities supplied a Cambodian court with their names.
Amid a cluster of Covid-19 cases originating at a seafood market, Cambodian workers in Thailand’s Samut Sakhon province say they are getting tested or being asked to not leave from their workplaces and dormitories to avoid the spread of the disease.
A Kampong Speu construction worker borrowed $3,000 from a private lender and poured it into a scam investment that went bust. The day before a payment was due on his loan, his son found him dead.
For less than two weeks, hundreds of people will cram into markets now sprouting on the banks of the Tonle Sap, chopping and raking fish heads, heaving and weighing large baskets of small fish, and haggling over prices every step of the way.
An ex-Macau crime boss sanctioned by the U.S. this month partly for links to newly established businesses in Cambodia was accused by prosecutors upon his 1999 arrest of working to build an arms factory here, according to reports at the time.
Cambodia’s state electricity provider is pushing ahead with the construction of a transmission line through the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary, a plan that has caused concerns for representatives of three multimillion-dollar conservation projects as well as officials in the environment and forestry ministries.
A 22-year-old musician who rapped nationalist lyrics about “the bravery to stand up” has been found guilty of incitement and jailed for 12 months, while an underage collaborator who apologized in court was handed a suspended sentence and freed.
Ruling party spokesmen say succession by CPP progeny is underway, based on merit, with the announcement of promotions for three sons of late deputy prime minister Sok An.
A private phone conversation in which two former opposition officials in Battambang province allegedly spoke of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s death was the focus of an incitement trial at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday.
A new sand dredging operation has commenced on the Tonle Bassac river in Phnom Penh within the past month, a local official said, with more than 90 companies now dredging rivers and streams in the country, according to the Mines and Energy Ministry.
About 100 poor families living along the Thai border say they have no interest in leaving to make way for a development, demanding $100,000 each in compensation and protesting against court summonses for three representatives.
An orphanage set up by a Johnson & Johnson heiress on prime Phnom Penh waterfront land has become embroiled in a child torture trial that on Friday saw a teenage witness who went “missing” for five days show up to “find justice” in favor of the alleged torturer.
A 16-year-old Cambodian girl who was allegedly beaten by a Cambodian woman who kept her as a live-in maid in Malaysia left a hospital there on Thursday after surgery on her ear, an official said.
A 16-year-old Cambodian girl from Mondulkiri province has been hospitalized in Malaysia with a nearly severed ear after allegedly being beaten and threatened by a woman who employed her as a maid, Cambodian officials said on Thursday.
Residents in a Kandal commune say it’s been five years since trash collection was stopped in their area — so people are using the local stream as a dumpsite, and it’s killing fish, making them sick and spoiling farmland.
The government has granted nearly 200 hectares of Ream National Park and flooded forest land that a local official said was disputed in Preah Sihanouk province’s Prey Nob district to companies and private individuals, to the surprise of two commune officials.
A pipe installed under a Phnom Penh pagoda burst on Tuesday while moving dredged sand from barges on the Tonle Bassac river to landfill on Choeng Ek lake, with a pagoda representative saying City Hall had pushed for the pipe to pass through their grounds despite their reluctance.
The Kandal Provincial Court said two factories’ assets would be auctioned, as workers have camped outside the factories every night seeking compensation amid a labor dispute that has been ongoing for a year.
The World Bank points to a rise in some agricultural and non-garments manufacturing exports this year despite a pandemic-induced economic downturn as it forecasts that Cambodia will be back to economic growth next year.
A Covid-19 patient says she could never have imagined that a visit to a Phnom Penh clothing store would result in dozens of people being driven by authorities for testing and quarantine, and her face being plastered over national news.
All grade 12 students will pass without taking their year-end exams due to disruptions from Covid-19, Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a surprise announcement on Tuesday that had the Education Ministry and others in the sector unable to immediately answer questions about university admissions and scholarships.
A soldier who was removed from Prime Minister Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit over his involvement in a land dispute has this month been made an adviser to Interior Minister Sar Kheng, according to government letters and court documents.
A former opposition commune councilor who now works as a tuk-tuk driver says he was assaulted by four men on Saturday, while the son of a jailed ex-CNRP official was also beaten on the same day.
A Phnom Penh man has been jailed for public insult and incitement for a social media post about preparing letters and documents so he can put his chicken coop in a state of emergency.
VOD speaks to four Covid-19 patients in the “November 28” cluster about their conditions, treatment and hygiene at their hospitals, and fears of discrimination from a wary public.
A minor party politician has been tossed from a government-mandated watchdog body, the Supreme Consultative Council, without any reason given after investigating an ongoing land dispute in Banteay Meanchey province.
Farmers in Kandal province say they each have thousands of dollars worth of vegetables spoiling in their fields because they can’t find buyers.
In nearly a third of rape cases investigated by human rights group Licadho over a three-year period, the suspect was a relative of the victim, further pressuring women to remain silent, the group says in a new report.
The U.S. has announced sanctions against a former Macau crime boss who two years ago launched an association headquarters in Cambodia linked to a cryptocurrency and Belt and Road Initiative-related security business at a ceremony attended by Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam An and military police chief Sao Sokha.
A force of about 100 police and military police officers descended on a Kampong Speu commune hall to arrest three alleged scammers accused of swindling entire villages and held hostage by an angry mob camping around the hall for several days.
A local market in Kandal province has been closed down while another in Kampong Chhnang is being sprayed down with disinfectant as health authorities trace the contacts of patients who tested positive for Covid-19 this week.
The prisons department says it still has not conducted any Covid-19 testing for prisoners, who are showing some symptoms of coughing, fevers and runny noses due to changing weather, even though the latest local cluster originated from the prisons director’s family.
Since last week, 34 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in a local cluster tied to the country’s prisons director. Health authorities called on people to return for their second tests on Monday and Tuesday, but crowded testing centers had some worrying about the risk of contagion.
Authorities in Vietnam have reported more trafficking victims crossing from Cambodia, the Interior Ministry’s counter-trafficking chief said, as the global economic slowdown creates a desperation for jobs while closed borders due to Covid-19 elevate the dangers of migration.
More than six months after Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit disappeared from outside his Phnom Penh apartment, his sister Sitanan testified before the Phnom Penh court on Tuesday in an effort to prevent her brother’s alleged abduction from turning into a cold case.
Kampong Chhnang provincial authorities have arrested six rice-wine makers for allegedly lacing their products with a lethal amount of methanol, and closed 346 production sites in the province as more than 12 people have died in the past two weeks.
Thousands of villagers in Kampong Speu province took three people hostage for three nights after pouring tens of thousands of dollars each into a massive Ponzi scheme allegedly run by a local family.
In December, Sihanoukville appears stripped to its components: Bright blue sky streaks through the metal and concrete frames of half-built, abandoned skyscrapers, and scraggly trees and grasses take hold of empty lots marked by for-sale signs.
A policy of “using palm leaves to package palm sugar” will help the government save costs amid a decline in revenues due to Covid-19 — or, in other words, using available resources like swapping state land with investors to support needs like road-building, an official said.
Three days after reopening, Phnom Penh’s Aeon Mall temporarily shuttered some shops at the Health Ministry’s request amid widening concerns over a local cluster of Covid-19 cases.
The Health Ministry said Saturday that the local source of the “November 28” Covid-19 cluster could be the daughter of the country’s prisons director, saying she showed relevant symptoms in October.
Suspected contacts were being tested for Covid-19 Friday evening at Phnom Penh fashion store Pedro after health authorities announced six new cases linked to the Sihanouk Blvd. location.
The Ratanakiri Provincial Court’s written decision dropping the case against Cambodia Daily journalists Aun Pheap and Zsombor Peter, issued on Thursday, gives state prosecutors three months to object.
Sitanan Satsaksit’s lawyer translated her ceremonial prayer: that she would prove to the Cambodian court that her abducted Thai activist brother lived in the Phnom Penh condominium building a few hundred meters behind her.
Four new Covid-19 cases in the local “November 28” cluster were announced Friday, with the Health Ministry saying that according to its analysis the cluster is unrelated to the visit of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto last month.
Armed military police officers locked more than a dozen local government officials inside the gates of a riverside compound on Wednesday following a “misunderstanding” related to the complex’s construction on state land, a city spokesperson said.
Phnom Penh’s 32-story Canadia Tower office building was closed for the day on Thursday after an employee at a bank in the building tested positive for Covid-19, with hundreds of people who worked on the same floor kept inside for testing.
She was 17 when she left her hometown in Kratie for a “good job” in China. Two and a half years later, on Saturday, she was able to post a message online. “They’ve forced me to take husbands here. They said if I don’t take them as husbands, they would sell me to a brothel.”
Hundreds of people are being tested and quarantined in provinces across the country even for having had indirect contact with the country’s prisons director more than two weeks before he tested positive for Covid-19.
UPDATED 6:50 p.m. — Pasteur Institute is running nearly 2,500 tests a day — “close to their limit” — while tests for airplane passengers have moved to the National Institute of Public Health. Pasteur is pooling samples, among other strategies, to accelerate testing volumes, the U.S. CDC says.
No prisoners have been tested for Covid-19 despite contact with an infected department director, even as more than 250 prison officers at the same Phnom Penh facilities have received tests due to the risk of contagion, officials said.
The Health Ministry said it carried out 2,621 further tests on Monday into a cluster of Covid-19 cases centered around the wife of the country’s prisons director, and found three new cases.
A rights monitor questioned the Phnom Penh Municipal Court’s decision to last week hold a mass trial of opposition supporters as the court announced that trials for defendants in the capital’s prisons will be postponed through at least December 14 amid Covid-19 fears.
UPDATED 6 p.m. — The Education Ministry has announced the school year is called off for public schools amid the emergence of a new cluster of coronavirus cases over the weekend.
UPDATED 11:30 a.m. — The total number of Covid-19 cases in the cluster around prisons chief Chhem Savuth has reached 14 due to local transmission, following more than 3,000 samples taken across the country, authorities said.
UPDATED 5:45 p.m. — The country’s prisons director, his wife and four of their family members have tested positive for Covid-19 with the source of their infection unknown, and Phnom Penh’s Aeon Mall I has been temporarily closed following a visit by the director’s wife, the Health Ministry said Sunday morning.
Bunong villagers flushed out by Sesan dam floodwaters have been taking boats to visit ancestral grounds, wading through clusters of dying trees that were not adapted to survive permanent floods. They are now bracing for a new fight as a rubber company eyes their refuge on higher ground.
Ruling party and civil society leaders on Friday expressed regret over the announced closure of the Swedish Embassy next year, with concerns raised over diplomatic relations and funding for human rights work.
Twenty-three families have ostensibly received a vacant plot on the edge of Phnom Penh’s Boeng Tamok lake — but some locals, including the village chief, suggest people have been paid to thumb-print applications to obtain lake land for unknown outsiders.
The Phnom Penh court on Thursday sought ways to streamline the mass trial of more than 130 opposition supporters in the face of missed names, crammed-in defendants and complaints that the accused had no information about what they were accused of.
Siem Reap judges on Thursday probed two young musicians over their defiant, nationalist rap lyrics, questioning whether songs extolling “the bravery to stand up” constitute incitement as alleged by the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
Hearings are underway at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court for more than 100 supporters of the dissolved CNRP who were charged with incitement and plotting. Arriving defendants and their colleagues say the occasion is a chance for the persecuted opposition to show solidarity.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday boasted of having spies in group chats and video conferences across the country — especially those discussing opposition plans.
Road repairs following recent nationwide flooding will cost $91 million, the Rural Development Ministry estimated this week, as farmers say they are struggling with rising costs due to broken transport links.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Wednesday again pushed back a trial against nine leaders of the dissolved main opposition party, as the defendants, who are overseas, called for their Cambodian passports to be returned so they can attend.
The Ratanakiri Provincial Court on Tuesday dropped the incitement charges leveled against two former reporters for the Cambodia Daily as the plaintiff in the case withdrew his complaint three years after bringing them to the court.
Local officials in disputed areas of Preah Sihanouk province say they know little about a newly disclosed batch of land granted to connected business owners, with a police chief expressing shock over the transfer of a Kbal Chhay water resource to one individual.
Nearly 150 CNRP officials and supporters are due to appear at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday, their lawyer said this week.
A sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen grants forest land in Preah Sihanouk province to his children Hun Mana and Hun Maly as well as the mother-in-law of his eldest son Hun Manet.
The trial of former Cambodia Daily journalists Aun Pheap and Zsombor Peter, charged three years ago as the newspaper shut down amid a government crackdown, has been scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at the Ratanakiri Provincial Court.
A Cham fisherman was killed on Wednesday after being caught stealing in Kandal province, but many details are unclear. While the Cham fishing community calls for justice, the court is examining the killing as a case of self-defense.
The Environmental Ministry has this year stopped sharing environmental and social impact assessments for new development projects with NGO Forum, the civil society network said.
Villagers allegedly shot dead a plantation’s security guard with a homemade gun this week amid an escalating dispute that has seen houses burned to the ground in Kampot province.
Two Koh Kong land protesters have been placed under court supervision after being sued by a former community representative who villagers allege was part of a conspiracy to sell residents’ land to tycoons.
UPDATED 1 p.m. — Prime Minister Hun Sen has emerged from quarantine as ministries issued a raft of orders to lift restrictions on various gatherings and facilities two weeks after a visiting diplomat sparked a Covid-19 scare in the country.
Citing an “alarming deterioration” in Cambodia’s democratic rule, a group of U.S. politicians appealed to their government to ramp up sanctions against Phnom Penh, as analysts said pressure from the U.S. was likely to rise with the coming change in administration.
At least 26 defendants told the Appeal Court over two years that they faced violence or torture by authorities to force confessions, according to a trial monitoring report by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.
Economists say the standardizing of regulations in 15 countries that signed a regional free-trade deal could make it attractive for companies to operate in or relocate to low-cost countries like Cambodia.
A Thai chicken factory has agreed to demands related to overtime and allowing migrant workers to leave its compound to buy food following last week’s protest by hundreds of Cambodian laborers, the factory’s management and a labor group said.
Just 500 meters from Angkor temple park grounds, casino operator NagaCorp has proposed a giant 75-hectare resort with theme parks, a “China Town” and hotels that the company compares to Disneyland.
After three years without a viable political opposition, politicians who stand apart or have broken from the outlawed main opposition party say the old vehicle of the CNRP should be left aside to give people with grievances a chance to participate in politics again.
Authorities claiming to be looking for weapons thwarted a small handful of supporters of the banned opposition CNRP from gathering outside the party’s former headquarters in Phnom Penh on Monday, the three-year anniversary of its dissolution.
The Health Ministry announced Monday morning that no new positive Covid-19 cases were found from 1,352 tests over the weekend of a cluster of suspected contacts of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who visited the country nearly two weeks ago.
UPDATED 9 a.m. — A known Vietnamese hacker group has created malware in documents that appear related to Asean meetings and is targeting the Cambodian government, a cybersecurity firm said in a report this week.
A defrocked monk accused of the rape of 12 boys, and who has been on the run from police for six years, was arrested in June at a pagoda in Ratanakiri province where he was living as a monk, the head of a child protection police unit said on Friday.
After a visit by Hungary’s foreign minister, his shirking of health protocols and subsequent renewed Covid-19 closures and quarantines, the initial public fury has had time to settle. Now, we need to focus on testing, transparency and taking precautions seriously, writes Matt Surrusco.
A CNRP activist who distributed T-shirts saying “Thank you for peace, but respect Article 2 of the Constitution” was questioned in court on Thursday as his brother railed that authorities “keep hunting down and persecuting people and do not allow them to live peacefully.”
An assistant to Prime Minister Hun Sen told a local media outlet that he didn’t know he was supposed to be in quarantine as he visited coastal areas — causing dozens to go into quarantine — despite being an indirect contact to a visiting diplomat who tested positive for Covid-19 after leaving the country.
About 500 Cambodian migrant workers at a food production factory in Thailand’s Chon Buri province protested on Wednesday, saying that they cannot continue under the economic pressure levied by the company for the past three months.
Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn on Thursday defended his Hungarian counterpart — noting Hungary’s past political support — amid an online backlash against the foreign diplomat after his visit to Cambodia last week spurred renewed Covid-19 closures and some 1,700 people being tested and quarantined.
Foreign arrivals from select countries and who are sponsored by a local company director or other official have had Covid-19 quarantine requirements relaxed, but “general” foreign and Cambodian arrivals no longer have the option to self-isolate at home for two weeks, according to the Health Ministry’s latest guidelines.
Prominent unionist Rong Chhun, whose July arrest over comments he made about the Vietnam border sparked a series of protests, on Wednesday appealed for bail in the Supreme Court, but was shut down by judges for asking the court to “not be politically influenced.”
Two schools have been closed in Preah Sihanouk province due to Covid-19 precautions after a prime ministerial assistant visited three coastal provinces over the weekend despite being a suspected contact of a visiting Hungarian foreign minister who tested positive after leaving the country last week.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto shared some laughs with his counterparts in Austria and Slovenia last week about his recent visit to Cambodia, which has triggered renewed Covid-19 closures in the country, and the quarantine and testing of more than 1,000 people, including Prime Minister Hun Sen.
A news publisher has been sentenced to 18 months in prison over criticisms of Prime Minister Hun Sen in several social media posts.
A trial of nine senior opposition leaders living abroad was delayed on Wednesday morning as defense lawyers requested time for the defendants to attempt to return to the country.
More than 1,100 people have now been tested for suspected direct or indirect contact with a visiting Hungarian foreign minister, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday, but it remained unclear how many received second tests on Monday as urged by the Health Ministry.
Some officials have breached quarantine and traveled outside Phnom Penh, leading the search for indirect Covid-19 contacts of a visiting Hungarian foreign minister to spread to at least seven provinces.
As the government closes schools for a second time amid renewed concerns of Covid-19 transmission, Phnom Penh students preparing for their ninth and 12th grade tests are concerned they have fallen behind during their online lessons.
In celebrating the 67th anniversary of Cambodia’s independence from France on Monday, civil society, analysts and government officials reflected on “national unity” — though their views were sharply divided on whether the CNRP should be included in such unity.
A full day of Covid-19 testing is being carried out on Monday for government officials from 13 different ministries and institutions after having varying contact with a visiting Hungarian foreign minister who later tested positive for the disease.
All schools in Phnom Penh and towns in Kandal province are being closed for two weeks, while KTVs, movie theaters and museums will be shuttered across the country till further notice, after a Cambodian man who worked directly with a visiting Hungarian foreign minister was found positive for Covid-19 on his second test on Saturday.
A Cambodian bodyguard who worked directly with a visiting Hungarian foreign minister last week tested positive for Covid-19 on his second test on Saturday, the Health Ministry announced.
Informal workers will be able to receive free medical care by signing up for the National Social Security Fund, the government said this week, though questions remained about how accessible the registration process was.
Three Kampot police officers were arrested and sent to court Thursday afternoon for killing a man because of a “coincidence” — they fired a gun at the ground while responding to a scuffle and the bullet hit the man, the provincial police chief said on Thursday.
At least a dozen CNRP supporters were questioned in the Kampong Cham Provincial Court this week over incitement allegations, while three former party officials were handed suspended sentences over forestry crimes in Pursat province, according to lawyers.
UPDATED 2 p.m. — Caution and skepticism persist despite health authorities reporting success in keeping Covid-19 numbers down, as government officials have ignored safety precautions, a foreign delegation was allowed to skip quarantine, and the country’s testing regime remains opaque.
Taking precautionary measures, some staff at news outlets and government bodies have gone into two-week quarantine following the visit of a Hungarian foreign minister who later tested positive for Covid-19.
A government minister said on Thursday that the Hungarian delegation that visited this week — and from which a member later tested positive for Covid-19 — along with the Foreign Affairs Ministry had asked for no mandatory masks, alcohol spraying or temperature checks during a signing ceremony.
Health authorities said on Thursday that 628 people had been tested for Covid-19 after coming in contact with a visiting Hungarian official who tested positive for the virus after leaving the country this week.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, his wife and more than a dozen members of his staff tested negative for Covid-19, and he will quarantine at home for 14 days as a precaution, the premier said late Wednesday, after he met a Hungarian official a day prior who later tested positive for the virus in Thailand.
Workers at the Dignity Knitter garment factory, embroiled in a labor dispute for 11 months, say they will reconvene in 10 days after the Kandal provincial governor visited and asked that they give the courts more time to process their employer’s bankruptcy proceedings.
Top Cambodian officials are going into quarantine after Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who visited the country on Tuesday and signed three agreements in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen, tested positive for Covid-19 after arriving in Thailand.
While recent floodwaters are receding, farmers who spoke with VOD say they are weighed down by heavy debt and years of failed crops, and see fear and hopelessness ahead of them.
Jailed unionist Rong Chhunn had “intent to incite social disorder” by releasing statements containing fabrications about the Cambodia-Vietnam border demarcation, the government told the U.N.’s human rights office in response to questions about his arrest.
The embattled tourism sector’s woes continued as foreign visitor numbers to Angkor Archaeological Park dipped again in October, while the Water Festival weekend failed to provide much of a boost for some regions and businesses.
Workers say debt and a lack of jobs in Cambodia are pushing them to consider crossing the closed border amid labor shortages in Thailand, despite the pandemic. Programs to get Cambodian workers back in Thailand are in the works, but concerns remain over conditions and safety.
Veteran garment workers have kept up a 24/7 rotating vigil outside the Dignity Knitter and Eco Base factories since before they shut in April. This week, ex-employees said they were still hoping for a payout, but until a court decision they were stuck with nowhere to go.
The businesswoman who received more than 10 hectares of one of Phnom Penh’s “last lakes” Boeng Tamok from the government, raising questions around transparency and accountability, is the daughter of Land Management Minister Chea Sophara.
More than a year since the courts reopened their investigation into two Radio Free Asia journalists, and almost three years since they were first arrested for treason, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of the continuing investigations.
A Preah Sihanouk man who tried to report a stolen loudspeaker to local police ended up beaten at the hands of officers due to “confusion,” then signed an agreement in which police promised not to beat him again if he did not sue.
Nearly 100 construction workers protested in Phnom Penh’s Toul Kork district on Monday, claiming the developer of a new mall has not paid them for three months.
A conservation organization recorded sharp declines in banteng, gaur and other species of land-dwelling hooved mammals in Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary over a 10-year biodiversity study, suggesting four animals are at risk of disappearing from the protected area within a few years — like tigers and wild water buffalo before them.
Prime Minister Hun Sen inaugurated the construction of a new bridge from the capital’s Koh Pich island to the under-construction Koh Norea satellite city by seemingly threatening the local family of former CNRP lawmaker Ho Vann, living in exile overseas.
A Phnom Penh deputy governor was among authorities who harassed rights monitors and journalists, threatening to confiscate their cameras and phones, at a small opposition rally outside the Chinese Embassy on Friday, with a media advocate calling the authorities’ actions “unacceptable intimidation.”
After authorities on Friday forcibly moved about a dozen people protesting across the street from the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh, and arrested three, demonstrators highlighted how police tactics used during a later rally at the U.S. Embassy were as different as “the sky and earth.”
An activist for the banned CNRP has been charged with incitement and will be jailed, a police spokesperson said on Friday, after he spoke to others in Tbong Khmum province about joining the party’s Paris Peace Agreements protest in Phnom Penh, according to fellow opposition supporters.
UPDATED 10:45 a.m. — About 50 uniformed and plainclothes authorities on Friday forcibly stopped about a dozen people protesting across the street from the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh, with one woman being carried away down Mao Tse Tung Blvd. by authorities and three other demonstrators pulled into the back of a police truck and driven away.
As CNRP supporters prepare to hold anti-China protests in 20 cities around the world on Friday, the outlawed opposition says it’s also waging a campaign calling on more Western governments to sanction Cambodian officials — including the justice minister — over alleged human rights violations or corruption.
Residents in Phnom Penh’s flooded Dangkao district say they are running out of options as food prices rise and bills arrive, but the incomes of thousands in the community have been disrupted after floodwaters halted production at the neighborhood’s main employer.
Van Sophat was handcuffed just before lunch on Thursday, taken away from his house and rammed into a police car still shirtless, his wife said.
About 16,000 factory workers are currently unable to go to work due to flooding in Phnom Penh and the provinces of Kandal and Takeo, the Labor Ministry said on Wednesday, with an economist warning of a hit to the economy and rising prices due to the recent extreme weather.
As he presides over a newly formed Sihanoukville “Master Plan” council, Prime Minister Hun Sen has granted four plots of land in Preah Sihanouk province to seven individuals, plus two more Phnom Penh lake areas to businesswoman Chea Sophamaden and City Hall.
More than 1,400 female and juvenile prisoners have been evacuated from Prey Sar Prison’s Correctional Center 2 and squeezed into Phnom Penh’s other overcrowded prisons amid flooding over the past two weeks, officials said on Tuesday.
A jailed Mother Nature environmentalist and Khmer Thavrak activist appeared at the Appeal Court on Tuesday, where a judge denied requests to drop their cases or grant bail, while three female activists from the groups were unable to attend due to flooding in their prison.
Hundreds of fishing families in a Pursat floating village are escaping barren conditions on the Tonle Sap to take on new jobs elsewhere.
Two opposition officials were arrested for insulting the king on Sunday, as the Information Ministry revealed it had recorded 145 cases of insults, fake news and messages that “polluted society” in just one month, both online and elsewhere.
The rise of domestic tourism offers a glimmer of hope for rural families struggling under the weight of the pandemic and economic crisis, but more work is needed before visits to Cambodia’s ecotourism areas can offer something special for local visitors, observers say.
Heavy rain warnings remain in place after more than a week of flooding, leaving rice farmers increasingly anxious about their harvests — the longer their fields are flooded, the more likely their crops will be lost.
Plunging fish exports this year point to the widespread disappearance of fish in the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers even as fish farms expand to meet domestic demand, fishers and officials said on Friday.
The Bar Association has elected as its new president a government lawyer who is working the treason case against opposition leader Kem Sokha, advises the cabinet, and has represented the prime minister’s son Hun Many as well as political activist Thy Sovantha.
With more heavy rainfall expected this weekend and ongoing flooding that has killed at least 21 people this month, Prime Minister Hun Sen cast doubt that the in-filling of capital lakes had contributed to severe flooding in Phnom Penh.
More than 8,000 square meters of central Phnom Penh land will be granted to Choeung Sopheap, one of the country’s most prominent tycoons whose firms are known for filling in Boeng Kak lake and previously receiving a 300,000-hectare land concession.
As the country continues to be inundated by heavy rain and flooding, a man grapples with the death of his wife, which has not been counted among the 12 official deaths from the past week’s storms.
More than 2,000 sanitation workers in Phnom Penh ended their strike and returned to work on Wednesday afternoon after City Hall and their employer promised to pay them as demanded in February.
Siem Reap residents say they have gone along with demolitions on their properties reluctantly and with regret to make way for road expansions, in one case cutting down to half a house that a family “spent our whole lives to build.”
Naval officers were deployed Wednesday afternoon for evacuations in Kampong Speu province amid ongoing nationwide flooding that has hit more than 60,000 houses in just three of the affected provinces, and inundated at least 180,000 hectares of farmland since last week.
Last week’s arrest of a former opposition commune councilor stems from a 6-year-old complaint filed by timber baron Try Pheap, a human rights group said.
Another new building is rising on Olympic Stadium grounds with the government handing over a corner to the country’s electricity supplier — and joggers and others who use the public space say the historic grounds are becoming hemmed in with new constructions and increasingly unpleasant for exercise.
The Cambodian Cultural Village in Siem Reap has announced its closure due to plummeting visitors amid the global pandemic, and follows workers’ protests for more than a month over salary cuts.
Garbage collection workers remain on strike despite a union urging them to accept a deal from City Hall, with the workers saying they want to see payments not promises.
Cambodia and China on Monday signed a long-awaited free trade deal, as industry observers said it could be a boon for agricultural investment and seen as a major policy achievement, while others spoke of the need for wider reforms to make Cambodian exports competitive.
About 30 villagers wielded axes and machetes as they tore down a forestry patrol shed in Oddar Meanchey province, locals say, sparking accusations of corruption and timber trafficking from a prominent monk’s environmentalist coalition.
Ten people, including three children, have died in floods that have damaged almost 25,000 houses and 84,000 hectares of rice and other crops, according to disaster management authorities, as 1,000 emergency personnel prepare rescue boats and other supplies in anticipation of further storms this week.
Amid a week-long strike by Phnom Penh sanitation workers, VOD speaks to several union members about the demands of the job, and why they remain committed to the hazardous work of keeping the capital clean.
Cambodia is down to five active cases of Covid-19 with no reported deaths, but even as the disease fades from public consciousness, members of the banned opposition CNRP who posted about coronavirus on Facebook remain in jail.
About 30 people gathered in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Phnom Penh residence on Thursday seeking his help to secure titles for land on Boeng Tamok, one of Phnom Penh’s “last lakes,” which in recent years has been divvied up for development on reclaimed land.
The number of Cambodians experiencing poverty this year could nearly double to 17.6 percent of the population — sending some 1.3 million people back into poverty — with the unemployment rate increasing almost seven-fold, a new U.N. report says.
The government has allocated 600 hectares of state forests in Preah Sihanouk province’s Prey Nob district to two tycoons linked to sugar plantations and other businesses.
The Health Ministry on Thursday said 57 people who had some form of contact with a French man, who tested positive with coronavirus 13 days into his supposed self-quarantine, had tested negative, while one new imported case was also announced.
Confusion reigned after the latest round of negotiations over a garbage collectors’ strike, with workers applauding a speech by Phnom Penh governor Khuong Sreng before later realizing, according to a unionist, that “none of their demands were accepted.”
The Religion Ministry will now require pagodas to have hard land titles as part of an effort to better regulate religious institutions in the country, a move some monks said would tighten authorities’ control of monks who participate in social work.
A former opposition commune councilor in Pursat province was arrested on Tuesday over an old warrant related to the clearing of forests, police said.
Dozens of people are getting tested for Covid-19 in Siem Reap after a French man visited bars and attended a pool party during supposed self-quarantine before testing positive over the weekend, on his 13th day of mandatory isolation.
Workers and authorities are set to continue negotiations on Wednesday over a garbage collectors’ strike that has led to major trash pile-ups around Phnom Penh and to some residents calling the capital “Garbage City.”
A senator accused of land grabbing in Mondulkiri province has written an apology to Prime Minister Hun Sen about his “mistakes in the past,” promising to “learn and practice following Samdech’s wisdom for the rest of my life.”
Four villagers have been interviewed by the court over the arrests of four men from leasing company Akchalnak Trop LOD, who allegedly brought an ax to the Kampong Chhnang village to repossess a motorbike with overdue monthly payments.
A 15-year-old boy who illegally entered the outlawed CNRP’s former headquarters over the weekend was released by authorities on Tuesday morning after questioning.
Piles of garbage are growing across the city as more than 2,000 Phnom Penh trash collectors strike to secure severance guarantees ahead of a major restructuring of waste management operations by City Hall.
Lawyers for former CNRP president Kem Sokha have applied to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to resume his trial, more than six months after it was suspended out of concerns for Covid-19.
Tbong Khmum police brought in three residents for questioning on Saturday over a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: “Thank you for peace, but respect Article 2 of the Constitution.”
The jailed editor-in-chief of popular online news outlet TVFB was freed on Monday after being handed a suspended 18-month sentence.
Two new cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed from people taking their 13th-day test during self-quarantine, the Health Ministry reported on Monday, setting off another round of contact tracing.
Hundreds of people are dismantling terraces, awnings and other structures in downtown Siem Reap to make way for road expansions — which for some will mean tearing down large chunks of their homes and businesses they say they have rights and titles to and on which they depend.
The number of traffic accidents dropped 23 percent in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period last year, according to government figures, with an expert suggesting that there had been fewer cars on the road and that stricter penalties were working as a deterrent.
Kampong Chhnang province’s military police commander said companies must first go through the courts before confiscating any debtors’ possessions, after authorities arrested four leasing company officers for breaking a lock as they tried to take away a motorbike with overdue payments.
A 33-year-old Cambodian woman was confirmed to have Covid-19 while in self-quarantine in Battambang two weeks after arriving from the U.S., and was in contact with at least seven people before testing positive, the Health Ministry announced Friday morning.
Four Koh Kong villagers were detained for about 12 hours after camping outside the provincial hall in a group of about 60 land protesters since Monday, they said.
About 400 private schools have gradually reopened since last month out of 600 applicants for “stage two” reopenings, the Education Ministry said on Thursday.
Banana workers in Stung Treng said people were getting sick in droves at the plantation, blaming chemicals sprayed by drones flying overhead, as well as cramped living quarters and a lack of clean water.
Justice Ministry officials need more room, so “empty public land” will be used to store court documents by filling in another part of Boeng Tamok, one of Phnom Penh’s “last lakes” that feeds hundreds of families and protects the capital from flooding.
The first of 10 Mondulkiri public officials implicated in illegal land grabbing in the province has been transferred from his position — a warning to others, according to a government spokesperson, but for local rights monitors a sign of continuing impunity over imprisonable crimes.
Some 132 lawsuits against 379 people have been used to silence expression and stifle civic engagement in the year to March, with most of the actions brought by the government, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights said.
A Chip Mong company representative said there was no threat made against protesters in its luxury Phnom Penh gated community after the residents, who opposed the filling in of a pond near the compound’s golf course, accused it of sending armed guards to remove protest banners from the gates of their mansions.
About 30 armed guards descended on a leafy Chip Mong-owned gated complex on Monday evening after residents — including Acleda Bank CEO In Channy — protested a plan to fill in a water feature, with some homeowners hanging protest banners on their mansions.
Five tons of larvicide has been shipped to one province alone as authorities battle the spread of the chikungunya virus, a rapidly spreading, mosquito-borne disease that is suspected to have infected almost 6,000 people across 21 provinces in three months .
Street vendors of all stripes around Phnom Penh manufacturing districts say their small businesses are becoming nearly impossible to sustain, one of the many knock-on effects of a decline in the country’s garment industry amid the global pandemic.
A Hungarian man has been confirmed positive for Covid-19 and was located by authorities at his Siem Reap City villa after officials said earlier that he had gone missing and was suspected to have contracted the virus, the Health Ministry said on Saturday afternoon.
The manufacturer of a methanol-laced wine that killed seven people and made 36 others sick earlier this year has “completely escaped,” police said, while various other state institutions said that the case was out of their hands or that food poisonings were not their responsibility.
A woman protesting the jailing of her husband, an ex-opposition official, filed a court complaint on Friday alleging attempted murder by a Phnom Penh security guard who threw her to the ground during a demonstration earlier this month.
The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia has filed court action against the E.U. seeking to reverse the bloc’s partial suspension of trade benefits over human rights violations.
UPDATED Sept. 25 — An anti-terrorism officer arrived uninvited to a noodle restaurant’s Pchum Ben duck soup party, got drunk, pulled out his gun, and threatened to kill the restaurateur and his wife, alleges a complaint lodged against him at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
Phnom Penh’s police chief said on Wednesday that authorities have yet to track down two Chinese men who escaped from Covid-19 quarantine on September 9 despite authorities searching for two weeks.
A group of Facebook users were questioned by police on Wednesday after streaming live from a pagoda in Takeo province, and preparing to distribute copies of the Paris Peace Agreements while urging viewers to think about which foreigners stood behind various officials.
Human rights groups on Wednesday criticized the Tbong Khmum court’s decision to bar rights monitors, reporters and even some family members from the sentencing of seven ex-CNRP officials the day before, while a defense lawyer did not attend the hearing.
A new women’s football league kicks off this weekend with 10 teams set to face off, an effort by the national football federation to recruit top female players to compete at the 2023 Southeast Asian Games to be hosted by Cambodia.
Four defendants were in hiding while dozens of local CNRP supporters gathered for what they said was the first time since the party’s dissolution as the Tbong Khmum Provincial Court on Tuesday sentenced five ex-opposition officials to jail for plotting.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has released on bail a former CNRP public affairs officer accused of “plotting” after an investigating judge placed him under court supervision, a court spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Hun Sen urged the country to commit to protecting peace as hundreds of land disputants protested in Phnom Penh on Monday, saying that while they remain marginalized, threatened and “in tears,” the people don’t have peace.
A prominent singer is speaking out to defend young musicians as a second rapper was arrested this month for incitement after posting songs about the problems he sees plaguing Cambodia.
Police arrested another ex-CNRP activist on Sunday, accusing party vice president Mu Sochua’s former assistant of collecting money from abroad to fund a local movement to overthrow the government.
An eyewear company has been fined $3.5 million by an Australian court after falsely suggesting it was donating glasses to Cambodians “in need” for every pair it sold, according to Australia’s competition and consumer commission.
Due to Covid-19 concerns, most schools in Cambodia were closed in March, risking long-term setbacks to students’ education. But some entrepreneurial youth took action by organizing informal classes and community libraries.
PREY PHNHEAS, Battambang — Prey Phnheas village is a 60-minute drive south of Battambang’s provincial capital. Road 151, which leads to the village, is lined with rice fields getting their first taste of the monsoons in mid-August. But the closer you get to Prey Phnheas, the rice shoots are not as green.
Amid record-low water levels, Cham fishing families fear they will need to finally leave Phnom Penh behind, with local authorities threatening their eviction to make way for a private development, and a search for new shores nearby coming up empty.
While a few sellers at O’Russei Market said business was good during the busy holiday season, some said customers likely had less cash to spend and were cutting back on pagoda offering purchases this year.
After deleting a tweet showing a dish containing soft-shell turtle, some species of which are endangered, the Australian Embassy said Tuesday that Ambassador Pablo Kang had tasted the food during a provincial trip last week and “was assured it was farmed.”
The Asian Development Bank on Tuesday revised Cambodia’s expected economic contraction this year from 5.5 percent to 4 percent, noting growth in non-garment exports thanks in part to demand for work-from-home electronics.
Thailand plans to allow a group of 500 Cambodian workers to return to work legally in Thailand for the first time since borders were closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, officials said on Tuesday.
U.N. officials raised concerns that Cambodian authorities did not fully investigate evidence into the disappearance of Thai pro-democracy activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit, in spite of the government’s insistence that it had pursued all available leads.
Six unions announced they would boycott Tuesday’s meeting with the Labor Ministry where they were to discuss amendments to the Labor Law, a move that a ministry spokesperson said misunderstood economics and would have no impact.
Environmental group Mother Nature’s founder alleges that the advocacy group’s Facebook page was hijacked after authorities arrested three activists earlier this month, one of whom was a page administrator.
Another activist was arrested in Phnom Penh on Thursday as the U.N., international rights groups and dozens of local civil society organizations condemned the government’s “campaign of fear and repression” against human rights defenders.
Thousands of workers took to the streets in multiple protests this week over unpaid wages from suspended factories as well as grievances related to benefits, as the Labor Ministry issued a warning against one unionist alleging an illegal strike and a man was detained while photographing a rally.
Academic studies say Facebook “likes” and “shares” of political content are widespread in Cambodia and a form of political engagement in a narrowing civic space. But even those small actions have become too risky for some.
Hun Manet presided over a military ceremony in lieu of Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday, making a speech in front of government ministers and high-ranking officials in what one analyst said was a display of his intention to eventually succeed his father.
The garment sector’s minimum wage will be increased to $192 starting next year, even as hundreds of factories have suspended operations and an estimated 150,000 workers lost their jobs.
Authorities are closing “a little loophole” in Covid-19 quarantine procedures following the escape of two Chinese men from a hotel on Wednesday night, with officers on the chase and “accomplices” brought in for questioning.
A gender rights advocate has said the demotion of a male provincial police chief accused of pressuring women officers to perform sex acts in return for promotions did not go far enough to protect the women and bring them justice.
Migrant workers in Battambang said they had no capital or land to start a farm and were heavily indebted. And with a glut of workers returning to the countryside, farm labor jobs were scarce and barely paid enough to live, they said.
A young rapper and a TikTok broadcaster have been arrested over videos that Cambodian authorities deemed to have the potential to cause chaos in society.
Ex-CNRP members in two provinces were jailed or summoned to trial over old charges of incitement and plotting, with authorities relitigating cases related to party founder Sam Rainsy’s failed promise to return to the country last year and other campaigns promoted by party leaders living in exile abroad.
Wage cuts hit workers with lower education, and those in the provinces, in the first four months of the year, according to a new survey, with a labor advocate predicting salary reductions to continue for the foreseeable future.
A recent wave of arrests of youth activists show the government’s fear of outspoken dissidents, and the potential for small demonstrations to become large-scale protests, political activists and analysts say, while a ruling party official denied any such fear yet suggested that the CPP intended to put out a “fire” before it spread.
The Justice Ministry said it has cleared 8,000 backlogged court cases, though closure eludes a defendant with a 12-year-old charge.
Three activists — including a monk — were arrested over two days at a series of small protests ongoing in Phnom Penh, with the Interior Ministry ordering action against two groups “causing chaos in society.”
Fifteen more hectares of one of Phnom Penh’s “last lakes” will be filled in to make way for government buildings, according to a decree signed two days before authorities arrested environmental youth activists campaigning for the lake’s preservation.
Three months after a Thai activist was allegedly abducted from outside a Chroy Changvar district apartment, neighbors say other Thai regulars who used to be seen in the area are no longer around, while apartment management denies the man had even lived there.
Police and military police have built new headquarters in a Phnom Penh public park where a large banyan tree has long been used as a gathering place for protesters.
Beleaguered by widespread closures and job losses, Cambodia’s tourism industry enjoyed a small bump last month from a surge in domestic travel, a welcome reprieve amid an outlook that remains dim.
Members of the environmental group Mother Nature spent Thursday trying to trace the whereabouts of three of its prominent activists, who were arrested by Phnom Penh police in the middle of producing the group’s latest campaign video.
A Poipet police officer was charged with aggravated intentional violence and sent to pretrial detention on Wednesday evening after allegedly shooting a motorcyclist in the back last week.
A victim of an alleged police shooting filed a court complaint on Monday against a police official in Banteay Meanchey province for attempted manslaughter and illegal use of a weapon — an incident national police brushed off as being only a “warning shot.”
After a minor traffic incident, the son of a tycoon brandished an AK-47 rifle he later claimed to have picked up in his father’s sugarcane plantation, according to police.
The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing border closures have dealt a heavy blow to informal workers in Poipet, including cart-pushing porters, who struggle to find alternative sources of income.
Nearly 30 former opposition party members from Kampong Cham have been summoned to appear in the provincial court over accusations of incitement, while a former CNRP district councilor for Phnom Penh also faces questioning for alleged incitement to cause serious chaos to social security in the capital.
Ex-CNRP lawmaker Son Chhay, who requested his political rights be restored by the government last week, has always marched to his own beat, including challenging ruling party and opposition leaders alike, former colleagues and observers say.
The youth activist group that has been largely driving this month’s protests in support of unionist Rong Chhun will again attempt to hold a demonstration against the arrests of government critics — including two of its members now in jail — early next month.
Three more senior leaders of the outlawed opposition CNRP have asked the government’s permission to participate in politics again, leaving exiled CNRP deputy president Mu Sochua wondering why.
The Education Ministry will allow grade 9 and 12 students from one public high school in Phnom Penh, and students across four provinces deemed “low-risk” for Covid-19 transmission, to head back to classrooms in just over a week, following six months of shuttered schools.
Performers and staff from the Cambodian Cultural Village in Siem Reap continued protesting through Thursday, fearing the loss of an administrative office would make working conditions worse in the future.
The Appeal Court on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision to arrest and jail unionist Rong Chhun over his claims that Cambodia had ceded land to Vietnam, denying him release on bail as his supporters continued to rally outside the court.
About 50 villagers who say their farmland falls within the planned site of the new Phnom Penh International Airport submitted a petition at Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Takhmao City residence on Tuesday to ask for a bigger payout from the airport’s developer.
Cambodian citizens will be allowed to enter the country without a health certificate declaring them free of Covid-19, which is required for arriving foreign nationals, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced on Wednesday.
About 100 fired garment workers have been guarding their closed factory in shifts since mid-January. They aim to ensure the owner does not sell equipment left inside and disappear with the money before paying workers what they are owed by the end of May.
Dissident Kung Raiya, who faces up to four years in prison on charges related to his printing of T-shirts with murdered political analyst Kem Ley’s image and words, said he does not expect justice when the court’s verdict is announced next month.
Health authorities and experts on Monday warned citizens to remain vigilant and keep up precautions against Covid-19, despite no new cases being reported in the country for 15 consecutive days and only three patients remaining in quarantine.
More than 40 people have been arrested this year in relation to alleged chaos-causing incitement and spreading coronavirus-related “fake news,” a police spokesman said.
For indebted garment workers who have been suspended from work due to coronavirus disruptions, money owed to microfinance institutions is a more immediate threat than Covid-19, leading some to consider selling assets before they’re repossessed.
The government on Friday eased pandemic-related restrictions on travel, which went into effect overnight Thursday, announcing that movement within provinces and between Phnom Penh and neighboring Kandal would be allowed.
The editor-in-chief of popular online news outlet TVFB was jailed on Thursday on incitement charges in relation to a Facebook post in which he shared remarks made by Prime Minister Hun Sen this week about struggling informal workers.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said garment workers who are suspended due to Covid-19 disruptions would receive an even smaller partial salary than he originally announced, while also postponing the Khmer New Year holiday and claiming that the “safest place” amid the pandemic was at work.
Cambodia’s garment industry group said this week that factory owners would not be able to pay 40 percent of suspended workers’ wages as recommended by the government, as they cut back work for tens of thousands of employees in the sector.
A day after police arrested the owner of the Rock Entertainment Center, Kith Theang, over a recent 50 kilogram drug bust, Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Monday ordered the nation’s police forces to improve their efficiency in stamping out the trade and use of drugs.
A drunken man assaulted a census officer in Takeo province on Monday, according to local authorities.
Prime Minister Hun Sen removed two deputy governors from their positions in the wake of a violent crackdown on land protesters in Preah Sihanouk province.
Following the mass arrest of more than a dozen land protesters in Preah Vihear province in January, one detainee is missing, and his family is raising concerns over his safety.
From 24-27 December 2025, Cambodia and Thailand are again meeting under the General Border Committee (GBC) framework to discuss a ceasefire. The talks could lead to a defence ministers meeting on 27 December, even as fighting continues and both sides accuse each other of violations.
National unity is not a slogan. It is a strategic asset. In a moment of crisis with Thailand, Cambodia’s strongest non-military advantage is legitimacy, meaning how credible Cambodia appears to its own citizens and to the outside world. Unity among Cambodian political forces will not immediately stop Thai military pressure, but it can strengthen Cambodia’s position in regional and international diplomacy, narrow the space for hostile pretexts, and expand support for lawful and peaceful solutions.
The Phnom Penh court decision to delay Kem Sokha’s case in mid December 2025 is being described by some officials and supporters of the ruling party as a step to protect national interest and unity. Many Cambodians do not see it that way. To them, it looks like the state is keeping a major political case in permanent limbo because the ruling elite is afraid of what could happen if real political competition returns.
In Southeast Asia’s latest border crisis, artillery fire and landmines dominate the headlines. But behind the barbed wire sits a quieter struggle over money and power. At the centre is Bangchak Energy, one of Thailand’s most important energy firms, and a fight over who really controls a large block of its shares. That contest now reaches into the inner circle of Cambodia’s ruling family and the once-close relationship between Hun Sen and the Shinawatra clan.
Cambodia’s political system in 2025 still runs through a single center of power. Human Rights Watch summarizes the reality in one line: “Cambodia remains a single-party state with fixed and controlled elections, with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) controlling all state institutions, including the judiciary.”
Fishers at Siem Reap’s Chong Khneas floating village are not pleased with the arrival of state-owned Angkor Enterprise, which has taken over and changed their boat rental system, impacting their incomes.
The Candlelight Party in Kampong Thom province filed a police complaint against a ruling party member for allegedly destroying a party banner in Stong district.
Battambang authorities have asked more than 50 families to stop farming red tilapia in the Sangke river, claiming it could pollute the water and slow the waterflow into a nearby dam.
Ethnic Vietnamese people living in a popular Siem Reap tourist destination say dozens of families in their community have fled in the last year, spurred by an illegal fishing crackdown that saw dozens of boats confiscated and ongoing alleged extortion by the local Vietnamese association.
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