Hun Sen disclosed in a speech over the weekend that his wife had built a stupa for him in secret, but that he had refused to be laid to rest at the Phnom Penh pagoda.
As the new Sihanoukville expressway opened over the weekend, one set of road signs stood out: an apparent directive for “no axes,” which a company official later explained was meant to remind motorists to not cut down forests along the road.
“I wouldn’t hold a glass of champagne and say ‘Cheers.’” A somewhat experimental effort with a $330-million price tag, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal straddled controversy, the pursuit of justice and bitter disappointment before its final verdict against the last-surviving regime leader on trial.
Oknha Duong Ngeap took $120,000 per Cambodian citizenship for Chinese and Taiwanese clients, he told the Phnom Penh court on Thursday.
Angkor residents are worried about being displaced from their work and public amenities if they move 20 km to an underdeveloped resettlement site. The state denies these are evictions, but its campaign to clean up “illegal constructions” leaves residents with little choice.
Hundreds of foreign nationals have been removed from Phnom Penh compounds as police acknowledged detention, torture, extortion and human trafficking in several arrests.
The Preah Sihanouk provincial administration said a boat carrying 41 Chinese nationals sank off the coast of Koh Tang, with 18 rescued at the time and another passenger found after a day.
On Thursday morning, the Khmer Rouge tribunal upheld all but two of a slew of convictions against former regime head of state Khieu Samphan, effectively ending the court’s judicial proceedings.
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.
Nearly 9,000 phones were seized from a Sihanoukville compound and barbed wire cut from the notorious “Chinatown” area. As human trafficking raids target compounds across the city, residents say other buildings appear to be quietly emptying of foreign workers.
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