Major action is needed to address a crisis of forced labor, slavery and torture in Cambodia, says a collective of 35 civil society groups.
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.
The Cambodian Center for Human Rights has called on judges to “inform and fully explain” to all defendants both their rights during trial and the charges against them, citing a 16-month review of proceedings at the Phnom Penh Appeal Court.
Unlike civil society reports that have enumerated dozens of freedom of assembly violations this year, Interior Minister Sar Kheng said on Thursday that there had been only six.
Almost half of the prisoners who appealed their sentences in a 16-month period between 2017 and 2019 were either not allowed to be present at their hearings or had no lawyers to represent them, a rights group said in a report Thursday.
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