The dusty road outside tycoon Try Pheap’s Thmor Da SEZ in Pursat is empty. But behind locked metal gates, its shabby buildings appear full of inhabitants. Interior Minister Sar Kheng this week called out police excuses in their crackdown on scam compounds, urging vigilance.
Workers at the Vanny Bio Research farm speak of X-rays to check newly arriving monkeys for airgun pellets and packing animals into crates for flights. It’s grueling work for under $200 a month to supply overseas laboratories with animals, they say.
Residents near the hills of Pursat’s Veal Veng district acknowledge there’s plenty of wild monkey hunting in the area, but the animals are getting harder to find. Prices have shot up in recent years, especially for monkeys caught while they are small, they say.
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.
Watching from outside the Sokha Hotel, activists and human rights defenders in Cambodia and Myanmar shrugged: As usual, they said, it was doubtful the yearly summit would lead to any material change for their situations.
Cambodian activists and opposition politicians made a last-ditch effort to catch the attention of U.S. President Joe Biden before he arrived at the Asean Summit, hopeful that the U.S.’s self-image as a protector of democracy could help elevate their plight.
Meetings played out behind closed doors on the first day of the Asean Summit in Phnom Penh on Thursday as hundreds of workers scurried throughout the Sokha Hotel’s labyrinthic interior to tape down innumerable red carpets and arrange flowers.
Phnom Penh is gearing up for the Asean Summit with fresh restrictions: street sellers downsizing stalls, residents taking down drying clothes, streets blocked around major hotels and nightclubs closed.
STUNG TRANG DISTRICT, Kampong Cham — Workers at a banana plantation where three people died and 66 others were hospitalized in late October are fleeing to their home provinces, fearful that exposure to pesticides stored near their onsite dormitories is behind the deadly incident.
Phnom Penh will divert private vehicles away from four arterial roads in the capital from Thursday to Sunday as part of traffic management for the Asean Summit, City Hall said.
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