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.
Some 21 police and Interior Ministry officials have died from Covid-19 out of 2,198 infections, the ministry said over the weekend.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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