
Briefs: UN Secretary-General to Visit Cambodia, Coal Plant Opens
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.
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.
Police investigations into plotting charges against former CNRP members, including Mu Sochua, relied mostly on their public Facebook posts and interviews with pro-opposition media Radio Free Asia.
The Khmer Will Party, which announced intentions of uniting with the Candlelight Party this week, quickly had its officials removed from the Supreme Consultative Council. The U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia raised concerns about Cambodia’s upcoming national election, recalling the “unfair” dissolution of the political opposition and drawing attention to ongoing mass trials.
The activisits were trying to follow up on an April petition about state violence against NagaWorld’s striking workers.
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.
Cambodia’s media “is in a perilous state,” the U.N. said in a research report, noting pressure through the criminal justice system and harassment against women. Court questioning against Boeng Tamok residents being sued by district security has been delayed.
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.
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 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.
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.
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