Human Rights Watch is calling for new legal protections for the thousands of Cambodians who work in Malaysia as domestic workers. Rights workers say both countries must do much more to prevent an array of abuses including physical and sexual violence. Abuse Human Rights Watch workers interviewed 28 women who were employed as domestic workers
So Ath No, the 49-year-old son of a senior government official, was released by kidnappers in the predawn hours Monday, nearly two weeks after his abduction. The kidnappers had originally asked for a $1 million ransom from his father, So Phon, who is an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Interior. So Phon said Monday he had paid no ransom and did not know the reason his son was released
Police and human rights groups say violent crime has spiked in the period since severe flooding began in August, as criminals take advantage of a distracted security force. The capital and many other places across the country have been inundated in recent weeks. Kheng Tito, a military police spokesman, said criminals are taking advantage of the floods, which slow police, to commit crimes.
Thousands of families have been displaced from their homes in Phnom Penh and are living in sites they say provide poor living conditions.
The protocol chief of the ruling party president, Chea Sim, has been charged with fraud and forgery and is currently in provisional detention at Prey Sar prison, officials said Thursday. Pheng Kunthea Borey, 56, was arrested at the Cham Yeam international border checkpoint in Koh Kong province on Wednesday, as she was trying to cross into Thailand, according to police officials and her lawyer, Kouy Thunna.
Thailand’s recently elected Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has made her first official visit to Cambodia. The one-day trip marks a new start in bilateral relations, which have been poor in recent years. Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra and her Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen have begun the process of rebalancing matters between the two neighbors, after years of deterioration
Vann Nath, a Khmer Rouge prisoner who survived by painting portraits of Pol Pot, died in Phnom Penh on Monday, following an 11-day coma brought on by a heart attack, family members and health officials said. Vann Nath, who was born in 1946 into a poor family in Battambang province, survived the Khmer Rouge’s notorious Tuol Sleng prison and had been an ardent supporter of victims’ justice at the UN-backed tribunal. He served as a witness in Case 001 at the tribunal, which put Kaing Kek Iev, the supervisor of Tuol Sleng prison better known as Duch, on trial for atrocity crimes.
Van La is a rice farmer in Kampong Speu province’s Udong district. Like many Cambodians, she is illiterate. And while she hopes her children will not suffer the same fate, many parents and educational professionals fear that Cambodia’s education system may fail her
A coalition of non-governmental organizations says it received a warning from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “readjust” some of their work, following a controversy over land rights along a railway line development. The NGO Forum said Monday it is preparing a response letter to the ministry, after it wrote a letter to the Asian Development Bank in 2010 warning of dangerous construction on a line slated for rehabilitation.
Phnom Penh officials met with representatives from the Beoung Kak lake area on Thursday, the first move toward dispensing land to some 800 families who had refused to make way for a massive development project.