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Teacher: I made child strip
A teacher at Hun Sen Wat Thmey Primary School in Svang Rieng province has been summonsed on charges of sexual harassment for ordering an 11-year-old female student to be undressed as a punishment for reading errors. According to a complaint filed by the victim’s family to the provincial court in May, second-grade teacher Duong Sinet regularly ordered a male student to take off the victim’s skirt and underwear in front of a class of some 30 students. It was not until mid-August that the case was escalated into a court investigation when the girl refused to attend school.
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Two More Refugees to Arrive From Nauru
Cambodia will take in two more refugees being held by Australia on the South Pacific island of Nauru as part of Phnom Penh’s controversial resettlement deal with Canberra, Interior Minister Sar Kheng said Thursday, on top of the four refugees already here. Mr. Kheng made the announcement in an interview broadcast live by local television station PNN on Thursday, following the return of a Cambodian delegation that visited Nauru to meet the applicants and confirm that they were coming voluntarily.
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ACU Drafting Whistleblower Protection Law
The head of the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) said Thursday that the body’s jurist group had begun drafting a new law to protect witnesses and whistleblowers who come forward with information about graft and other crimes. Om Yentieng, chairman of the ACU, said the proposed law would not be limited only to those who approached his body with information, but would protect a wide range of individuals who assist authorities in investigations. Mr. Yentieng initially said the ACU had plans to draft such a law in November.
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A traditional healer is accused of raping minor
A traditional healer in Kampong Speu province has been accused of using his position to allegedly rape a teenaged girl. Phom Khoeum, a 58-year-old healer from Chansen commune, was taken into custody on Sunday after the mother of the 15-year-old victim, Chea Sarem, 39, filed a complaint to the local authorities. Choub Sovan, the local commune chief, said the girl had fallen ill and treatment at the local hospital had failed to bring down her fever. “My daughter had a high temperature and I sent her to be treated at the provincial hospital, but she was not better,”Sarem said.
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CPP to Push Ahead With New Commune Election Law
The National Assembly will vote on an amended law governing commune elections on October 20 even if the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP do not forge a deal over the parts of the law they disagree on, CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said Wednesday.
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Better factories? ILO project prasied by World Bank
The World Bank praised the International Labour Organization’s Better Work program in a report released on Monday, commending the program’s Cambodian operation for its role in improving the job quality and personal independence of the Kingdom’s mostly female garment workers. “The Better Factories Cambodia program benefitted all the key stakeholders by improving work conditions, supporting the growth of the apparel sector in Cambodia (benefitting all local stakeholders), and boosting developed world buyers’ reputation by sourcing from ethical workplaces,” the report reads.
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Unions balk at floated figure
Garment worker unions yesterday decried a preliminary, government-suggested increase to the minimum wage as being far too close to what they perceive as a lowball offer from employers. As tripartite wage talks continue, unions yesterday said officials from the government's Labour Advisory Committee had on Tuesday offered a 5.7 per cent increase on the current minimum wage. That figure, which amounts to a jump of slightly more than $7 based on the current minimum wage of $128 per month, is not much different from the increase suggested by employers of 3.5 per cent, or slightly under $4.50.
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Cambodia Turns Away Montagnard Asylum-Seekers From Vietnam
Cambodian authorities on Wednesday refused a request for asylum made by nine Vietnamese Montagnards who had traveled to Phnom Penh to ask for help, and whose presence in the country had previously gone unreported. The nine arrived in the capital on Sept. 30, but were turned away by the Ministry of Interior, which refused to register their names, a U.N. rights officer posted to Cambodia told RFA’s Khmer Service on Thursday. “OHCHR was alerted to the arrival of nine new asylum seekers yesterday requesting assistance,” Wan-Hea Lee, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) representative in Cambodia wrote in an e-mail. “I understand that they were also refused registration by the Refugee Department, as have all others who crossed over this year,” she wrote.
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Women at Large After Alleged Acid Attack on Boyfriend
The suspect in the country’s latest acid attack is at large after allegedly pouring acid over her boyfriend in Phnom Penh on Tuesday, according to police. Leng Socheata, 21, was driving his motorbike in Prampi Makara district and his girlfriend, Chin Likim, also 21, was riding pillion when she poured the acid over his head and neck at about 2:30 p.m., said Mok Borunchhorsak, chief of police in Veal Vong commune. “The girlfriend attacked the man with acid,” he said Wednesday. “The man was seriously injured on his head and neck and his family has sent him to Vietnam for treatment.”
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Labor Law Violators to Face Stiffer Daily Fines
Companies that violate the Labor Law will now face a five-fold increase in fines following a new order from the justice and labor ministries intended to encourage more compliance.
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Chinese Firm Begins Construction at Boeng Kak
Eight years after CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin signed off on a 99-year lease of Boeng Kak lake in one of the most controversial real estate deals in Phnom Penh’s recent history, a Chinese firm has begun construction on the first major development project on the filled-in lake. Beijing-based Graticity Real Estate Development company started construction last month on One Park, a commercial and residential development billed as “Sophisticated Urban Living” after purchasing 20 hectares from Shukaku, Mr. Meng Khin’s firm, according to Hong Xin, customer manager for Graticity.
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A tailored agreement
Following weeks of quarrelling, the Kingdom’s garment unions yesterday agreed to demand a monthly industry minimum wage of $168 – only to find themselves miles apart from employers who are refusing to consider an increase beyond the rate of inflation. Leading up to ongoing tripartite minimum-wage talks slated to culminate in October, pro-government and independent unions debated between demanding $158 or $178 a month, with one league of independent unions even offering a target of $207 based on a survey of garment workers’ spending habits. But yesterday, 14 unions settled on the $168 figure after more than an hour of internal discussion, according to a statement released after the meeting.
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Land dispute pits PM’s brother against Brigade 70 general
The Kampong Speu Provincial Court has joined the fray in a land battle between Hun Sen’s elder brother and a general attached to RCAF’s infamous Brigade 70, ordering a halt to its clearing. A court officer, joined by 20 local authority officers and several members of local NGO Natural Resource and Wildlife Preservation Organization (NRWPO), on Friday went to the disputed property, where they kicked out the general’s workers, who were clearing the land with four tractors. No one was arrested. Hun San, the premier’s brother and director of the Cambodia Shipping Agency, bought a parcel of land from villagers in Kampong Speu’s Oral district in 1999.
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Unions Come to Consensus on Wage Proposal
A disparate group of independent and pro-government trade unions on Tuesday agreed to make $168 their proposal for the garment sector’s new monthly minimum wage in ongoing negotiations with employers, bridging weeks of differences. With the Labor Ministry pushing the Labor Advisory Committee (LAC)—made up of government, factory and union representatives—to make its proposal to the ministry by Monday, unions were warned that they would not be allowed to suggest any raise at all if they could not all agree on a single figure.
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Hun Sen Touts Cambodia’s Approach To Closing Gender Gap
NEW YORK CITY—Prime Minister Hun Sen addressed world leaders at the UN on Sunday, giving his formula for closing the gender gap. Speaking at a global leaders summit on the subject at the United Nations, Hun Sen said closing the gender gap in developing countries requires a four-prong approach: increasing investment in gender equality; ensuring the protection of women’s rights; strengthening government institutions; and continuing to promote women’s involvement in the economy and their financial inclusion.
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Man Arrested Over Threat to Bomb Graduation
A former student at the University of South-East Asia in Siem Reap City was arrested on Monday for posting a comment on a friend’s Facebook page threatening to bomb a graduation ceremony presided over by Interior Minister Sar Kheng. Savoeun Tao, 26, finished his studies at the school in 2013 and grew angered by repeated changes to the date for a graduation ceremony that the interior minister was to preside over, according to Phoeung Chendareth, chief of the provincial police’s minor crimes bureau.
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Don’t Worry, Gov’t Tells Net Users
PHNOM PENH (Khmer Times) – The government yesterday moved to reassure Internet users and NGOs fearful of a censorship crackdown after plans to implement new controls to combat cybercrime and the abuse of social media. A draft sub-decree announced last month gives the Interior Ministry’s new Anti-cybercrime Department powers to deal with abuse, but there are no plans to block sites. Under the draft, the Anti-cybercrime Department, according to the sub-decree, will be mandated to monitor mail, phone calls and faxes, searching for “irregularities relating to national security.” “The Internet environment in Cambodia is more favorable because there is no restriction to any website. You can even access porn sites here,” Sun Rapid, Director of R&D Center at the Ministry of Telecommunications, said at a gathering of NGOs and government officials to discuss Internet freedom.
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‘Bride traffickers’ tried
Six women were tried by Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday over allegations of trafficking three Cambodian girls into forced marriages in China on false premises of employment in Singapore. According to presiding judge Svay Tonh, the girls, aged 18 to 22, were lured from families in Kratie province by offers of work in beauty salons in Singapore with salaries of $800 to $1,000 per month. “But when the victims agreed to work as advertised, they . . . sent them to China to marry husbands there,” he said.
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Cambodia Blocks Outside Doctors From Treating Jailed Opposition Senator
Cambodian authorities are refusing to allow doctors from the human rights group Licadho to visit a jailed opposition lawmaker held at Prey Sar prison in the capital Phnom Penh, claiming the facility already provides adequate care, sources said. Their refusal constitutes a form of “discrimination” against Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) senator Hong Sok Hour, who was arrested in August after challenging Cambodia’s ruling party on its handling of a border dispute with neighboring Vietnam, the senator’s lawyer told RFA’s Khmer Service on Wednesday. “This is nothing more than discrimination against an opposition party member,” the senator’s lawyer, Chhoung Chou Ngy, told RFA.
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Trial of Sok Hour to begin on Friday
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday will hear the case against opposition Senator Hong Sok Hour, who was arrested and saw his parliamentary immunity bypassed last month over a Facebook post. Sok Hour faces charges of forging a public document, using a forged public document and incitement to cause serious unrest, after he posted a “fake” section of a 1979 border treaty between Cambodia and Vietnam on August 13, which stated the countries would dissolve their border.
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