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Police Break Up Non-Sunday Bible Study
Authorities in Ratanakkiri province last week broke up a church meeting on the grounds that the organizers failed to secure government permission, a clear breach of the Law on Peaceful Assembly, which exempts religious gatherings from such rules. Local authorities often break up meetings hosted by NGOs for the same reason, a practice the NGOs blame on a government intent on stifling dissent.
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New teams to settle land disputes announced
Newly appointed Minister of Land Management Chea Sophara last week established a working group comprising 27 four-man teams tasked with hastening the resolution of land disputes. According to a letter issued by the Ministry of Land Management on Friday, each team will be assigned three disputes to bring to a close, reporting the results back to the ministry.
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MINISTER CLAIMS LOGGING HAS ENDED
Environment Minister Say Samal claims Cambodia has put an end to illegal logging and timber exports to Vietnam, despite reports of continued, and even rising, levels of forest clearing and timber being transported to the Kingdom’s neighbor. Mr. Samal also proposed the government cancel all forest land concessions – something that was already agreed upon in 1998 but has yet to be enacted nearly 20 years later.
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Opposition Announces Then Cancels Plans for Another March
CNRP spokesman Yim Sovann on Sunday publicly announced—but then appeared to cancel—plans for another march across Phnom Penh next week calling for the king’s intervention to end the CPP’s spate of repression against its critics. The CNRP last week delivered a petition to King Norodom Sihamoni asking for help, after months of legal attacks against the party culminated in provisional charges being laid against deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha, as well as an effort to arrest him.
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CNRP plans second petition over political stalemate
The Cambodia National Rescue Party will submit a second petition to King Norodom Sihamoni on June 13, a day before party leader Kem Sokha is scheduled to appear before court for ignoring prior summonses. The party will begin to collect thumbprints for the petition from supporters across the country, asking the King to intervene in the escalating political crisis and to defend the rights of targeted lawmakers, and will be followed by a march to submit the petition, said party spokesman Yim Sovann.
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Ministry official wary of Sokha arrest strategy
An Interior Ministry spokesman has questioned the wisdom of arresting opposition leader Kem Sokha, saying it could result in “bloodshed between Khmer and Khmer”. Khieu Sopheak, speaking to Radio Free Asia on Wednesday, said Sokha’s arrest in the near term would impact the nation negatively and suggested Sokha could be arrested at some indeterminate point in the future.
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EQUALITY SOUGHT AFTER LAND DISPUTE
About 200 families gathered last week in a village in Koh Kong’s Kiri Sakor district, demanding compensation for their removal from land to make way for a Chinese-owned Union Development Group (UDG) project in 2011. In Kongchet, coordinator for rights group Licadho in Koh Kong, said that in 2011, land disputes involving the families were defused via negotiation when most residents agreed to leave their homes in exchange for compensation packages from UDG. A total of 21 families, however, refused the compensation packages and were ultimately given up to $10,000 in addition to plots of land in favorable locations to vacate the village.
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ABRUPT FACTORY CLOSURES SPARK PROTESTS
More than 100 workers at Phnom Penh’s Jiyun Garment factory in Meanchey district gathered to demand owed wages yesterday morning after discovering the factory had been cleared out and its owner had disappeared. What workers did find were copies of their passports, family books and contracts, afloat in a pool of water in the factory grounds where they appeared to have been relegated for destruction.
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Government Launches Probe of CNRP Petition
Interior Minister Sar Kheng on Thursday ordered a special, nationwide investigation to root out any faked thumbprints on a petition the CNRP has handed the king for help in settling the current political standoff. The CNRP is boycotting parliament in protest over the recent legal action against its lawmakers and submitted a petition to the Royal Palace on Monday asking King Norodom Sihamoni to intervene, along with a purported 200,000 thumbprints from supporters.
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Peninsula dwellers seek ministry’s intervention
Representatives from six communities on the capital’s Chroy Changvar peninsula yesterday petitioned the Land Management Ministry to intervene and stop the imminent clearing of their land by district authorities and development firm the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation. Community representative Chea Sophat said that despite attempts to find a solution over land designated for the Chroy Changvar Satellite City, district security forces have continued to clear the land.
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Kampong Speu disputants ‘pressured’ to take sugar firm deal
Despite earlier statements by company representatives that $500 compensation packages being offered to land disputants at Ly Yong Phat’s Kampong Speu economic land concession (ELC) were negotiable, attendees of a meeting between company representatives and residents yesterday said they felt pressured to take the offer. The ruling party senator was granted the ELC in 2010, and since then, his Phnom Penh Sugar Company has been locked in a bitter dispute with residents. The impasse appeared to have been broken two weeks ago when more than 200 families accepted a $500 compensation package.
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NEC Visits Jailed Official; Bail Hearing to Come
National Election Committee (NEC) Deputy Chairman Kuoy Bunroeun on Thursday led a delegation of elections officials to visit one of the body’s top administrators, Ny Chakrya, who has been jailed on charges of bribing an opposition leader’s alleged mistress. Mr. Chakrya, a former human rights monitor before his appointment in January to the new bipartisan NEC, was jailed in April after being accused of helping convince CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha’s alleged mistress to deny the affair when questioned in court.
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Despite government bravado, no slowdown in timber smuggling
The anti-logging commission established in January by Prime Minister Hun Sen boasted in an April report that it had all but eliminated illegal logging and smuggling in the eastern provinces. Locals in the Kingdom’s east tell a vastly different story. Interviews with NGOs, government institutions and more than 30 people from six different communities in Tbong Khmum, Kratie and Mondulkiri indicate that – thanks to rampant official corruption and spiking demand – smuggling has continued unabated, and could even be on the rise.
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CNRP MPs hit with fraud claim
A Cambodian People’s Party official has lodged a complaint with the National Assembly against two opposition lawmakers accusing them of using underhanded tactics to try and take land from two villagers in Kandal province. Sok Sambath, a member of the CPP’s secretariat in Phnom Penh, claims CNRP parliamentarians Mao Monivann and Tok Vanchan attempted to cheat the alleged victims, Pork Sovanna and Kol Sophal, out of property in Ponhea Leu district’s Prek Taten commune.
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Deal to end Phnong’s five-year land dispute
A community of ethnic Phnong people in Mondulkiri’s Keo Seima district has accepted a settlement from a Vietnamese rubber firm ending a five-year land dispute. Eight of the community’s representatives met for two hours yesterday with representatives of Binh Phoc Kratie Co, along with district and provincial authorities and officials from rights group Adhoc while more than a 100 community members waited outside.
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Police May Choose Not to Apprehend Sokha
Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said on Thursday that police may choose not to execute an arrest warrant for deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha, which the courts say is forthcoming, if they believed his arrest would cause “blood to flow, clashes or acts of violence.” The CNRP has threatened mass protests if Mr. Sokha is arrested for failing to show up for court questioning last week as a “witness” in his own sex scandal. On May 26, police unsuccessfully tried to arrest him, and he was provisionally charged the next day.
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Lawyers Rally Around Colleague Jailed for Bribery
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday charged attorney Pich Rattana with attempted bribery of a judge, as dozens of fellow lawyers rallied to have him released on bail. Mr. Rattana’s own lawyer, Saing Vannak, confirmed the charge and said Mr. Rattana had been placed in provisional detention at Phnom Penh’s PJ Prison. Both Mr. Vannak and deputy prosecutor Ngin Pech, who processed the case, declined to give further details.
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LAWYER CHARGED FOR BRIBING JUDGES
Pich Ratana, the lawyer arrested by the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) earlier this week for alleged corruption, was charged yesterday by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court with the “attempted bribery of judges” under article 518 of the penal code. “He is now still being questioned by the investigative judge at the court,” municipal court clerk Ly Sokha told Khmer Times.
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Seven NEC members visit colleague in jail
National Election Committee deputy secretary-general Ny Chakrya has appealed to his NEC colleagues to help secure his release from prison so he can resume working on organising the 2017 local and 2018 national ballots. The former Adhoc staffer is one of six people – including four current employees of the rights group – locked up for allegedly conspiring to bribe the purported mistress of opposition leader Kem Sokha.
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S-21 functionary testifies at KRT
Witness Suos Thy, a former list-maker at the infamous S-21 prison, testified before the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday, recounting the internal operations of the security centre. He joined the Khmer Rouge rebels in 1971 during their struggle to overthrow the US-backed Lon Nol regime. In 1972 he fought in Siem Reap as a part of Regiment 123.
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