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  • Ministries Announce New Regulations for Foreign Business Owners

    The Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Labor have imposed new regulations and legal conditions on foreign investment and businesses in Cambodia, with the ministries requiring foreign-owned companies to file correct legal papers and to strictly follow Cambodia’s immigration and labor laws, including foreign workers having work permits. According to a joint announcement letter on the reinforcement on the inspection of foreign labor in Cambodia issued by the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Labor, the agreement was signed by both ministers on March 10, and obtained by Khmer Times yesterday.

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  • As Union Law Vote Nears, Employers Call for Last-minute Changes

    Representatives of employers from Cambodia’s industrial sector called for changes to the contentious draft union law yesterday. They criticized the government’s enforcement of strike regulations while requesting changes to the law that include higher thresholds for forming unions and more powers for dissolving unions. At a press conference yesterday at the Cambodiana Hotel, the leaders of the Garment Manufacturers’ Association of Cambodia (GMAC) and the Cambodian Federation of Employers and Business Associations (CAMFEBA) complained that illegal strikes have disrupted business and made buyers skittish about investing in the Cambodian garment industry. After double-digit exports and year-on-year growth after the 2008 economic recession, the growth of garment sector exports slowed to below 10 percent in 2014, according to GMAC.

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  • Police Block Meeting Between UN Envoy and Kuoy Villagers

    Police in Preah Vihear province on Monday stopped a meeting between the U.N. human rights envoy to Cambodia and ethnic Kuoy villagers attempting to air their grievances over a long-running land dispute between them and a Chinese sugar cane plantation, according to the U.N.

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  • Cambodia’s Democratic Progress Stymied in 2015

    The evolution of Cambodia’s democracy saw significant setbacks last year, with the government repeatedly violating the law, suppressing freedom of expression and over-seeing continued state corruption, according to an annual report released by a watchdog on Tuesday. Koul Panha, executive director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections (Comfrel), which compiled the study, warned that Cambodia was faltering on its path to democracy with local and national elections approaching in the next two years.

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  • Prey Lang Network Demands Justice After Axe Attack

    Members of the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) insisted yesterday that the government carry out an investigation into the assault on one of their activists in Kratie province on Monday. Phon Sopheak was asleep in a hammock near Boeung Cha village in the midst of a forest patrol – during which she and her colleagues were attempting to halt illegal loggers – when she was attacked by an unknown assailant with an axe. Ms. Sopheak was hospitalized with serious injuries. She remains there today.

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  • Lauded activist attacked while patrolling Prey Lang forest

    Axe-wielding assailants injured a well-known environmental activist from the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) as she was patrolling a section of Prey Lang forest in Kratie province with her group early on Sunday morning. Phon Sopheak, 25, who accepted an award from the United Nations Development Programme on behalf of the PLCN in Paris last year, suffered a deep wound to her left leg and a smaller wound to her calf as she was resting.

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  • Commune Chief Found With Over 17 Tons of Illegal Rosewood

    Police in Tbong Khmum province found more than 4,000 pieces of undocumented rosewood after raiding the home of a commune chief over the weekend but chose not to arrest the official pending further investigation. Chan Tara, an assistant to provincial court prosecutor Heang Sopheak, said 10 officers raided the home of Hem Yiep, the chief of Ponhea Krek district’s Trapaing Phlong commune, on Saturday morning, acting on a tip from a resident. There, inside a large shed used to house pigs, they found 4,696 pieces of rosewood weighing a total of 17.7 tons.

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  • Attack on Prey Lang Defender Highlights Logger Brutality

    A member of the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) in Kratie province was seriously injured after she was attacked by an unknown assailant while sleeping in a hammock on Sunday night near Boeung Cha village. Observers say the attack highlights the brutally hostile nature of the illegal logging industry and the lengths to which they will go to protect their stakes in the timber trade.

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  • Win Shingtex Workers to March on New Factory

    Hundreds of former workers from the Win Shingtex (Cambodia) factory, who have been protesting for owed wages and benefits since early this month when the company surreptitiously terminated their contracts, will march along National Road 4 today to a location they believe to be the site of a new Win Shingtex factory, according to worker representatives. The plan comes after workers were stopped by police during a march to the Ministry of Labor yesterday.

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  • Armed Soldiers Storm Forestry Office to Retake Truck

    A group of 10 armed soldiers stormed a Forestry Administration office in Oddar Meanchey province on Monday and attempted to seize a military truck that had been confiscated from them after they used it to transport illegal timber, leading to an hourslong standoff, officials said. The soldiers, members of Platoon 243 of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces’ (RCAF) Division 2, rushed into the Forestry Administration’s division office in Anlong Veng district on Monday morning and demanded the return of their vehicle at gunpoint, according to division chief Khorn Khem.

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  • Workers protest ahead of draft union law vote

    Independent unions and NGOs staged low-key demonstrations at factories in several provinces yesterday in opposition to the draft trade union law, which is due to go to the National Assembly next week. Workers with banners, posters and stickers protested at 100 factories and union offices in Kampot, Preah Sihanouk and Kandal provinces as well as Phnom Penh, according to Ath Thorn, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers’ Democratic Union.

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  • Dam-affected villagers make case to UN envoy

    The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia met with Stung Treng Governor Mom Saroen yesterday to discuss the plight of ethnic minorities in the province affected by the Lower Sesan 2 dam project. Special rapporteur Rhona Smith is in Cambodia on a 10-day visit focusing on women’s and indigenous people’s rights, and on Sunday met with villagers in Sesan district’s Kbal Romea commune.

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  • Government Cancels Concession Run by Vietnamese Army

    One of four rubber plantations operated by the Vietnamese military in Ratanakkiri province had its contract with the government canceled last month amid accusations that it had engaged in illegal logging and had allowed Vietnamese farmers to encroach on Cambodian land, the director of the provincial agriculture department said on Monday. The Dai Dong Duong economic land concession (ELC) was one of four in the northeastern province whose shares were quietly bought up over the past few years by various units of the Vietnamese army, according to Commerce Ministry records and Vietnamese state media.

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  • Charges dropped against Mother Nature monk duo

    Charges against two co-founders of environmentalist group Mother Nature have been dropped, according to their defence lawyer, while deported co-founder Alex Gonzalez-Davidson yesterday said he plans to force his own arrest if he is not permitted to return to stand trial. Three Mother Nature activists, Try Sovikea, Sun Mala and Lem Samnang, were arrested in August 2015 over their anti-sand dredging activities in Koh Kong province and charged with threatening to cause destruction, defacement or damage and ordering others to do so.

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  • Young Environmental Activist Attacked; Loggers Suspected

    An environmental activist on patrol in the Prey Lang Forest in Kratie province was attacked with a machete as she slept on Sunday, just hours after she and her cohorts seized half a dozen chainsaws from a group of loggers pillaging a grove of valuable hardwood.

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  • Speed Up Reforms to Draw Investment, EU Says

    The E.U. is the world’s leading investor in Asean countries, yet less than 1 percent of its investments in the region are made in Cambodia—a statistic reflective of the country’s human resource deficiencies and opaque business environment, E.U. officials said Monday.

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  • Duo to face court over arson

    Two men will be questioned by the Preah Vihear Provincial Court today over allegations they burned down the office of rubber company Ample Focus over a heated land dispute. The two are among eight villagers sued by the company for destroying their property in Sangkum Thmei district in September last year.

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  • Four Housemaids to Be Repatriated From Malaysia

    Four Cambodian women working as maids in Malaysia will be repatriated in the coming days after seeking help from the Cambodian Embassy over poor labor conditions, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday.

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  • Judicial System Questioned on Human Rights

    The National Assembly’s human rights commission met Justice Minister Ang Vong Vathana on Friday to discuss the problems surrounding the country’s court system, including procedural issues, government interference and lengthy pre-trial detentions. After a three-hour closed-door meeting between Ms. Vong Vathana and head of the opposition-led human rights commission, Eng Chhay Eang, the pair held a press conference.

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  • Koh Kong locals seek land’s return

    Representatives of 526 Koh Kong families hopped on their motos on Friday morning to deliver petitions to their district town halls calling for the return of land taken from them by a 2006 economic land concession (ELC), as well as compensation for lost crops. In 2006, a 2,239-hectare ELC in Sre Ambel and Botum Sakor districts was handed to the Koh Kong Sugar Industry Company, then part-owned by CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat.

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