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On Garment Exports, Gov’t Figures Vary Wildly
Cambodia’s critical garment industry may be doing significantly better than Commerce Ministry figures suggest, judging by the Finance Ministry’s count, but just whose numbers to trust is up for debate. In February, the Commerce Ministry’s import-export inspection general directorate said Cambodia’s garment exports for 2014 hit $5.75 billion, up 4 percent from 2013. Though the figures defied predictions by the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) that exports would not grow at all, they did mark a major slowdown for the sector following a 20 percent jump in 2013.
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Boeung Kak women self-harm
Three imprisoned land activists intentionally injured themselves on Friday in an alleged suicide attempt after being confined in their cell for two days, according to their families and a fellow inmate. Tep Vanny, Kong Chantha, and Bor Chorvy – all from Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak community – reportedly hit their heads against the wall on Friday morning until they fell unconscious after being denied any time outside of their cell in Prey Sar prison’s Correctional Centre 2.
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Interior Ministry Publicizes Official Price List to Combat Bribery
The ministers of interior and finance last month signed off on a document announcing official prices for basic government services such as the production of ID cards and passports in order to combat irregular fee collection, according to a copy of the document released Saturday. The document, which was signed on March 18 by Interior Minister Sar Kheng and Finance Minister Aun Porn Moniroth, laid out the prices for all basic services provided by the Ministry of Interior and called for public servants to strictly keep to those prices.
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Official questioned over $1.5M land ‘fraud’
A former Ministry of Interior police officer was tried by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday for allegedly embezzling more than $1.5 million under the pretense of buying land from Kandal province villagers for a company he used to work for. Ex-officer Pech Hy was charged with breach of trust after his former employer and friend Okhna Srey Chanthan, president of 7NG Company and Agricultural Safety Trading Co Ltd, sued him for buying around 1,000 hectares of land with co
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PM says NGO law to be passed soon
A contentious draft law aimed at regulating Cambodia’s NGOs could be passed by the National Assembly as early as next month, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday. “[The draft law] is a matter of disagreement, but the government has had it drafted since 2012,” Hun Sen said during a speech at the Centre for Deaf and Mute Children in Phnom Penh. “It will pass through the Council of Ministers no later than May before it is sent to the National Assembly, and the draft law will be passed without any obstacles.”
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Energy, disease risks: report
A global risk-analysis firm has released a grim – albeit partial – snapshot of Cambodia, noting that the Kingdom’s overreliance on essential resources from other countries leaves it vulnerable to instability, and that it is at “extreme risk” of a communicable-disease pandemic. The Global Risks and Resilience Atlas 2015 – which looks at natural and manmade problems affecting the globe, and which was released last week by risk-analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft – placed Cambodia at the top of its external resource security risk index, which rates a country’s vulnerability to fluctuations in outside sources of water, energy and food.
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Health minister summoned to Assembly
Minister of Health Mam Bunheng has been called to appear in parliament over his alleged inaction in response to the Global Fund scandal and other allegations of corruption in the health sector, an opposition lawmaker has said. The request for Bunheng to appear before the National Assembly on Friday was made by Ho Vann, a lawmaker who chairs parliament’s anti-corruption commission. Ho Sothy, chief of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s cabinet, and Or Vandin, spok
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Patrols restart in Prey Lang
Forest activists have seized at least 25 chainsaws and 53 cubic metres of alleged illegally felled timber in Prey Lang forest since community patrols began on Thursday, members of the activist network have said. Un Vien, a 43-year-old from Preah Vihear province, said the patrol he was with had confiscated 12 chainsaws and 10 cubic metres of timber, which the group intended to destroy.
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Prey Long Network Ends Four-Day Patrol to Monitor Logging
A network of about 400 activists completed a five-day patrol of the unprotected 650,000-hectare Prey Long forest in the country’s north Sunday, seizing and burning illegally logged wood and confiscating chainsaws from those they discovered felling trees. The patrol, the largest in more than a year for the Prey Long Community Network, began on Wednesday with four groups entering the forest in Kompong Thom, Kratie, Preah Vihear and Stung Treng provinces to carry out the monitoring they believe authorities have neglected.
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CNRP ‘decides’ on Puthea
The opposition emerged from an afternoon meeting yesterday saying it was united on the selection of Hang Puthea, head of election-monitoring group Nicfec, as the ninth member of the reformed National Election Committee (NEC). The announcement followed days of seeming uncertainty over the decision, which one party official previously told the Post had been made by party president Sam Rainsy “alone”.
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Crime Level ‘Critical’ in Cambodia: US
A spike in violent crime over the past year has seen Cambodia receive a “critical” rating in a report outlining the potential dangers for U.S. Embassy staff operating in the country. The Cambodia 2015 Crime and Safety Report, which was compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Diplomatic Security and released Wednesday, cited armed robberies, youth gangs and break-ins as some of the dangers facing U.S. diplomats.
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Gov’t offers bursaries for poor
The government will provide scholarships to poor public school students in grades 1 through 12 in an effort to curb drop-out rates. Primary and lower secondary students will receive 240,000 riel ($60) a year and upper secondary students will receive 360,000 riel ($90), according to a March 17 decree from Prime Minister Hun Sen, released by the Ministry of Education this week. The scholarships include the 2014/2015 academic year for grades 4 through 12, but scholarships for students in grades 1 through 3 will be held and issued by prakas.
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Police Release Logger Who Implicated Official
Villagers in Mondolkiri province on Tuesday detained and handed over to authorities a Vietnamese man who told police that Sos Malen, a local environmental official, had let him into Cambodia to log illegally. Immigration police let the man go, however, claiming to have insufficient evidence to hold him. Khut Chanra said Thursday that he and about 40 other local villagers were patrolling Pech Chreada district’s Phnom Nam Lier Wildlife Sanctuary for illegal loggers on Tuesday night when they came across a team of six Vietnamese men about to drive two truckloads of Koki logs across the border into Vietnam. The villagers seized the wood and one of the loggers, but the other five escaped.
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Civil party asked to return as witness
A civil party at the Khmer Rouge tribunal was ultimately reclassified as a factual witness yesterday after judges decided his testimony – as one of the only survivors of the Ang Roka prison – was of particular importance. Than Tim, 69, was one of the three civil parties who testified about their suffering under the hands of the Khmer Rouge in Takeo’s Tram Kak district. He told the court that, in 1977, he was working in an ox-cart unit in Takeo’s Trapeang Thum Khang Cheung commune when he was surprisingly called into a closed-door meeting by the unit chief.
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Five drug smugglers convicted in PP court
A Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge yesterday convicted five people of smuggling methamphetamine from Laos to Cambodia, handing down prison sentences of 25 to 30 years. Six people were arrested in the capital’s Sen Sok district in March 2013 during police raids on several houses where the trafficking operation was based, netting 14 kilograms of methamphetamine, Phnom Penh Municipal Military Police Deputy Commander Khen Sovann said yesterday.
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UN Experts Detail Extensive Rights Violations
A U.N. human rights panel on Thursday evening released a report on the government’s adherence to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, taking aim at a series of violations including impunity for extrajudicial killings, excessive use of force by authorities and a lack of judicial independence.
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Justice Minister Seeks Briefing Over Years-Old Land Dispute
The justice minister on Wednesday wrote to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court requesting that the judge in charge of a case surrounding a long-running land dispute report to the ministry, following intervention from the National Assembly’s human rights commission. Ly Sreang Kheng and his family have been battling real estate tycoon Khun Sear and his eponymous company for five years over a plot of land in Phnom Penh’s Tuol Kok district.
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Land, insecurity linked: report
Rampant land grabs, economic land concessions and a disastrous land-titling program have fostered an environment of insecurity for Cambodia’s most marginalised citizens, according to a new report, which argues that the Kingdom needs to rethink its current business-centric development model. Based on 400 interviews, Human Security and Land Rights in Cambodia, by researchers Pou Sovachana and Alice Beban, aims to determine what kind of insecurities people living in disputed areas have, and what mechanisms actually provide security to those members of the population. It bases its concept of human security – “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want” – on the principles of a 1994 UNDP report.
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Disabled education lacking
In an internal report released this week, the Ministry of Education gave itself high marks for the access to education it offers disabled children, offering a rundown of successes in the field dotted with green checkmarks, not unlike a school report card. However, though the ministry itself acknowledged room for improvement, observers yesterday were uncertain whether it appreciated just how much improvement was required, while also noting that 2014’s achievements still fell well short of what the Kingdom’s disabled children need.
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Eleven Arrested Over Illegal Sand Dredging
Three owners of sand dredging companies were among 11 people arrested Thursday by military police—working in tandem with the Ministry of Mines and Energy—for operating without a proper license, according to a spokesman for the ministry.
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