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Five Montagnards arrested
Five Christian Montagnard asylum seekers, including two children and an infant, were arrested and detained yesterday after police and soldiers raided the forest in Ratanakkiri province where they have been hiding for the past two weeks. Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc, said the Montagnards – a mother and father, their two young sons, and 9-month-old daughter – were arrested at about 4:30pm in O’Yadav district. “Police and soldiers held and handcuffed the mother and father in the forest and transported them on two trucks along the road adjacent to the Vietnamese border,” Thy said. Four men the family was in hiding with managed to escape, according to ethnic Jarai villagers in the area. Police were still searching for them yesterday evening, and one of the two trucks was parked nearby ready for their arrest, the villagers said.
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Teen held for rape of 6-year-old
A 16-year-old boy was charged on Saturday for allegedly raping a 6-year-old girl in Takeo’s Borei Chulsar district. The boy was brought in for questioning on Saturday after police were tipped off by villagers and the NGO World Vision about the incident, according to Borei Chulsar district policeman Khem Sophal. The 16-year-old reportedly admitted to raping the girl, who lives in a neighbouring house, on Wednesday and luring her to his house, Sophal added.
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Villagers in Ratanakkiri Prevent Company From Clearing Land
About 100 villagers prevented a company from clearing part of its land concession in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat district on Saturday in the latest confrontation in a long-running dispute in the Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, according to a villager and a local official. The Vietnamese-owned Daun Penh Agrico firm, which was awarded an 8,825-hectare economic land concession inside the sanctuary in 2011, was prevented from clearing a 50-hectare swath that local indigenous communities claim as part of their communal forest.
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Bailed out: Mother, child are released from custody
A mother and her 8-month-old daughter held in prison for allegations of illegal land clearing were released on bail by Preah Vihear Provincial Court due to health concerns for the two. Lem Sokhem, 45, and her husband, Sorn Vuthy, 46, were arrested on January 13, after Preah Vihear’s provincial Forestry Administration lodged a court complaint against the couple for allegedly clearing state land, where they lived illegally, deputy prosecutor Ly Lon said yesterday.
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Police Arrest 5 Montagnards In Ratanakkiri
Police in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district on Sunday arrested five Montagnard asylum seekers and were searching for three ethnic Jarai villagers who had been helping them evade authorities since they arrived from Vietnam about two weeks ago, villagers and a rights worker said. A Jarai villager, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from authorities, said police from O’Yadaw district’s Som Thom commune arrested the five asylum seekers while another four fled into the forest. The group of nine, which included two young children and an infant, arrived in Ratanakkiri on January 19.
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2014 one of the ‘worst years’ for human rights
Human Rights Watch says that 2014 was one of Cambodia’s worst years in recent history in terms of human rights violations, citing “killings by security forces, arrests of activists and opposition politicians, summary trials and crackdowns on peaceful protest”. The Cambodia section of its World Report 2015 also cited the government’s alleged use of the judicial system to silence activists, critics, trade unionists and opposition politicians.
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Cambodia ‘not free’: report
Following reports of endemic corruption and suppression of dissent in the Kingdom last year, Cambodia was once again classified by global watchdog Freedom House as “not free” in a generally bleak report released yesterday. In Freedom of the World 2015, Freedom House’s assessment of the real-world political rights and civil liberties enjoyed by citizens all over the globe in 2014, Cambodia averaged 5.5 out of seven, with one representing the most free and seven the least free. The total number was derived from the country’s score of six and five in the political rights and civil liberties subcategories, respectively.
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Disgruntled Nursing Students Petition Parliament
About 20 nursing students from the privately run International Science Institute petitioned the National Assembly on Wednesday to demand action against their school, which they claim is unlicensed and providing them with a substandard education. The school opened in 2012 and currently has about 160 students, according to its director Hak Channy, who said Chea Sam Ath—the daughter of CPP President Chea Sim—owns it.
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Revisions needed in courts’ treatment of children: report
Reforms in how child victims and witnesses are handled in Cambodia’s criminal justice system are needed at several levels, a new study by women's and children’s rights NGO Hagar recommends. Released yesterday evening, the UNICEF-funded study, titled A System Just for Children, compiles information gathered last year in the course of 103 interviews with stakeholders (54 of them being children), as well as information gleaned from other studies. “Many countries, rich and poor, are experimenting with practical ways to implement theoretical ‘best practice,’ especially around alternative means for obtaining and representing child testimony that do not (re)traumatise children,” the study, written by Dr JK Reimer, says. “As in all countries there are gaps between published policy and the implementation of legal systems in Cambodia.”
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Rights of Young Victims Ignored by Justice System, Report Says
Cambodia’s justice system is overlooking the rights of children, according to the first detailed research into child witnesses and victims released Wednesday, with medical examinations of rape victims and extortion of families highlighted as major problems. Compiled by researchers for Hagar International and Unicef, the report, “A System Just for Children,” notes that few cases involving children make it to court and result in successful prosecutions. For those that do, it says, “there is little attention to the special needs of child victims at policy level.”
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A short fuse at City Hall, activists say
Boeung Kak community activists yesterday accused Phnom Penh Municipal Hall administrative director Mean Chanyada of rudely cutting short a meeting with their group, a charge the official denied. Boeung Kak representative Chan Puthisak characterised Chanyada’s allegedly storming out of the meeting as evidence of the city’s lack of will to put an end to their years-long dispute. “He used furious behaviour and language, telling me, ‘If you have no trust, you should go back immediately.’ He declared the close of the meeting by stopping one of his officials who was trying to explain [something] to us, and he just walked out of the meeting,” he said.
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Nearly 50 Abused Brides Repatriated Last Year
The number of Cambodian women caught in abusive marriages in China is increasing dramatically, according to rights groups, which last year helped repatriate nearly 50 brides who had been either trafficked abroad or lured by the promise of a better life. Local rights groups Adhoc and Licadho said Thursday that they helped 49 women return to Cambodia from China in 2014, compared to 29 the year before. Adhoc assisted 21 of those women last year, compared to just four in 2013, said Chhan Sokunthea, head of the organization’s women’s and children’s rights program.
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Asylum rush: New group arrives from Vietnam
Eighteen more Montagnards arrived in Ratanakkiri yesterday morning, bringing the total number of the Christian asylum seekers in hiding in the northeastern province to 32, villagers and a local rights group said last night. According to an ethnic Jarai villager, speaking on condition of anonymity, the latest arrivals – 16 men and two women – crossed into Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district at about 10am yesterday. The villager, who has been helping Montagnards, an indigenous group from Vietnam’s central highlands, who have descended on the province in recent months, said the latest group would not stay with the 14 asylum seekers already in hiding. “We do not place them in the same group, or the authorities and police will find them,” he said.
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Evictees Demand Land Within Their Communities
About 50 protesters, mainly from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities, demonstrated Wednesday morning outside City Hall to demand that governor Pa Socheatvong help them stay within their eviction-hit communities. “We do not want to move to another location, but City Hall wants to move us to a relocation site in Sen Sok district,” said Boeng Kak resident Chan Puthisak.
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Charges for alleged child rapist
Police in Banteay Meanchey sent to court a man who allegedly raped an 8-year-old girl earlier this month and attempted to sexually assault a 12-year-old girl on Monday. Moeun Seth, 21, was charged at the Banteay Meanchey Provincial Court yesterday, a day after police say he confessed to raping a child on January 6, and attempting a similar crime on Monday, according to Bun Set, Banteay Meanchey’s deputy bureau chief of serious crimes. Seth said yesterday that the man had been charged “with rape of underage children and kidnapping”.
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Alleged child rapist caught
Less than a week into the New Year, a man on a bicycle approached a group of children walking home from school. A robber was just up the road, the man wearing a medical mask allegedly told the group of 7- and 8-year-olds. They should hide with him in the woods. Once there, the “good Samaritan” ordered the children to remove their clothes and lie down with their eyes closed, police said. He then picked out one 8-year-old, raped her and rode away on a motorbike he had stored nearby.
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Official Defends Imprisonment Of Activists to Visiting US Envoy
A secretary of state at the Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday defended the government’s widely criticized imprisonment of 11 activists and an opposition official during a closed-door meeting with a visiting U.S. diplomat. Daniel Russel, an assistant secretary of state at the U.S. government’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, visited Cambodia on Tuesday and met with Foreign Affairs Ministry Secretary of State Ouch Borith. Speaking to reporters after the meeting at the ministry in Phnom Penh, Mr. Borith said he told Mr. Russel that the media had communicated a biased representation of the November arrests of 11 activists.
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Anti-trafficking group slams weak sentences
An international anti-trafficking organisation yesterday lamented light sentences handed out to a trio of arrested human traffickers. Earlier this week, the Kandal Provincial Court convicted guesthouse co-owner Touch Vanny and Heng “Srey” Mao, but acquitted Vanny’s husband, according to a statement released by the International Justice Mission. Vanny and Mao were both given two-year, largely suspended sentences. The three suspects were arrested in November during a raid that recovered 13 teenage victims of trafficking and forced prostitution.
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Construction Worker Arrested While Raping Schoolgirl
A 21-year-old man was arrested in Banteay Meanchey province on Monday while raping a 12-year-old girl he had grabbed off her bicycle as she rode home from school, and later admitted to raping a 9-year-old girl earlier this month, police said Tuesday. Deputy provincial police chief Seth Los said local police had arrested Moeun Set, a construction worker, in Mongkol Borei district’s Chamnoam commune after a resident reported the crime to authorities. “While one girl was riding her bicycle on the road, he came to grab her from behind and raped her,” Mr. Los said. “This man is a suspect in the rape of two girls in the commune this month.”
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Cleaners at airport to get salary bump
A monday walk-out by cleaners at Phnom Penh International Airport has resulted in the company the airport enlists for sanitary services agreeing to hike employees’ monthly salaries by $20 yesterday. More than 30 employees at HCC Co, the airport’s cleaning service, walked off the job, demanding their base pay be raised from $90 to $128 per month and that senior workers receive $28 raises, Hang Sophea, an HCC employee, said yesterday. After Monday’s walkout, HCC officials agreed to meet with workers about their demands yesterday.
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