Human rights

A reporter for local television station MSJ TV was briefly de­tained and questioned by police on 20 February for allegedly inciting residents who are facing eviction from their riverside homes in Kom­pong Chhnang City, a journalist and officials said on 21 February. Ngunly Theara, a news reader ...

With a Nobel Peace Laureate poised to lead the next government, human rights activists are concerned they are in line for a major disappointment. Andrew MacGregor, from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said he feared “we are in a honeymoon period”. Keep reading ...

Indigenous peoples fighting economic land concessions (ELCs) in Cambodia are more likely to get results with violent protest than lodging their complaints through legitimate channels, a controversial study published this month argues. The paper, published by Young Sokphea in the Asian Journal of Social Science, concludes ...

Australian banking giant ANZ has come under fire for its response to a scandal over its financing of a sugar plantation previously linked to forced evictions and child labour in Kampong Speu province. Titled Still Banking on Land Grabs, Oxfam’s Australia branch released a report on ...

Anne-Sophie Gindroz, a former Swiss humanitarian worker in Laos, observed forced displacement and evictions of rural populations to make way for dams and other controversial infrastructure and plantation projects in the impoverished Southeast Asian country.  Gindroz, who was the country director for Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation, ...

Less than a month after the government announced that more than 170 Montagnard asylum seek­ers would have their refugee applications processed, an Interior Min­istry spokesman said on 10 February that the group had not met the criteria for refugee status and would be returned to Vietnam. However, ...

After more than 40 men broke out of a Phnom Penh drug rehabilitation cen­ter on 5 February, officials said this week that they have called off efforts to arrest 18 es­capees who remain at large, in­stead asking for their families to re­turn them voluntarily. A total ...

Journalists in Magwe blocked from parliament for the past five years have had their hopes of entering the chamber dashed. The previous hluttaw, dominated by Union Solidarity and Development Party representatives, refused to grant them access. But at the opening of the Magwe Region Hluttaw on ...

The sight of bulldozers smashing shanty towns as police drive out squatters from their flimsy homes could be a thing of the past, as National League for Democracy MPs take the helm in Yangon and Mandalay regions, as well as in Nay Pyi Taw. NLD MP U ...

Mandalay witnessed a distinct changing of guard on 8 February as its new hluttaw took office, with the newly appointed Speaker stressing the importance of being accountable to the public. He added that human rights and economic and social development will be priorities, and promised to ...