Land rights acrimony in AusAID Asian project
By Rebecca Puddy & Sebastian Strangio A TAXPAYER-FUNDED development project is mired in controversy after the Cambodian government launched a crackdown against land rights organisations critical of the compulsory resettlement of families.
Fraying at the seams
Cambodian garment workers uneasy as factories shift to shorter-term contracts that increase pressure, while a labour standards group reports excessive hours and banned solvents that contribute to fainting
North Korea’s New Friend?
A rare visit by a North Korean official to Cambodia raises the faint prospect of more engagement with Southeast Asia. But ties with Phnom Penh are complicated.
All aboard North Korea’s refugee railroad
PHNOM PENH – In late November 2006, after a long, perilous journey from northeast China, a North Korean national crossed the Vietnamese frontier into Cambodia’s northeast Mondulkiri province. The man, identified only as Ly Hai Long in local media reports, was promptly arrested by Cambodian police, who told a reporter from the Cambodia Daily that...
Split personalities revealed in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH – As part of its ongoing release of leaked United States diplomatic cables, the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks this month released its small cache of Cambodia-related dispatches. The 777 cables from the US Embassy in Phnom Penh – an eagerly awaited bounty for Cambodia-watchers and local analysts – span the period from 1992 to...
US cables chart China’s rise in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH – On December 18, 2009, Cambodian police rounded up 20 ethnic Uighurs from safe houses in the capital Phnom Penh, where they had arrived earlier in the year seeking political asylum. A day later, the group, which included two infants, was driven to the airport in a bus with shades drawn over the...
Ghosts of the killing fields
An apparent unwillingness to try two Khmer Rouge commanders for war crimes reflects a growing mood to bury Cambodia’s bloody past
Cambodia: When genocide trials turn personal
Many former Khmer Rouge fighters say they are worried that the U.N.-backed tribunal will start to cast a wider net.
Slow justice in Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal
Senior Khmer Rouge officials go to trial later this month but there are increasing concerns that the government is meddling in the judicial process, writes Sebastian Strangio from Phnom Penh
Potemkin graft crackdown in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH – ON the morning of May 12, Cambodia’s local newspapers ran photos of a bedraggled figure being escorted from a small courthouse. The man, who wore a crumpled green shirt and clutched a water bottle as he leant on the shoulder of a security guard, was Top Chan Sereyvuth, a former prosecutor at...
For North Korean State Waitresses Abroad, Lives of Rigor and Temptation
The waitresses, enlisted from the DPRK elite into state service and shipped to government-run eateries across Asia, face political scrutiny and the prison-like servitude of home
