LIBRARY

22 November 2013

After more than 14 months detention, Yorm Bopha was finally released from Police Judiciaire prison (PJ) at 5.45 this evening. Her much-anticipated Supreme Court hearing began this morning at 9.45 as more than 400 supporters, including monks and civil society, joined her family and community outside the courtroom. After a 2-hour hearing, the Supreme Court granted bail to Bopha pending her re-trial at the Appeal Court.

Clearly emotional to be reunited with her eight-year-old son, and expressing gratitude to her fellow community members for their unstinting support, Bopha headed to Boeung Kak surrounded by well-wishers to celebrate her release.

Get the details of today's release via our live stream.

21 November 2013

On November 23rd, 2013, the international community will mark the Third International Day to End Impunity. In Cambodia, impunity continues to be one of the greatest obstacles to strengthening the rule of law and allowing citizens of the country to receive Justice. We are inviting reporters, media workers and victims who have been denied justice as a result of impunity to express their solidarity by joining together where journalist Khim Sambo was killed in 2008 and call the government to provide Justice.

21 November 2013

This briefing paper offers brief capsule on all of the reporters killed in Cambodia since 1993.

13 November 2013

Early on the morning of November 12, 2013, a violent clash between striking garment workers and armed forces, followed by two additional clashes between the growing number of armed forces and a crowd of citizens, resulted in the death of one bystander and at least nine injured in Phnom Penh's Meanchey district.

12 November 2013

Earlier this morning, a violent clash between striking garment workers and armed forces, followed by two additional clashes between the growing number of armed forces and a crowd of citizens, resulted in the death of one bystander and at least nine injured in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district.

1 November 2013

For three days from October 23-25, 2013, over 25,000 people peacefully gathered from across Cambodia in the capital city to rally for political change. The National Rescue Party (CNRP) leaders collected over 2.3 million thumbprints calling for an independent investigation into July’s election irregularities and for election reform. Marking the 22nd anniversary of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, CNRP leaders and supporters successfully delivered this petition to eight embassies and the UN, requesting signatories to uphold their promise to help ensure democracy and respect for human rights in Cambodia.

25 September 2013

Gravely concerned at the Cambodian authorities’ repeated use of excessive force to prevent and suppress the people’s exercise of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, the undersigned non-governmental organizations call on the Cambodian and foreign governments to take immediate action to prevent the human rights situation from deteriorating further.

16 September 2013

We, the undersigned organizations, condemn in the strongest terms the indiscriminate police brutality last night that left one young person dead and several more injured when armed forces were given the green light to use live ammunition in a crowd of commuters, local residents and demonstrators.
After a largely peaceful day of demonstrations marking the first day of a planned three-day protest by opposition party CNRP, tensions escalated late on Sunday night. Barbed wire barricades had cut off major arteries of the city throughout the day, resulting in traffic chaos at key locations in the capital.

5 September 2013

As the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) prepares to hold a peaceful “meditative” assembly on 7 September 2013 to demand an independent investigation into what it alleges are irregularities, including fraud, around the national election of 28 July, the undersigned non-governmental organizations and civil society groups make the following statement.

19 August 2013

The Cambodian Community Legal Education Center (CLEC) and Cambodian League for the Promotion & Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) call on the authorities to drop all charges against students Tut Chanpanha and Sok Dalis. We similarly call for charges against small shop owner Lim Lypaeung and Hiv Borin to be dropped.

7 August 2013

We, the undersigned civil society groups, urge Metfone, an Internet service provider (ISP) registered and operating in Cambodia, to issue a full explanation of today’s temporary blocking of Facebook, as well as the ongoing unavailability of the Ki-Media website.

Earlier this morning, at about 9 AM, Metfone users began to report that they were denied access to Facebook. The outage lasted for more than three hours.

7 July 2013

We, the staff and members of the civil society groups listed, and our partners, families and friends, who are registered voters throughout Cambodia, will only consider voting for members of parliament of all political parties that keep the media free at all times.

1 July 2013

We, the undersigned civil society organizations, welcome the government’s decision to rescind shocking measures issued last week to censor Cambodia’s local news media in the final weeks before the July 28 National Assembly elections, and condemn the decision ever to implement such measures. We remain deeply concerned about an order to ban foreign news reporting of election polling which will come into force five days before the vote.

We condemn this ban in the strongest possible terms and urge the government to remove all restrictions on the news media during this critical pre-election period. We also call for the government to guarantee that it will not repeat its attempts to censor the airwaves or any other media, including social media on the internet.

28 June 2013

The government has imposed shocking and expansive measures to censor Cambodia’s local news media ahead of July 28 elections, banning FM radio stations from rebroadcasting “foreignbased programs” in Khmer and from reporting on foreigners who are campaigning “to support or oppose” political parties or candidates.

The ban will stay in place through the July 28 National Assembly election day.

25 June 2013

Cambodian Community Legal Education Center (CLEC) and Cambodian League for the Promotion & Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) welcome the conviction of former Bavet governor Chhouk Bandith for shooting three garment workers last year, but condemn the light sentence – one-and-a-half years in prison – for actions that amounted an attempted triple-homicide.

The sentence is little more than a slap on the wrist, and is emblematic of Cambodia’s pervasive culture of impunity for the well-connected elite.

18 June 2013

Imprisoned Boeung Kak Lake land activist Yorm Bopha filed an appeal with the Supreme Court on June 17, 2013, in a bid to overturn or reduce her two-year prison sentence. She was convicted for her alleged involvement in a physical assault, but it is widely believed that the charges came in retaliation for her land rights activism.

Bopha was arrested in September 2012 and convicted of “intentional violence” in December; she was originally sentenced to three years imprisonment. The Court of Appeal suspended one year of her sentence on Friday, June 14, meaning she is scheduled for release in September 2014. Both Bopha’s original trial and her appeal were characterized by a stunning lack of evidence

5 June 2013

The appeal hearing of imprisoned Boeung Kak community member Yorm Bopha began today at approximately 2:45 p.m. in Phnom Penh, with hundreds of supporters gathering outside the court’s gates. An additional 30 to 40 members of a pro-government motodop association organized a counter-protest calling for Bopha to remain in prison. The counterprotest itself was not that vocal, but the group used piped-in crowd noise, channeled through a megaphone, in an attempt to drown out the chants of Bopha’s supporters. At least one of the motodop group told a human rights monitor he was paid 30,000 riels to protest.

Inside the court, approximately 40 people from local and international NGOs, foreign embassies, the United Nations, and media observed the hearing. Bopha and her husband both testified.

After three hours, the hearing was adjourned, to be continued on June 14 at 2 p.m.

30 May 2013

This morning near Phnom Penh city hall, authorities called in three fire trucks, which used high-pressure water from their hoses to disperse peaceful protesters from the Boeung Kak, Borei Keila and airport communities. Firefighters also targeted some community members who came to rescue colleagues who had fallen down due to the impact of the water. This video was taken at the scene.

1 May 2013

On May 1, 2013, between 6,000 and 7,000 garment workers, union leaders, local communities, motodops, students, NGOs and others gathered in Phnom Penh to mark International Labor Day. The group marched from Freedom Park to the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, calling for living wages, improved working conditions and for justice in the Born Samnang/Sok Sam Oeun and Chhouk Bandith cases. This album contains a selection of photos from the march.

14 March 2013

We, the undersigned civil society groups, welcome the Court of Appeal’s long-overdue decision today to release independent radio station owner Mam Sonando and his two co-appellants, Touch Ream and Kan Sovann, but caution that a long road remains to rehabilitate Cambodia’s democracy ahead of National Assembly elections in July.