Cambodian News

The environmental watchdog Global Witness claims Cambodia’s political elite has captured the country’s oil and mineral resources.
In a new report entitled ‘Country for Sale’, the group says earnings from oil, gas and minerals are jeopardised by high-level corruption, nepotism and patronage in allocating and managing the assets.
Global Witness also suggests that millions of dollars paid [...]

While Cambodia waits for the oil to flow from its offshore blocks, potentially yielding millions of barrels and billions of dollars, industry experts have lowered their expectations.
“It is a very risky business. Oil is sticky, and it likes to stay in the ground,” said Michael McWalter, an oil and gas expert at the Asian Development [...]

The Cambodian authorities must stop denying people the right to housing and ensure adequate compensation and restitution for over 150 poor urban families who were forcibly evicted from central Phnom Penh at the weekend, Amnesty International said today.
Cambodian security forces and demolition workers forcibly evicted 152 families from Dey Kraham community in the early hours [...]

The threat of eviction had been lurking around them since 2006. The struggle of dozens of families who still clung onto their houses in Dey Krohom, in the central Tonle Bassac district of Phnom Penh, is one of the longest in the distressing two decade-old history of land matters in Cambodia. From one ultimatum to [...]

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has departed for oil-rich Kuwait in his first-ever visit to the Middle East, aimed at expanding business and trade ties.
Hun Sen was accompanied by a number of high-ranking government officials and business people as he left on the four-day trip on a plane provided by Kuwait.
“This [...]

Phnom Penh – Cambodia’s prime minister will attend next month’s summit of the Association of Sout East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in neighboring Thailand despite hinting last week he would boycott the meeting, media reports said Monday.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said last week that attending this year’s series of ASEAN meetings would be too costly and [...]

Two men released on bail Thursday night after more than four years in prison said they were grateful but wary they had not received full justice.
Born Samnang, 24, and Sok Samoeun, 36, were released from Prey Sar prison Wednesday night, following a decision by the Supreme Court Wednesday ordering the Appeal Court to review murder [...]

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodian monks have persuaded authorities to ban the country’s first rock opera, which features actors dressed as clergy who break into song and dance, saying it insults Buddhism.
In a letter sent to the ministry of cults and religion, as well as to the media, the Supreme Sangha Council of Buddhist Monks [...]

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodia’s highest court Wednesday provisionally released two alleged killers of a prominent labour leader and ordered the case to be re-tried, citing unclear evidence.
Chea Vichea, who headed the country’s largest labour union and was a vocal critic of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government, was gunned down at a Phnom Penh newsstand [...]

Former king Norodom Sihanouk will not return to Cambodia from Beijing until after February, due to a resurgence of his cancer and doctors orders to rest.
“Because of my cancer, my return, which was supposed to be in February 2009, will be after February,” Sihanouk wrote in a statement.
Sihanouk, who is 86, was diagnosed with cancer [...]