LIBRARY

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.

13 March 2013

On the morning of March 13, 2013, a group of military police and police officers, accompanied by district security guards, stormed a peaceful protest by the Boeung Kak Lake community. In what turned out to be the most violent crackdown against this community, five citizens were left injured, including broken teeths and bones.

13 March 2013

Authorities’ escalated their ongoing crackdown on the Boeung Kak Lake community today, as police launched a brutal attack on demonstrators who had gathered in a public park outside the Prime Minister’s house.

Three people were detained and five were seriously injured, including Lous Sokorn, the husband of imprisoned Boeung Kak rights activist Yorm Bopha. The demonstrators were calling for the release of Bopha, who has been designated a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International.

6 March 2013

After a full day of testimony and arguments, the Prosecutor began his closing statement today by requesting that secession-related charges against Mam Sonando be changed. According to the Prosecutor, Sonando should be convicted of instigating the crimes of obstruction and interference with local officials, under articles 28, 504 and 609 of the Penal Code. The Prosecutor also asked to add a forestry crime -- the unlawful clearing of forest land -- under article 97.6 of the Forestry Law. The charges against the other two appellants, Touch Ream and Kann Sovann, remained the same. One witness's testimony was, however, abruptly halted when he repeatedly stated that he had mistakenly identified Sovann as being present at an incident that was the basis for the accusations against him. The witness stated that none of the three appellants had been at the incident in question.

The Appeals Court will announce its decision on March 14, 2013 at 8 am.

5 March 2013

On the morning of March 5, 2013, the Appeals Court opened a hearing to review the verdict against independent radio owner Mam Sonando and two co-defendants, Touch Ream and Kan Sovann. The court was standing room only for the proceeding, with around 55 people, including numerous international observers, in attendance. The hearing follows the September 2012 trial in Phnom Penh’s lower court which resulted in a widely condemned 20-year-long prison sentence for 72-year-old Sonando. No evidence of Sonando’s involvement in an alleged “secession” in Kratie province was presented during the trial, nor was there any evidence that a secession movement even existed.

The hearing is expected to end tomorrow.

18 February 2013

The human rights situation in Cambodia began 2012 teetering on the edge of a precipice, and by the end of the year had fallen off the cliff, according to a new report from LICADHO.

The past year was the most violent year ever documented in terms of the authorities using lethal force against activists, according to the report, “Human Rights 2012: The Year in Review.” The year also saw four deaths related to conflicts over natural resources, a growing atmosphere of fear and intimidation and the mass arrests of activists.