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លោក ទប់ រិទ្ធី មន្ត្រី​គណៈកម្មាធិការ​ជាតិ​រៀបចំ​ការ​បោះឆ្នោត​បាន​ឱ្យ​ដឹង​ថា​ចោរ​បាន​កាត់​សោ​ដែល​ចាក់​ទ្វារ​អគារ​ និង​បាន​លួច​យក​សម្ភារ​ទាំង​អស់​ប៉ុន្តែ​កុំព្យូទ័រ​យួរ​ដៃ​សម្រាប់​ចុះ​ឈ្មោះ​ដែល​បាន​រក្សា​ទុក​នៅ​ក្រៅ​ការិយាល័យ​មិន​បាន​បាត់បង់​ទេ​ដោយសារ​តែ​នៅ​ក្នុង​ការិយាល័យ​នេះ​មិន​មាន​ចរន្ត​អគ្គិសនី​ដើម្បី​បញ្ចូល​ថ្ម។

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លោក​ថ្លែង​ថា៖ «ទិន្នន័យ​នៅ​ក្នុង​កុំព្យូទ័រ​គឺ​នៅ​តែ​មាន​សុវត្ថិភាព​ដដែល​ខណៈ​ដែល​ការិយាល័យ​ខេត្ត​របស់ គជប បាន​ផ្គត់ផ្គង់​ឡើង​វិញ​យ៉ាង​ឆាប់​រហ័ស​ដល់​សមភាគី​ឃុំ​របស់​ពួកគេ»។

ថ្នាក់​រៀន​នៅ​វិទ្យាល័យ​មួយ​នៃ​ទឹកដី​អង្គរ

ថ្នាក់​រៀន​នៅ​វិទ្យាល័យ​មួយ​នៃ​ទឹកដី​អង្គរ

កូន​សិស្ស​កំពុង​រៀន​​នៅ​ក្នុង​ថ្នាក់​រៀន​ប្រក់​កៅស៊ូ​តង់​លាយ​ជាមួយ​ស្លឹក​ដូង​នៅ​អនុវិទ្យាល័យ​រហាល​​ស្ថិត​ក្នុង​ភូមិ​រហាល ឃុំ​តាសៀម ស្រុក​ស្វាយលើ ខេត្ត​សៀមរាប​កាលពី​ពេល​ថ្មីៗ​នេះ។ រូបភាព​ដែល​ត្រូវ​បាន​ចែកចាយ​​បន្ត​គ្នា​នៅ​តាម​បណ្តាញ​សង្គម​ហ្វេសប៊ុក​នេះ​បាន​សរសេរ​ថា​បច្ចុប្បន្ន​អនុវិទ្យាល័យ​រហាល​នេះ​កំពុង​ខ្វះ​អគារ​សិក្សា​។ សៀមរាប​គឺជា​ខេត្ត​​ដែល​​មាន​​​តំបន់​ទេសចរណ៍​ដ៏ល្បីល្បាញ​ក៏​ប៉ុន្តែ​ទោះ​យ៉ាង​ណា​ស្ថានភាព​រស់នៅ​របស់​ប្រជាពលរដ្ឋ​ជាច្រើន​ក្នុង​ខេត្ត​នេះ​​នៅ​តែ​គួរ​ឲ្យ​សង្វេគ។ រូបថត​ហ្វេសប៊ុក

តុលាការ​ថា​មិន​បាន​ទទួល​ភស្តុតាង​ពី​អ្នក​បឹងកក់​រឿង​ហិង្សា​នៅ​វត្ត​ភ្នំ​...

Hearing on Wat Phnom attacks resumes

Questioning resumed yesterday over a now three-year-old attack on a peaceful gathering of activists at the capital’s Wat Phnom, as dozens of local land dispute activists protested outside the municipal court demanding justice.

The September 2013 attack saw about 20 members of the Boeung Kak and Borei Keila communities – as well as journalists and observers – attacked during a candlelight vigil by a group of men armed with sticks, slingshots and electric batons.

Eleven activists, including two elderly women, were injured in the attack.

After her questioning yesterday, 57-year-old Phann Chhunreth told the Post that the court had maintained it possesses no evidence related to the attack, despite widely circulated video and photographs. Four of her fellow activists were questioned last week.

“When we filed the complaint, we submitted evidence as well,” she said. “But now they say we did not have the evidence. We had pictures of the fighting and video clips.”

The complaint names four Daun Penh district officials as the ringleaders of the attack: Deputy District Governor Sok Penhvuth; director of order Kim Vutha; council official Pich Socheata; and deputy police chief Soa Nol.

“I saw only one of them during the violence – Socheata. But they were the four leaders [of the attack],” Chhunreth said.

Reth went on to say that presiding judge Lim Makaron addressed confusion over the dates on the summonses – which listed the date of the attack as May 6, 2016, rather than September 22, 2013 – admitting an error and saying that it would be corrected.

Nget Khun, 76, also known as “Mummy”, said she will continue to present the evidence the activists had originally submitted to the Ministry of Interior and National Police during her own questioning today, adding that complications such as the summons date mistake were rare when activists were the target of complaints.

“They did not call perpetrators, but they called us. Now, they put the wrong date [on the summons],” Khun said. “So, I don’t know what tricks they are playing.”

Hit near the eye by a marble in 2013, Si Heap said she and other activists had initially ignored the summons because they were afraid of validating the wrong date on the document, which could adversely affect the verdict.

Garment factory employees protest short-term contracts

More than a hundred workers at the Orient Spring Cambodian garment factory in the capital’s Meanchey district have been protesting since Friday against the firm’s continued use of short-term employment contracts.

The workers said the factory’s management refused to give them contracts longer than three months despite having reached seniority, demanding at least six-month work contracts, according to Neang Sanha, president of the Worker Unity Trade Union. According to Cambodian labour laws, workers with two years’ seniority are entitled to be transferred to undetermined duration contracts, or long-term contracts.

“The workers must get what they demand, because what they are demanding is not unreasonable,” said Sanha.

He added that the three-month contracts had led to concerns among the workers that the factory may close down or that there could be layoffs. He said workers were still negotiating with the factory to find a resolution to their demands.

Apart from longer contracts, Sanha said workers also wanted a 2,000 riel (about $0.50) daily food allowance, as well as 18 days’ paid annual leave a year.

Worker Srey Nang said they needed contracts lasting at least six months because “we need to have stability . . . We have heard the factory wants to end the contracts of some workers.”                  

National Assembly body eyes Kem Ley probe

Members of Kem Ley’s funeral committee are backing a call by the chairman of the National Assembly’s human rights commission to publicly question officials about the investigation into the political analyst’s July murder.

Eng Chhay Eang, a CNRP lawmaker and the commission chair, told local media that the investigation into the longtime government critic’s shooting death is moving too slowly, and that the ministers of interior and justice should be questioned on the assembly floor as a result.

In response, activist monk But Buntenh, a member of the funeral committee, said the committee would support the move, and urged for more transparency in the investigation.

“I think it’s a fantastic idea to hold a public questioning, and there should be as many people as possible involved in the process,” Buntenh said, adding that the video from the gas station where the murder took place should be released to the public.

Meanwhile, Moeun Tola, another member of Ley’s funeral committee, said he suspects the authorities are not serious about finding those responsible for the murder.

“We haven’t been happy with the investigation from the beginning, and there are many reasons we think the suspect is not the real killer,” Tola said, adding that Ley’s murder resembles those of slain labour leader Chea Vichea and environmental activist Chut Vuthy.

“After [the murder], the authorities immediately removed the [petrol station] video and it seems their intention is to cover up evidence,” Tola added.

Only hours after Ley’s murder, police released a video-taped confession in which Oeuth Ang, a 44-year-old former soldier, said he had killed the analyst over a $3,000 debt, a tale dismissed by colleagues and family members as preposterous.

Hostage recounts terror in captivity at hands of Somali pirates

Hostage recounts terror in captivity at hands of Somali pirates

One of the four Cambodian fishermen released by Somali pirates on Saturday described yesterday their terrifying four and a half years in captivity, which he said “killed us emotionally”.

Kampong Chhnang province native Em Phoum Many, 34, was kidnapped in March 2012 along with 28 of his fellow sailors when pirates hijacked the Taiwanese-owned fishing vessel Naham 3 in open waters south of the Seychelles.

After spending a little over a year off the coast of Somalia, the fishermen were then moved to a remote corner of Galmudug state in central Somalia. They remained there until Sunday evening when a UN humanitarian flight brought them to Nairobi, Kenya; three of the crew – none of them Cambodian – did not survive the ordeal, however.

Speaking from Nairobi yesterday, Many spoke of the conditions he and his shipmates endured.

“We slept in the forest. We only got two meals a day; we were given rice with sweetened water. And they didn’t allow us to take a bath, we only got 1 litre of water a day,” he said. “They always threatened to kill us. They had already killed us emotionally; they said if we run, they will shoot.”



Naham 3 is owned by the Taipei-registered Kaohsiung Jianchang Fishery Company. A Taiwanese lawmaker involved in ransom negotiations leaked a video to his national press over the weekend, purportedly filmed sometime in 2014.

The video shows the crew emaciated and melancholy, few of them raising their eyes from the ground as they are filmed squatting in dusty scrubland and guarded by men bearing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades with keffiyehs drawn across their faces.

The video then cuts to a man identified by Taiwanese media as chief engineer Shen Jui-chang. Shirtless, he berates the Taiwanese president for not coming to their aid. Claiming the crew is disease-ridden, he says that two crewmembers, aged 24 and 28, had already died for want of medicine.

Em Vann, 44, had been sure her brother, Em Phoum Many, was dead until he called her from Somalia on Saturday following his release. She had not heard from him since he called years ago to say he had been captured. “Since that day I could not eat anything, and I was so worried I could not sleep,” Vann told the Post yesterday.

She described her brother – who spent 10 years as a monk before becoming a fisherman – as a calming presence who spoke little but smiled often.

“He just called me on Saturday; he said he will come soon. I am happy; I shed a tear, because we thought he may have been dead already,” she said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Chum Sounry said yesterday that Many and his three colleagues will fly into Manila on Friday and that arrangements for their return to Cambodia will be made from there.

The crew of the Naham 3 were described by one of the negotiators as “the last remaining seafarers taken hostage during the height of Somali piracy”.

Border police arrested in Thailand with meth

Border police arrested in Thailand with meth

A Cambodian border police officer was arrested by Thai authorities on Sunday for allegedly trafficking 150 methamphetamine pills into Thailand’s Chonburi province, police said yesterday.

Chhor Kern, deputy police chief at Battambang’s Kamrieng district, said the officer was identified as Ob Tevrith, who is a police officer at a border crossing in Kamrieng. He was arrested in a market in Chonburi province just across the border.

“We don’t know what happened, because he was arrested in Thailand,” he said. “The Thai [police] report said that they had arrested a Cambodian border police officer at a Thai market . . . They found 150 meth pills with him.”

Tevrith is being held in Thailand, Kern said.

Cambodian officials are still not clear on the details of the case, but they know that Tevrith is being “accused of trafficking drug pills into Thailand territory”.

“We have not yet received any confirmation on what happened from him directly,” Kern said. “On that day, he went to Thailand near the Cambodian border and then we couldn’t contact him after he was arrested by Thai authorities for drug trafficking.”

This is not the first time that a police officer from the same district has been arrested with drugs across the border. In 2014, Cambodian anti-drug police officer Sao Chanthy, also from Kamrieng district, was arrested by Thai authorities with 3,000 pills of yama – a cheap methamphetamine.

Black Monday No 25 Criticism by KVD to the Hun Sen government for abusin...

Kandal cops on the lam after fatal beating

Three police officers have been implicated in the murder of a man in Kandal province’s Sa’ang district on Friday, contradicting an earlier claim that the man had been fatally beaten by a mob after attempting to steal one of the officers’ motorbikes.

The three police officers are now at large, a police official said yesterday, with the victim’s family maintaining that no robbery had even taken place.

In fact, in an account posted on the National Police website, the dead man’s wife and one of his companions that night both said that victim Chamroeun Seyha, 26, had been badly beaten while in police custody, only to later die of his wounds after being sent to hospital.

Seyha was beaten to death on Friday by what provincial police on Sunday said was “a mob of villagers” who had gathered in response to 33-year-old district police officer Chhay Sina’s cries for help after five men purportedly attempted to rob him of his motorbike.

However, since the alleged robbery, Sina – along with district deputy police chief Pheadey Vitou, 33, and district police officer Kheang Songtheng, 31 – appears to have skipped town. “The police officer who was robbed [has] now escaped, along with two other police officers,” confirmed a district police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Kandal provincial police chief Eav Chamroeun yesterday avoided directly naming the three as suspects, but nonetheless noted that the suspects, whoever they may be, would not escape justice. “If they flee, it means that they committed the crime,” he added.

Meanwhile, in statements posted by the National Police, Khuon Sreymom, 21, the wife of the deceased, and Tith Leap, 22, one of the four surviving victims of the beating, claimed no robbery had actually taken place.

According to Sreymom, her husband and his friends had been confronted by district police at the gate of Thun Mon pagoda in Prek Koy commune’s Svay Tany village on their way home, and were later beaten and kicked after police accused them of trying to steal the motorbike.

Her account was echoed by Leap, who said he and the deceased, as well as three other friends on another motorbike, had overtaken Sina’s motorbike after he overtook them, with no intention to rob the officer.

When they arrived at the gate of Thun Mon pagoda, however, they were stopped by Sina and another police officer, who were later joined by two more police officers.

“When the two [police officers] arrived, [one of them] pulled the trigger of their gun, which was pointed in the air, but no bullet was fired,” Leap told the National Police. “Then, they started beating and kicking us.”

“At the police station, they [continued] beating us for an hour by kicking and kneeing us in our stomach,” he added.

The claims, however, were refuted by district police chief Seng Socheat, who asserted that the deceased and his friends had in-tended to rob Sina, and maintained that a mob was to blame.

“They hit Sina’s motorbike from behind and he fell down. They also walked to Sina, who then pointed a gun at them and called [the two officers] to help,” he said. “The villagers thought it was a robbery, so they beat and kicked them until our forces arrived.”

However, as CCHR’s advocacy director Piseth Duch noted yesterday, the Ministry of Interior “currently lacks practices to investigate police conduct”.

“We see very few cases of the Ministry of Interior performing thorough investigations of police officers who break the law, she said, pointing to an October beating that left two parliamentarians seriously injured.

An investigation into the case yielded no results until three members of the Prime Minister’s Bodyguard Unit turned themselves in. No further arrests were made despite numerous people being filmed participating.

តំណាងប្រជាពលរដ្ឋមកពីសហគមន៍នានា នៅទីក្រុងភ្នំពេញ

The Secret Underbelly of the Cambodian Garment Industry

“That’s the Rat Trap Door factory,” a garment worker told me, pointing to a little blue door on a windowless wall along National Road 4 in Phnom Penh. “The door is so small it looks like only rats can get in.”

It didn’t look like a factory. Unlike larger, registered factories, this one had no sign. People working there had no clue what it was actually called, he said. They didn’t have worker identity cards. They didn’t know whether the factory was registered with the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), which provides employment injury and worker health insurance, or whether it had registered the workers.

Cambodia has many nameless factories. At the “Cow Poop factory,” cows relieve themselves at the factory entrance. Then there’s the Paper Flower factory, the Mango Tree factory, and those identified by an owner or manager’s first name. Garment workers in Cambodia may have a good sense of humor about these shadowy, unidentified factories, but people who work in them are more vulnerable to abusive labor practices that violate local law and international norms.

This is the underbelly of Cambodia’s garment industry and the lowest rung of the international apparel industry. Small factories often act as subcontractors for larger export-oriented factories, but are subject to far less scrutiny or monitoring. Many are secretive with their workers, and their working conditions and business practices stay largely under the radar. These small factories help cut costs for larger factories that are subject to more scrutiny. And they become all the more relevant with the recent increase in the garment sector’s minimum wage in Cambodia to $153 per month.

Earlier this year, we spotted about 50 small factories around Kandal province, near Phnom Penh. Some were tiny, but driving past them, I could see busy workers and heaps of garments through the windows. Many factories were advertising jobs. It’s impossible to estimate how many such factories mushroom in response to seasonal garment orders.

Many of these factories looked like huge tin sheds with little ventilation. Others look like houses. One or two had barely visible names, but most had none.

With the help of Cambodian labor rights defenders, I was able to speak to workers from some of these factories. They all said the same thing about not knowing the name of their factory and not thinking it was registered under the NSSF. The workers either didn’t have factory identification cards or, if they did, they were scrawled merely with their name and division—no factory name. Workers said their factories were getting “business” from larger factories in surrounding areas, which are mostly export-oriented. They didn’t know the brands that sourced the garments: At the production stage they saw, there were no labels.

These factories typically employ workers on a piece-rate basis between April and November, or the “high season,” the workers told me. The factories close when business wanes.

The shadowy nature of these factories hurts labor rights in Cambodia. Their workers should benefit from labor protections, including through the NSSF. Earlier this year, fund officials and the Labor Ministry took an important step by adding health care to coverage for injuries under the social security fund. Garment workers in these small factories do get sick and injured, and need these benefits. But if the factory doesn’t register them, they’re left out.

Some problems in the garment industry are hard to fix. But this one isn’t. The Cambodian government should publicly announce a period for all factories to register with the NSSF, and face penalties if they don’t. It should also publish a list of all factories, by sector, that are NSSF-registered.

Global brands have long benefited from the labor of workers in many subcontracted factories, often without authorizing their production role. While most brands have codes of conduct forbidding unauthorized outsourcing to smaller factories, their purchasing practices can drive such outsourcing. Because production at these sites is unauthorized, such factories do not fall within a brand’s supply chain monitoring. In rare instances, brands that have detected the use of these factories have absorbed them into their supply chain.

Global apparel brands should urge the Cambodian authorities to ensure that all factories and workers are registered under the NSSF, and press the government to publicly list registered factories. While brands should do much more to protect workers in small, subcontracted factories, encouraging the Cambodian government to take these steps is at least a step in the right direction.

The Cambodian government and global brands have an opportunity to coalesce behind a common goal: ensuring that all workers—in factories big and small—are covered by the NSSF and enjoy their full rights under the law.