Politics

While Cambodia struggles to cope with Covid-19, EU policies are hurting the very people whose 'rights' it wants to protect

It seems so long ago (though it was only in February) that the European Union finally decided to partially remove Cambodia’s trade privileges under its Everything But Arms (EBA) scheme. So much, as they say, has happened since.

Cambodia, host of this year's Asia-Europe Meeting, is set to delay the political forum's biennial summit from mid-November to the spring of 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, a diplomatic source said Friday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that China and Cambodia have demonstrated through their concrete efforts in jointly fighting the COVID-19 epidemic that the China-Cambodia community with a shared future is unbreakable.

Cambodian authorities should immediately divulge the whereabouts of Wanchalearm Satsaksit, a prominent Thai activist who was forcibly disappeared in Phnom Penh on June 4, 2020, Human Rights Watch said today.

Sitanan Satsaksit was on the phone to her brother early in the evening on 4 June when he told her to hold the line. Wanchalearm, also known as Tar, was handing over a few dollars for meatballs at a stall opposite his home in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

National Assembly (NA) Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan has expressed her belief that new Cambodian Ambassador to Vietnam Chay Navuth will contribute more to ties between the two countries, as well as between the two legislatures.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has sent a message of congratulations to the Central Committee of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) on its 69th founding anniversary (June 28, 1951-2020).

The families of former activists and members of the disbanded opposition party, who have been jailed this year, petitioned the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh on Friday to intervene and aid in the release of their relatives.

This week, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen confirmed what has long been suspected, that he is grooming his eldest son, Hun Manet, for leadership of the country. “As his father,” Hun Sen declared, “I have to support my son and train him so that he is capable”.

The United States has agreed to provide Cambodia with more than $56 million in development assistance, the two countries announced.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has groomed his eldest son as a potential successor ever since that son, Hun Manet, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point almost 20 years ago, and is confidently predicting his ruling Cambodian People’s Party will remain in power for another 100 years.

The U.N. Committee on Enforced Disappearances has called on Cambodia to “urgently search” for a Thai pro-democracy activist who went missing nearly three weeks ago in a suspected abduction outside his Phnom Penh condominium complex.

Prime Minister Hun Sen boasted this week that his party’s new $30-million headquarters was built to last a century, prompting criticism from the opposition that the CPP had no intention to ever give up power.

Phnom Penh authorities shut down a demonstration on June 22 held by a group of activists from environmental NGO Mother Nature to raise awareness of a new development slated for Koh Kong Krao island, representatives of the group said this week.

A woman in Siem Reap, who is linked to a rape investigation into activist monk Luon Sovath, told VOA Khmer on Tuesday that an unknown person was impersonating her on Facebook and posting purportedly incriminating videos between the monk and four women.

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen will participate in the 36th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit via video conference on Friday, said a foreign ministry's press statement on Tuesday.

At first glance, Cambodia is insignificant. Indeed, with a GDP per capita in 2019 of only $1,620 and a growth rate hovering below seven percent, Cambodia is far from an East Asian economic powerhouse.

China provided 7.22 million U.S. dollars from the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) Special Fund 2020 to Cambodia on Tuesday for implementing 20 projects in the kingdom.

Hun Sen brags that military vehicles from China cost taxpayers nothing, but that raises troubling questions about the funds' sources .