In mid-October last year, 18-year-old Bun Hat rode about 60 km from an isolated village on the Sesan river to Ratanakkiri’s provincial capital, Banlung, to meet a man who planned to lock him up and hide the key.
At that point, Mr. Hat was two years into a drug habit, enticed by friends who bought crystal methamphetamine and “ya ma”—meth cut with caffeine—from itinerant Khmer peddlers who regularly motored through the village hawking household goods and fried bread.
Disdain and pain flooded a meeting on Thursday between government officials and families whose villages are set to be submerged by a dam’s reservoir.
Representing families affected by the construction of the Lower Sesan II hydropower dam site, about 10 indigenous villagers traveled from Stung Treng province to Phnom Penh for the chance to plead their case to officials from the Mines and Energy Ministry.
koh khnhe, Kratie Province – Half the houses in this village are deserted. Pale dust from the dirt road coats staircases falling into disrepair. Scraps of wood beneath them weather. Tractors used to cart timber are slowly rusting.
“They’ve gone, all of them,” says Soung Sophy. “You drive your car here, you won’t meet people. There are just houses.”
There are 700 species of dates in the world, according to Leng Mong Neath, a real estate broker and would-be date farmer. Of these, only about 20 bear edible fruit. And of these 20 edible species, only two can grow in Cambodia.
Neither of these two varieties—known as KL1 and Barhi—produce the sweet, brown sticky fruit used to sweeten pastries and break Ramadan fasts in the Middle East. Cambodia doesn’t get hot enough for that, Mr. Neath said—only temperatures consistently over 41 degrees Celsius can sun-dry dates on the tree.
Settling a drawn out, yearlong discussion on what Cambodia should do with its millions of dollars worth of seized trafficked animal parts, Prime Minister Hun Sen has announced the haul will be exhibited and not destroyed.
Speaking at the end of the Interior Ministry’s annual meeting on Friday, Mr. Hun Sen said he had ignored a request from “Americans” to destroy the tons of elephant tusks and rhino horns. Taking another swipe at the U.S., he said that it had “no rights on Cambodia’s administration.”
The Environment Ministry on Sunday held a press conference to showcase its newest tactic for promoting environmental awareness—beauty queens.
“One of the things we enjoy as beauty queens is we are given the opportunity to state our opinions,” said Camille Hirro, who represented the Philippines in the 2016 Miss Global pageant.
Police said on Thursday they were investigating allegations that the Chinese managers of a worksite for a sugarcane concession had severely beaten three workers for stealing oil and fertilizer, and that one of them later died of his injuries.
Tiem Sang Kream, the chief of Chey Sen district police in Preah Vihear province, said the beating was apparently witnessed by other workers and allegedly happened earlier this month. Police investigations began two weeks ago, he said.
The world’s largest freshwater fish may go extinct as a result of the environmental impact of the newest dam proposed on the Mekong, according to documents released ahead of a consultation that began on Wednesday.
The Mekong giant catfish, which can grow up to 3 meters long and 300 kg in weight, is critically endangered with their populations decimated by overfishing, dams and habitat destruction, according to the environmental organization WWF.
When the government announced a ban on surrogacy last year, foreign parents who had hired Cambodian women to carry their babies received assurances from officials that they would be allowed to safely take their children from the country.
On Tuesday, however, a senior Interior Ministry official backed down on that promise and a guarantee those parents would not face prosecution.
Following his abrupt departure as the head of Cambodia’s opposition, Sam Rainsy said on Monday that he would fully remove himself from all roles within the party, including fundraising from abroad.
However, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s main adversary for the past two decades refuted suggestions that it was an “end of an era” in Cambodian politics and maintained that he still perceived himself as the primary “symbol of resistance” against the ruling party.