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All the News Without Fear or Favor
Friday, March 13, 2015
Volume 60 Issue 78
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Group Finds
‘Systematic’
Abuse at
Garment Plants
B y Z SOmBOr P eter
THE CAMBODIA DAILY
Forced overtime, child labor,
union busting, abuse of short-term
contracts and shadowy subcontracted factories remain rampant in
the country’s $5.75 billion garment
sector amid “dismal” government
oversight, the U.S.-based Human
Rights Watch (HRW) says in a new
report.
“Work Faster or Get Out: Labor
rights abuses in Cambodia’s Garment Industry,” released yesterday after interviews with hundreds
of workers at dozens of factories
last year, also blames the major
international brands sourcing from
Cambodia, including H&M and
Adidas, for not doing enough to
help workers.
The government and factories
say the abuses are more the exception than the rule.
“But what we have found is systematic problems,” Phil Robertson,
HRW’s deputy director for Asia,
said at the report’s launch in
Phnom Penh.
“We see systematic use of
[fixed duration contracts] to keep
everybody on short-term contracts and ensure that they have
no security at work. We see systematic union busting, retaliation
against workers for exercising
their rights guaranteed in the
Constitution and in the Labor
Continued on page 2
Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily
General Sao Sokha, commander of the military police and president of the Football Federation of
Cambodia, congratulates national team players after they beat Macau 3-0 in their first World Cup
qualifier at Phnom Penh's Old Stadium yesterday. (Story page 21)
Ministry Sold Land From Under 163 Families
B y S ek O dOm
THE CAMBODIA DAILY
The day before a hectare of land
in Phnom Penh was set to be divided among 163 families who won a
rare land-dispute victory over a
wealthy businesswoman, the Agriculture Ministry on Wednesday is sued a letter claiming it gave the
entire plot to a construction firm in
2009.
The families were granted the
9,982-square-meter plot in Sen Sok
district by the Phnom Penh Mu -
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Page 3
cambodiadaily.com
that a deputy prosecutor from the
Phnom Penh Municipal Court,
aided by police, intended to intervene yesterday and properly divide
up the land among the 163 families.
Before the work could begin,
however, the Agriculture Ministry
on Wednesday sent a letter to Municipal Court director Taing Sunlay
claiming the ministry previously
owned the plot and in 2009 gave it
the Kim Hap Company as part of a
land swap.
Continued on page 7
Two Police Officers Shot During Ferguson Protest
B y m att P earce
Court Orders Family off Khun
Sear's Land, Lawyer Says
nicipal Court in 2007 following a dispute with local businesswoman
Keo Neam. Ms. Neam unsuccessfully challenged the municipal
court’s decision, which was upheld
by the Appeal Court in 2008 and by
the Supreme Court in 2011.
One of the awardees, Chea
Sarom, has since claimed the
whole area for her family and prevented the others from settling
on it.
But on Wednesday, deputy district governor Mou Manith said
Two St. Louis County police officers were shot outside the Fergu son Police Department during
another night of protests in the
troubled Missouri city, police confirmed early yesterday.
St. Louis County Police chief Jon
Belmar said two officers were hospitalized after the shooting, which
occurred shortly after midnight
during demonstrations that followed the resignation of the Fer guson police chief Wednesday.
“These police officers were
standing there, and they were shot-just because they were police officers,” Belmar told reporters.
An officer from the St. Louis
County Police Department, 41
years old and a 14-year veteran, was
shot in the shoulder, and an officer
from the Webster Groves Police
Department, 32, was shot in the
face, he said.
The turbulent night followed
Wednesday’s announcement that
Ferguson Police chief Thomas
Jackson planned to resign in the
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wake of a scathing U.S. Justice De partment investigative report that
followed the fatal police shooting
last summer of 18-year-old Michael
Brown, an unarmed black man.
Violent protests followed the
shooting, and more demonstrations erupted when a grand jury
elected not to indict the white officer, Darren Wilson, who said he
shot Brown after the young man
tried to grab his gun.
The Justice Department also
cleared Wilson, who has since left
Continued on page 17