Judges at Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court grilled the former prison chief of the Khmer Rouge regime on Thursday about his notorious jail.
The Khmer Rouge’s prison chief on Monday told Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court that he had ”sacrificed everything” for the revolution.
Thai and Cambodian soldiers exchanged fire on a disputed stretch of their border on Friday, killing one Thai in the latest flare-up of an ancient feud
The head of state under Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge appealed to be released from detention on Friday ahead of his trial at the UN-backed war crimes court.
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/ 16 February 2009
Cambodia’s United Nations-backed war crimes court on Monday made final preparations for its long-awaited first public trial of a Khmer Rouge leader.
Cambodia on Tuesday quietly marked the 10-year anniversary of Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot’s death, amid fears that time is running out to try ageing regime leaders before a genocide tribunal. Pol Pot, the tyrant who turned Cambodia into killing fields in the late 1970s, died on April 15 1998, reportedly from a heart attack.
Cambodia suffered its worst-ever outbreak of dengue fever last year and it killed 407 people, most of them children, the highest toll in nearly a decade. Dengue, which causes fever had infected nearly 40 000 people since the first outbreaks last May, Ngan Chantha, director of the Health Ministry’s anti-dengue programme, said on Friday.
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/ 19 November 2007
Former Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan was formally detained and charged on Monday with war crimes and crimes against humanity by Cambodia’s United Nations-backed genocide tribunal, a court spokesperson said. "The co-investigating judges have detained him for a period of one year," tribunal spokesperson Reach Sambath said.
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/ 17 October 2007
A Cambodian cow arrested by authorities last week after causing a string of traffic deaths was butchered by its owner to prevent future highway carnage, police said on Tuesday. The large animal had repeatedly escaped its enclosure and wandered into a nearby road.
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/ 16 October 2007
Cambodian police said on Tuesday a suspected serial paedophile being hunted by Interpol across Asia was a Canadian national called Christopher Paul Neil, born in 1975. Keo Vanthan, deputy director of Interpol offices in the impoverished South-east Asian nation, said Neil had visited Cambodia before leaving for Vietnam.
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/ 19 September 2007
Khmer Rouge ”Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s top surviving henchman, was arrested on Wednesday at his house on the Thai border and taken to Phnom Penh to face the United Nations ”Killing Fields” tribunal. Nuon Chea was arrested by a squad of Cambodian special forces soldiers, police and Western security guards.
A charter plane carrying 22 people between two popular Cambodian tourist destinations crashed on Monday in a mountainous region in the south of the country, aviation officials said. The Russian-made AN-24 left the Angkor temple town of Siem Reap at about 10am local time and vanished off radar screens 37 minutes later.
An unsuccessful sexual advance by an elderly Cambodian man on a young heifer ended badly when the bovine fought back, kicking him to death. Ta Sam (67) of Svay Rieng province had been divorced for just 10 days when his urges apparently overcame him in the middle of the night with tragic consequences.
With sad eyes, Om Som sits in her shack in the Cambodian countryside waiting for answers. The shoeless 70- year-old has clung on for half a lifetime hoping to find out what happened to her beloved husband, and why. She also prays for some scant justice for the man she never saw again after he was led away by three young Khmer Rouge cadres, falsely accused of stealing a chicken.
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/ 24 October 2006
Cambodian children still suffer sexual exploitation despite a recent government crackdown on foreign paedophiles, child-rights activists warned on Tuesday. Rodney Hatfield of the United Nations Children’s Fund Unicef said the commercial sexual exploitation of children remained a serious problem in the kingdom.
A reputation for cruelty, even by the standards of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime he led, set Ta Mok apart from his revolutionary comrades and earned him the nickname of "The Butcher". Ta Mok died on July 21 at the age of 80 after languishing in jail since 1999.
Former Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok, one of Pol Pot’s most ruthless henchmen and a key defendant in upcoming ”Killing Fields” trials, died on Friday in an army hospital in the Cambodian capital. The one-legged 82-year-old, dubbed ”The Butcher” for overseeing mass purges during the ultra-Maoist regime’s four years in power, had been in hospital with breathing problems since last month.
A rat that bumbled into one of Cambodia’s largest power plants was blamed for blacking out the entire capital, Phnom Penh, and much of surrounding Kandal province over the weekend, a power official said on Tuesday. Millions were cast into darkness on Sunday night.
A 90-year-old Taiwanese man was among three charged by a Cambodian court on Monday with trying to smuggle several kilograms of heroin out of the country, court officials said. The alleged drug mule was arrested over the weekend along with two other Taiwanese also found to be carrying heroin.
A Cambodian couple who mummified their deceased premature baby to keep at home as a lucky charm had broken no laws and were merely adhering to ancient superstitions, police said on Wednesday. Cambodians believe that the mummified bodies of children and some primates born prematurely have powerful magical powers.
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/ 13 January 2006
Tourist arrivals in Cambodia jumped by 35% in 2005, a senior official said on Thursday as the country seeks nearly to triple the number of foreign visitors in the next five years. ore than 1,4-million arrivals were recorded last year, up from just more than a million in 2004.
Cambodia is mimicking Myanmar’s repressive tactics with its arrest of two prominent rights leaders, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday. Kem Sokha, head of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, was arrested on Saturday, while police also seized Yeng Virak, the director of the Community Legal Education Centre.
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/ 13 October 2005
A Cambodian Buddhist monk said on Thursday he had launched a line of wristwatches, their faces emblazoned with his image and embedded with a powerful magic charm, to protect his followers from the developing nation’s increasingly chaotic traffic.
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/ 1 September 2005
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Thursday that millions of Cambodians cooking with charcoal were to blame for using the bulk of the country’s wood and was a far greater factor in the nation’s massive deforestation problem than illegal logging.
Authorities in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin said on Monday that nearly 40 people have fallen victim to what they believe to be a contaminated batch of crab sauce imported from the nearby town of Battambang. Police have ordered vendors to stop selling crab sauce until it can be sent to the capital for testing.
Six masked men who took 70 students and three teachers hostage at an international school in northwestern Cambodia on Thursday have released some of their captives, a government spokesperson and police said. The men have also demanded a 12-seat van from authorities.
A fight between an elderly woman and a Cambodian Buddhist monk over an allegedly magic turtle required the reptile to be rescued and landed the monk in court on charges of impersonating a god, police said on Thursday. The trouble began when monk Khong Chantha (26) sold a turtle with Buddhist inscriptions carved into its shell to an elderly local woman for ,25.
Cambodian police have been ordered to capture dozens of buffaloes and cows roaming in the Angkor Wat heritage zone because of the dung they are leaving among the ruins, an officer said on Wednesday. Half a dozen police officers had spent about six hours on Wednesday trying to catch buffaloes bathing.
Officials and religious leaders are disputing claims by a Cambodian man that his cow is possessed by a magic healing spirit that emigrated from Thailand. The animal’s owner claimed on Monday that excrement and urine from his cow could miraculously cure diseases since it became possessed by a heavenly entity last week.
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/ 18 January 2005
Cambodian authorities said on Tuesday that they have acted to combat a growing mouse plague by offering a government bounty of about two cents for every mouse tail farmers can muster. The offer of a bounty on only the severed tails of the mice is meant to encourage people not to waste the rest of the mouse after they receive their reward.
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/ 10 January 2005
Cambodian authorities have taken a strong step towards making the red-light district of the northern tourist town of Siem Reap more anonymous — by literally banning red lights, a police official said on Monday. The action was taken a few days ago as part of a concerted crackdown on thriving prostitution in the town.
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/ 20 December 2004
Enraged at his ex-wife’s remarriage, a Cambodian man dug up her daughter’s decomposing body and placed the exhumed corpse on his former wife’s doorstep, police said on Monday. The daughter, who was 25 when she died, had been buried for about six months, Pursat district police chief Pen Tung said.