People and government

After a Khemerak University student was jailed in Phnom Penh on 22 August over a social media post calling for a “color revolution” in Cambodia, the school’s director on 24 August claimed that politics had “poisoned” students at his institution. Police arrested Kong Raya, 25, at the university ...

A group of students from central Vietnam have joined hands to teach Vietnamese in the neighboring country of Laos and helped cement the friendship between the two nations. The course in Laos’ Xiangkhouang Province is part of the summer volunteer activities of an international volunteer team ...

Cambodian police on 25 August showed off a seizure of nearly 1.5 tonnes of marijuana worth more than $7 million packed into coffee bags, part of an ongoing drug crackdown in the country. Keep reading ...

Ieng Thirith, who was among Pol Pot’s inner circle during the rule of the Khmer Rouge as the regime’s social affairs minister, died on 22 August in Pailin province, where her family remains influential. She was 83. Keep reading ...

British rights activist Andy Hall has been charged with criminal defamation in Thailand after he researched a report that alleged labour abuses at the Natural Fruit Company, a large Thai pineapple wholesaler that supplies the EU. The Bangkok south criminal court decided on 24 August to indict the ...

A ‘model village’ built by the government offers little improvement in living standards for several hundred families displaced by conflict in Kachin State. Ngwe Pyaw, which means “wealthy village” in Myanmar language, was founded in May 2014 as a pilot resettlement site. But it is wealthy ...

Japan and the five Southeast Asian countries bordering the Mekong River adopted a blueprint on 24 August to boost industrialization in the subregion. The blueprint, known as “The Mekong Industrial Development Vision,” got the thumbs-up during a meeting between Japan’s Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Yoichi ...

Thirteen illegal Lao labour immigrants who were rescued from an alleged “slavery farm” in Nakhon Pathom are being treated as witnesses in a suspected human trafficking case. The immigrants, some as young as 15 years old, will not be charged with illegal entry into Thailand because they ...

New mass graves with 24 bodies thought to be those of migrants have been found in Malaysia, police say. The graves were found in the state of Perlis near the Thai border not far from 139 grave sites unearthed in May, Perlis police chief Shafie Ismail ...

A bank manager has been charged after 12 Lao workers — some as young as 14 — were found enslaved and kept in cages on a farm outside Bangkok. The workers, aged between 14 and 25 years old, were found sleeping in small spaces framed by ...