Crime and law enforcement

On a raid this month, Wildlife Alliance’s WRRT seized 71kg of bushmeat, 10 live Asian leaf turtles, and more than 50kg of turtle carapaces and plastrons from a restaurant in Koh Kong province. The team released the turtles back into the wild and destroyed the wildlife ...

Police in Myanmar have seized South East Asia’s biggest ever haul of synthetic drugs, the scale of which they described as “off the charts”. More than 200m methamphetamine tablets, 500kg of crystal methamphetamine and 300kg of heroin were found in raids in north-east Shan state. Thirty-three people ...

Cambodia’s three-year-long “war on drugs” campaign has led to a litany of human rights abuses and the overcrowding of prisons and detention centres, human rights watchdog Amnesty International has announced in a new report. Released during the weekend, the report titled “Substance Abuses” documents the government’s ...

Before lockdowns, curfews, and safe distancing, Thodsapone Kitta would go door to door, visiting low-income families in Thailand’s northern Nan province, a poor, mountainous region home to hill tribes and rural farmers where people are vulnerable to trafficking. For Thodsapone, a member of The Freedom Story, ...

The 92nd Mekong River joint patrol by China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand concluded on Saturday morning (April 25) as three Chinese law enforcement boats returned to Guanlei Port in the southwest Province of Yunnan. A total of 109 law enforcement officers from the four countries participated ...

The Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry is seeking to postpone the enforcement of the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), due to take effect late next month, saying state and private organisations will be too burdened to comply during the pandemic. The PDPA was published in ...

Amnesty International has shared a new video it received that claims to show extreme overcrowding and “inhumane conditions” in a Cambodian prison amid the coronavirus pandemic. The video, released on Friday, shows at least 25 prisoners crammed into a small cell and lying on the floor. There is ...

The current COVID-19 virus health crisis is said to have been passed on by animals to humans. Suspected wildlife pinned for the spread of the pandemic include bats and pangolins – both considered delicacies in China where the virus first emerged. According to a recent study, ...

The coronavirus outbreak has upended our lives in unimaginable ways and prison inmates are no exceptions to the struggles. In light of the novel coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic, people globally are facing a multitude of challenges and problems. While the lethal virus is claiming lives in ...

The Cambodian government should take urgent measures to reduce the risk that the country’s severely overcrowded prisons will suffer COVID-19 outbreaks, Human Rights Watch said today. Reducing overcrowding in prisons is important to prevent outbreaks, which would have serious health consequences for prisoners, prison staff, and the ...