Cambodia’s Defense of Rights Record at UN Review Slammed

Foreign donors should push Cambodia’s government to end its human rights abuses as part of its bid to maintain political control of the nation, a rights group said Wednesday, after Phnom Penh allegedly snubbed recommendations by foreign governments to improve the country’s rights record. Representatives of foreign governments proposed several areas of improvement for Cambodia during the country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session on June 26 at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva—a rights review mechanism through which all U.N. member states are examined every four years. New York-based Human Rights Watch said that Cambodia “brushed aside calls … to reverse its crackdown on human rights and reform its abusive policies and practices.” ... Human Rights Watch said that Cambodia had merely “noted” that it had received recommendations addressing rights violations at the UPR session, and “deflected” calls to end the suspension of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and actions to ensure media and Internet freedom. ...

Joshua Lipes
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/review-07022014161641.html