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The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) has broken up a syndicate led by a Vietnamese woman that specialized in forging records of foreign fishermen, enabling them to work and cross borders illegally, an official said Tuesday. The syndicate targeted Vietnamese fishermen who did not have work permits or whose seaman’s books had expired, MMEA deputy operations director Maritime Capt. V. Pannir Selvan said. Selvan described the suspect as a Vietnamese woman in her 30s who holds Malaysian permanent resident status. The woman, who was not named, was arrested during a house raid by MMEA in the state of Pahang on Feb 3. “During the raid on the suspect’s house, the MMEA team managed to seize 36 Vietnamese passports, 54 Vietnamese seaman’s books, fake seaman approval stamps, and other questionable documents,” he said. A seaman book is a continuous record of service that must be carried and is an official and legal record of sea experience. ...

Officials in Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province are making preparations to release 47 Malaysians who were detained on suspicion of running an illegal gambling operation there. Provincial Director Um Siphan, in an interview with RFA’s Khmer Service, confirmed the group of 37 men and 10 women would be released soon, but could not specify an exact date. Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a press release on the case yesterday that suggests that many of the 47 could have been victims themselves. “Officers from the Embassy of Malaysia in Phnom Penh made a consular visit to the detainees to ensure their wellbeing after receiving detailed information and approval from the local authorities,” the ministry said in the release. “The visit revealed that most of the detainees were offered jobs with an attractive pay,” it said. The embassy officers then met with prison officials and the judge, and finally sent a diplomatic note requesting their release to Camb...

About 23 percent of children in three Cambodian provinces along the country’s northwestern border with Thailand have dropped out of school, causing great concern for the education ministry. During a conference on Wednesday, Education Minister Hangchuon Naron said that the dropout rate in Battambang, Banteay Meanchey and Oddor Meanchey provinces was significantly higher than in other Cambodian provinces, where dropout rates average 18 to 19 percent.  

A former British diplomat called on Wednesday for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to be excluded from bidding for the next generation of 5G mobile technology contracts, saying allowing such a move would be "irresponsible." In a report for defense and security think-tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Charles Parton warned against Beijing's "rigorous, ruthless advancement of China's interests." "The history of China’s cyber attacks shows that an integral part of CCP interference abroad is getting access to a wide variety of information, whether related to industry, commerce, technology, defense, personal details or politics," Parton wrote. "5G will be crucial to the future functioning not just of [critical national infrastructure], but to many processes which will be reliant on the Internet of Things," he said. Parton is a senior associate fellow at RUSI who spent 22 years of a 37-year diplomatic career ...

China's human rights activists continue to speak out on behalf of victims of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's abuses of power, despite the threat of arbitrary detention, torture, and forced 'disappearance,' an overseas rights group said on Thursday. "Types of retaliation included the use of torture, enforced disappearance, and arbitrary detention," the report said, adding that the government had also threatened activists who tried to cooperate with United Nations human rights experts. Anyone who tried to speak out for marginalized and persecuted communities, report violations, or complain about the perpetrators of rights violations "bore the brunt of government retaliation" last year, the report said.

Cambodia and the United States sparred this weekend over comments appearing on a U.S. embassy Facebook page criticizing the Cambodian government’s continued detention of the leader of a now-banned opposition party. The unsigned Feb. 15 posting called former Cambodia National Rescue Party leader Kem Sokha an innocent man, detained on “unjust charges,” and noted he has now been held either in jail or under house arrest for nearly 18 months. Cambodia National Rescue Party president Kem Sokha was arrested in September 2017 on treason charges widely seen as politically motivated, and the Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP two months later for its part in an alleged plot to topple the government. The move banned the opposition party’s candidates from taking part in a July 29, 2018 general election, which Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) then steamrolled without any viable opponent. Denied bail six times, Kem Sokha was finally released from pre-trial detention o...

A group of forestry activists accompanied by monks held a Buddhist ceremony in hopes of protecting Prey Lang forest in Cambodia’s central plains. The forest has been ravaged by deforestation caused by illegal logging, with much of the illicit timber smuggled outside the country.  One monk, the Venerable Oun Long, led a group of villagers to patrol the area and clothe the trees last weekend. He said the group confiscated abandoned wood and chainsaws. They also detained loggers they found on patrol. He said the group clothed at least 40 trees. In May last year, a report by the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said that around 300,000 cubic meters (10,594,400 cubic feet) of timber—including endangered rosewood—had been smuggled out of protected areas in Cambodia to Vietnam with the help of local authorities through some U.S. $13 million paid in bribes between November 2016 and March 2017.