Cambodia 20260622

Mekong Memo Cambodia Weekly: Business, politics, finance, trade & legal news.

Jun 22, 2026

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Cambodia Keeps The Pressure On

At a UN meeting in New York, Cambodia defended its decision to pursue compulsory conciliation with Thailand, saying that bilateral talks were no longer viable. Ambassador Keo Chhea told the New York assembly that Thai military provocations had precluded continued direct talks (as evidence, he mentioned Thai forces raising national flags at the Thmor Da International Border Checkpoint in Pursat). Bangkok has also ditched the 1:200,000 colonial-era maps in favor of a 1:50,000 version that conveniently redraws contested territory. Cambodian PM Hun Manet used a meeting with Thai PM Anutin Charnvirakul on the sidelines of the ASEAN-Russia summit in Kazan to press Thailand to appoint a Joint Boundary Commission chief and restart border demarcation work that has been paused since the December 27 joint statement. Anutin downplayed the exchange, describing it as little more than “pulling each other aside by the elbow.” He also brushed off questions about reopening border checkpoints, saying he had no intention of raising the issue because “Thai people would be furious.”

Read more: The Star (Anutin), Khmer Times (UNCLOS push), Khmer Times (timeline), Cambodianess (border flags)

Rong Chhun Can Walk but Not Run

Cambodia’s Supreme Court upheld Rong Chhun’s conviction on Friday but suspended his four-year prison sentence in favor of three years’ probation. This means he’ll stay out of prison but cannot vote, run for office, or leave Phnom Penh for the period. A five-year ban on his political rights neatly covers the 2027 commune elections and the 2028 national polls. The original charge resulted from Facebook comments about online scam operations and the Vietnam border demarcation, subjects sensitive enough to have landed him in prison once before, in 2021. The Supreme Court also walked back a lifetime ban on his political rights, reducing it to five years. "If the powerful leader wants black, the court will paint it black," Chhun told some 300 supporters outside the courthouse, where police had blocked surrounding streets. His lawyers are weighing a royal pardon appeal to King Norodom Sihamoni. A Phnom Penh court ordered the seizure of his home in April 2025 over a 400 million riel ($100,000) damages fine from the earlier conviction.

Read more: AP News (government defense), CamboJA News (asset seizure), UCA News (related sentence), Malay Mail (Hun Manet), Khmer Times (residency)

Freed Hostages Left Behind

Thousands of trafficked workers freed during the scam crackdown are now sleeping rough in Phnom Penh or eating one meal of plain rice a day in immigration detention, unable to afford flights home. According to Amnesty International, more than 70% of the scam compounds it identified were left untouched. Cambodian authorities say the crackdown has been a success, claiming nearly 290,000 voluntary departures and 19,000 deportations. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court detained 19 more foreign nationals in three cyber fraud cases and jailed six bank account sellers connected to more than $253,000 in losses. Discord and Patreon sites got blocked as part of a set of 31 domains that were flagged for illegal activity, but Telegram, where researchers say active recruitment networks are still operating openly, has thus far remained available.

Read more: NPR (visa fines), Khmer Times (fraud law), Cambodia Daily (WhatsApp), CamboJA News (blocked apps), ABC (Amnesty)

Phnom Penh Registry Gets a Memory Wipe

The Ministry of Commerce has, without fanfare, made its business registry less transparent. Former director records have disappeared, company searches now require an exact legal name, and foreign VPN users are increasingly being met with a “maintenance” page. The changes came in stages with no public notice. A May decree did away with the former requirement for companies to report changes to branch directors. The ministry's spokesperson said the changes were the result of a "technical issue" and directed questions to a hotline that nobody was answering at last check. Researchers say the registry kept going dark for months at a time before the overhaul, which is coming at the same time as crackdowns on the country's multibillion-dollar online scam industry and a string of sanctions against prominent tycoons.

Cambodia Eyes a Russian Trade Deal

Hun Manet met Vladimir Putin in Kazan, the headline event of an ASEAN-Russia summit that also served as the 70th anniversary of Cambodia-Russia ties. The visit produced two commercial threads worth watching. Manet spent part of the visit trying to hustle for a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union, a five-country bloc whose exports grew nearly 38% in 2025. GAZ Group's export director sat down with Manet to talk about entering the local auto sector, pitching a nearly hundred-year-old commercial vehicle maker that runs 15 plants and ships to 43 countries.

Read more: Khmer Times (FTA push), Khmer Times (GAZ meeting), Fibre2Fashion (EEC chairman), Kremlin RU (Putin)

aerial photo of field — Photo by Simon Soy on Unsplash

Half a Peak and a Prayer

Chinese arrivals came in at 331,199 in the first four months of 2026, making them Cambodia's largest foreign visitor group and explaining why Phnom Penh's four-month visa-free trial looks more like a recovery bid than a victory lap. The government wants 600,000 Chinese visitors by October 15 and 1.2 million for the year (compare to a 2019 peak of 2.36 million). Air Cambodia ran a promotional event at Guangzhou's Baiyun International Airport to help close the gap, but the bigger constraint is in the air. Cambodia is still an outlier in China’s aviation recovery story. Flights between the two countries are still down by more than half from 2019 levels, even through China-Southeast Asia routes overall were down by less than a tenth. Direct services from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to Siem Reap have yet to return.

Read more: Travel and Tour World (regional comparison), Travel and Tour World (Guangzhou), Travel and Tour World (first group), China Daily (projection)

Factory Firing Sends 1,800 Walking

About 1,800 workers at AJ Textile in Kampong Speu walked off the job after the factory axed Chork Mealea, a supervisor of more than two years and a CCAWDU member, with no prior notice and no stated reason. More than 100 protested outside and about 1,700 stopped work inside, taking the opportunity to raise further issues of salary miscalculations and sick leave deductions. Workers got back on the job after Labor Ministry intervention, but Mealea was not reinstated; the provincial labor department said her contract had expired. Board chairman Shun Yao denied any union connection, helpfully reminding everyone that "in China, we don't have this kind of issue regarding unions." CCAWDU says at least seven workers involved in union organizing have been let go from garment factories in the past six months.

Still Defending Hanoi After Forty-Nine Years

At a ceremony in Tboung Khmum province, Supreme Adviser Tea Banh took the 49th anniversary of Hun Sen's 1977 crossing into Vietnam as an opportunity to share a warning to the diaspora. Critics who don't appreciate what Vietnamese forces did for Cambodia should "remain abroad," he said, because returning home "would not be easy for them." The occasion honored the oft-told story of Hun Sen's trek through forests, streams and minefields to get Hanoi's help, in a move that eventually brought down Pol Pot. Tea Banh dismissed opponents as ungrateful extremists who no longer thought of Cambodia as their homeland, and expressed "deep gratitude" for the sacrifices of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers.

Read more: Khmer Times (historical timeline), VOV News (CPP framing)

One Environmental Issue Remains

The environment ministry counted 896 crimes tackled and 43 people jailed in the first five months of the year, with offenses running from illegal logging and wildlife poaching to taking over state land. Rangers also seized dozens of homemade firearms and removed more than 11,000 wire snares from the country’s 73 protected areas. Five members of Mother Nature Cambodia have been behind bars since July 2024, serving six to eight years on charges of plotting against the state.

New to Science and Gone by Quarry

A Fauna & Flora survey of 64 limestone caves across the karst hills of Battambang turned up at least 11 species new to science, among them a pit viper, a flying snake, geckos, micro-snails and millipedes, with four still being formally described. The fieldwork ran from November 2023 to July 2025. Each limestone hill is effectively its own island, allowing species to evolve separately from nearby populations. The downside is that many of those species exist nowhere else. At Phnom Takriem, quarrying has already removed about a fifth of the hill. Globally only around one percent of karst landscapes enjoy any formal protection in what could be a lost opportunity for conservation.

Glass Threads Bring Hard Cash

Hong Kong fiber-optic maker WCFO is building a new plant that will about double its production capacity for fiber-optic cable components, feeding the data center boom happening in Southeast Asia as AI investment accelerates. Demand for the wiring that connects servers inside large facilities has been booming as hyperscalers and regional operators race to pour concrete across the region. WCFO already runs in the country, so the new plant will effectively sit beside its existing factory.

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