Religious Freedom, Minority Rights and State Control in Contemporary Cambodia (2025)

Photo: Cambodia - flowcomm

Cambodia is officially a Theravada Buddhist country, and approximately 97% of the population identifies as Buddhist. The state maintains a close relationship with the Buddhist sangha, which it controls through the Supreme Patriarchate. Religious minorities — including Christians, Muslims (Cham community), Vietnamese Buddhists, and members of religious movements regarded as "cults" — face varying degrees of discrimination, registration barriers, and in some cases violence and displacement. This report draws on USCIRF, Human Rights Watch, and the OHCHR Cambodia country office.

State Control of Buddhism

The Cambodian government controls Buddhism through the Supreme Patriarchate, which governs both the Mohanikay and Dhammayut orders. Monks who engage in political activism — particularly those who have supported the opposition or land rights movements — have been defrocked and imprisoned. The government has used the sangha as a tool for political mobilisation, with monks attending CPP rallies and endorsing government candidates, creating a fusion of religious and political authority that disadvantages all non-Buddhists.[1]

Cham Muslims: Discrimination and Surveillance

The Cham Muslim minority was subjected to genocide under the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979), during which an estimated 90% of Islamic scholars and up to 500,000 Cham Muslims were killed. Today, Cham communities face land rights violations, closure of Islamic schools, and surveillance of mosques — particularly those with alleged links to foreign Islamic organisations. In 2018, authorities closed all Islamic schools not approved by the Ministry of Education, affecting thousands of Cham students.[2]

The Cham community's experience in Cambodia must be understood in the context of the ongoing trauma of genocide and the state's deep suspicion of Muslim institutions with foreign connections — a suspicion that generates discrimination in schooling, land rights, and public employment.
USCIRF, Cambodia Country Report 2024

Asylum Considerations for Religious Minorities

Cambodians who belong to religious minorities and have experienced state harassment — particularly Cham Muslims whose schools or mosques have been targeted, Christians from communities subjected to land disputes or mob violence, or members of unregistered religious movements — may have individual asylum claims. The general Buddhist majority in Cambodia does not face state-directed religious persecution, but the absence of religious freedom protections and the use of religious institutions for political control creates conditions of institutionalised disadvantage for minority believers.[3]