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On Monday, legal professionals for Cambodia’s ruling occasion filed a lawsuit accusing a number one rights activist of defamation and searching for $500,000 in damages, the most recent growth within the nation’s rolling political crackdown.
The criticism was filed in Phnom Penh Municipal Courtroom in opposition to Soeng Senkaruna, the deputy head of the Cambodian Human Rights and Growth Affiliation (ADHOC), one of many nation’s predominant human rights teams. In response to The Related Press, it was filed on the order of former Prime Minister Hun Sen, the previous chief of the Cambodian Folks’s Social gathering (CPP), who stepped down and handed energy to his son in August, after greater than 38 years in workplace.
The lawsuit asserts that Senkaruna dishonored the CPP in a Khmer-language interview with The Cambodia Every day final week, during which he acknowledged that the ruling occasion has used its affect with the courts to place stress on its political opponents – a thesis that this week’s lawsuit solely appears to substantiate.
It quoted Soeng Senkaruna as saying that political disputes ought to be resolved politically and never by way of the courts and acknowledged the CPP has “at all times used the courts as a barrier to oppress its opposition political companions.”
The lawsuit alleges that the “remarks had been exaggerated and dishonest,” within the AP’s paraphrase, and will tarnish the CPP’s public fame forward of Senate elections on February 25, despite the fact that unusual voters is not going to take part. (Senators are elected solely by members of the nation’s commune, district, provincial and municipal councils.)
Senkaruna is simply the most recent critic of the Cambodian authorities to be hauled into court docket for voicing routine or mundane criticisms of the authorities, plenty of whom have seen them ordered to pay punitive damages after being convicted of defamation. In October 2022, the identical Phnom Penh court docket convicted Son Chhay, the vice chairman of the opposition Candlelight Social gathering (CLP) of defaming the CPP, after he claimed that the native elections held the earlier June had been marred by fraud, a verdict that was upheld by the Supreme Courtroom final yr. He was ordered to pay the occasion $1 million in damages, a case that Senkaruna particularly cited in his interview with The Cambodia Every day. Evidently, the lead to such circumstances is mostly preordained, except Hun Sen chooses to file the lawsuit.
ADHOC has additionally beforehand been focused in earlier peaks of political repression. In April 2016, 4 staffers from the group had been arrested on bribery fees, prompting ADCHO’s former government director, Thun Saray, to flee overseas to keep away from arrest.
The lawsuit additionally comes simply days after three politically lively Cambodian exiles had been arrested in Thailand forward of Prime Minister Hun Manet’s first go to to the nation later this week. The three, two of whom had been members or former members of the CLP, had been reportedly planning protests to coincide with the Cambodian chief’s go to.
All of this has been a part of the identical rolling crackdown that has proceeded over a lot of the previous decade, smothering civil society, the impartial media, and most significant sources of opposition. (Among the many many casualties was The Cambodia Every day, which was pressured to shut its doorways in 2017 and now publishes from overseas, and solely on-line.) This allowed the CPP to run within the 2018 and 2023 elections almost unopposed, and formalize its management over almost each political establishment within the nation.
This week’s lawsuit, despite the fact that it was filed by Hun Sen reasonably than his son, is the most recent signal that political expression and dissent will proceed to be handled as illegal actions below the new-look Cambodian management. Whereas any vital political adjustments would seemingly take time, Hun Manet’s authorities has thus far proven little indication that it has any intention of adjusting course.
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