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Cambodian police charge opposition critic of border policy
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Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (left) and his wife Bun Rany attend an event by his ruling party to mark the 37th anniversary of the 1979 downfall of the Khmer Rouge regime at the party headquarters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Jan. 7. (AP/Heng Sinith)
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Cambodian opposition lawmaker was charged Tuesday with two criminal offenses for criticizing the government's handling of the demarcation of the border with Vietnam. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
The arrest Monday of the lawmaker, Um Sam An, marked the revival of a campaign of pressure that Prime Minister Hun Sen had launched last year against his foes and critics.
Um Sam An had been a prominent campaigner against the government's use of contested maps to demarcate the border, accusing the government of ceding land to Vietnam. The topic is a politically charged one in Cambodia.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged Um San An with incitement to commit a criminal act and inciting prejudice against another country, said his lawyer, Sam Sokong. The charges carry prison sentences of up to two and three years, respectively.
One of Um San An's colleagues in the Cambodia National Rescue Party, Hong Sok Hour, is facing trial on several charges after making similar criticisms last year implying that the government failed to counter land encroachment by Vietnam, Cambodia's traditional enemy.
Hun Sen has been in power for three decades. While Cambodia is formally democratic, his government is authoritarian and known for intimidating opponents.
Last year, he put an end to an uneasy detente with the opposition party, with which he had reached a political truce in 2014 to end a boycott of parliament. The opposition mounted a surprisingly strong challenge against Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party in the 2013 general election, which it accused the government of stealing.
The opposition has faced physical and legal intimidation, and politically motivated legal actions against charismatic opposition leader Sam Rainsy have convinced him to stay abroad.
The opposition for its part had sought to capitalize on its election gains by hitting Hun Sen on the sensitive issue of relations with Vietnam, with some of its lawmakers charging that Cambodia was losing land to its neighbor. Hong Sok Hour was arrested last August after Hun Sen accused him of treason for an online posting that included the purported text of a 1979 treaty with Vietnam that declared that their mutual border would be dissolved.
Hun Sen — who was foreign minister at the time in a government installed by a Vietnamese occupation force that invaded Cambodia to oust the murderous Khmer Rouge regime — insisted that the treaty was forged. Hong Sok Hour apparently had reposted a bad translation of a document he found on the Internet, and was indicted on three charges, including falsifying public documents, using fake documents and inciting chaos. The charges carry maximum sentences of 10 years, five years and two years, respectively.
Um Sam An, who pursued the same issue, was arrested in the northeastern city of Siem Reap shortly after midnight Sunday. He had just returned from a trip to the United States.
His Cambodia National Rescue Party decried his arrest, saying it breached his immunity as a lawmaker. The government rejects such claims, saying such arrests are allowable because the lawmakers have been caught in the act of committing a crime.
