
Photo of Kem Sokha via VOA
Via Jinja who points to this AP wire story about the arrest of the Kem Sokha, Cambodian Center for Human Rights. It confirms that Yeng Virak, head of the Community Legal Education Center, was also arrested.
The article provides more details about the banners displayed at Human Rights Day and that prompted the arrest. (Lux Means has a post with some photos from the December event here and here - but not the banner described below.) The Cambodian government also denied cracking down on freedom of expression:
Khieu Kanharith, the government spokesman and information minister, said the government has sued the two men over a critical banner they displayed during a gathering on International Human Rights Day on Dec.10. He said the banner labeled Hun Sen as a "communist" and a "traitor who has sold away (Cambodian) land to Vietnam."
"We have already stated in the past that this (accusation) is very serious," he said, denying the government is cracking down on freedom of expression.
U.S. Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli remarks suggest that the latest action shows the Cambodian government is more authoritarian than democratic and is afraid of free speech. In an article in the Cambodia Daily, Mussomeli said "We are concerned that this may be part of a broader plan to
quash the opposition. The prospects for a credible and fair
election in 2008 are being impaired.... They've scared the hell out of
the opposition and it becomes more difficult to take these trappings of
democracy as the real thing."
(The US embassy participated in the December Human Rights Day event that led the New Year's Eve arrest.)
The article also quotes Virak's lawyer as saying the arrest is unfair as the words on the banner in question were scribbled in as grafititi by someone else and that when the organizers saw it, the banner was promptly removed. Still some argue, a government tolerant of free speech would not be throwing the organizers of the event or the organization holding the banner in jail.
What the government would do if a Cambodian blogger wrote a critical post about Hun Sen? It is time for a crash course on anonymous blogging? Those blogging outside the country need not worry about this ... But according an article in the Cambodia Daily, to Cambodians citizens quoted in the article, the arrest is a warning to stop speaking out.
One unidentified source quoted for the article is calling for outside help:
"The UN and powerful countries around the world should intervene on this matter in order to help those activists," he said. "Then Cambodian people can take the second step in protesting to release Kem Sokha and others."
Expat Cambodians
living in the US are organizing and urging US citizens to contact
their government officials and express outrage about the situation. Here is an opinion piece from the Cambodia Information Center entitled Freedom Of Expression Being Haunted By Ghost Of The Past which is also encouraging people to express their outrage.
Technorati Tags: cambodia, freespeech, freedomofexpression