Ruling Party Official Writes Off Sam Rainsy’s Commitment to Cambodia’s ‘Culture of Dialogue’
RFA | 19 August 2015
A senior official with Cambodia’s ruling party on Wednesday
dismissed opposition leader Sam Rainsy as insincere after he pledged his
Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) would scale back criticism of the
government for its handling of a border dispute with neighboring
Vietnam.
Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan lashed out at
Sam Rainsy days after opposition senator Hong Sok Hour was arrested for
posting a disputed diplomatic document online relating to the border—a
move nongovernmental organizations called “politically motivated” as
they demanded his immediate release.
Part
of doing so he said, would require CNRP members to stop “tickling
sensitive issues”—such as the border demarcation with Vietnam—with Prime
Minister Hun Sen’s CPP, adding that “speaking out in public does not
gain us anything.”
On Wednesday, during a press conference about
Hong Sok Hour’s arrest and subsequent charges on forgery and incitement,
Phay Siphan suggested that Sam Rainsy had been mocking the CPP as being
unable to accept criticism and fired back on a personal level.
“I
[recently] said I saw Sam Rainsy’s wife having an affair with someone
in a hotel and [Sam Rainsy] suggested it was defamation,” he said.
“I answered that I was only ‘tickling’ [a sensitive issue]. This is unethical language.”
CNRP
spokesman Yim Sovann refused to respond to Phay Siphan’s comments,
saying only that the opposition “is busy working on border issues,
illegal immigration, poverty and other key problems.”
But Am Sam
Ath, a senior official with local rights group Licadho, said that a
high-ranking government spokesman should know better than to make such
comments and urged Phay Siphan to set a better example for the public.
“I think his comment directly affects a person’s honor,” he said.
“If
we examine the ‘sensitive issues’ [both Sam Rainsy and Phay Siphan]
raised, they are different. [Sam Rainsy] did not make a comparison that
affected someone’s honor.”
Prime target
Phay
Siphan’s comments followed similarly personal ones made by Hun Sen who,
hours after Sam Rainsy addressed the media on Monday, likened him to the
head of “a gang of thieves” bent on souring relations between the CNRP
and CPP, according to a report by the Phnom Penh Post.
“A gang of
thieves destroying the stability of this country who have come to
confess: that is Mr. Sam Rainsy and his party,” the prime minister said
during a radio interview.
“While they shake our hands, they step
on our toes and use the culture of dialogue to destroy the royal
government,” he said, referring to a July 2014 agreement between the two
parties to work together which ended a political deadlock in the wake
of disputed elections a year earlier.
Hun Sen demanded that Sam
Rainsy and the CNRP “correct all the dishonest statements” about the
government and the CPP, saying that without such a concession the
culture of dialogue between the two parties could not continue.
In
response to Hun Sen’s comments, Yim Sovann told RFA the CNRP and CPP
need to employ the culture of dialogue in every circumstance, but he
added that criticism was a normal part of politics in a democratic
society.
Political science professor Ros Ravuth said the culture
of dialogue was necessary and urged the two parties to return to
peaceful negotiations in order to solve the country’s problems.
“Both parties should speak with each other like family,” he said.
But
social commentator Kem Ley told RFA that it was unimportant whether the
culture of dialogue exists or not, adding that the CPP is using it as a
pretext to weaken the opposition.
“[The two parties] should use
existing mechanisms—such as the National Assembly (parliament), or
channels between lawmakers and party leaders—to negotiate for the sake
of solving the country’s political crisis together,” he said.
Recent jailings
Amid
CNRP accusations that the government has been ceding land to Vietnam,
which invaded and occupied Cambodia in 1979, by using incorrect maps to
determine border demarcations, several opposition lawmakers and
activists have landed in prison.
On Aug. 5, Cambodian authorities
detained three CNRP activists on insurrection charges for their role in
a protest that turned violent in July 2014, after convicting 11 other
opposition activists—known as the Freedom Park 11—last month on similar
grounds and handing them lengthy jail sentences.
Prior to his
arrest on Saturday, which was ordered by Hun Sen last week, Hong Sok
Hour had posted comments on social media claiming that an article of the
1979 Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Treaty was meant to dismantle, rather
than simply define, the border between the two countries.
He had also posted online two copies of the 36-year-old border agreement with Vietnam containing the article's disputed wording.
On
Sunday, Hong Sok Hour was sent to Prey Sar prison and charged with
forging a public document, using a forged public document, and
incitement to cause serious unrest for social security—which could carry
a combined maximum prison sentence of 17 years.
Rights at risk
Late
on Tuesday, a group of 13 NGOs issued a joint statement calling for the
immediate release of Hong Sok Hour, whose arrest they said was
“unconstitutional, politically motivated” and part of a “far-reaching
and systematic attack on dissent and democracy” by Hun Sen’s government.
The
statement also pointed to the conviction of the Freedom Park 11, the
recently passed Law on Associations and Nongovernmental Organizations
(LANGO)—widely seen aimed at restricting NGO work in the country—and
several other proposed laws, which it said “represent a grave threat to
democracy and human rights in Cambodia.”
“The [government] is
undertaking a campaign to shut down the dissenting voices that provide
the strongest opposition—political opponents, civil society
organizations, trade unions, and ordinary people using social media—by
exercising complete control over the judiciary and by introducing
oppressive laws that violate international human rights standards,” it
said.
Also on Tuesday, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in
Washington issued a statement expressing alarm over the passage of the
LANGO and the conviction of the Freedom Park 11, saying the events
“raise serious questions about the government’s commitment to human
rights.”
“[Hun Sen’s] regime’s ongoing repression of those
exercising their legitimate and universally protected rights of free
speech and freedom of association is of continuing concern,” the
statement said.
The Commission called on Cambodia’s government to
honor its international and constitutional human rights obligations by
retracting the “unduly harsh and politically motivated” convictions of
the Freedom Park 11, and by withdrawing the LANGO.
There is no word to describe this mentally-ill Viet/Yuon's houseboy Phay Siphan!!!
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