US raises alarm over Cambodia opposition crackdown

Daily Mail | 13 November 2015

The United States expressed alarm about the political crisis in Cambodia on Friday and urged the authorities to drop charges against opposition leader Sam Rainsy.

A Cambodian court issued an arrest warrant against Rainsy over an unserved defamation sentence Friday, in what many saw as a power play by Prime Minister Hun Sen's supporters.

This came after Hun Sen threatened Rainsy with legal action for urging the international community to pressure him to exit the office he has held for more than three decades.

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Cambodia's main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party president Sam Rainsy arrives at a conference room to speak to the press in Tokyo on November 10, 2015 ©Yoshikazu Tsuno (AFP/File)

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the deteriorating political climate in Cambodia "includes assaults against two opposition lawmakers and now the arrest warrant against opposition leader Sam Rainsy."

"The timing of these charges gives the appearance of undue political influence in the judicial process.

"More broadly the pattern of actions against the opposition suggest a return to the harsh political practices and tactics that the Cambodian people have made make clear they no longer want," he told reporters in Washington.

Rainsy was sentenced for defamation in a 2011 case, while he was living outside Cambodia, for accusing the country's foreign minister of being a former Khmer Rouge member.

It was one of a string of convictions against the opposition leader, the main challenge to Hun Sen's powerful grip over the country.

Rainsy insists the convictions were politically motivated and he returned to Cambodia ahead of 2013 elections only after receiving a royal pardon.