[Vietnamization] Courts Issues Fresh Summons for Cambodian Opposition Leader

The latest summons comes on a complaint that Rainsy defamed Heng Samrin — a political ally of Hun Sen — by claiming that while Cambodia's president from 1979 to 1992, he accused the country's royal leader, Norodom Sihanouk, of being a traitor.

Courts Issues Fresh Summons for Cambodian Opposition Leader

ABC News / AP | 2 December 2015

A Cambodian [kangaroo] court has issued a summons for opposition leader Sam Rainsy to hear defamation charges, adding to legal troubles that already include another summons and an arrest warrant.

Rainsy has been in self-imposed exile since mid-November, when an order for his arrest was issued on an old conviction for defaming Cambodia's foreign minister. He also was expelled by the ruling party-dominated National Assembly, losing his parliamentary immunity. It had been generally assumed that the conviction, carrying a two-year prison sentence, had been lifted by a 2013 pardon.

Lawyer Ky Tech said Wednesday that he filed a defamation complaint against Rainsy on behalf of the National Assembly president, Heng Samrin.

Rainsy's supporters believe his legal problems are orchestrated by Prime Minister Hun Sen in response to the opposition's growing political strength. In a Facebook posting Tuesday, Rainsy said that "the Cambodian authorities use a well-oiled machinery of justice for political purposes."

The cases against Rainsy, along with other attacks on the opposition, represent the end of a political truce Hun Sen reached with the opposition in 2014 to end a parliamentary boycott. The opposition had accused Hun Sen's party of stealing the 2013 general election.

All opposition members of the National Assembly were absent Monday in a new boycott when debate began on next year's national budget. They are demanding that Hun Sen meet with Rainsy.

The mid-November arrest warrant has to do with Rainsy's allegations in 2008 that Foreign Minister Hor Namhong had been a collaborator with the Khmer Rouge when he was in one of their prison camps in the 1970s.

In late November, a summons was issued for Rainsy to hear charges of falsifying public documents, using fake documents and inciting social unrest. It apparently relates to Facebook postings by a fellow member of his Cambodia National Rescue Party of mistranslated documents about the border with Vietnam.

Rainsy's party has been making political inroads this year by highlighting what it says is the loss of national territory to neighboring Vietnam, Cambodia's traditional enemy. The government responded by pursuing cases in court against its critics, with harsh sentences handed down in questionable proceedings.

The latest summons comes on a complaint that Rainsy defamed Heng Samrin — a political ally of Hun Sen — by claiming that while Cambodia's president from 1979 to 1992, he accused the country's royal leader, Norodom Sihanouk, of being a traitor.

Sihanouk, who was ousted as the nation's neutralist leader by a pro-American coup in 1970, had cooperated with the communist Khmer Rouge in toppling those who had ousted him, but then was held prisoner by his erstwhile allies during their bloody reign of terror over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Other recent moves against the opposition include the brutal beatings of CNRP lawmakers by members of a pro-government mob, and the removal of CNRP deputy leader Kem Sokha from his post as vice president of the National Assembly by a vote of the government's Cambodian People's Party majority.