In this trading outpost on Thai border, CNRP sees an opportunity

Poipet problems shape race

PHSAR Trey is smack in the middle of Poipet town. The market is a warren of narrow alleys filled with vendors, shoppers and motodops going about their daily lives.

Vong Kimhong sits in her grocery store surrounded by boxes of sugary Thai drinks, detergent and crispy snacks. She’d hardly finished saying her husband just called when her phone rang: It was him again, calling from prison.

“Please send my message out to the people,” he said, his voice crackling over the cellphone.

Kimhong’s husband is Chao Veasna, the opposition CNRP’s second deputy chief of Poipet commune who has been in jail since February, when a two-year-old court case was resurrected relating to a 2015 protest at a local customs office.

Cross-border fees prompted porters to stage the protest, which soon turned violent, with protesters throwing bricks at the customs office and burning tyres, and Military Police retaliating by beat- ing them and firing shots in the air.

Veasna was blamed for inciting the rioters – an accusation he called “slander” at the time – but no arrest was made at the time. Two protesters later questioned over the violence CONTINUED

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