Cambodia’s Rainsy to be charged with ‘treason’

PHNoM PENH: Cambodia’s exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy has committed treason by inciting soldiers to defy orders, Prime Minister Hun Sen said, and he will face new legal action over the comments.

The threat of more legal action against Sam Rainsy, who has lived in France since 2015 to avoid a series of convictions, comes weeks after a court dissolved his opposition party, removing any significant challenge to Hun Sen extending his decades-long rule in a general election next year.

The dissolution of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) has been condemned by the opposition, rights groups and some Western countries as the most serious blow to democracy since an international peace deal and UN-run elections in the early 1990s ended decades of war and genocide.

The United States has withdrawn an offer to help fund the election and the European Union has raised the possibility of withdrawing trade preferences.

Sam Rainsy, who stepped down as leader of the CNRP this year in what turned out to be a futile bid to forestall a ban on his party, suggested in a video posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday that soldiers would not obey orders to shoot civilians.

“Around the world, at any time, armed forces don’t obey orders given by dictators to kill people and we say that Hun Sen is not immortal, we must not protect Hun Sen,” Sam Rainsy told supporters in Paris.

Hun Sen, who has held power for more than 32 years, said the military would file a lawsuit in response.

“This is a treasonous crime, an incitement of soldiers to disobey orders,” Hun Sen told garment workers in Phnom Penh. — Reuters