Cambodia lawmakers flee gov’t. crackdown

Two late-night text messages in an hour, one from sources in the military, the other from the cops, warned Cambodian opposition politician Mu Sochua her arrest was at hand.

The next day she bolted from the country, joining half of the kingdom’s opposition lawmakers in self-exile.

They have fled since September 3 when their party chief was arrested in the middle of the night by hundreds of officers, a dramatic escalation of a purge of rivals to Cambodia’s strongman premier Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest serving leaders.

“I don’t intend to be captured,” Mu Sochua told AFP from Bangkok, where she arrived on Tuesday and will stay before heading to Europe.

“I don’t intend to sit and wait for a kangaroo court to give us a trial that is a total joke.”

Through a mix of threats, harassment and legal entanglements, Hun Sen’s government has been clearing out critics ahead of key elections that will test the premier’s 32-year run.

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party ( CNRP) is in tatters, with more than 20 MPs skipping abroad in the past month after their stand-in leader Kem Sokha was locked up in a remote prison on dubious treason charges.

His arrest comes months after a series of legal convictions and new laws forced the party’s longtime frontman Sam Rainsy to step down.

Deputy party leader Mu Sochua is no stranger to intimidation.

The 63-year-old is a veteran of an opposition movement that has spent most of its time dodging Hun Sen’s machinations.

But the latest crackdown, she says, feels different.

“For the first time I felt unsafe. And politically speaking, this is the first time I felt we no longer have the possibility of a dialogue,” Mu Sochua told AFP, adding that police have been following the movements of her party’s members around the country.

“I didn’t want another leader caught, another voice being silenced. That left me with one choice only, which is to leave.”