Pacific Daily Newshttp://www.guampdn.com/
May 13, 2009
Our comfort and complacency about our civil rights at a time when vigilance, rather than polished political rhetoric, is needed to protect those values can result in those rights being diminished.
Hear what 18th century Irish statesman Edmund Burke once said, "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
President Abraham Lincoln said, "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
And a Holocaust survivor said, "Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies."
They, among many others, knew what they were talking about.
In my column of May 6, I wrote about a Khmer woman, Mu Sochua, 55, a mother of three and member of the Cambodian parliament, who filed a lawsuit against Premier Hun Sen for "defamation" because of Sen's scurrilous references to her in a nationally broadcast speech on April 4.
Sochua claimed that Sen's comments were directed at her. Although she was not named, the circumstances and references he made in his speech were so specific that they could refer only to her.
On April 23, flanked by her lawyer, Kong Sam Onn, Sochua announced she was suing the premier for 13 cents and a public retraction of his comments.
I wondered in my column whether Sochua was "foolhardy" to confront a strongman who controls all branches of government in a country where "disappearances" and "accidents" are routine, and I reported Sen's countersuit against Sochua for $2,500 for her alleged "defamation" of him.
In a speech at a graduation ceremony, Sen, who has an honorary doctorate from the University of Hanoi, announced he was not only suing Sochua, but both, "a lady and her lawyer," for $ 2,500 each for "defamation" when Sochua and her lawyer announced the lawsuit.
As if to confirm how words flow through Sen's mouth with no restraint, it was reported by multiple sources that, "The premier also referred to the 'lady' in question as 'stupid' and called on the National Assembly to lift her parliamentary immunity."
"To strip her immunity, 'it is as easy as ABC,' the prime minister said," according to reporters. They added that Sen said "it was highly unlikely that (Sen's) own immunity would also be taken away. ... I do not believe that (Cambodian People's Party) lawmakers will suspend my immunity." A Phnom Penh daily newspaper reported that Sen said neither his countersuit nor his April 4 speech was "an affront to women."
The political leader said because he never mentioned Sochua by name, the latter's lawsuit is a defamation, hence, his countersuit against Sochua and her lawyer for defaming him.
"I shall walk to prison, if that is what justice is about in Cambodia," the newspaper reported Sochua as having said.
Meanwhile, the May 6 Phnom Penh Post reported that Sen's lawyer, Ky Tech, said he "filed a complaint with the Bar Association. ... If the Bar's disciplinary council finds (Sochua's lawyer, Kong Sam Onn) was at fault, he will be stripped of his license to practice, and Mu Sochua will need to find another lawyer to take on her case."
The Post reported, "Ky Tech said Kong Sam Onn was at fault because of statements he made when outlining his client's case at an April 23 press conference called by Mu Sochua."
Whoa, a lawyer is at fault for "outlining the case made by a client? You bet.
Bar President Chiv Songhak said Ky Tech's complaint was now before the disciplinary council, and Kong Sam Onn could receive a warning, have his license suspended or be disbarred.
Guess what? Ky Tech was the Bar Association's former president, and Hun Sen is a lifetime member of the association. The May 8 Daily quoted the premier's lawyer as having told the deputy prosecutor at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court: "I asked the prosecutor to punish (Sochua and her lawyer) according to the law."
The Daily summarized the two lawsuits: "Mr. Hun Sen's case was filed in response to Ms. Mu Sochua's, essentially claiming that she had defamed him by claiming that he had defamed her."
Lest anyone forgets, in this era of technological progress, what Premier Sen said in his nationally broadcast public speech of April 4 was video-recorded. No court of law anywhere in the civilized world would find it simple to dismiss Sochua's case against the premier.
What's dangerous for the rule of law is what can be read online in a comment on the May 6 Post: "In Cambodia, when you want to sue a powerful man like PM Hun Sen, not only may you lose the case, but your lawyer will probably be disbarred and explicitly intimidated."
The late U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy said, "It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope."
And the winner of Nobel Peace Prize and Gandhi Peace Prize, African spiritual leader Bishop Desmond Tutu's famous words: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
Justice begs for rights-loving people's action.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
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