CAMBODIA: Government Pulls Out Legal Weapons Against Dissent

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PHNOM PENH, (IPS) - These are tough times to be either a journalist or an opposition politician in Cambodia.

That is because the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen is cracking down on both the opposition-aligned media and politicians from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP).

In June, an editor of a newspaper affiliated with the SRP was jailed for a year for publishing a story the government objected to. The publisher of the newspaper ‘Moneaksekar Khmer', was told this month that he would be sued after publishing a series of articles that the prosecutor said was designed to sow conflict between government ministers.

On the political front, two opposition members of parliament were stripped of their immunity and are being sued. Their lawyer recently quit their cases and the SRP and crossed over to the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) after being told he would be sued.

Two other opposition MPs have been told they could have their immunity taken away too. Two NGOs have also received threats of lawsuits.

There are fears that this South-east Asian country's democracy is under threat as the CPP -- which won more than two-thirds of the seats in the 2008 general election and which controls all the organs of state and the judiciary û moves against dissenters.

”We are being treated like the enemies of the state. It's a crisis in this country,” veteran opposition MP Son Chhay said.

But government spokesman Phay Siphan says the government is simply using the courts to target those people it considers to be spreading disinformation or threatening the country's stability.

”According to the Constitution, everyone has the right to say anything they like,” Phay Siphan said. ”But the Constitution prescribes clearly that (people may not) abuse other people's rights. So the government has to protect that.”

That is cold comfort to local and international observers such as Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, both of which have issued statements expressing concern about recent events. Human Rights Watch country specialist Sara Colm says recent events are a matter of ”extreme concern”.

”To have all of these different sectors of society effectively silenced is definitely a step backwards for the whole democratic process in Cambodia,” Colm said, adding that the right to express views critical of the government is being eroded. ”It's a very worrying trend in Cambodia to see lawsuits filed and even criminal charges levied against people for simply doing their jobs.”

In the legal action against the media, some noted that the prosecutors are using a law that allows journalists to be jailed for what they write. That is what has happened with Hang Chakra, the editor who in June began a one- year jail term after his newspaper ran a series of articles reporting that a senior government minister's staff had committed corrupt acts.

But the law the government ought to use in such cases is the 1995 Press Law, critics say. Local human rights group Licadho says the Press Law's provisions do not permit the jailing of media professionals found to have breached its provisions. It states that ”no person shall be arrested or subject to criminal charges as a result of expression of opinion”.

So why did the government prosecutor use the older law in the case against Hang Chakra? Phay Siphan says that is a question for the prosecutor, not the government, to answer. But, he says, the information minister has recently said that he does not want to see media workers jailed for what they publish.

To critics, the CPP, which has never been known for being tolerant of criticism, has become even more thin-skinned lately.

”We totally 100 percent accept that criticism,” Phay Siphan insisted. ”But insulting û no. And misleading û no. Freedom of expression is different from insulting and misleading.” He maintains that the government is simply balancing the right of expression against its duty to maintain law and order. It is ”concerned about national security too'”, he added.

At the SRP headquarters, opposition MP Son Chhay believes there are a number of reasons for the government's action against critics. First, the ruling party is worried about the social unrest that the effects of the global economic crisis could spark among younger Cambodians who are hard put finding jobs. Second, he says, there is dissatisfaction within the CPP over what critics call Hun Sen's autocratic style.

Son Chhay says Cambodia risks a reversal in its young democracy. To avoid that, he says donor nations, which pledged more than 950 U.S. million dollars to the Cambodian government this year, should pressure the government into making reforms.

”We don't want to live lives like the North Korean people û we have suffered enough,” he said of the kingdom's traumatic decades of war and the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge.

But the government's actions seem to be making many cautious about criticising it, for fear of being sued for disinformation, defamation or incitement. Son Chhay admits that official intimidation has led the opposition to conclude that these are bad times to speak out.

”We have no alternative,” he said. ”I think we will quiet down for a while. We are not going to speak too much. We are not going to raise the issue of corruption. We are not going to speak about landgrabbing. We are not going to talk about the corrupt court system.”

It does not help that the judiciary is not entirely independent, which is why the government wins its court cases, he adds.

This explains why the publisher of ‘Moneaksekar Khmer' tried to resolve his case as he did. Days after being told he would be sued for incitement and disinformation, Dam Sith wrote a grovelling letter of apology to Hun Sen begging forgiveness.

But in Dam Sith's defence, he has seen what happens when the media and the CPP collide. Last year, Dam was jailed for a week for publishing a story that offended the foreign minister. Shortly before the 2008 general election, one of his journalists was shot dead û the tenth to be murdered since 1993. None of those murder cases has been solved, and they are unlikely to be.

In his letter, Dam Sith told the prime minister that he would cease publishing his newspaper if Hun Sen saw to it that the court case was dropped. The government lawyer who filed the case told the English-language ‘Phnom Penh Post' on Jul. 10 that Hun Sen had instructed him to withdraw the complaints against Dam Sith.

The result is that the country's non-CPP media just became even weaker. Licadho's annual media report shows that the CPP effectively controls all eight of the nation's TV stations, most of its radio stations, and by far the majority of the Khmer-language newspapers.