Arrested in September 2017, Kem Sokha was accused of wanting to overthrow the Cambodian government of Hun Sen, prime minister in power for decades. More than five years later, the verdict is in. The 69-year-old opposition leader was sentenced Friday, March 3, to 27 years in prison “for collusion with foreigners in Cambodia and elsewhere,” Judge Koy Sao told the Phnom Penh court.
After the verdict, Kem Sokha was immediately taken from the courtroom to his home, where he will be under house arrest and prohibited from meeting anyone except his family members. He has one month to appeal the conviction and jail term, Ang Udom, one of his lawyers, told reporters.
An opposition figure and co-founder of the now dissolved Cambodia National Salvation Party (PSNC), Kem Sokha has always contested the charges. The court also stripped him of the right to vote and barred him from running for political office, which bars him from contesting the July 23 national ballot.
A dragging trial
“I cannot accept this judgment,” Kem Sokha supporter Chea Samuon told Agence France-Presse (AFP) outside the courtroom. “It’s very unfair to him and to the people. He’s not guilty, it’s political pressure.”
Kem Sohka’s trial illustrated the “frightening problem of state control over the judiciary in the country”, said Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, Chak Sopheap.
The United States reacted quickly through the voice of its ambassador to Cambodia, present in court. Kem Sokha’s trial and conviction are based on a “fabricated conspiracy” and constitute a “miscarriage of justice”, W. Patrick Murphy told reporters. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Kem Sokha in Phnom Penh in August, said he was “disappointed” with the length of the “politically motivated” legal proceedings. Kem Sokha’s trial has dragged on, in part due to coronavirus restrictions which caused hearings to be postponed for almost two years, until the resumption in January 2022.
Decline in individual freedoms
Critics say Hun Sen – in power since 1985, is Asia’s longest-serving leader – has rolled back democratic freedoms, and Sokha’s sentencing is part of the regime’s crackdown on Israel. against dissenting voices, some of whom had to flee the kingdom for fear of being arrested and prosecuted. Last year, dozens of opponents, some linked to the PSNC, such as its former leader Sam Rainsy, who has lived in exile in France since 2015, were sentenced to prison terms in two mass trials denounced by the International community.
The PSNC had made a breakthrough in the 2013 elections, winning 55 seats out of 123, before being dissolved four years later by the country’s Supreme Court. In the ballot that followed, in 2018, Hun Sen’s party won all the seats in Parliament, results hotly contested.
In the absence of visible opposition, the Cambodian leader, a former Khmer Rouge fighter who dissented from the movement, who rose through the ranks during the occupation of Cambodia by Vietnam, is heading at 70 for another landslide victory in the legislative elections of July.
The closure deemed arbitrary of one of the last independent media in the kingdom, Voice of Democracy, in mid-February, has revived concerns about the holding of free and fair elections.