UPDATED 7:55 a.m. — Din Varin, 48, was smashed in the head with a brick on Monday morning outside a Phnom Penh market and rushed to the hospital. One day after the attack, nearby vendors said they were still shocked, saying they knew the organic vegetable vendor as a gentle and quiet seller but knew nothing of alleged political activities.
Two opposition officials were arrested for insulting the king on Sunday, as the Information Ministry revealed it had recorded 145 cases of insults, fake news and messages that “polluted society” in just one month, both online and elsewhere.
Last week’s arrest of a former opposition commune councilor stems from a 6-year-old complaint filed by timber baron Try Pheap, a human rights group said.
Cambodia is down to five active cases of Covid-19 with no reported deaths, but even as the disease fades from public consciousness, members of the banned opposition CNRP who posted about coronavirus on Facebook remain in jail.
A former opposition commune councilor in Pursat province was arrested on Tuesday over an old warrant related to the clearing of forests, police said.
A 15-year-old boy who illegally entered the outlawed CNRP’s former headquarters over the weekend was released by authorities on Tuesday morning after questioning.
Lawyers for former CNRP president Kem Sokha have applied to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to resume his trial, more than six months after it was suspended out of concerns for Covid-19.
Tbong Khmum police brought in three residents for questioning on Saturday over a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: “Thank you for peace, but respect Article 2 of the Constitution.”
A woman protesting the jailing of her husband, an ex-opposition official, filed a court complaint on Friday alleging attempted murder by a Phnom Penh security guard who threw her to the ground during a demonstration earlier this month.
Human rights groups on Wednesday criticized the Tbong Khmum court’s decision to bar rights monitors, reporters and even some family members from the sentencing of seven ex-CNRP officials the day before, while a defense lawyer did not attend the hearing.
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