Youth activists who were charged with incitement over their participation in protests for the release of jailed unionist Rong Chhun defended their innocence in their second trial hearing on Tuesday, saying their actions amounted to freedom of expression.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday denied bail to five members of activist group Khmer Thavrak and two members of the Khmer Student Intelligent League Association, as the defendants urged that they had already been in jail for as long as nine months.
Amid denials of links to various politicians and opposition figures, one activist on trial at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday for incitement spoke of receiving a $1,000 donation for office rent from a Cambodian-Australian MP who is also a defendant in the case.
A jailed Mother Nature environmentalist and Khmer Thavrak activist appeared at the Appeal Court on Tuesday, where a judge denied requests to drop their cases or grant bail, while three female activists from the groups were unable to attend due to flooding in their prison.
Khmer Thavrak started from a core group of about 30 activists in January, Metta explained, with small groups of four or five people sporadically joining over the past nine months. She too joined that way: Metta worked as a chef in a Kratie restaurant, and later in a Chinese restaurant in Phnom Penh, but she was always following social issues in the news.
A group of four Khmer Thavrak protesters believed their tuk-tuk was being tailed by police and asked the driver to make random turns before heading to a U.N. office for help. Eventually, one of the four was arrested outside her home, another member said.
Three activists — including a monk — were arrested over two days at a series of small protests ongoing in Phnom Penh, with the Interior Ministry ordering action against two groups “causing chaos in society.”
The youth activist group that has been largely driving this month’s protests in support of unionist Rong Chhun will again attempt to hold a demonstration against the arrests of government critics — including two of its members now in jail — early next month.
Six youth activists have been rounded up and arrested hours after rallying for detained unionist Rong Chhun, including a young woman dragged by her hair into a vehicle from outside a cafe.
Heng Sreynop says she lives in a red zone in Thailand, and fears Covid-19. She says she understands why the borders need to be closed, but it adds to the pressure. “If we wanted to escape, we couldn’t escape. We don’t know where to escape.”
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