Tbong Khmum, the nation’s youngest province, has faced a sharp crackdown against opposition supporters in the last several months, with at least nine activists in jail. But family members of imprisoned CNRP supporters say they will not be silenced.
In another case of violence against people linked to the upended opposition CNRP, a Phnom Penh activist was surrounded by four men at a Chroy Changva market and beaten with metal rods in broad daylight.
Defense lawyers for nine senior opposition leaders gave conflicting closing statements on Tuesday, with a Bar Association-appointed lawyer requesting a minimum sentence — due to defendants’ age and inability to carry out their plans — as if they had pleaded guilty.
Six case files against 153 CNRP defendants, split into four trials, make up a web of ongoing prosecutions against the outlawed opposition’s senior leaders and grassroots supporters.
A general contractor in Texas who has never set foot in Cambodia is among more than a dozen foreign citizens called up to a mass trial of the banned main opposition party. Their experiences suggest Thai authorities supplied a Cambodian court with their names.
The Phnom Penh court on Thursday sought ways to streamline the mass trial of more than 130 opposition supporters in the face of missed names, crammed-in defendants and complaints that the accused had no information about what they were accused of.
After three years without a viable political opposition, politicians who stand apart or have broken from the outlawed main opposition party say the old vehicle of the CNRP should be left aside to give people with grievances a chance to participate in politics again.
Authorities claiming to be looking for weapons thwarted a small handful of supporters of the banned opposition CNRP from gathering outside the party’s former headquarters in Phnom Penh on Monday, the three-year anniversary of its dissolution.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has released on bail a former CNRP public affairs officer accused of “plotting” after an investigating judge placed him under court supervision, a court spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Police arrested another ex-CNRP activist on Sunday, accusing party vice president Mu Sochua’s former assistant of collecting money from abroad to fund a local movement to overthrow the government.
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