A tuk-tuk driver has been arrested in Kandal province for allegedly distributing pamphlets to neighbors that contained death threats against Prime Minister Hun Sen, though his wife said he had mental issues and was not politically involved.
Khat Soeun said her husband, Pav Ravy, 46, was arrested earlier this month after distributing pamphlets around their village in Khsach Kandal district’s Sithor commune.
He was a tuk-tuk driver in Phnom Penh and also had mental problems — taking medication prescribed by the Khmer-Soviet hospital for about five years, she said. He was not involved with any political party, she said.
“He wrote this and that, but I do not know what words he wrote. He gave it to the people in the village to see, and then the police came and arrested him,” Soeun said. “Please help my husband. He is in prison. Please help to release my husband. I have nothing now. I don’t even have money to buy food.”
Commune police chief Khem Suy said the pamphlets were incriminating. “The serious one was the threat to kill Samdech Hun Sen. And another thing he wrote is that he is a Sam Rainsy Party activist.”
Sam Rainsy is a prominent opposition leader living in exile in France.
According to a report from Kandal provincial authorities, Ravy was arrested on August 5 and sent to the Kandal Provincial Court on August 7 for “incitement to disturb social security.” He is in pretrial detention at the Kandal Provincial Prison.
In a separate case, a Preah Sihanouk man was arrested this week over a TikTok tirade claiming that officials who do not support Prime Minister Hun Sen’s son taking power had died from being injected with vaccines.
Huoth Vicheat, spokesperson for provincial prosecutors, said Van Chandy, 31, was being questioned for incitement to disturb social security following his arrest on Monday evening. “The prosecutors are questioning him now,” Vicheat said on Wednesday.
Chandy’s TikTok video raves against Hun Sen and his family, saying the prime minister “secretly signed a contract with the Chinese to protect his son’s power.”
“The one who does not support his son, they have been injected to die, and a few officials have died,” says the video, which was still online on TikTok as of Wednesday.
(Translated and edited from the original article on VOD Khmer)
