Cambodian opposition leader convicted for Facebook post

By Lauren Crothers

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Cambodia’s exiled opposition leader and two aides were convicted in absentia Tuesday over a video that was posted to his Facebook page, and which has already seen one senator jailed.

Cambodia National Rescue Party President Sam Rainsy and two aides who help with the administration of his social media page were jailed for five years, according to The Cambodia Daily, in a case that was taken up against them after a video was shared by another politician on Rainsy’s Facebook wall.

In November, Hong Sok Hour, a senator for Rainsy’s eponymous former party, was jailed for seven years for posting a video clip that featured a copy of the 1979 border treaty between Cambodia and Vietnam, which had been altered.

Sok Hour was convicted of forging a public document and incitement to commit a crime based on the dissemination of the video.

Cambodia’s opposition has long claimed that neighboring Vietnam is encroaching onto Cambodian land, while the government insists on the accuracy of the demarcation between the countries.

Rainsy -- who has been in exile for more than a year to avoid imprisonment in another defamation case -- responded to the convictions Tuesday by accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen of running a “brutal dictatorship” in which the courts “do evil freely, with impunity”.

“The puppet court's decision against me and two of my colleagues today gives me more motivation and greater commitment in the struggle to bring about changes in a democratic manner in 2017 and 2018,” he said.

Commune elections are to be held next year, with national elections to follow in 2018.

Early Tuesday morning, Rainsy penned a Facebook post in which he predicted his prosecution alongside his two co-accused.

He said the document shared by Sok Hour “had one word mistranslated from Khmer to English and from English back to Khmer, with the verb ‘redefine’ becoming ‘dissolve’”.

In July, Rainsy was convicted of defaming National Assembly President Heng Samrin over a post he made on Facebook, in which Rainsy alleged Samrin’s post-Khmer Rouge regime sentenced the late King Norodom Sihanouk to death.