Chea Mony, President of FTUWKC, and brother of slain Chea Vichea (Photo: RFA)17 Nov 2006
By Pov Ponlok
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy
Chea Mony, President of the Free Trade Union of Workers in the Kingdom of Cambodia, had sent a letter on Friday to Mrs. Ly Vuoch Leng, President of the appeal court, to request a new hearing for the murder case of Chea Vichea.
In this letter, Chea Vichea demanded for the court to find justice for Chea Vichea, his family, and the workers, as well as providing justice to Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn who are currently in jail and whom a witness claimed they are not killers of Chea Vichea.
Chea Vichea told RFA: “We focus our attention on Mrs. Var Sothy, she is an important witness who personally saw the murder of Chea Vichea. She wrote a letter from Bangkok stating that Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn are not the killers, that’s one point. Secondly, during his incarceration in Malaysia, Heng Pov answered through the press that Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn are not the killers also. When he was the Phnom Penh municipal police chief, Heng Pov was in charge of the Chea Vichea murder file. Therefore, we want the appeal court to hold a hearing for the release of Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn, if they are involved in the murder. We want the court to find the culprits and those who back the killing of Chea Vichea.
Chea Mony added that if the Cambodian court is independent and not corrupt, the victims will necessarily find justice: “If the court is independent, if it is not corrupt, I am confident that it will release Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn, and it will find the killers of Chea Vichea, as well as those who are behind the murder.”
In this letter, Chea Vichea demanded for the court to find justice for Chea Vichea, his family, and the workers, as well as providing justice to Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn who are currently in jail and whom a witness claimed they are not killers of Chea Vichea.
Chea Vichea told RFA: “We focus our attention on Mrs. Var Sothy, she is an important witness who personally saw the murder of Chea Vichea. She wrote a letter from Bangkok stating that Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn are not the killers, that’s one point. Secondly, during his incarceration in Malaysia, Heng Pov answered through the press that Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn are not the killers also. When he was the Phnom Penh municipal police chief, Heng Pov was in charge of the Chea Vichea murder file. Therefore, we want the appeal court to hold a hearing for the release of Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn, if they are involved in the murder. We want the court to find the culprits and those who back the killing of Chea Vichea.
Chea Mony added that if the Cambodian court is independent and not corrupt, the victims will necessarily find justice: “If the court is independent, if it is not corrupt, I am confident that it will release Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeurn, and it will find the killers of Chea Vichea, as well as those who are behind the murder.”
1 comment:
The Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun case looks more like the Dreyfus Affair in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Please see the Dreyfus Affair below. LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Dreyfus Affair
Dreyfus Affair , the controversy that occurred with the treason conviction (1894) of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), a French general staff officer.
The Case
The case arose when a French spy in the German embassy discovered a handwritten bordereau [schedule], received by Major Max von Schwartzkoppen, German military attaché in Paris, which listed secret French documents. The French army, at this time the stronghold of monarchists and Catholics and permeated by anti-Semitism, attempted to ferret out the traitor. Suspicion fell on Dreyfus, a wealthy Alsatian Jew, while the press raised accusations of Jewish treason. He was tried in camera by a French court-martial, convicted, and sentenced to degradation and deportation for life. He was sent to Devils Island, off the coast of French Guiana, for solitary confinement. Dreyfus protested his innocence, but public opinion generally applauded the conviction, and interest in the case lapsed.
The Controversy
The matter flared up again in 1896 and soon divided Frenchmen into two irreconcilable factions. In 1896 Col. Georges Picquart , chief of the intelligence section, discovered evidence indicating Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy , who was deep in debt, as the real author of the bordereau. Picquart was silenced by army authorities, but in 1897 Dreyfus's brother, Mathieu, made the same discovery and increased pressure to reopen the case. Esterhazy was tried (Jan., 1898) by a court-martial and acquitted in a matter of minutes.
Émile Zola , a leading supporter of Dreyfus, promptly published an open letter ( J'accuse ) to the president of the French republic, Félix Faure, accusing the judges of having obeyed orders from the war office in their acquittal of Esterhazy. Zola was tried for libel and sentenced to jail, but he escaped to England. By this time the case had become a major political issue and was fully exploited by royalist, militarist, and nationalist elements on the one hand and by republican, socialist, and anticlerical elements on the other.
The violent partisanship dominated French life for a decade. Among the anti-Dreyfusards were the anti-Semite Édouard Drumont ; Paul Déroulède, who founded a patriotic league; and Maurice Barrès . The pro-Dreyfus faction, which steadily gained strength, came to include Georges Clemenceau , in whose paper Zola's letter appeared, Jean Jaurès , René Waldeck-Rousseau , Anatole France , Charles Péguy , and Joseph Reinach . They were, in part, less personally concerned with Dreyfus, who remained in solitary confinement on Devils Island, than with discrediting the rightist government.
Pardon and Aftermath
Later in 1898 it was discovered that much of the evidence against Dreyfus had been forged by Colonel Henry of army intelligence. Henry committed suicide (Aug., 1898), and Esterhazy fled to England. At this point revision of Dreyfus's sentence had become imperative. The case was referred to an appeals court in September and after Waldeck-Rousseau became premier in 1899, the court of appeals ordered a new court-martial. There was worldwide indignation when the military court, unable to admit error, found Dreyfus guilty with extenuating circumstances and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
Nonetheless, a pardon was issued by President Émile Loubet, and in 1906 the supreme court of appeals exonerated Dreyfus, who was reinstated as a major and decorated with the Legion of Honor. In 1930 his innocence was reaffirmed by the publication of Schwartzkoppen's papers. The immediate result of the Dreyfus Affair was to unite and bring to power the French political left wing. Widespread antimilitarism and anticlericalism also ensued; army influence declined, and in 1905 Church and state were separated in France.
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