Oath water drinking ritual points to widespread CPP vote buying, and villagers contempt to such practice

Human rights organization calls for an end to the forcing of villagers to drink oath water

26 May 2007
By Sav Yuth
Radio Free Asia (a station labeled insolent by Hun Sen)
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

A human rights organization plans to send a letter to ask for intervention from the Siem Reap provincial governor, asking him to put to an end the practice of forcing villagers to drink “oath water” to show their support for a political party in all the villages of the province of Siem Reap.

The reaction from the human rights organization came on the heel of an investigation at the Svay Sor commune, Varin district, where almost 100 villagers from 3 villages were forced by their village and commune chiefs to support the CPP by continually drinking oath water starting from 19 May until now.

Suon Narin, the Adhoc facilitator in Siem Reap province, said in the afternoon of Friday 25 May that the human rights organization is concerned about the upcoming 2008 general election if the population are bring forced (to pledge their allegiance to a political party) since now already.

Suon Narin said: “If they take this action, we have concerns that, for the upcoming 2008 general election, there will be irregularities because people fear due to the threats.”

A villager from O village, Svay Sor commune, who is one among the many who drank oath water said that he was forced by his group chief to drink oath water, and he was very scared about this issue. “They call us in to drink (the oath water), they are concerned that we are not faithful, that we do not want to vote for them. They pour water in a cup, they put in a small statue of Buddha (in the cup), they told us to drink. We are concerned, but we don’t know what to do, so I drank…”

The commune and village authorities recognized that they did indeed call the villagers to come in and drink the oath water because there is a disparity between the number of people receiving gifts and the number of votes the CPP received during the recent commune election.

Prang Chheun, the Svay Sor commune chief, said that he was the one who came up with this idea, and he did not receive any order from anybody else. He said that this stems from the fact that the CPP have 1,800 adherents in the commune, however, during the April commune election, the CPP received 700 votes less than the number of (alleged) party members.