Government Fires Back at Sonando Supporters

March 12, 2013
By Zsombor Peter
The Cambodia Daily

The government has accused the opposition and non-government groups of trampling on the country’s Constitution by criticizing independent radio station owner Mam Sonando’s conviction (sic!) for stoking an alleged insurrection and calling for his release.

The Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit issued the statement Friday, two days after the Appeal Court wrapped up hearings in Mr. Sonando’s appeal.

On October 1, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced the 72-year-old Beehive Radio station owner to 20 years in jail in a decision widely rebuked by rights groups as politically motivated and intended to stifle the voice of a pop­ular government critic. They criticized the trial for offering no evidence linking Mr. Sonando to the alleged crime other than the questionable testimony of some co-defendants who had their sentences suspended after implicating him.

But in Friday’s statement, Quick Reaction Unit vice president Tith Sothea insisted that Mr. Sonando was convicted “in conformity with the law” and in turn accused critics of trying to undermine those laws.

“After the handling [sic] out of the verdict and sentence, the opposition and civil societies immediately react against the government in violation of the rule of law that is identical to the act of burning or tearing down the Constitution of Cambodia,” he wrote.

“With deep intention to exploit the defendant for political benefit, the opposition party called the punishment of Mam Sonando, who has political alignment with the opposition party, and the punishment of other accused individuals as a political threat to the nation.”

Mr. Sothea went on to warn that thousands may have died had the alleged insurrection in a remote village in Kratie province been allowed to develop and spread.

“Critics had forgotten that if the rebellious group can expand and strengthen power and lead armed forces to revolt nationwide or to explode into war and bloodshed again, that would kill tens of thousands of people. And if the situation was to fall into this predicament, how do we solve it?” he asked.

“Based on the reaction from the group of people who sit above the law, it can be asked what they really want from Cambodia, whether they wanted to remove the legitimate prime minister through joining hands to lead uprising and revolution, or to abolish the judiciary, or to control the monarchy. The answer is that the court is an independent institution.”

Hundreds of soldiers and police raided Kratie province’s Broma village—where Mr. Sonando is supposed to have convinced villagers to take up arms against the government—in May on the grounds of having to remove the alleged re­bels. But rights groups dismissed it as an excuse for the government to evict hundreds of families who had merely been locked in a land dispute with a nearby rubber company.

The government claims that the villagers were armed with farming and hunting implements, but the only reported victim of the raid was a 14-year-old girl shot dead by security forces. The government decided not to investigate the death on the grounds that it was an “accident.”

Though Mr. Sothea endorsed the Municipal Court’s verdict in the statement, he rebuked others for offering up their own opinions.

“The choice to appeal or not is the decision of defense lawyer and his client who has agreed to follow the legal proceedings, and for that reason, no third party from outside should be allowed to express their reactions or exploiting the convicted individuals for gains of their own parties or groups,” he said.

Son Chhay, a lawmaker for the opposition SRP, said the party had every right to call for a political solution to what it deems a blatantly political conviction.

“Everyone knows Sonando has done nothing wrong. The government has the power to put him in prison; it also has the power to release him,” he said.

Mr. Chhay also said that if the government sees fit to rebuke the opposition and NGOs for commenting on the case, it ought also to admonish donor countries that have joined them.

U.S. President Barack Obama called Mr. Sonando a political prisoner and urged Prime Minister Hun Sen to release him during a visit here in November.

“They [the government] should also accuse Barack Obama, and also accuse the prime minister of France…. They can accuse the whole world, because what we see is Mam Sonando is a political prisoner,” he said, rejecting the Quick Reaction Unit’s claim that the SRP had something to gain politically by defending Mr. Sonando.

Yeng Virak, executive director of the Community Legal Education Center, a legal-aid NGO, said civil society groups also had a duty to speak out against perceived breaches of justice.

“We observe and we see that there is no grounds to imprison Mam Sonando,” he said. “That’s why we say that justice needs to be done. We see that justice is being abused and therefore we need to speak out.”

Mr. Virak also rejected the government’s claim that it had possibly prevented much bloodshed by thwarting the alleged rebellion before it could spread.

“It’s nonsense, because they failed to perform their duty from the first minute,” Mr. Virak said of the government. “This could be prevented from the first day by addressing the land problem, but all of them failed.”

In a bizarre twist to the case just before the appeal hearings ended Wednesday, prosecutor Hean Rith asked the court to drop the original charge of inciting antigovernment violence against Mr. Sonando yet to uphold the charge of leading an insurrection. He also asked the court to add a charge of clearing forestland for personal ownership.

The court is scheduled to announce its decision on Thursday.