KI-Media News Brief
The Takeo provincial monk chief denied that he was the one who defrocked Monk Tim Sakhorn. He said that a monk who is an advisor of the Buddhist patriarch came over from Phnom Penh, accompanied by bodyguards, the advisor-monk asked to use the pagoda to perform the defrocking ritual on Monk Tim Sakhorn, and after that, Monk Tim Sakhorn was whisked away. Moto doop drivers reported to a Sralanh Khmer reporter that they witnessed the car transporting defrocked Khmer Krom monk Tim Sakhorn took him across the border into Vietnam on that same day he was defrocked. Khieu Sopheak, the spokesman of the Ministry of Interior, told The Cambodia Daily on Monday, that Monk Tim Sakhorn was sent to Vietnam after he was defrocked. Khieu Sopheak said that the law “allegedly” requires that Cambodia expel Monk Tim Sakhorn out of the country, but that Monk Tim Sakhorn requested that he be deported to his hometown in Vietnam, although Khieu Sopheak couldn’t tell where in Vietnam the hometown of Monk Tim Sakhorn is located. Human rights officials expressed doubts about Monk Tim Sakhorn’s voluntary request for deportation to Vietnam. The car transporting Monk Tim Sakhorn was later spotted parked in front of the Kirivong district police chief on 01 July. When a Sralanh Khmer reporter approached the police station to try to meet the police chief, several police officers were seen immediately taking off from the police station by motorcycles.
