05 August 2007By Keo Nimol
Radio Free AsiaTranslated from Khmer by Socheata10 Khmer Kampuchea Krom associations met in Phnom Penh on 04 August and they issued a petition demanding that the former abbot of Phnom Den North pagoda be sent back to Cambodia because Khmer Krom people jailed in Vietnam usually suffer severe torture.
Kim Van Chheng, the director of the facilitating committee for Khmer Kampuchea Krom who met with all 10 Khmer Krom associations in Phnom Penh, declared: “First we will issue a statement condemning the arrest made by the Vietnamese authority against Monk Tim Sakhorn, claiming that he illegally crossed the border to enter Vietnam, that’s a first step. In a second step, we will send a letter to Hor Nam Hong, the foreign affairs minister, asking him to review this case, in order to have Vietnam send Monk Tim Sakhorn back to Cambodia.”
He added that, in the past, Khmer Krom people who are jailed in Vietnam, suffered severe torture: “They (Vietnamese) will do anything so that when he get out of there (Vietnamese jail), his state of mind would no longer be normal anymore.”
Regarding the problem the Vietnamese authority arresting Monk Tim Sakhorn, the abbot of Phnom Den North pagoda, Monk Yoeung Sin, the representative of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Monks Association, said that the fact that the information indicates that Abbot Tim Sakhorn is currently jailed by Vietnam, also shed some light to this case.
Yoeung Sin: “The knowledge of this information is also a relief, so that his family is not scared, and his family can have some confidence back.”
Keo Nimol: “Venerable, could there be other Khmer Krom people who are afraid that the Vietnamese authority would force Monk Tim Sakhorn to make false confessions?
Yoeung Sin: “This is a concern also, some are scared and they already fled.”
Trinh Ba Cam, spokesman for the Vietnamese embassy, could not be reached on 04 August regarding the accusation made against the former abbot of the Phnom Den North pagoda.
Monk Tim Sakhorn was defrocked on 30 June 2007, he was accused of undermining the friendship between Cambodia and Vietnam, and of using the pagoda to distribute political documents to oppose Vietnam.
Following his defrocking, he was whisked away by armed men, and disappeared. An official from the ministry of interior indicated that Monk Tim Sakhorn asked to return back to live in Vietnam. On 01 August, the Voice of Vietnam reported that the Vietnamese police arrested Monk Tim Sakhorn and accused him of illegal migrations in and out of Vietnam, and the Vietnamese authority arrested him based on Article 87 of the Vietnamese penal code by accusing him of sabotaging the Vietnamese unification policy, he must face justice in Vietnam.
