A leading Cambodian opposition politician has been sentenced to two years in prison and banned from politics for life after being convicted of the crime of “inciting social unrest.”
Sun Chanthy, 44, the former president of the Nation Power Party (NPP), was convicted by judges at Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 4 million riel ($994) and was stripped of his right to vote or run for office in any future election.
Chanthy was arrested at Phnom Penh International Airport in May after he returned from meeting Cambodian overseas workers in Japan, the local human rights group Licadho reported at the time. The charge was connected to criticisms that he posted on social media of the government’s policy on issuing “poverty cards,” which allow poor Cambodians to receive free medical treatment and other welfare benefits. In a statement at the time, the Ministry of Justice said that Chanthy had “twisted information” to suggest that the cards would only be available to those who join the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).
Rong Chhun, a longtime nationalist and labor rights activist who is an advisor to the NPP, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) that the court’s decision was “based on political influence.“ He added, ”Those who are being jailed in Cambodia are those who want to restore Cambodia’s reputation and respect of human rights and democracy.”
Chanthy’s lawyer Choung Choungy said that the punishment was severe and that his client’s comments were intended as “constructive criticism for the development.” But for Prime Minister Hun Manet’s government, which views any dissent as a sign of subversion – even as an incipient stirring of “color revolution” – “constructive criticism” is a contradiction in terms. For nearly a decade, the CPP government, with growing diplomatic and economic backing from China, has steadily constricted the bounds of acceptable political discourse. During that time, it has attempted to oppress, divide, and demoralize the Cambodian opposition, which has long ceased to pose much of a political challenge.
Sun Chanthy was one of the co-founders of the NPP, which was formed in October 2023 as a de facto successor to the Candlelight Party, which was arbitrarily excluded from participating in the national election in July of that year. While the Candlelight Party still exists, many of the party’s senior leadership have since migrated to the NPP, whose logo – an illuminated lightbulb – was intended as an “upgrade” on the Candlelight Party’s eponymous emblem.
The Candlelight Party had itself attempted to take up the mantle of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was dissolved by the courts in late 2017 after strong performances in the national election of 2013 and the commune elections in 2017. However, its emergence in late 2021 opened up a latent divide between supporters of Sam Rainsy, the grey eminence of the Cambodian opposition, with whom the Candlelight Party is closely associated, and Kem Sokha, who is currently serving a lengthy term of house arrest on flimsy treason charges.
Despite the steady diminution of the power of the Cambodian opposition, which is now divided between the NPP and the Candlelight Party, and various other political micro-parties, the CPP government has continued to subject its opponents to steady pressure, often via the medium of the country’s political captured courts. Most notably, it recently arrested scores of opposition activists who led a campaign against a long-standing economic agreement with Laos and Vietnam, accusing the government of ceding territory and natural resources to Vietnam.
The sentence handed down against Sun Chanthy last week provides yet more evidence that the advent of Hun Manet, who took over from his father Hun Sen last year, has done little to slow the political crackdown that has now persisted for nearly a decade. It also demonstrates the CPP’s determination to extend its dominance to the outer limits of the Cambodian state and to efface the limited political freedoms that were created by a U.N. peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s.
