09 September 2016•Update: 14 September 2016
By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH
The deputy leader of Cambodia's opposition was convicted Friday for failing to appear at court to answer charges of soliciting a prostitute -- a decision immediately condemned by Human Rights Watch as a “political farce”.
Rights group Licadho Canada said that at 2.15 p.m. (0515GMT) the court had announced the verdict, sentencing Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) deputy leader Kem Sokha to five months in prison and levying him with a $195 fine.
The origins of Friday’s trial were rooted in a series of recordings of telephone calls between Sokha and a woman named Khom Chandaraty, his alleged mistress, in February.
In those calls, Sokha spoke about buying properties for the woman, prompting officials at the Anti-Corruption Unit to open an investigation into his assets.
Chandaraty was later accused of being a prostitute and Sokha was charged with solicitation.
He had been holed up at party headquarters for months to avoid arrest.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency at the CNRP offices after the verdict, CNRP lawmaker Mu Sochua said the conviction was “not surprising, but the struggle continues”.
“We saw the cry for justice; there’s no backing down,” she said of the party's supporters, adding that it would continue its push for non-violent reform in Cambodia.
“It’s not that we want change; change is necessary,” she said.
Sokha was in good spirits, she said, and ready to hunker down for an even longer wait, sequestered away, to avoid being arrested.
On Friday morning, a few hundred people gathered to hear Sokha deliver a defiant speech as the trial got underway a few kilometers (miles) away at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
He told the crowd his “pain” today would be worth “the happiness of the people of Cambodia tomorrow.”
Video footage shot outside the court showed a scuffle between supporters and police. A witness at the scene said one person had been arrested.
Before Sokha took to the stage, CNRP Chief Whip Son Chhay read from a party white paper obtained by Anadolu Agency on Friday, which argues that the case is legally groundless.
It said that the court had violated Sokha’s rights as he still has parliamentary immunity, and that the judicial system is a “political tool of the ruling party”.
The court had been widely called upon to drop the case, most recently by Edward Royce, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs.
In a letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen dated Sept. 7, Royce wrote that he believed the charges to be “spurious and politically motivated” and that “by attempting to disqualify and otherwise harass the political opposition,” he was denying citizens free and fair local and national elections in 2017 and 2018.
Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, said in an email to Anadolu Agency after the verdict that the case was “all part of Hun Sen’s scorched earth plan to destroy the opposition and run roughshod over the rights of those who criticize his government”.
Four human rights workers and an election official who assisted the alleged mistress have been imprisoned ahead of trial for allegedly bribing her.
