By Lauren Crothers
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
Ten members of a group branded terrorists by the Cambodian government have been arrested in an ongoing crackdown on dissidents, local media reported Friday.
The Khmer National Liberation Front activists were detained on suspicion of plotting to incite violence by planting explosives near the Thai-Cambodian border, the Cambodia Daily reported, citing a National Police statement.
The group, formed in December 2012, campaigns for "peace, freedom and democracy" in Cambodia and views Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party government as a puppet of Vietnam.
Front leader Sam Serey, who lives in self-imposed exile in Denmark, said the group had been planning a protest outside the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh on Thursday, the 23rd anniversary the signing of the Paris peace accords that ended conflict in Cambodia.
National Police spokesman Kirth Chantharith told the Daily the group had been planning to "prepare activities to incite and cause violence in Phnom Penh."
Sen, who has been premier for more than 25 years, has branded the group a terrorist organization intent on toppling his government by any means, including violence.
In April, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted 12 men and a woman, six of them in absentia, of plotting to overthrow the government and jailed them for between five and nine years, to the dismay of rights groups that claimed the case was politically motivated.
In May, police arrested 33-year-old Hen Chan and seized hundreds of copies of Serey’s manifesto, which is banned in Cambodia. He was charged with plotting to commit an attack on the country.
Serey did not respond to requests for comment Friday but in a statement issued Thursday he called for "the international community and to the UN to intervene by putting pressure on the dictatorship regime of Hun Sen and the Vietnamese communists to release all protest leaders of the Khmer National Liberation Front immediately."
www.aa.com.tr/en
