Cambodia: Opposition figure put under court supervision

By Julia Wallace

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AA) - In the wake of a murder of a political analyst that several government-aligned media sources have claimed was orchestrated by the opposition party, a senior opposition figure was put under court supervision Thursday.

The deputy president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), Kem Sokha, has been holed up in the headquarters of his party since police attempted to arrest him in May for flouting a court summons.

Kem Sokha’s daughter, Kem Monovithya, who is also the CNRP’s deputy director-general of public affairs, wrote on Twitter on Thursday that her father had been put under court supervision and told he could not leave the country.

“When did he want to leave country? Ha!” she added.

Kem Sokha has been buffeted with a stream of court summonses and lawsuits over the past few months, all in relation to an affair he allegedly had with a hairdresser.

Recordings of his private telephone conversations with the woman were leaked online, prompting an investigation by the government’s Anti-Corruption Unit, despite the fact that there was no apparent connection between the romantic relationship and any alleged corruption.

Kem Sokha's party has decried the lawsuits and investigations stemming from the liaison, calling them a politicization of a private matter.

The court order to remain in Cambodia did not involve the killing of the analyst, Kem Ley, but came in the wake of articles published in government-aligned media outlets that speculated that the CNRP was involved in masterminding his murder.

One story, published by the government-friendly Fresh News outlet, suggested that kem Sokha had ordered Kem Ley to be killed because he considered him “a traitor”, according to The Cambodia Daily newspaper.

The Daily also reported that a government spokesman had said he had heard that the opposition party was responsible for the killing.

The opposition “want things to occur to place the blame on the government,” Sok Eysan told the Daily.

Another government-friendly news outlet published photographs purporting to show the alleged killer at a CNRP event, although Facebook users later debunked the claim.

In a post on his Facebook page, opposition leader Sam Rainsy -- currently living abroad to avoid a jail sentence in a defamation case -- said the rumors were a form of “testing the waters to see whether or to what extent anybody would swallow their ridiculous stories”.

“Kem Ley was privately but effectively helping the CNRP draft its political platform,” he added.

“He was particularly close to Kem Sokha. It’s nonsense that the latter might have thought of killing the former.”