Sokhoeun told Radio Free Asia on a Tuesday that he was not afraid. “I don’t fear being arrested because I’m fighting for freedom,” said Chhorn Sokhoeun, an activist with the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party. Hours before the protest he was planning went ahead the next morning, Thai authorities arrested him.
He and Chhorn Chorn Ny were taken in before the Wednesday demonstration against Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Bangkok for the first time since taking office the year before. A Cambodian asylum seeker in Bangkok and a Thai official, both unnamed for security reasons, described the arrests. Sokhoeun had said 300 to 400 Cambodian migrants planned to join. They wanted Hun Manet to stop persecuting refugees, free political prisoners and settle the problem of Cambodian migrant workers facing travel limits into Thailand. The protest never happened.
A week earlier, Thai immigration police had detained three other activists along with their wives and four children, again ahead of a threatened protest. One was Kong Raiya, jailed twice for his criticism of the Cambodian government. Another was Lim Sokha, a senior member of the opposition Candlelight Party, which was barred from the previous year’s national election. The third was Phan Phana. Phan told RFA the five activists had recently fled to Thailand, sought asylum and been granted refugee status. Thailand’s immigration bureau did not immediately respond to RFA’s questions.
What the two leaders said
At a news conference at Government House, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said he had assured Hun Manet it was Thai policy not to let anyone use Thailand “as a platform to interfere in internal affairs or conduct harmful activities against our neighboring countries.” Hun Manet thanked Srettha’s government for quashing the activists’ actions. Cambodia, he said, would likewise not allow its soil to be used for activities that interfere with Thailand. “This is for mutual respect, mutual benefits for our countries,” he said.
Human Rights Watch called the arrests shameful. “These refugees should be immediately and unconditionally released and permitted to seek safety and protection in a third country if that is what they want,” Phil Robertson, the group’s deputy Asia director, told RFA. He said Hun Manet’s praise for the arrests “shows that he really is the new face of transnational repression in the Mekong sub-region,” and that Hun Manet was trying to surpass his father in dictatorial control.
Hun Sen, then prime minister, had long asked Bangkok for help pursuing his critics in Thailand. In June 2020, Thai activist Wanchalearm Satsaksit was abducted by gunmen outside his Phnom Penh apartment complex, a day after posting a Facebook video criticizing the Thai government. What happened to him is not known.
Gas and the border
The same meeting dealt with energy. Thailand and Cambodia both claim an area of the Gulf of Thailand of about 10,425 square miles that could hold 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, plus condensate and oil, according to the Bangkok advisory firm CLC Asia. The two sides signed a memorandum in 2001 to mark the maritime border and set up a joint development area, but checking the full 798-kilometer land border drawn under French colonial rule has stalled the effort for more than 20 years. Srettha said the leaders agreed to discuss joint exploration alongside maritime delimitation.
The Preah Vihear temple dispute did not come up. Hun Manet commanded Cambodian forces around the temples when the countries clashed over ownership several times between 2008 and 2011. Thousands of troops remain on both sides of the border.
Sources
Sources
- Turbulent US trip ends for Hun Manet – phnompenhpost.com
- Cambodia: Hun Manet government escalates its criminalisation …
