Cambodian opposition head urges Australia to prevent rights abuses

PHOTO

Cambodia opposition party leader Sam Rainsy in the capital Phnom Penh in 2006. He has lived abroad for the past year, after being sentenced to more than 10 years in prison in absentia this year. [Reuters]

19 Nov, 2010
Source: Australia Network News

Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy says he will use his current visit to Australia to urge the government to do more to prevent human rights abuses in his country.

Mr Rainsy - who heads the eponymous opposition Sam Rainsy party - says he also plans to meet and thank Cambodian-Australians for supporting his efforts to bring democracy to Cambodia.

The opposition leader is currently living in Paris, and faces more than 10 years in prison if he returns to Cambodia after being convicted in absentia of uprooting border markings and publishing a false map of the border with Vietnam.

His jail sentence that's been widely criticised by human rights groups.

Speaking to Radio Australia's Connect Asia, Mr Rainsy said Australia must pay more attention to human rights abuses in Cambodia, and to push for free and fair elections that would "not distort the will of the people".

"Cambodia is a very unfortunate country with a totalitarian government, with the population, especially farmers suffering from land grabbing, with destruction of the environment, with a rampant government corruption making the people poorer and poorer, whereas the elite get richer and richer," he said.

He rejected suggestions that recent calls he has made for Prime Minister Hun Sen to be put on trial for human rights abuses were unlikely to be realised.

"This is not impossible. In Cambodia, there is currently a trial of the former Khmer Rouge leaders, those who were responsible for the mass killing of millions of people," he said.

"As you know, the current Cambodian leaders... were part of the Khmer Rouge system when Pol Pot was toppled. Some of his subordinates became the current leaders of Cambodia.

"We are just pushing for an investigation to expose the truth."

The former finance minister says he hopes one day to return to Cambodia in an attempt to clear his name, but says he will remain abroad until injustices he listed in Cambodia are rectified.

"I am prepared to go back to Cambodia anytime, provided farmers who have been arrested for protesting land grabbing are released and providing their land be given back to them," he said.

Mr Rainsy said he did not believe living in exile would harm his reputation or credibility at home.

"We have to use all legal means to ensure that the rights of our people are respected, so one of the means is to try to gain support wherever in the world we can get it, especially in the international community," he said.