Border: Unity opportunity that cannot be missed

(Photo: Cambodge Soir Hebdo)

27 Feb 2010
By Pen Bona
Source: Radio France Internationale
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy for KI-Media
Click here to read the article in Khmer

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy is currently being sued under two new charges involving the border with Vietnam. The new lawsuit that the government lawyer had just sent to the Phnom Penh municipal court on Friday is more severe than the first one in which Sam Rainsy was sentenced to 2-year of jail time. Will the border problem leads to disunity and unending hatred among the Cambodians?

The two-year jail sentence for uprooting border stakes in Svay Rieng province was not the end of Sam Rainsy’s case. It was in fact the start to additional charges brought against Sam Rainsy. The continuing saga of this case leads to a more severe and unsolvable problem. The two new accusations raised by the government lawyer and sent to the Phnom Penh municipal court on Friday are: (1) publication of false information, and (2) the falsification of public documents. They are much more severe charges that could lead to up to 15-year of jail sentence.

The two new charges were raised after opposition leader Sam Rainsy published maps to prove that the border stakes which he uprooted in Samrong commune, Chantrea district, Svay Rieng province, at the end of October 2009, were truly inside Cambodian territories. However, the government called these documents “fake”, and it went on to accuse Sam Rainsy of defaming the government.

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