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| Yorm Bopha speaks to reporters in June. She was arrested yesterday and sent to Prey Sar prison for pre-trial detention. Photograph: Meng Kimlong/Phnom Penh Post |
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| Lous Sakhorn (in blue shirt) leaves Phnom Penh Municipal Court with other villagers from the Boeung Kak lake community yesterday following his release. He was arrested yesterday morning along with his wife, Yorm Bopha, who later in the day was sent to Prey Sar prison for pretrial detention. Photograph: Pha Lina/Phnom Penh Post |
Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Claire Knox
The Phnom Penh Post
Bopha was a vocal presence at protests for the Boeung Kak 13, a group of women arrested during May 22 eviction protests.
Prominent Boeung Kak villager and protester Yorm Bopha was yesterday jailed in Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, after she and her husband – en route to check for their names on a voting register – were pounced on by police in plain clothes in what her husband claims was a set-up.
Outside a building housing Srah Chork commune’s electoral roll, 29-year-old
Bopha and her 56-year-old husband Lous Sakhorn were arrested at about
9am by 10 policemen, who shoved them into an unmarked car and sped away, according to witness Doung Kea.
About 100 villagers who gathered outside Daun Penh police station
maintained they had not been informed of an August 29 arrest warrant
handed down by Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge Te Samnag – a response
to an alleged act of intentional violence committed on August 7.
“The accused suspects escaped after the court issued the
warrant… to ensure the suspects are judged fully they must be arrested,” Samnag told the Post.
While her husband was released at about 3pm, Bopha was ushered away
to Prey Sar prison to await her trial for Article 218: intentional
violence.
Sakhorn said he and his wife had never received the
warrant and a Srah Chork police officer had phoned them several days
ago, asking them to check their names on the electoral roll.
“When we arrived, they arrested us without any official documentation … they then accused us of leading people to fight authorities,” he said.
He said that at 11am he asked to call his neighbour to collect his children from school, but was denied.
Bopha was a vocal presence at protests for the Boeung Kak 13,
a group of women arrested during May 22 eviction protests. They were
charged two days later with disputing authority and trespassing on land
awarded to ruling Cambodian People’s Party senator Lao Meng Khin’s
development firm Shukaku and sentenced to between one and two and a half
years in prison.
The women were released on June 27 but still carry the burden of guilty convictions.
Tep Vanny, one of the Boeung Kak 13, said the latest
arrests were an obvious attempt to threaten their recent calls for the
demarcation of 12.44 hectares of land that Prime Minister Hun Sen
pledged to them just over one year ago.
Housing Rights Task Force communication official Long Kim Heang said
the arrest and warrant were a new, illegal tactic to scare Boeung Kak
women into silence.
Opposition Sam Rainsy Party MP Mu Sochua said she would act immediately against the arrest and would again lobby US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to intervene.
“This is a psychological and physical threat – this kind of pressure should not be mounted on a victim,” she said.
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