Culture of Compromise Seen Hurting Courts

By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
18 August 2009

Legal action, compromise and asking for pardon to end disputes have become an integral part of Cambodian politics, effectively and commonly used in past several years.

Since 2005, the nation’s courts have seen 17 cases that monitors label political in nature, stemming from border issues, corruption, defamation, disinformation and incitement. The cases have ranged from local politicians and rights activists to the prime minister and senior-level opposition leaders.

The new trend has met with mixed reaction. There are those who say such cases are an improvement over the use of weapons to solve disputes. But there are others who would prefer the courts are not involved in politics, or legal issues used as a pretext to intimidate critics of the government.

Kem Sokha, president of the Human Rights Party, an opposition party with three seats in the National Assembly, was once imprisoned briefly as the head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights; he was charged with defamation of the government for hanging up a banner for 2005’s Human Rights Day.

“My release at the time was the result of political compromise, with intervention from Cambodians inside and outside the country, as well as international intervention,” Kem Sokha told VOA Khmer by phone last week. “I see this as not a practice that we want. We want to use a legal system where everybody is under the law, as a democratic principle with no one above it.”