By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
BANGKOK — A proposed law to control nongovernmental groups in Cambodia threatens to silence some of the last independent voices in an increasingly repressed nation, a group of leading international human rights agencies said Thursday.
Calling the proposal “the most significant threat to the country’s civil society in many years,” the agencies urged foreign nations and aid groups to oppose the law, which they said would undermine much of the nation-building work the donors have supported at a cost of billions of dollars.
The measure, which is moving toward enactment by Parliament, would for the first time require nongovernmental organizations of all types and sizes to register and to follow complex reporting procedures. The law would give the government new leverage to shut down any group it considers to be opposed to it.
Human rights advocates said the law would cap a long process during which Prime Minister Hun Sen has imposed controls over his political opponents, the security forces and the judiciary, leaving the independent groups and civil society the country’s only independent voices.
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