SINGAPORE
Sitanan Satsaksit kneeled outside her brother’s apartment building, her eyes lowered in prayer beneath a wide-brimmed hat. As she tried to reconstruct the events of that evening six months earlier, she heard his distressed voice in her head.
They had been chatting on the phone, she back in their native Thailand and he in his adopted home of Cambodia. An outspoken democracy activist and satirist, 38-year-old Wanchalearm Satsaksit was among more than 100 Thai dissidents who had fled into exile following a 2014 military coup.
He told her he was buying meatballs outside his high-rise in Phnom Penh, the capital, when she heard a commotion, a series of bangs and shouts. Then came his plaintive cry, repeated again and again: “I can’t breathe.”
Rainsy faces up to five years in prison for insulting King phnompenhpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from phnompenhpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Court Convicts Kampong Chhnang Journalist for Reporting on Land Dispute
23 December 2020
VOA Khmer
Sok Oudom, pictured at a construction site, is the owner of Rithysen radio station and a local citizen journalist in Kampong Chhnang province, Cambodia. (Courtesy of Facebook)
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PHNOM PENH
A Kampong Chhnang radio station owner was convicted for incitement on Tuesday and sentenced to 20 months in prison for reporting on an ongoing land dispute between villagers and the military in the province.
Kampong Chhnang Provincial Court presiding judge Y Thavrak found Sok Oudom, owner of Rithysen radio station, guilty of “incitement to commit a felony” and sentenced him to 20 months in prison and 20 million riels, around $5,000, in punitive damages, according to Un Chanthol, a lawyer for the journalist.
RFA
A court in Cambodia on Monday began the trials of five detained opposition activists and their party’s acting chief, drawing around 100 supporters who demanded that authorities drop charges human rights groups have dismissed as “politically motivated.”
Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) acting president Sam Rainsy, who lives in self-imposed exile in Paris, was tried by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in absentia for “falsifying information” regarding the death of former National Police Commissioner-General Hok Lundy and “incitement” for calling on the public to default on microfinance loans amid the financial crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Sam Rainsy had tried to return on Nov. 9, 2019 to lead nonviolent protests against Prime Minister Hun Sen, urging Cambodian migrant workers abroad and members of the military to join him. However, his plan to enter Cambodia from Thailand was thwarted when he was refused permission to board a Thai Air
Rainsy s case of incitement heard in court phnompenhpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from phnompenhpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.