Opposition slayings in Cambodia carry threatening message Poli

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- A series of slayings of people linked to Cambodia's political opposition, including last week's shooting death of a top union leader, has created an atmosphere of fear, human rights advocates said.

Chea Vichea, president of Cambodia's Free Trade Union of Workers and affiliated with the country's main opposition Sam Rainsy Party, was fatally shot Thursday in Phnom Penh.

In October, a reporter for a radio station run by the opposition Funcinpec party was gunned down in front of the station, and a popular singer was shot as she left a relative's home in Phnom Penh. She remains in critical condition at a Bangkok hospital.

No arrests have been made in those cases.

"I think that the killings here are sending a message of threat," said Pa Nguon Teang, spokesman for the independent Cambodian Center for Human Rights. If nothing changes, "serious human rights violations will happen more and more," he said Friday.

A number of activists with the Funcinpec and Sam Rainsy parties also were killed in what the parties allege were politically motivated attacks before and after last July's inconclusive general elections.

The opposition parties and the Cambodian People's Party have yet to form a government after months of fruitless negotiations, and the motivations for the attacks remain unclear.

"For some in the ruling party, political killing is the default method for eliminating stubborn but peaceful opponents," Steve Heder, a Cambodian specialist at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, said.

Om Yen Tieng, senior adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen, said they haven't made any conclusions about the motivation behind the killing since the investigation was not finished.

"We want justice," he said in French on Saturday. Some cases take longer than others, but "we haven't forgotten the guilty."

The CPP, led by Hun Sen, took power in 1979 after a Vietnamese invasion ousted the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge, which is suspected of killing 1.7 million Cambodians during its 1975-79 rule.

Cambodia had made progress in shedding its image of a lawless land when it signed an agreement in June with the United Nations to try Khmer Rouge leaders, Dina Nay, acting director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy, said Friday.

But Chea Vichea's murder and the other unresolved killings have been a setback for the fledgling democracy, making people insecure and afraid to express their opinions, she said.

"It's a culture of impunity. We don't know who shot the singer, we don't know who shot the journalist," she said. "What we want to know is what really happened."

Sara Colm, senior researcher in Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said that "Cambodia has a poor track record in bringing to justice the perpetrators of political killings."

After the October shootings, King Norodom Sihanouk lamented in a letter posted to his Web site that Cambodia had become a "jungle ... populated more and more by wild beasts."

On Friday, the king said in a statement that the murders are multiplying and they "undeniably" of a political "background."

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On the Net: The Cambodian Center for Human Rights:

http://www.cchr-cambodia.org/

The Khmer Institute of Democracy: http://www.bigpond.com.kh/users/kid/