For more than a year, the Cambodian government has been rounding up supporters of the banned Cambodian National Rescue Party and charging them with treason. Amid tight security and chaotic scenes, 129 of them appeared Thursday before the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, although their trials have now been put off until early next year
Yeang Sothearin and Uon Chhin—who had worked as an editor, reporter and news anchor, and a photographer and videographer for RFA’s Khmer Service, respectively—were taken into custody in November 2017 and charged with “illegally collecting information for a foreign source” after RFA closed its bureau in the capital in September that year
The United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Cambodia on Tuesday expressed concern over the targeting of a number of former opposition officials, suggesting that Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government is engaging in a political witch hunt