The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has released or plans to release 11
environmental, social and political activists. the activists with suspended
sentences were still on probation for periods as long as two years following
release and therefore they were still under the supervision of the courts
system and subject to re-arrest if they are ever deemed to have violated the
conditions of their probation. The Court on handed down the verdict for the
appeal case of the outspoken union chief Rong Chhun. He was released from
prison on Nov. 12 after the Court of Appeal suspended part of his sentence.
Chhun was among at 11 activists
Environmental activist Chhorn Phalla was sentenced to five years in prison
on Wednesday after being convicted of clearing state forest land in
Ratanakkiri province. Civil society groups decried what they described as an
attempt to silence an activist who had been working to protect Cambodia’s
natural resources and indigenous land.
A long-standing land dispute between villagers from Prey Tea I and II
villages in Phnom Penh’s Chaom Chao III commune and the Air Defence
Battalion Command 91 erupted into a protest on November 8 in front of the
Por Sen Chey district hall over the issuance of a land certificate to the
military.
