Human Rights Watch today condemned a deadly April 25 grenade attack on the home of the family of a Cambodian opposition activist from the Son Sann Party. The incident, in the southeastern province of Takeo, may have been in part politically motivated, Human Rights Watch charged. In a separate incident on April 26, the Son Sann Party president in Tramkak District of Takeo reported that several shots were fired in front of his house, but no one was wounded. The organization said the April 25 attack, which resulted in two dead and three wounded, was the latest in a series of violent incidents involving political party members running against the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) of Second Prime Minister Hun Sen in elections slated for July 1998.
Human Rights Watch called on the Cambodian government to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice. "Impunity for perpetrators of this kind of violence may deter Cambodians from taking an active role in opposition parties," said Sidney Jones, executive director of the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. "If people are afraid to join the opposition, the credibility of the elections will be jeopardized."
According to Human Rights Watch, recent incidents of political violence in Cambodia have included assassinations of senior officials of the Funcinpec Party of Prince Ranariddh _ ousted by Hun Sen in last year's coup _ as well as killings of lower-level opposition party workers and families of members of the armed resistance in the countryside. Human Rights Watch has called on international donors to postpone election aid or technical assistance until minimum conditions for a fair electoral process have been met.
"Donors should not be supporting a flawed process as the least bad of several unsatisfactory options," said Jones. "Instead they should be working actively to reduce or eliminate those flaws; in particular by exerting sufficient pressure on the Cambodian government to prosecute clear cases of extrajudicial executions, conducted not only during and immediately after the July 1997 coup, but also these more recent cases as well. Donors should be making an end to this kind of impunity a precondition for any kind of election assistance."
In the April 25 incident, a grenade was thrown in front of the house of the sister of Khieu Rama, the district chief for the Son Sann Party in Kirivong District, Takeo Province. Five people were in the house at the time, which is located in Romdel village, Som commune. Two were killed: Khieu Rama's elderly brother Khieu Nuon, aged around 70, and Rama's sister, Khieu Ky, aged around 55. Khieu Rama and two other relatives were seriously injured in the explosion.
While villagers and provincial officials said that the incident may have been prompted in part by a land dispute between commune officials and Rama's sister Khieu Ky, political tensions also existed between the victims' family _ who are involved with the Son Sann Party _ and local authorities, who are members of the CPP.
Two days before the grenade attack, local authorities tried to pressure Khieu Rama to thumbprint a document pledging his support for the CPP, but he refused, according to Son Sann Party officials. Other villagers said that they had been recently pressured to sign up with the CPP or risk the threat of relocation to remote areas such as Pailin in western Cambodia.
In an interview with Human Rights Watch in March, 1998, Khieu Rama expressed his fears about his personal safety during the upcoming electoral campaign. A number of robberies had occurred in Takeo earlier that month, and Khieu Rama feared that he might be targeted for his political views under the guise of a robbery attempt.
Of Cambodia's 24 provinces and municipalities, Takeo will have the fifth largest number of seats in the upcoming National Assembly elections. Kirivong, a fairly remote district in Takeo near the Vietnamese border, was the site of at least three political killings during the 1993 electoral campaign. Two of the victims were members of the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party (BLDP, now called the Son Sann Party) and one was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. On October 1, 1997, in what is seen as a political killing, five people were summarily executed by a commune militia commander in Kirivong District. Those killed included a popular Funcinpec activist, his son, and three nephews.
