Activists urge strong international response to tainted Cambodian election

The election lead-up and actual campaign has seen legal amendments, oppression of dissident voices and interference in media, paving the way for the sixth election victory for Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. 
Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), dubbed the Cambodian system as “one-party dictatorship disguised as democracy”.
“With his government changing laws to obstruct the opposition from contesting and ignoring bans by international election monitors, Hun Sen has now changed the political paradigm,” he said. “These changes will likely favour him and his rule for the next 10 to 15 years.”
Robertson called for stronger international pressure, possibly bans, from the United States and the European Union as their previous moves to cut aid and suspension of funding had not yielded results. “What we are seeing is Donald Trump abandoning any pretence of an ethical form of foreign policy in the name of realpolitik,” he went on .“The EU, meanwhile, is increasingly divided that they are even failing to come together to put pressure on human rights issues.”
HRW attended Tuesday’s forum together with representatives from other rights monitors as well as Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in Bangkok.
Chandanie Watawala, executive director of Asian Network for Free Elections (Anfrel), said that Anfrel would be among civil society groups that would not deploy observers in the country.
Anfrel cited the absence of the main opposition party, threats by government and party officials, absence of non-partisan election observers as well as restriction of space for independent coverage as reasons for declining to monitor the election. “Of the nearly 80,000 accredited domestic observers, more than half hail from two groups, the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia and the Cambodian Women for Peace and Development,” Anfrel said in a press release issued on the day. “Both have close ties to the ruling party, as the first is headed by Hun Many, one of the PM’s sons, and the second by Deputy PM Men Sam An.”
Sam Zafiri, secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists, pointed out that the situation in the upcoming election was even worse than the 2014 election, which had already been deemed unfair.
The Cambodian government has taken absolute control through legal enforcement of lese majeste, amended constitutional clauses that mandates every Khmer citizen of their “obligation to defend the motherland” as well as the introduction of an anti-fake-news bill, Zafiri said.
“This new legal structure is the opposite of the rule of law, where the judiciary can no longer protect the rights of people in Cambodia and instead oppresses them,” he said. “We’re looking to the international community to press Cambodia to return to the rule of law by not supporting this election.”
Charles Santiago, a Malaysian member of Parliament who chairs the APHR, urged Asean countries not to congratulate the winner of the election. “Democracy leaders in Asean should press Cambodia on this election, as the government there is doing everything possible to win votes,” he said.