Cambodia opposition seeks Obama's help in murder probe

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Cambodia's opposition leader Thursday urged US President Barack Obama to help find the killers of a prominent union boss, as hundreds of people gathered to mark five years since his murder.
Chea Vichea, who headed the country's largest labour union and was a vocal critic of Prime Minister Hun Sen's government, was gunned down at a Phnom Penh newsstand on January 22, 2004.
The daylight murder shocked Cambodia and badly fractured the country's nascent workers' movement. It was condemned by rights groups as a brutal attempt to silence opposition-linked unions.
"I beg US President Barack Obama to help Cambodian people find the criminals to bring them to justice," opposition leader Sam Rainsy told a crowd Thursday at the spot where Chea Vichea was shot.
The politician marched through Phnom Penh with some 300 garment workers and unionists to place wreaths and light incense sticks at the newsstand.
Sam Rainsy criticised authorities for failing to arrest the real culprits, but said he hoped that a "push from outside" would bring "change" in the case of Chea Vichea's murder over the next year.
Cambodia's highest court late last month provisionally released two men convicted of killing Chea Vichea and ordered the case to be re-tried, citing unclear evidence.
The two men, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, had been arrested just days after the union chief's 2004 death, convicted of murder and quickly sentenced to 20 years each in prison.
The United States and UN welcomed the decision by the court to order a retrial. International and local rights watchdogs had called the conviction and trial deeply flawed and said the true perpetrators remained at large.
But two other labour leaders have also been murdered since Chea Vichea's killing, in an escalation of attacks against workers' rights advocates.
Their deaths cast a pall over Cambodia's key garment industry, with several major clothing labels warning the government that swift justice was needed for their continued presence in the country.

Cambodian opposition newspaper journalist and son killed in drive-by shooting

A journalist working for a pro-opposition Cambodian newspaper was killed along with his son in a drive-by shooting in the capital, police said Saturday.
Khem Sambo, 47, reported on corruption and other social ills under the rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen for the opposition newspaper Moneaseka Khmer.
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He was riding a motorcycle with his 21-year-old son on Friday when they were each shot twice by a man who was also riding a motorcycle, Phnom Penh police Chief Yim Simony said. They died later in a hospital.
“At this stage we do not have any leads yet about the motive. We are collecting evidence and witnesses who could help us in searching for the attackers,” Yim Simony said.
Moneaseka Khmer editor Dam Sith called the attack “the gravest threat” to his newspaper, which is affiliated with Cambodia's main opposition Sam Rainsy Party.
Oum Sarin, president of the Cambodian Association for the Protection of Journalists, said the killing is “creating a climate of fear” among journalists.
The case is the first killing of a Cambodian journalist in five years, according to Pen Samithy, president of Club of Cambodian Journalists.
The killing threatens the climate for campaigning ahead of July 27 national elections, the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, a coalition of 21 private groups, said in a statement.
It said it suspected the killings were linked to the many articles Khem Sambo wrote about issues such as illegal logging, illegal fishing deals and land grabbing that involved powerful government officials.
Khieu Kanharith, Cambodia's information minister, said the “culprits cannot be forgiven and must be found.”