Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

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Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

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Amnesty International has designated four human rights officers and an election official who were jailed earlier this month as “prisoners of conscience” and will call on millions of members around the world to petition the government for their release.

Previous Cambodians who have been deemed prisoners of conscience—meaning they were jailed for their beliefs or inherent characteristics and have never advocated violence—include land rights advocate Yorm Bopha and activist radio station owner Mam Sonando.

John Coughlan, Amnesty International’s researcher for Cambodia, said on Tuesday that four senior officers from rights group Adhoc and a former officer at the NGO who is now a top official in the National Election Committee had met the criteria.

“It is totally transparent that they have been jailed for the human rights work, for working to uphold the rule of law and supporting victims of human rights violations,” Mr. Coughlan said in an email...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/second2/a ... ve-112985/
Will the embarrassment caused by an Amnesty campaign secure their release, or on the contrary, will it cause loss of face, toes digging in and refusal to compromise ?
Real question. I support Amnesty International in general.
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

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Free the detained five, UN urges
A United Nations expert has called on the government to immediately release human rights and National Election Committee officials who have been controversially accused of bribing a witness.

“The charges are seen as politically motivated and in November 2016, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled their detention to be ‘arbitrary’,” said Rhona Smith, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia.

“The use of criminal provisions as a pretext to suppress and prevent the legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression and to silence human rights defenders is incompatible with article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which has been signed by Cambodia.”

She said that on May 11, 2016, a group of UN human rights experts sent a joint urgent appeal to the government on the cases of the five detainees, but had not received any response.
The UN agency urged Cambodian authorities to make an effort to release the human rights defenders according to Cambodian obligations under international human rights law.

Ruling CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said the UN human rights experts might think the issue was politically motivated, but the government considered it legal action according to the law which had to be implemented.

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/34820/ ... -un-urges/

[Reminder: The five people in question are human rights officials and an NGO worker arrested in May 2016 in connection with the Kem Sokha sex scandal, accused of attempting to bribe the silence of the presumed mistress of Mr Sokha. Seang Chet, a Sam Rainsy commune chief, has already been sentenced to five years prison for the alleged bribery. All six are considered to be political detainees by the international community.]

Old thread from June 2016: Global pressure on CPP builds. https://cambodiaexpatsonline.com/post131 ... ha#p131171
Interesting to note that apart from Kem Sokha's pardon, the situation remains almost unchanged.
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

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PM to consider the release of rights officials
1 Feburary 2017

Prime Minister HE said he would consider releasing four human rights officers and an election official – who have been detained since April – after the verdicts in their cases, but he said two members of the opposition will receive no such consideration.

During a session of the National Assembly yesterday, Mr. HE said there were three groups of requests for pardons, all of which needed to respect court procedures.

“The first case relates to the individuals of Adhoc and Ny Chakrya,” he said, referring to four Adhoc officials – Ny Sokha, Nai Vanda, Yi Soksan and Lim Mony – as well as Mr. Chakrya, a former Adhoc official and now the deputy secretary-general of the National Election Committee (NEC).

“If the court closes the investigation and proceeds with the trial, we can use the same method used with commune chief Mr. Seang Chet and the case of Mr. Kem Sokha,” he added, referring to an opposition CNRP commune chief and the acting CNRP president respectively.
Both Mr. Chet and Mr. Sokha were first convicted of crimes related to a prostitution case involving Mr. Sokha and his hairdresser and were then pardoned by King Norodom Sihamoni in December after a request from the prime minister.

The four Adhoc officials and Mr. Chakrya, commonly referred to as the “Adhoc Five,” have been detained for more than nine months on charges, widely believed to be politically motivated, of attempting to bribe a witness or conspiracy to bribe a witness.

Mr. HE said yesterday that if the verdict is first enforced, court procedures would not be violated. He explained that two months must transpire after a conviction for a verdict to be officially enforced as time for an appeal must be allowed.
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/34982/ ... officials/
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

300 + days of pretrial detention. No bail. All that for alleged bribery charges. This is not about justice, it is about deterrence and showing who is the boss.
Prediction: They will be convicted and sentenced. After that, they will be pardoned (by the king), and thanks to who ? HE has got the 'punish first and pardon later' method down to a fine art.

Bail denied for Adhoc foursome
Fri, 24 February 2017
Touch Sokha

The Court of Appeal yesterday rejected the bail requests of four Adhoc staffers, now in jail more than 300 days, citing fears they would refuse to appear in court when summonsed.

The four – Lem Mony, Nay Vanda, Yi Soksan and Ny Sokha – were placed in pre-trial detention in April on “bribery” allegations connected to the sex scandal surrounding CNRP acting president Kem Sokha.

They were charged with bribing a witness after Sokha’s alleged mistress, Khom Chandaraty, to whom Adhoc had provided legal assistance, accused them of asking her to lie about her affair with Sokha.

Speaking after yesterday’s closed-door hearing, Adhoc lawyer Lor Chunthy told reporters his assurances that his clients would not flee fell on deaf ears.“They are afraid we would not go to court when summonsed. We asked the court to take their passports and guaranteed that they will not flee, but the judges did not agree,” he said...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/b ... c-foursome
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

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Dozens of Civil Society Groups Sign Statement on Jailed Adhoc 5
March 6, 2017

Nearly 80 international and Cambodian civil society groups have signed a joint statement urging the government to halt its crackdown on activists and release five current and former senior officials of rights group Adhoc who have been awaiting trial since May.

The statement released on Sunday by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights coincides with today’s hearing at the Supreme Court for four of the officials, who have been detained on bribery charges in a case widely perceived to be politically motivated.
The officials, who will again dispute the legality around their arrests and detention, have been denied bail six times and spent 311 days in prison, according to Sunday’s statement.

“We…strongly condemn the brazen attacks carried out against Cambodian human rights defenders (HRDs) over recent weeks, in what appears to be a deliberate strategy by the Cambodian authorities to punish and deter any expression of dissent ahead of the upcoming commune and national elections,” says the statement signed by 78 groups.

“We are alarmed by the escalating severity of the government’s crackdown on fundamental freedoms, which has seen HRDs targeted with threats, judicial harassment and even violence,” it continues...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/doze ... -5-126137/
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

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From Canada, Adhoc President Finally Urges Gov’t to Release Staff
March 16, 2017

Breaking months of silence since shortly after his organization was rocked by the imprisonment of four of its senior staff last May, the president of rights group Adhoc has called on the government to release its political prisoners.

Thun Saray had fallen off the public radar since the arrests, having left the country for an “extended mission” to Canada. He failed to appear in court for questioning in October over the case against his four employees, who face bribery charges over a sex scandal involving CNRP President Kem Sokha, and his own staff had reported that they rarely heard from him...
Rights group Licadho currently places the number of political prisoners in the country at 27, including the Adhoc officers.
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/from ... ff-126622/
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Amnesty International report on Cambodia 2016/2017:
Image
Full report: https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/as ... -cambodia/
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

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Judge to Extend Detention of Cambodia’s Adhoc 5
April 26, 2017

A judge yesterday told court officials that he would further extend the detention of four senior staffers of rights group Adhoc and an election official who already have been jailed for nearly a year without trial, in a case that has drawn international criticism from human rights defenders.

This week marks a year since the four Adhoc officers and a former Adhoc employee, National Election Committee (NEC) official Ny Chakrya, were charged and detained over bribery accusations related to a government investigation of an alleged sex scandal involving opposition leader Kem Sokha. The accused say they were providing legal services to a witness, Mr. Sokha’s alleged mistress...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/brea ... -5-128665/
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Will international attention help their case ? It's hard to say. Yet, for the moment, there has been no attention and no progress. They are still in jail for accusations of bribery ...(???) Yes, the charge is bribery, and for the time being, they are merely accused, therefore presumed innocent, of course.

Adhoc 5 Selected As Finalists for International Rights Award
April 27, 2017
The Adhoc 5 have been collectively selected as a finalist for the Martin Ennals Award, an annual prize for human rights activists also known as the Nobel Prize for human rights...
Cambodia Daily
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Re: Amnesty International Campaign: Free the Adhoc Five !

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Government reaction to the announcement:

-The Cambodian government has dismissed news of the Adhoc Five being named as finalist for a prestigious global human rights award, deeming their nomination a political move to influence the judiciary.
Government spokesperson Phay Siphan said the activists’ shortlisting for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders was of no significance in Cambodia.

“This award has a political tendency of interfering with the judicial process of the Cambodian courts,” Mr. Siphan said...
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/37824/ ... bal-award/
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