A prominent Cambodian-American lawyer has been sentenced to six years in jail for treason in an ongoing mass trial against critics of the ruling party.
Theary Seng and dozens of activists, many of whom are members of the dissolved opposition group the Cambodia National Rescue party (CNRP), were found guilty at Phnom Penh municipal court on Tuesday. The trial is one of four covering nearly 130 defendants, seen by many as prime minister Hun Sen’s attempt to stamp out growing dissent to his 37 years of rule.
Seng and her co-defendants were accused of trying to help exiled CNRP leader Sam Rainsy with a botched attempt to return to Cambodia in 2019.
Seng, founder of the civil society nonprofit Civicus, who has regularly worn elaborate costumes at the trial, arrived at the courthouse on foot in an emerald dress, carrying a papier-mache torch and a crown declaring “Freedom”. “I am Lady Liberty,” she shouted as rush-hour traffic streamed past. “I am freedom. And it won’t just be me found guilty today – all the Cambodians who love freedom, who are genuine democrats, will be found guilty.”
As soon as the court delivered the verdict, Seng was dragged into a waiting police vehicle. Members of the protest group the Friday Wives, who were outside the court, were pushed by police as they fought to hold up a banner.
Jared Genser, an international human rights lawyer who has been barred from Cambodia for his activities in representing Seng, said the prime minister saw the activist as a “direct threat to his grip on power” ahead of next year’s national elections.
“She wasn’t going to leave, she wasn’t going to go into exile or relent and speak differently about him or the regime,” said Genser. “You can imprison a person, but you can’t imprison an idea. And her idea is a very simple one: the Cambodian people should decide how to be ruled.”
US ambassador to Cambodia, W Patrick Murphy, tweeted that he was “deeply troubled” by the verdict and called on Cambodian authorities “to release her and other human rights activists from unjust imprisonment”.
Local human rights organisations were also quick to condemn the verdict. Chak Sopheap, director or the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said authorities were “instrumentalising the justice system in relentless efforts to silence opponents and critics”.
“Nobody should be jailed for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association, no matter how different the opinions they express and the political ideas they defend are from those of the country’s leaders,” said Sopheap. “This never-ending witchhunt against critical voices that the authorities have been leading must cease.”
Mardi Seng, Seng’s brother and an opposition leader, said that more than 40 years after surviving a Khmer Rouge death camp, “my sister is going to prison again under a similar regime and leadership”.
“We expected this, and in many ways my sister and I prepared for it, but preparing for it isn’t the same as seeing security guards rush in to grab her,” said Seng.
The siblings fled the Pol Pot regime as children in 1979 and were educated in the US, where Theary Seng received a law degree from the University of Michigan. After returning to Cambodia in 2004, she was among the only activists with foreign passports who remained in the country to face Cambodia’s “political theatre” head-on.
She spent recent weeks preparing for jail by joining video calls with former political prisoners around the world and meditating daily. “They did not anticipate that I’d challenge the case and that others would appear and start a momentum,” she said of the ruling party. “Now they have to stem that momentum.”
