Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday denied allegations from Sam Rainsy Party officials that the ruling CPP is plotting to frame the opposition party leader in an effort to strip him of his parliamentary immunity and send him to jail.
“I need Rainsy to have freedom,” Hun Sen said after a speech to graduates at the Royal university of Agriculture in Phnom Penh.
“Sam Rainsy is the blood Hun Sen needs,” he said. “Hun Sen needs his blood to make me stable. I don’t need to lift [Sam] Rainsy’s immunity.”
Hun Sen said he did not want to attract the rancor of the international community or make the feisty parliamentarian into a celebrated martyr.
If Sam Rainsy were jailed, Sam Rainsy would become “like Aung San Suu Kyi,” Hun Sen said, referring to the Burmese pro-democracy leader currently under house arrest in Rangoon.
The premier’s remarks follow accusations by Sam Rainsy Party leaders that the CPP has fabricated evidence to show the opposition leader slandering the King, an offense that carries a jail sentence.
“The latest trick the ruling CPP is planning to use in order to ‘legally’ eliminate opposition leader Sam Rainsy is to frame him and get him sentenced for the crime of lese-majesty,” a party press release said.
The statement, signed by Sam Rainsy parliamentarian Son Chhay and released late Wednesday, says the CPP have created a tape in which Sam Rainsy appears to say, “The King is a criminal.”
Son Chhay goes on to theorize that the Khmer-language statement was spliced together from two authentic recordings, one in which Sam Rainsy says “the King is needed to guarantee peace,” and another in which he said, “this country is a haven for criminals.”
Opposition parliamentarian and wife of Sam Rainsy, Tioulong Saumura, said that, while the party had not yet obtained the tape, they learned of its existence from reliable sources in the Royal Palace.
CPP spokesman Khieu Kanharith denied a plot and said he was not aware of the existence of the cassette. “I don’t believe [Sam Rainsy] and I don’t know where he gets this from,” Khieu Kanharith said Thursday.
“It’s just normal he made such slander,” Khieu Kanharith said. “People no longer mind him.”
Hun Sen himself acknowledged the existence of “a tape” but denied that it was to be used against the opposition leader.
“Of course it is true that I have received many documents, not just a tape,” he said. “[But] Sam Rainsy should be well looked after. He is a good opposition leader. If we lose Sam Rainsy, Hun Sen also loses value.”
The controversy is the latest in a long series of allegations from the opposition party that the government is plotting to silence its most outspoken critic.
In January last year, Funcinpec and CPP leaders joined to publicly denounce Sam Rainsy for a Millennium address they alleged also slandered the King and belittled the nation’s religion, Buddhism. Sam Rainsy countered that the allegations were unfounded and were part of an ongoing government campaign to remove him.
In that instance, the government made not effort to prosecute Sam Rainsy.
