A top UN human rights official announced Monday that 50 killings believed to be political have been confirmed here since August, when the UN last submitted a report documenting political assassinations.
The new tally brings the total of killings the UN says are apparently politically motivated to at least 90 since factional fighting tore through Cambodia in July.
Thomas Hammarberg, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on human rights to Cambodia, spoke Monday in Geneva to the UN’s top human rights body.
The speech marked the first of two annual human rights reports he submits to the UN Human Rights Commission.
“There have been further killings and cases of disappearances,” Hammarberg told the commission, according to a transcript received Monday.
“I have received reliable information about more than 50 additional cases of killings in which the motivation appears to be political.”
Hammarberg did not indicate what political allegiances the victims held.
However, in a separate report submitted to the government in August, Hammarberg documented 41 alleged summary killings and 16 disappearances, and virtually all of the victims were supporters of Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Three of the 16 men who disappeared have resurfaced alive, he said Monday.
The biannual human rights report that Hammarberg marked with a speech Monday was submitted to the government last month. The report addresses impunity of the Khmer Rouge, a dysfunctional judiciary, prison conditions, economic, labor and social rights, and more, he said.
A report documenting the newly confirmed 50 killings has not yet been completed, UN officials said Monday.
Om Yentieng, an adviser to Second Prime Minister Hun Sen, said Monday that it is up to the UN to provide evidence of the killings and then the government will conduct its own investigation.
“[The government] cannot identify the dead people with only a picture,” Om Yentieng said, referring to the August report in which some photographs of dead bodies were included. “We need time to thoroughly investigate the evidence.”
Hammarberg cited four violent incidents he deemed to be politically motivated: the Jan 27 murder of a Sam Rainsy Party activist in Prey Veng province; the Feb 19 murders of three family members of a resistance captain loyal to Prince Ranariddh in Banteay Meanchey; the March 4 assassination of Funcinpec General Kim Sang in Phnom Penh; and the deadly March 26 grenade attack on the inauguration ceremony of a Takeo-province pagoda.
One person died in the grenade attack, which officials said was politically motivated. The pagoda had been built with funds from CPP President Chea Sim.
Khieu Sopheak, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said the government would investigate the killings in the UN report.
“We should investigate every report regarding crime in Cambodia,” he said.
Rights workers and opposition party workers say they believe a nationwide campaign of political violence against government critics is being coordinated by central authorities in Phnom Penh.
“I can’t believe local officials just decided that they hate the KNP or the BLDP [parties],” said Tioulong Saumura, a steering committee member for the Sam Rainsy Party. Four Sam Rainsy Party workers have been killed since October, she added.
Investigations into two separate killings of Sam Rainsy Party workers in Prey Veng and Kompong Cham in the last four months were motivated by personal revenge, police say.
“If you take all the killings of KNP or Funcinpec members since September, they are all being described as robberies, personal disputes or acts of revenge,” a senior human rights official said.
Also, human rights workers and Funcinpec party workers confirmed the February shooting death of an outspoken supporter of the royal family and likely an active Funcinpec member.
An unidentified gunman killed Mom Yem on Feb 20 while the 65-year-old was resting with his family underneath his raised house in Kompong Trach district, Kampot province.
The shooting happened at 8 pm when it was too dark to identify the gunman, according to friends of Mom Yem who were interviewed by party workers.
Khieu Sopheak discounted claims of a nationwide campaign of political violence against opposition party members, saying “it is not in the political guidelines of the government or the Ministry of Interior.”
Despite receiving a promise in September from Hun Sen that “no one would be spared” in an investigation, the government has not pursued suspects in the 41 deaths and 16 disappearances detailed in the August report, Hammarberg said.
“To date, there are no indication[s] of such investigations,” Hammarberg told the UN commission Monday. “No one has been arrested or prosecuted. To our knowledge, there is no special commission or special prosecutor appointed for this task.”
Government spokesmen, however, said Monday that Minister of Justice Chem Snguon has been appointed to head a task force investigating the killings.
Chem Snguon has left Cambodia to seek medical treatment and could not be reached for comment. Neither Khieu Sopheak nor Om Yentieng could say whether the task force has made any progress. (Additional reporting by Touch Rotha and Kay Kimsong)
