The Appeal Court on Monday morning upheld last year’s protest-related convictions against 11 activists, but knocked a few months off the one-year prison sentences of all but the most high-profile members of the group.
Seven of the defendants were arrested in mid-November for blocking traffic during a protest in front of Phnom Penh City Hall against the municipal government’s failure to address the repeated flooding of their Boeng Kak neighborhood homes.
The other four were arrested the next day for “obstructing public officials” while demonstrating outside the municipal courthouse against the arrest of the first group.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted all 11 in quick succession sentenced each of them to a year in prison. Rights groups condemned the trials, which they said were politically motivated and aimed to silence anti-government dissent.
At about 9:30 a.m. on Monday, the Appeal Court upheld the original verdicts against the 11 activists as well as the one-year prison sentences for the most prominent defendants — anti-eviction activist Tep Vanny and former monk Soeung Hai.
The other nine had their sentences reduced by between two and six months, leaving all 11 with time left to serve. The first seven activists who were arrested also had their fines reduced from 2 million riel (about $500) to between 1.5 million riel (about $375) and 1 million riel (about $250).
The court, Presiding Judge Nguon Im said, decided “to uphold the verdict of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court as valid.”
Song Sreyleap, one of the first seven activists arrested, immediately denounced the verdict.
“We hoped the court would have provided justice for us, but now we see that the court has not provided us justice,” she yelled as soon as the decision was announced.
A brief scuffle ensued inside the courtroom after the defendants refused to heed the judges’ orders to stay quiet. Security guards proceeded to bundle the group out of the room, some of them by their hands and feet.
The case has attracted the attention of rights groups and foreign delegations to Cambodia.
Some of the delegations sent representatives to observe the Appeal Court’s hearings last week. The U.N.’s visiting human rights envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, also attended. On Friday, Mr. Subedi said that a lack of judicial independence remained one of the biggest human rights problems in the country.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that nine of the activists had their sentences reduced by between two and three months. Their sentences were reduced by between two and six months.
