CPP Lawmaker Badly Beaten With Steel Pipe

CPP lawmaker Chin Kim Sreng was attacked with a steel pipe and knocked unconscious late Sunday night allegedly by a security guard seeking revenge over a long-running land dispute with local authorities, police reported.

According to a Chamkar Mon district police report obtained Mon­day, Chin Kim Sreng pulled up in a Lexus SUV outside his home on Street 71 in Boeng Keng Kang I commune around 11:30 pm and was attacked by security guard Ros Sovann, 28.

According to the report, Ros So­vann, who was working next to the lawmaker’s home, came up behind Chin Kim Sreng as he went to un­lock his gate and struck him once on the back of the head with a 0.62-meter-long steel pipe.

Leaving the lawmaker unconscious on the ground, Ros Sovann then got into Chin Kim Sreng’s luxury car and began ramming it into the front gate of his house. Alerted by the noise of the SUV, neighbors called local police who arrived to ar­rest Ros Sovann while he was still behind the wheel of the car.

Chin Kim Sreng is being treated at Calmette Hospital in Phnom Penh where a doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the lawmaker had regained consciousness and was faring better, though his face remained very swollen.

Ros Sovann is currently being detained at Chamkar Mon district police headquarters, reportedly having confessed to the crime and having also attempted to commit suicide on Sunday night by hanging himself with electric cable, police said.

Phnom Penh Municipal Police Chief Touch Naruth said on Monday that Ros Sovann had talked with his friends in recent days about hating high-ranking officials and also about how he wanted to die.

According to the district police report, Ros Sovann had been enraged by a long-running land dispute in Meanchey district, where commune officials allegedly grabbed 1,500 square meters of his family’s land 11 years ago. Ros Sovann had recently fallen in love and wanted to get married, but his mother had told him to wait until the land dispute was resolved so that they could pay for the wedding, the report stated.

Contacted on Monday, Ros Sovann’s mother Nov Yeab, 54, said that her son had been driven crazy by the delay of the courts in dealing with her land dispute.

“Because I have no money to pay the court, and our living conditions are so hard, he started to have mental problems,” Nov Yeab said, adding that she went to visit her son in police custody Monday morning and he had very little memory of the incident.

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak referred all questions about the attack to the municipality.

(Additional reporting by Emily Lodish)

 

Related Stories

Latest News