Military police said they are investigating a riot that broke out at a polling station in Phnom Penh’s Meanchey district Sunday, in which two police vehicles were torched, but did not say whether they would take legal action against the rioters.
Protests began at the polling station at a primary school in Stung Meanchey commune when angry voters complained they could not find their names on the voter list, and descended into anarchy when a man allegedly attacked a monk who was among the protesters.
A polling station official locked herself in a classroom to avoid the mob outside. When police tried to help her, hundreds of youths hurled stones at them.
Members of the 100-strong military police force then fired more than 10 shots into the air to disperse the protesters, who responded by smashing two military police trucks and setting them alight.
The mob then attacked a man who they mistook for an ethnic Vietnamese. He had to be taken to the hospital for head injuries.
“It was very terrible. We tried to stop them and prevent violence but the violence just happened against the military police,” National Military Police spokesman Brigadier General Kheng Tito said Monday. “We are investigating and waiting for our general commander’s orders on what to do.”
Commune chief Mao Savoeun said Yin Kim Sien, the besieged polling official who hid from the protesters in a small classroom, had been able to leave after the rioters dispersed about 7 p.m.
“The atmosphere is calm now,” Mr. Savoeun said, adding the injured man, whose name he did not know, had been taken to the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital and then discharged.
Thach Thavory, 24, one of several monks who took part in the protest—some even hurling rocks at police—said he planned to file a lawsuit against Bayon television station, which he claimed broadcast “one-sided” footage of the riot leaving out the fact that military police had fired shots in the air.
Huot Kheang Vieng, deputy general director of Bayon TV, defended the station, saying it was up to them to chose what to broadcast.
(Additional reporting by Dene-Hern Chen)
