Some 132 lawsuits against 379 people have been used to silence expression and stifle civic engagement in the year to March, with most of the actions brought by the government, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights said.
In a report on strategic lawsuits against public participation, based on the monitoring of legal actions between April 2019 and March, the NGO said such lawsuits “stifle citizen engagement through the fear of incarceration and pose large financial burdens because individuals are subjected to legal costs and large fines.”
They are “used as an intimidation tactic to scare individuals, civil society actors, community leaders, journalists, whistleblowers and human rights defenders into silence,” it said in the report, issued Monday.
In full: https://vodenglish.news/more-than-300-targeted-in-lawsuits-to-stifle-civic-engagement-cchr/
