Activist Reported Threats, Intimidation
A popular Sam Rainsy Party activist who reported threats made against him to three human rights groups was shot dead near his Kompong Speu home Saturday night, officials confirmed Sunday.
Uch Horn, 52, who had just recently joined the opposition party, was shot seven times Saturday evening 200 meters from his house where he had been bathing in a pond, said Sam Rainsy Party Secretary-General Eng Chhay Eang, who visited the victim’s house Sunday.
Human rights groups that received Uch Horn’s reports of intimidation and the US embassy are investigating the murder. Human rights workers who interviewed him said that his murder was likely political because it came so close to his joining the party on April 24. Uch Horn was president of the Sam Rainsy Party Commune Council in Baset commune, Baset district, and was appointed to be the opposition party candidate for the upcoming commune elections, a news release said.
“The reason he was killed was because he was a Sam Rainsy Party [member], and he was popular,” Eng Chhay Eang said. “He never made any trouble in the village.”
Kompong Speu Deputy Police Chief Chea Vuth said he sent investigators and the provincial prosecutor to the crime scene Sunday morning but had little information about the case.
“I just know it was a shooting case,” he said.
If Uch Horn’s slaying is recognized as a political one, it would be the first this year as the country nears the first elections for its 1,621 communes in February. There was only one independently confirmed political killing last year, when a Funcinpec rival was murdered by a CPP commune official who was later arrested and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
The Sam Rainsy Party frequently claims that its activists in the provinces are being threatened, beaten or killed for political reasons. Most of the cases are disregarded by authorities as personal disputes, and Prime Minister Hun Sen has said political intimidation does not exist in Cambodia.
However, Uch Horn came to Phnom Penh to report threats made on his life after he joined the party. Shortly after becoming a Sam Rainsy Party member, he left for a five-day training session and returned to find rumors in his village that he was a sorcerer. Neighbors told him he would be killed, a man threatened to beat him with a bamboo club and his farmhouse was burned down, according to his statements to human rights groups and a neighbor.
Fearing for his life, Uch Horn traveled to Phnom Penh June 18 to report to the UN’s human rights office and local human rights agencies Adhoc and Licadho. The threats on his life came only after he joined the Sam Rainsy Party, he wrote in his statement.
“Please help to investigate and follow about my safety,” he wrote.
Representatives from the UN, Adhoc and Licadho all confirmed receiving the statement.
“He didn’t talk about the political party,” said Chan Soveth, an Adhoc investigator who interviewed the victim. “But he recently joined it, so that is the problem….I am going to investigate to find out about the threat to him.”
Another investigator said Uch Horn told him his problems only started when he became “very popular” in the CPP-controlled commune.
US Ambassador Kent Wiedemann said he was “very disturbed” at the news of the killing.
“This is something that needs to be investigated immediately,” he said, adding that the perception of political violence with impunity would be “corrosive” to the election process. The US wants to see the government moving forward with the democratic process, and the commune elections are seen as one test of that.
Peter Leuprecht, the UN’s special representative for human rights, has called violence in the upcoming elections “a serious danger.”
