SRP Lawmaker Ho Vann Beaten, Plans Complaint

SRP lawmaker Ho Vann was beaten Saturday morning when about 10 Russei Keo district security guards tried to prevent him from erecting a large SRP sign along Route 6A on Phnom Penh’s Chroy Changva peninsula, he said.

Ho Vann was holding tight to one of the two posts supporting the 1.5-by-2-meter sign, his jaw clenched in protest, when he says one of the security guards struck him just below the back of his right knee with a large wooden stick.

The lawmaker exhibited his purple bruise in an interview Sunday morning at SRP headquarters.

“They do not want to talk peacefully. They break down and destroy the Sam Rainsy logo,” Ho Vann said, adding that he would be filing a complaint with National Assemb­ly President Heng Samrin that a guard had beaten a parliamentarian.

“I am a lawmaker for the Sam Rainsy Party, but they do not listen to me…. They do not respect our Cambodian lawmakers at all,” he said.

Ho Vann claimed that he knew the identity of his attacker and said he would be seeking $10,000 compensation for his injuries.

A small group of SRP supporters arrived in Chroy Changva commune at 8 am Saturday to erect the sign, Ho Vann said. The site is about 50 meters from the Japanese Friendship Bridge, where there are many billboards from political parties and advertising companies.

More than an hour later, with the sign up but its cement base still hardening, the group of guards arrived under the leadership of Russei Keo Deputy Governor Kob Sles. They or­dered the sign taken down, saying the SRP delegation had not received permission.

Photographs show the guards wearing hats typically worn by police but not police uniforms or badges. They claimed to be “public security guards,” according to Ho Vann, but drove in a vehicle with a district police license plate, he said.

Deputy District Governor Chan Sovuth appears in one of the photographs wearing a CPP hat.

After the guards struck Ho Vann, he said he recoiled in pain and the guards were able to wrench the sign away from his possession and begin dismantling it.

Video footage shows crowds of curious onlookers watching from a distance as guards stomp on the felled sign and hack away at it with axes.

Kob Sles said he was well within his rights to ask Ho Vann to remove the sign because he hadn’t received the necessary permission.

“Ho Vann was stubborn. He did not listen to me. He used his lawmaker title to scare me,” Kob Sles said.

Ho Vann said he had informed authorities but hadn’t received a re­sponse. He said SRP always notifies authorities when they put up signs but rarely gets an official notice of permission. The notification has always been sufficient, he said.

Kob Sles said notification is not sufficient, and Ho Vann should have waited until he received formal permission.

Kob Sles said he didn’t know who the guards were, but thought they might be police assigned to the Japanese Friendship Bridge. He said he didn’t know the identity of Ho Vann’s attacker.

“It was crowded there,” Kob Sles said, encouraging Ho Vann to file a direct complaint with the district office if he knows the identity of his attacker.

District police chief Chey So Seila said he was not familiar with the case, and municipal police chief Touch Naruth referred questions to Kob Sles.

      (Additional reporting by Chhay Channyda)

 

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