Cambodia’s Hun Sen government has warned any commercial airline that allows exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy to board a flight back home — as he has said he will do on Saturday — will be seen as abetting a coup.
The country’s civil aviation authority issued the threat at the weekend as Mr Sam Rainsy and fellow self-exiled leaders from the banned Cambodian National Rescue Party pushed ahead with plans to return on Cambodian Independence Day on November 9 to lead a “restoration of democracy” campaign.
“Airlines are not allowed to board them,” Chea Oun, head of the Cambodia’s Civil Aviation State Secretariat, told Radio Free Asia’s Khmer Service. “If they do it, it means they are participating in a plot and the companies can be prosecuted as well.”
