Independent radio station owner and rights activist Mam Sonando is one of just a few Cambodians to speak out against the Hun Sen government.
Yesterday, for his bravery the 71-year-old Sonando was sentenced to a term of 20 years imprisonment on the spurious charges of attempting to overthrow the government and inciting villagers to riot. The court found that Sonando tried to create a state-within-a-state in the poor rural area of Pro Ma, Kratie. The idea that this could be contemplated is nothing more than a sick joke.
"During the rainy season, the jungle trails leading to the village become a series of quagmires, barely navigable by motorcycle and on foot. The village is little more than farmhouses, people and chickens.
"The soldiers came and told us they were here to rescue us from the secessionists," one villager says, speaking in her home built on stilts. "They took our farmland, and now they won't allow us to go back to tend to our crops."
Much more likely however, is that Hun Sen is afraid of Sonando's popularity among Cambodia's rural poor.
"Critics of Hun Sen say that Mam Sonando, who runs the activist group Association of Democrats, came into the government's cross hairs for trying to help farmers in the village of Pro Ma in Kratie province organize to protect their land. The land was granted to a Russian-owned agribusiness, and some villagers refused to leave."
~http://www.npr.org
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