Cambodia

Abstract

The past year saw determined and often-violent efforts by the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP) to suppress mass protests against the deeply flawed July 2013 parliamentary elections, and force the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), to accept the election results, and end its boycott of the National Assembly. The government imposed bans on peaceful protests, including strikes by trade unions campaigning for increased wages. In some cases, protesters engaged in attacks in response to security force repression.A July 2014, CPP-CNRP agreement ended the opposition's boycott of the National Assembly. The agreement, which followed the arrest of prominent CNRP leader Mu Sochua, and six other CNRP assembly members on trumped-up charges, failed to commit the CPP to implement institutional and legal reforms to ensure that future elections will be free and fair, or to guarantee freedom of expression and opinion, peaceful assembly and association, or fair trials.Poverty remained particularly severe in the countryside, while urban workers also suffered from wages so low they contribute to widespread malnutrition. Victims of land concessions to agro-industrial business interests—the major cause of dispossession of land from farmers, and resulting land disputes—made little progress in receiving adequate compensation and resettlement packages. Government officials and judges remained mired in corruption, but almost all were immune from action by courts and the government's Anti-Corruption Unit, which only targeted petty cases involving those without CPP political protection.