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A Cambodian authorities critic who was crushed up by assailants final yr has been arrested on fees of incitement and defamation after posting a social media remark that made enjoyable of the Ministry of Commerce.
Ny Nak, who sells fertilizer and fruit bushes from the capital Phnom Penh, was arrested on Friday after Minister of Labor Heng Bitter filed a grievance in opposition to him for a remark he made on Fb, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported over the weekend.
In accordance with the native human rights group Licadho, Nak stated that the Fb web page in query referenced the federal government’s choice to present away 91 hectares of land in Kampot province in southern Cambodia to a person named Heng Bitter, which a neighborhood newspaper later recognized because the minister.
On December 17, Nak posted a remark that requested, “What achievements has Heng Bitter executed for the Khmer nation that the federal government gave him forest land as his private property? RIP Khmer forests.” The federal government denies the report that the Heng Bitter concerned within the Kampot land deal is the minister.
Nak is being held at Phnom Penh’s Correctional Middle 1.
RFA reported a barely totally different course of occasions, claiming that the costs relate to a Fb remark that Nak made in response to the Ministry of Commerce, which acknowledged that it’s aiming to register 10,000 new corporations in 2024. Nak reportedly posted that this “should embrace dried clams corporations, begging corporations, or unlawful drug corporations.” He added that the federal government ought to disclose what number of failed companies have just lately closed.
Whichever particular Fb posts have led to the most recent fees, it’s clear that Nak has a latest historical past of run-ins with the authorities. In August 2021, he was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment on fees of incitement after making a satirical publish criticizing then Prime Minister Hun Sen’s COVID-19 restrictions. (He joked that he was putting face masks on his chickens and placing his hen coop below “a state of emergency.”)
Even after his launch the next June, Nak continued to publish essential feedback about authorities officers on his Fb web page referred to as IMan-KH, which at the moment has 424,000 followers.
Particularly, he criticized the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries for its administrative bloat and ineffectiveness in serving to Cambodian farmers. In September, he posted a remark that criticized Minister of Agriculture Dith Tina over his dealing with of a report on rice costs. Hours later, a gaggle of males in black uniforms and helmets drove Nak’s motorcycle off the highway and beat him severely with batons.
Anybody who has noticed Cambodian politics for any time frame will notice the similarity to assaults in opposition to opposition members relationship again years. Particularly, human rights teams documented the same sequence of assaults on activists from the opposition Candlelight Occasion within the months main as much as nationwide elections final July, from which the celebration was barred from collaborating.
Phil Robertson of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch yesterday denounced Nak’s arrest as “yet one more instance of the systematic persecution of an outspoken authorities critic.” He added, “What this arrest exhibits is simply how little has modified below the brand new authorities of Prime Minister Hun Manet with regards to primary civil and political rights.”
The notable factor about Nak’s case, aside from what it reveals in regards to the continuities of coercion below Cambodia’s new-look authorities, is his willpower to not succumb to intimidation, even after experiencing the exhausting fringe of the federal government’s repressive energy.
On January 3, two days earlier than his arrest, he posted a message to Fb. “I, Ny Nak, want to inform all those that threaten and intimidate that even when you have the facility, cash, and power to harm me and need to destroy my profession, minimize my life, I’m not afraid,” he wrote.
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