FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JOINT PRESS RELEASE
Cambodia: Latest Detention of Women Land Activists: Rights Groups Call for Immediate Release, Condemn Government’s Ongoing Persecution of Human Rights Defenders
(Bangkok, 13 September 2012): Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation against Torture), WITNESS, Amnesty International and Freedom House call for the immediate release of land and housing rights activists, Yorm Bopha and Tim Sakmony, who were arrested on 4 September and 5 September, respectively, on dubious charges. The women appear to be the latest targets of the Cambodian authorities’ use of seemingly trumped-up criminal charges to intimidate Cambodia’s human rights defenders and social activists. We urge the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to immediately grant the women provisional release. Unless independent and impartial judicial investigations conducted according to international fair trial standards demonstrate the existence of sufficient, credible evidence that the women have committed recognizable criminal offences, the cases against them must be dropped.
Read more at World Organisation Against Torture, released 13 September 2012.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JOINT PRESS RELEASE
Cambodia: Latest Detention of Women Land Activists: Rights Groups Call for Immediate Release, Condemn Government’s Ongoing Persecution of Human Rights Defenders
(Bangkok, 13 September 2012): Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organisation against Torture), WITNESS, Amnesty International and Freedom House call for the immediate release of land and housing rights activists, Yorm Bopha and Tim Sakmony, who were arrested on 4 September and 5 September, respectively, on dubious charges. The women appear to be the latest targets of the Cambodian authorities’ use of seemingly trumped-up criminal charges to intimidate Cambodia’s human rights defenders and social activists. We urge the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to immediately grant the women provisional release. Unless independent and impartial judicial investigations conducted according to international fair trial standards demonstrate the existence of sufficient, credible evidence that the women have committed recognizable criminal offences, the cases against them must be dropped.
Read more at World Organisation Against Torture, released 13 September 2012.