PHNOM PENH, July 17: Democratic freedoms and human rights are getting eroded in Cambodia, despite a rosy economic picture promoted by the government, a leading human rights group said today.
At the same time, the country's power and wealth "is increasingly being consolidated into the hands of a small elite, who use their position to expand and solidify their personal privilege, usually at the expense of the poor and dispossessed," the Cambodian human rights group, Licadho, said in a report today.
Cambodia is being threatened by “a growing risk of political, social and economic instability, fueled by the discontent of those who find themselves abused and dispossessed by the state,” it said. The present situation “is that of a wobbly kneed democracy reverting to an increasingly authoritarian state,” it added.
Licadho, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights, was founded in 1992 as an independent group to promote respect for civil and political rights.
Repeated calls to the government went unanswered.
However, when Mr Yash Ghai, the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for human rights in Cambodia, made similar charges in March, they were angrily rejected by Prime Minister Mr Hun Sen.
Cambodia is actually a “heaven” for non-governmental groups to do their work, Mr Hun Sen, the country’s unquestioned strongman, said last month.
The Licadho report said the economic growth rate of 13 per cent ~ that the government claimed to have achieved for 2005 ~ was a “facade” hiding a wider range of problems faced by the people.
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