CNRP’s Protest Culminates in 25,000-Strong Street March

If opposition supporters are wearied by the CNRP’s continuing boycott of parliament, they refused to show it on Friday as an estimated 25,000 people turned out for the final day of a three-day protest that delivered petitions and letters to eight foreign embassies and the U.N., seeking help to end the political deadlock. On Thursday, the opposition’s lackluster march attracted only about 1,000 participants as the CNRP handed petitions to the U.S., U.K. and French embassies. … But, on Friday, tens of thousands of people gathered at Freedom Park before setting off at about 8:30 a.m. on a punishing trek that lasted almost six hours, crisscrossing the city in the blistering heat to visit the embassies of Australia, Russia, Japan, Indonesia and China, with the police presence minimal for the third successive day. The embassies visited represent countries that signed the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement 22 years ago on Wednesday, which ushered in a U.N.-led election following years of civil war, and held open the promise of a peaceful, multiparty democracy. With Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling CPP governing despite the boycott of parliament by the 55 elected opposition lawmakers, and with no proper investigation of July’s election carried out, the CNRP says that the terms of the 1991 agreement had been broken. Signatories to the agreement, the CNRP says, still have a duty to ensure that the Cambodian government adheres to the agreement’s core principle of a liberal and participatory democracy. Though it is unlikely that the international community will act—most of the countries whose embassies were visited on Friday have en­dorsed the CPP’s election victory—the opposition and its supporters re­main indefatigable in their attempts to force the government to soften its intransigent stance. …

 Simon Henderson and Khy Sovuthy
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/cnrps-protest-culminates-in-25000-strong-street-march-45962/