CPP Takes Steps to ‘Reform’ Human Rights Commission
Prime Minister Hun Sen passed a sub-decree late last year to expand the scope of his government’s Cambodian Human Rights Committee (CHRC) by creating new departments and placing rights monitors in villages, according to a copy of the Royal Gazette dated December 31 and distributed Tuesday.
The expansion of the committee will also see the commission’s logo modified to include the olive-branch symbol of January 7, the day Vietnamese-backed Khmer Rouge defectors—who would become the CPP—overthrew Pol Pot’s regime, according to the December 23 sub-decree.
The sub-decree says that the rights monitors it creates will be volunteers selected in villages to report back to the committee, and will work with a new General Department of Administration and Complaints and General Department of Investigation and Human Rights Education under the government’s CHRC. …
The news of the change comes three weeks after Mr. Hun Sen’s government sent military police armed with AK-47 assault rifles to breakup a protest of striking garment factory workers. The forces shot dead five workers and injured more than 40. …
U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi emerged from a personal meeting with Mr. Hun Sen last Wednesday saying he felt encouraged by assurances the prime minister made to him that an independent human rights committee would soon be established. …
Khy Sovuthy
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/cpp-takes-steps-to-reform-human-rights-commission-50942/
