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/
