NGOs Say ‘Rose Revolution’ Case Is Baseless

Rights groups on Monday urged the government to drop its incitement charges against four people arrested last week and accused of plotting to topple the government by handing out yellow roses to security forces and urging them to turn their guns against Prime Minister Hun Sen. In a joint statement, rights groups Licadho and the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC) said authorities had no credible evidence against any of the suspects. Police arrested students Tut Chanpanha and Sok Dalis on Thursday while picking up 1,000 roses they were planning to hand out to soldiers and police around Phnom Penh amid rising tensions following last month’s national election. On the same day, they arrested printing shop owner Lim Lypheng and information technology worker Hy Borin for preparing small stickers to accompany the flowers urging police and soldiers to “turn your guns against the despot.” The Phnom Penh Municipal Court subsequently charged all four of them with incitement to commit a felony, which carries a sentence of up to two years in jail. … The flowers and stickers were both ordered by a U.S.-based group of Khmer-American dissidents, the Khmer People Power Movement (KPPM), that has long called for regime change in Cambodia. The government calls it a terrorist organization plotting to topple the regime with a private army but has offered no evidence to back up the claim. Licadho and the CLEC said Mr. Chanpanha and Ms. Dalis—whose cases are being handled by a Licadho lawyer—had no idea any stickers were meant to accompany the flowers. “The questioning at the court revealed beyond any doubt that Chanpanha and Dalis only intended to distribute flowers to military personnel, a common campaign activity used throughout the world to promote peace. They never saw or came into any contact with either Lypheng’s shop, Borin or the allegedly inciting stickers,” the statement says. “In any case, the crime of incitement poses a particular threat to freedom of expression and thus requires extraordinarily compelling evidence of intent and immediacy. The mere printing of offensive stickers does not alone establish the required intent for criminal liability.” …

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