Rights Groups Condemn Verdict of Murdered Journalist
The verdict issued Wednesday by the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court dropping the charges against a military police officer and his wife who were allegedly involved in the murder of an investigative journalist is a travesty of justice and a sign of impunity in the country, rights groups said Thursday. Hang Serei Odom, 42, a reporter for the Virakchun Khmer Daily, was found hacked to death, his body stuffed in the trunk of his car, in O’Chum district on September 11. In the months before his murder, he had written about officials involved in the illegal luxury timber trade. Two days after the journalist’s body was found, military police Captain An Bunheng and his wife, Sim Vy, were arrested when police discovered a pair of Hang Serei Odom’s shoes in the couple’s restaurant where he had been drinking the night before he disappeared. … London-based environmental watchdog Global Witness issued a statement Wednesday blasting the court for its decision and said that the verdict was another example of impunity within the judiciary. … “The Cambodian justice system has yet again failed those who risk their lives to defend their rights and protect the country’s rapidly vanishing forests,” Megan MacInnes, a Global Witness campaigner, said in the statement. “This is the latest example of the shocking climate of impunity in Cambodia.” Ms. MacInnes added Hang Serei Odom’s death to a list of people killed in the fight for the country’s land and forests, along with the 2012 death of environmental activist Chut Wutty and Heng Chantha, a 14-year-old girl who was shot and killed during a land eviction in Kratie province. … Local rights group Adhoc, which has been closely monitoring the case, criticized the court procedure during the initial investigation of the case, in which important evidence such as phone records were not examined or retrieved in the immediate aftermath of the murder. …
Kuch Naren and Dene-Hern Chen
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/rights-groups-condemn-verdict-of-murdered-journalist-41435/
