Cambodia’s king has pardoned former opposition leader Kem Sokha for a treason conviction, just weeks after he lost an appeal to overturn that verdict, according to a royal decree released on Monday.
Kem Sokha, 72, co-founder of the defunct Cambodia National Rescue Party, has been held under house arrest since he was found guilty of treason in March 2023. He was accused of conspiring with a foreign power to topple then-premier Hun Sen.
Last month a court in Phnom Penh upheld his 27-year sentence and banned him from leaving the country for five years once that term ends. The royal decree said the pardon only applied to the original sentence.
A lawyer for Kem Sokha did not immediately answer phone calls seeking comment on the pardon.
Kem Sokha’s case was among the most prominent in a sweeping crackdown on opponents of the Cambodian People’s Party, which has ruled Cambodia for more than four decades.
The United States said at the time that his conviction was based on “fabricated conspiracy theories”.
He was among only a few remaining opposition figures in the Southeast Asian country, after many others fled in the wake of a 2017 Supreme Court ruling that banned the CNRP.
The Khmer Movement for Democracy, an organisation led by one of those exiled figures, Mu Sochua, said in a statement that the pardon was an attempt to whitewash the government’s campaign against its political opponents.
“The decision to mitigate only the prison sentence while maintaining the ban on political activity and restricting freedom of travel abroad is merely shifting the form of detention from house arrest to political confinement,” it said.
Cambodia’s government, now headed by Hun Manet, the U.S.- and British-educated son of the still influential former premier Hun Sen, denies targeting opponents and says those convicted were law-breakers.
Hun Sen, who now serves as senate president, signed the decree on behalf of King Norodom Sihamoni, who is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
(Reporting by Josh Smith;)
