Monthly Archives: February 2020

Decision due Wednesday could hurt nation’s $9.5bn apparel sector

SHAUN TURTON, Contributing writer, Nikkei Rewiew Japan

FEBRUARY 09, 2020 12:42 JST

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s human rights record has been criticized by the European Union, which is set to announce its decision Wednesday on removing trade privileges on some Cambodian exports. (Nikkei montage/Reuters)

PHNOM PENH — The European Union is set to withdraw trade privileges on some Cambodian exports after a yearlong review of the Southeast Asian nation’s widely-condemned human rights record, according to a document uploaded to the European Parliament’s website.

An official announcement on whether Cambodia will retain its duty-free access to the bloc under the Everything But Arms scheme for least developed countries is due on Wednesday.

But in what appears an inadvertent disclosure of the widely anticipated decision, details were included in a file uploaded to the European Parliament website.

The document — submitted by Italian MEP Danilo Oscar Lancini on behalf of the far-right Identity and Democracy Party — appeared to point to a partial suspension of Cambodia’s EBA privileges.

It did not specify which products had lost their duty-free access, but noted rice was not among them.

Lancini, who did not respond to a request for comment, is a member of the parliament’s Committee on International Trade.

His submission details proposed amendments to a resolution about the EU’s free trade agreement with Vietnam. It was in this context that Cambodia’s EBA status was referenced. Among the proposed revisions, which express concern about the impact of Vietnamese rice imports on the bloc’s market, the ID Party also pointed to Cambodia as a threat.

By David Whitehouse -February 7, 2020    

Cambodian opposition figure Sam Rainsy told everyone that he would be back in Cambodia for independence day celebrations on November 9. He never made it, and is still in exile in Paris. Game, set and match to Prime Minister Hun Sen?

Some media reports at the time suggested that the failure to return could mean the end of Sam Rainsy’s political career. Other journalists have accused him of a lack of courage – though without suggesting any alternative opposition strategy.

Opinion polls are taboo in Cambodia, so it’s hard to measure how the attempted return affected the popularity of Sam Rainsy. If his Facebook page is any guide, the episode has not dimmed his standing in Cambodia. His recent video on Facebook in which he challenged Hun Sen to put him on trial for treason in place of Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) leader Kem Sokha has been viewed well over a million times: bear in mind that Cambodia has a population of 15 million and that many have no Internet access.

Kem Sokha and Sam Rainsy were the joint founders of the CNRP in 2012. Sam Rainsy stood down as leader in 2017, hoping to avoid his list of convictions for various offences including libel being used as grounds to justify the dissolution of the party. So Hun Sen simply arrested Kem Sokha instead for treason, dissolved the CNRP, then cast aside to seek evidence for the charge. This “evidence” largely consists of an unremarkable speech made by Kem Sokha in Australia in 2013.

This is worth repeating if you are new to the story: an exiled dissident who has spent most of the last 15 years in Paris, who has accumulated a stack of in absentia libel convictions in Cambodia’s courts, and who demands to be put on trial for the treason charge now faced by his deputy as party leader until 2017, is not facing trial because . . . the government is too scared to do it.