Kem Sokha, the former leader of the Cambodian opposition, was yesterday granted a royal pardon, effacing a 27-year prison sentence for treason, a month after an appeals court upheld his conviction.
Sokha, 72, the co-founder of the now defunct Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), had been under house arrest since he was convicted of treason in March 2023, after a long spell in pretrial detention.
The royal decree, signed by Senate President Hun Sen on behalf of King Norodom Sihamoni, who is currently in China for medical treatment, comes after years of criticism of Sokha’s treatment by the United Nations, Western governments, and human rights groups.
As Cambodianess reported, the decree removes the remainder of Sokha’s prison sentence but does not overturn the Appeal Court ruling, handed down on April 30, that upheld his conviction. It also keeps in place a ban on him taking part in politics or leaving the country for five years after his sentence was over.
“We have already known that Kem Sokha’s case is a political one, and only a political solution can resolve it,” said Meng Sopheary, Sokha’s lawyer, as per Camboja News. “He has not received full freedom because he still does not have the right to engage in politics, vote, and travel abroad.”
In a post on Facebook, Hun Sen’s son Hun Manet, who took over the prime ministership in 2023, described the pardon as “one more step towards strengthening national unity.”
Sokha was arrested by members of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s personal bodyguard unit late on the evening of September 3, 2017. He was later charged with “conspiracy with a foreign power” under Article 443 of Cambodia’s criminal code. The main piece of evidence presented by government lawyers was a video of a 2013 speech Sokha gave in Australia, in which he discussed the support he received from Western democracy-promotion advocates.
At the time of his arrest, Sokha was the acting president of the CNRP, which had performed well at national elections in 2013 and local polls earlier in 2017, eating into the majority of Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and raising hopes of a genuine political opening.
However, the arrest marked a decisive escalation of the CPP’s campaign against its opponents. It was followed in short order by the dissolution of the CNRP by the Supreme Court in November 2017 and the flight of most of the party’s leadership into exile, alongside a broader crackdown on civil society and the independent media.
The CPP would go on to win all 125 parliamentary seats at the national election in 2018 and won 120 seats at the next election in 2023, after which Hun Sen handed power to his son Hun Manet.
The pardon came after Cambodian authorities permitted Sokha to visit his 100-year-old mother, whose health has sharply declined, on May 20. The second visit took place just hours before the signing of the pardon. During the visit, Cambodianess reported, Sokha “said he wanted to leave politics behind and spend the rest of his life with his family if he were fully freed from the conviction.”
The use of royal pardons to quash politically motivated court rulings was a regular feature of Hun Sen’s more than 38 years in power, generally intended to manage domestic political opposition and external opinion.
It is unclear what exactly explains the timing of Sokha’s pardon, but Cambodia’s government has recently come under close foreign scrutiny for the giant online scamming centers that have metastasized over the past five years, some of which have been linked to prominent CPP-aligned tycoons and political figures. The government is currently in the midst of a far-reaching crackdown on the industry, and Hun Sen said this week that Cambodia “will do whatever it takes to let the world know that it has successfully destroyed online scams.”
Hun Manet’s reference to “national unity” may also hint at the ongoing border dispute with Thailand, which twice erupted into conflict last year, and has pushed relations between Bangkok and Phnom Penh to their lowest point in years.
In any event, it would be a mistake to view the pardon as a sign of liberalization, and Sokha will remain under close observation by the authorities to ensure that he does not engage in any “political” activities.
“Hun Sen’s decision to pardon Kem Sokha after more than eight years in arbitrary detention partially reverses a grievous injustice, but it is deplorable that Sokha remains barred from participating in politics or leaving the country,” Elaine Pearson of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
The Khmer Movement for Democracy, an exiled opposition group, described the pardon as “a political chess game to deceive the public and whitewash its wrongdoings before the international community.”
