"The Fight for Freedom: Attacks on Human Rights Defenders 2018-2020", 19 December 2020

The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) … is releasing “The Fight for Freedom: Attacks on Human Rights Defenders, 2018-2020”.“The Fight for Freedom” is not an exhaustive list of all attacks targeting human rights defenders ... Instead, it highlights a number of high-profile cases where human rights defenders have been targeted for intimidation, arrest or imprisonment while trying to peacefully exercise their rights to association, assembly and expression as guaranteed both in Cambodia’s constitution and under international law.

An annexe … to this report’s publication draws upon the work of LICADHO’s human rights monitoring project to detail a broader, though still not comprehensive, pattern of attacks and threats against human rights defenders in Cambodia.

In the three years since LICADHO last released a report on attacks on human rights defenders carried out by authorities, the government has overseen the dissolution of the main opposition … and continued its repression of non-political human rights defenders and activists…

The arrest of Rong Chhun … after the union leader joined garment workers on the street and visited farming communities along the Vietnam border sparked a wave of peaceful protests calling for Chhun’s release…

Khmer Thavrak youth activist Hun Vannak was just one of the people imprisoned while calling for Rong Chhun’s release. His mother, Ty Mary, told … that her son had only acted for the betterment of society…

Repressive laws have been enacted in recent years that curtail fundamental freedoms and human rights, …