A Change of Guard

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Saturday 17 November 2012

US worries on Cambodia rights before Obama trip

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (AFP/File, Tang Chhin Sothy)
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States said Thursday it was pressing Cambodian leader Hun Sen to reverse his "very worrying" direction on human rights as President Barack Obama prepared to visit for a regional summit.
Obama will on Monday become the first sitting US president to visit Cambodia, where human rights groups accuse the government of stepping up a crackdown on dissidents and on protests, many linked to land disputes.
Samantha Power, a White House official in charge of human rights, told reporters on a conference call that Obama was visiting for the "important" East Asia Summit and related meetings hosted by Hun Sen.
"But our message to him on a bilateral basis is very much about human rights abuses that are being committed within Cambodia's borders and urging him once and for all to actually start to take these concerns seriously rather than continuing to move in very worrying directions," she said.
Power said that the main US message to Hun Sen will be to hold free and fair elections, to end land seizures and to protect human rights more broadly.

A dozen US senators and members of the House of Representatives last month urged Obama to speak out over Cambodia's "deteriorating human rights situation."
Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, earlier said that if Obama does not speak out over concerns, "his visit will be seen by the government as an endorsement and deepen the sense of inviolability."

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