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Cambodian human rights center chief hit with defamation charge+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)PHNOM PENH, Dec. 31_(Kyodo) _ One of Cambodia's top human rights campaigners was detained Saturday for questioning on a defamation charge filed against him by the Phnom Penh municipal authority, a police official said. Kem Sokha, director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, was confronted in his office in Phnom Penh in the early afternoon while a number of opposition parliamentarians and British Ambassador David Reader, chair of the European Union diplomatic missions to Cambodia, watched. According to the police, the Phnom Penh municipal authority filed a defamation suit against Kem Sokha on Dec. 21, alleging his human rights center was responsible for erecting at least two banners criticizing the national government over the country's boundaries with Vietnam. The banners were raised in the capital Dec. 10 at a gathering of several thousand people that his organization hosted to mark Human Rights Day. The Cambodian government led by Prime Minister Hun Sen is exceedingly sensitive to any criticism alleging he has ceded any Cambodian territory to Vietnam. |