Coalition of NGOs issues recommendations about situation of Human rights in Cambodia

By Ka-set
24-04-2009
The Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) and the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) announced on April 22 the drafting by a coalition of NGOs – coordinated by the Alliance for Freedom of Expression in Cambodia (AFEC) and assisted by the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) of a joint submission on freedom of expression and assembly in Cambodia to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, for inclusion for the purposes of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Cambodia’s Human Rights record. Those organisations wish their recommendations to be included in the document’s summary concerning the situation of Human rights in Cambodia. The submission, summed up in a communiqué released by the AHRC, shows that the last four years have seen freedom of expression and assembly in Cambodia “seriously undermined”, with opinion restricted, parliamentarians silenced, the media controlled, access to information blocked, and assembly and public demonstration prevented, the organisation details. Those NGOs elaborated a series of recommendations in their submission: inviting the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression to visit and assess the situation in Cambodia, working with other ASEAN member states to create an ASEAN Human Rights body in 2009, and decriminalise disinformation in the course of reforming the Criminal Law.