Parliamentarians of Sam Rainsy Party Seek to Visit Foreign Embassies in Phnom Penh and Appeal for Reactivation of Paris Peace Agreement

Parliamentarians of Sam Rainsy Party Seek to Visit Foreign Embassies in Phnom Penh and Appeal for Reactivation of Paris Peace Agreement

PHNOM PENH –Members of Parliament of the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) will visit embassies in Phnom Penh, Cambodia of the countries, signatories of the 1991 Paris Accords to deliver an appeal for the reactivation of the Agreements.

As written in the party’s official appeal, “nineteen years ago, in order to put an end to war and massacres and to help in the reconstruction of Cambodia, the international community, under the aegis of the United Nations, brought all Cambodian factions together so as to achieve national reconciliation and to lay the foundations of a system of liberal democracy, on the basis of pluralism. It is this type of political system that the international community accepted to guarantee for Cambodia by signing the Paris Agreements on October 23, 1991.”

However, “a worrying authoritarian trend has been noticeable in Cambodia over the last few years. It shows in the form of a deterioration in the human rights situation, the stifling of fundamental freedoms, a brutal policy of land grabbing that affects essentially the poor, the suppression of all forms of criticism and protest, the persecution of the parliamentary opposition and activists of the civil society, the use of the judicial power for political ends and a drift toward a one-party system.”

The SRP Party has been working relentlessly to push for all citizens to be able to speak out and to protect all Cambodian citizens' freedom of speech and all other fundamental rights.

It is for this reason that Members of Cambodia’s chief democratic opposition party, will seek to visit the embassies of the signatories represented by eighteen friendly countries including all Western powers and Australia and Japan, to appeal for the reactivation of the Accords.