Measure comes amid sustained crackdown on opponents of the ruling Cambodian Individuals’s Social gathering.
Cambodian lawmakers have handed a regulation giving the federal government the ability to strip citizenship from folks who “collude” with international international locations.
The regulation handed on Monday empowers authorities to revoke the citizenship of anybody convicted of conspiring with international international locations, scheming in opposition to Cambodian pursuits, or committing acts resulting in “destruction of sovereignty, territorial integrity and nationwide safety”.
The laws was permitted by all however 5 lawmakers within the 125-member Nationwide Meeting, which is dominated by the long-governing Cambodian Individuals’s Social gathering.
Below the regulation, revocation of citizenship is to be determined by a committee established on the request of Inside Minister Sar Sokha.
Whereas the laws should nonetheless be permitted by Cambodia’s higher home and the king, these steps are broadly thought-about formalities.
The measure comes amid a sustained crackdown on opponents of the governing celebration, the political car of former strongman chief Hun Sen and his son, present Prime Minister Hun Manet.
In June, Hun Sen, who dominated Cambodia for greater than three many years earlier than his son took the reins in 2023, mentioned Cambodia wanted to take motion in opposition to nationals who “facet with international nations”.
Quite a few outstanding political figures have fled Cambodia to keep away from arrest amid the crackdown, together with Sam Rainsy and Mu Sochua, the cofounders of the banned Cambodia Nationwide Rescue Social gathering.
Earlier than the parliamentary vote on the regulation, a coalition of fifty rights teams on Sunday warned that the laws would have “a disastrously chilling impact on the liberty of speech of all Cambodian residents”.
“The potential for abuse within the implementation of this vaguely worded regulation to focus on folks on the premise of their ethnicity, political beliefs, speech, and activism is just too excessive to just accept,” the group mentioned.
“The federal government has many powers, however they need to not have the ability to arbitrarily resolve who’s and isn’t a Cambodian.”
