PHNOM PENH: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said today he would drop criminal defamation lawsuits against five human rights activists whose arrests were cited as evidence of his increasing authoritarianism.
Hun Sen, the former Khmer Rouge soldier who has run Cambodia for the past two decades, said he had talked at length with the five last night and had agreed to accept their apologies for accusing him of selling land to neighbouring Vietnam.
''Their letters were enough for me to end the case,'' he told reporters after meeting Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo.
''But I have to ask my lawyers and legal experts how to drop the charges against them after this compromise,'' he added.
Four of the five, who included Kem Sokha, head of the U.S.-funded Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR), were freed on bail last week following a visit to Phnom Penh by Christopher Hill, a senior US diplomat.
Kem Sokha and his deputy, Pa Nguon Teang, were charged with defamation, which carries up to a year in jail, in connection with a banner at a December human rights rally that labelled Hun Sen a communist and a traitor who had sold off land to Vietnam.
The other two men released -- radio station owner Mam Sonando and teachers' union head Rong Chhun -- had also commented on the frontier with Vietnam, a highly charged political issue in a country deeply suspicious of its larger neighbour to the east.
Yeng Vireak, a legal activist affiliated with the CCHR, had been released earlier on bail.
''I do not want to challenge with any one. I would prefer to strike a compromise rather than challenge,'' Hun Sen said. ''I am calm now.'' Despite his latest move, human rights groups accuse Hun Sen of using Cambodia's notoriously corrupt law courts to clamp down on his political opponents.
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy remains in self-imposed exile after losing his parliamentary immunity last year and receiving in absentia an 18-month jail term for accusing Hun Sen of trying to blow him in a 1997 grenade attack that killed 16 people.
Another opposition MP, Cheam Channy, was sentenced to seven years in jail in August for forming an illegal armed group, a charge human rights groups dismissed as politically motivated.
