Allen Myers, Phnom Penh
On January 29, police announced the arrest of two people they accuse of fatally shooting Chea Vichea, the president of the Free Trade Union of Workers.
Vichea was killed a week earlier, as he read newspapers at a news stall on one of the main streets of the city. Two men on a motorcycle pulled up at the stall. The passenger got off, shot Vichea with a pistol three times at close range, returned to the motorcycle and escaped. Vichea died on the spot.
On January 25, tens of thousands of mourners, mostly garment workers, marched in the funeral procession or attended the cremation ceremony for the slain union leader. Rumours that police were blocking truckloads of mourners from reaching the city centre proved false; in fact, police directed traffic and helped to ensure an unhindered march.
Political charges
Sam Rainsy, the leader of the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), which Vichea supported, lost no time in seeking to make political capital of the killing. On the day of the murder, he declared it a deed of the government, although he offered no evidence.
On January 27, Rainsy went further, telling a press conference that the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and Prime Minister Hun Sen were plotting to kill him and four other people: Eng Chhay Ieng, the secretary-general of the SRP; Prince Norodom Sirivudh, the secretary-general of Funcinpec; Kem Sokha, a former Funcinpec senator who now heads an NGO funded by the US government, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights; and Rong Chhun, the head of the Cambodian Independent Teachers' Association.
Rainsy's accusations further increased tensions. The current political stalemate has so far prevented the creation of a new government following national elections on July 27.
Prior to the elections, Funcinpec was the smaller partner in a coalition government with the CPP. After the election, in which the CPP won an increased majority — 73 out of 123 seats — Funcinpec and the SRP formed a misnamed "Alliance of Democrats".
Because of a constitutional anomaly — two-thirds vote of the National Assembly is required to approve a government — the old government, of which Funcinpec ministers are still nominally a part, continues in office. Funcinpec and the SRP are demanding that they both be included in a new government, which they want to carry out their program rather than the program of the winning party.
Suspects
The two suspects are Born Samnang, 23, the alleged gunman, and Sok Sam Oeun, 36, charged with being the driver of the motorcycle. Police said the two admitted having been promised US$5000 to kill Vichea and having been given a down payment of $1500. The police said that they were still looking for the person who had solicited the killing.
Police also displayed a pistol, the alleged murder weapon, saying that Samnang had led them to its hiding place after he confessed.
When displayed to reporters on January 29, however, the two loudly proclaimed their innocence and said they had been beaten into signing confessions. Oeun claimed that he had not known Samnang prior to his arrest.
The next day, Samnang retracted his denial and publicly stated that his confession was accurate. But Oeun continued to deny any role in the murder.
On the same day, there was a further development. A few days before the election in July, Vichea had received an anonymous text message threatening to kill him. On the morning of January 30, police presented to reporters a man who confessed to having sent the threat. Police said they had found in his house the mobile phone from which the message was sent (the phone number is recorded by the system).
The story of the man, known as Men Vatana, Tiem Vatana or Chan Vatana (it is not unusual in Cambodia for people to be known by several names), included some surprises. According to the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper of January 31, the police reported finding Vatana's membership cards in the Khmer Nation Party (the forerunner of the SRP), the SRP, Funcinpec "and many others".
Moreover, Vatana, who identified himself as an SRP member, said that he had been asked to send the threatening message by Eng Chhay Ieng, the party's secretary-general, who had provided him with an English text of the message.
Another Cambodian newspaper, Chakraval, included in its headline of the story the information that Vatana was "suspected to be mentally ill", but this possibility seems not to have been seriously pursued by anyone else.
Eng Chhay Ieng responded on February 1 by announcing that he was going to sue Vatana, the police colonel who presented him to the media and a national television reporter who interviewed Vatana. Eng Chhay Ieng said that he had been campaigning in the provinces on the days on which Vatana claimed to have met him in SRP headquarters, and that he cannot speak or write English.
His suit is only one of many pending legal actions. On January 30, Hun Sen filed a $5 million defamation suit against Rainsy over the latter's claim of an assassination plot. Not to be outdone, Rainsy on February 1 said he would sue for $50 million and demand that Hun Sen be jailed over a grenade attack on a rally in 1997 in which 13 people were killed.
Motives
Opposition politicians, who demanded an immediate arrest of the killers on January 22, immediately denounced the arrest of the two murder suspects a week later as a "show" and a "joke", without stating exactly what they found improbable in the police account. And, of course, the police do not claim to have answered the fundamental question: who organised what was clearly a case of murder for hire?
Whether the killing was really carried out by Born Samnang and Oeun or by two other people, it seems likely that the killers would have been hired through an intermediary and so would not know either the identity or the motive of the person or persons who paid for the murder. The trail cannot be followed further than the immediate killers unless the police can find the intermediary.
However, the idea that the killing was directly political seems unlikely. While Vichea was an active supporter of the SRP, he was not an influential politician — dead he is more damaging to the CPP than he was while alive.
Vichea is more likely to have made fatal enemies in connection with his union activities. Cambodia's garment industry, which has sprung up only since the mid-1990s, has often been characterised by thuggery and violence. The unions in it are small, divided and easily attacked when their officers cannot be bought off.
From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.
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