25-7-2023 (WASHINGTON) The United States has announced it will impose visa restrictions on individuals and pause foreign assistance programs in response to Cambodia’s national election, which saw Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling party win in a landslide after credible opposition leaders were disqualified. The US said the ruling party’s suppression of the opposition meant the election could not be considered free or fair.
Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party secured 120 of the 125 available seats in Sunday’s elections, according to preliminary results. The unofficial successor to the CNRP, the Candlelight Party, was barred from running in the election by the National Election Committee on a technicality.
The US, the European Union, and other Western countries refused to send observers to the election, citing a lack of conditions for it to be free and fair. Russia and China, however, sent observers.
Late on Sunday, the US State Department said it had “taken steps” to impose visa restrictions “on individuals who undermined democracy and implemented a pause of foreign assistance programs” after determining that the elections were “neither free nor fair.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, “Cambodian authorities engaged in a pattern of threats and harassment against the political opposition, media, and civil society that undermined the spirit of the country’s constitution and Cambodia’s international obligations. These actions denied the Cambodian people a voice and a choice in determining the future of their country.”
Michael Greenwald, spokesman for the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, said the visa restrictions would be placed on individuals involved in “threatening and harassing the political opposition, media, and civil society,” but he would not specify who or how many individuals that would entail.
The State Department urged the CPP to use its new term to restore “genuine multi-party democracy.” Regional advocacy group Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights called on all democracies to denounce the elections.
