Cambodians voters went to the polls this past weekend. Meanwhile, a group of Cambodian-Americans from Lowell went to Washington, DC to protest.
In Cambodia, the long-time prime minister, Hun Sen, is accused of rigging the nation’s elections to stay in power. The opposition, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, was dissolved and their leader was imprisoned.
The international community has widely condemned the elections as non-democratic, and Rithy Uong of Lowell agrees. He leads the opposition party’s branch in the US and Canada and he helped organize the protests.
Uong says he and about 100 people from Lowell joined hundreds of others from more than a dozen states at the DC protest. And another 150 people from Lowell attended protests in New York.
The protesters urged Cambodians to boycott the election. “It’s like a joke. It’s a sham election,” says Uong. “It’s an election without a competitor.”
The protesters were also advocating for a bill in the U.S. Congress that promotes free and fair elections and imposes sanctions on the Cambodian prime minister and his inner circle. Last week the bill passed in the U.S. House.
Uong says in the next few weeks he’ll be working to convince the U.S. Senate to take up the bill. He’s hoping the sanctions force the Cambodian prime minister to become more democratic.
“We, as Cambodian Americans will not sit still and watch the death of democracy in Cambodia and watch the suffering of the Cambodian people,” Uong says.
