asianews

Friday, September 18, 2009
Op-Ed by Jayakhmer

The dispute between our elected officials namely between the most powerful man in Cambodia and a helpless member of parliamentarian takes on new twists and turns. The battle is being fought internationally. Mu Sochua has been attracting a lot of international attentions especially from the US Congress. This proves yet again that Samdech Prime Minister Hun Sen and his advisors have miscalculated the impact.

In the afternoon of September 14th, I attended the meeting at Berkeley. The Goldberg Room at Boalt Hall Law School where Mu Sochua gave a talk was a small room and was packed with about less than 200 people. All the seats were taken; I stood against the wall listening to a courageous woman telling her struggles in her motherland to a friendly and sympathetic audience.

“I will not compromise,” Mu Sochua repeated several times as she described the human rights situation in Cambodia.

Listening to Mu Sochua, I could not help but wonder how we came to this point politicall