Cambodia’s Mu Sochua cries out against China

Without true democracy and a legitimate anti-graft system, Cambodia is destined for heavy debts, low-end jobs, exploited lands and depleted natural resources under its current relationship with China, prominent exiled opposition politician Mu Sochua told Asia Times in an exclusive interview.

Mu Sochua, president of the Khmer Movement For Democracy (KMD), a United States-based activist group, was vice president of the nation’s largest opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), when the Supreme Court banned and dissolved it in October 2017.

She and other CNRP politicians fled the country after the arrest of CNRP leader Kem Sokha on treason charges, including unproven allegations he was working with the United States to stage a “color revolution” the party has consistently maintained are trumped up.

Seven years later, Mu Sochua continues to challenge the democratic legitimacy of the prevailing Cambodian People’s Party (CPP)-dominated political order forged in recent stage-managed elections the CNRP insists have been neither free nor fair.

In particular, she says the West should review the implementation of the Paris Peace Agreements, signed in October 1991, to ensure Cambodia’s sovereignty, self-determination through free and fair elections, and human rights after decades of debilitating civil war fueled by competing great and regional powers.

That independence, Mu Suchua asserts, is under rising threat from China’s growing power and influence over the ruling CPP.

She said China’s influence has grown rapidly in recent years, seen in the increasing presence of China’s military, cybercrime and human trafficking operations run by the Chinese mafia, the provision of loans through the Belt and Road