Some 70 union members and opposition party activists gathered at a Phnom Penh newsstand on Wednesday to commemorate the killing of labor leader Chea Vichea, who was gunned down by an unknown assailant 21 years ago as he read a newspaper.
The outspoken critic of then-Prime Minister Hun Sen was the president of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia. His funeral procession through the capital in 2004 was attended by thousands of supporters, and his killing remains one of Cambodia’s most notable unsolved crimes.
“I request that authorities speed up the investigation,” said Chea Mony, the brother of Chea Vichea and the acting president of the opposition Nation Power Party.
“It has been 21 years,” he said on Wednesday. “This isn’t a short time. It should be enough to find the real killers.”
Two men were arrested within days of the murder with each handed 20-year jail sentences in a 2005 trial decried by rights groups as unjust.
The men, Sok Sam Oeun and Born Samnang, maintained they had been framed by police, and were finally acquitted in 2013 by Cambodia’s Supreme Court, which ruled they had been wrongfully convicted.
A special commission set up by Hun Sen in 2015 to find the real killers and accomplices has produced no results.
RFA couldn’t reach National Police Spokesman Chhay Kim Khoeun for comment on the status of the investigation.
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“Even though it has been 21 years, it is not too late for the crime of shooting and killing people like animals,” said Meach Sovannara, the leader of the New Generation Party. “There is no time limit that requires us to stop investigating or trying to apprehend criminals and bring them to justice.”
Rong Chhun, a prominent labor activist who was a close associate of Chea Vichea, vowed to continue to speak out “until the murderers are found.”
“We will not stop, even if it takes another 21 years,” he said.
Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.