AN Inter-Parliamentary Union committee has weighed in on the government’s legal battle with opposition leader Sam Rainsy. In a decision reached on July 15, the IPU’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians called on authorities to ensure that Sam Rainsy could resume his parliamentary duties “as soon as possible”, after he was convicted of damaging public property and inciting racial hatred for uprooting border posts last year. The decision, a copy of which Sam Rainsy emailed to media outlets yesterday, expresses “grave concerns” with how the National Assembly lifted Sam Rainsy’s parliamentary immunity, a tactic that “can only cast doubt on its independence of the government”.