About 100 motodops converged on the office of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights yesterday, demanding president Ou Virak retract comments accusing victims and witnesses of giving false testimony during last month’s widely condemned trial of Boeung Kak lake woman Yorm Bopha.

E Sophors, president of the Cambodia for Confederation Development Association, which supports two motodops a court says were beaten at the behest of Bopha, said Virak was failing as a human rights representative by taking sides.

“We’re so disappointed because . . . he represents only one party and we have no rights as motodops,” he said, in the second protest at CCHR in a fortnight.

After Bopha’s trial last month, Virak accused victims and witnesses of giving scripted testimony as part of plot to frame the activist and scare fellow land protesters into submission.

“I think they have been told, ‘hey, let’s point the finger in a certain direction and you’ll get more compensation’,” he told the Post at the time.

Virak said yesterday he would keep speaking out against Bopha’s three-year prison term.

“These [two motodops] are probably the real victims, but the court needs to find the real perpetrators,” he said, noting the CCDA had the right to protest peacefully. “Let’s apply the same principles for everyone. Allow everyone to protest outside my office.”

Several motodops have said they were given food or money to attend protests, claims Sophors denies.

 

To contact the reporters on this story:

May Titthara at [email protected]

Shane Worrell at [email protected]