Phnom Penh: Police in Australia are investigating a threatening letter received by a Victorian state MP which warned that he and other critics of Cambodian strongman Hun Sen in Australia would be targeted by an assassination team.
The letter was sent to the Melbourne office of Labor’s Meng Heang Tak before Sunday’s election in Cambodia, and said his name appeared on a hit list, along with other vocal opponents of the government in Phnom Penh.
Victorian Labor MP Meng Heang Tak speaks at a Cambodian community event in Melbourne.
“These people including yourself will be targeted for death by my Cambodian third hand squad who will be flying there to do the clean-up,” the letter said.
The one-page, typed warning said the same fate would apply to any members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) who opposed the plan of Prime Minister Hun Sen to pass the leadership baton to his eldest son, Hun Manet, after almost four decades in charge.
It also contained a threat to “any Australian member of parliament” who challenged the Cambodian regime, and any members of the Cambodian community in Australia who were against Hun Sen. The letter also singled out former Victorian MP Hong Lim and Chea Youhorn, the former mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong and the president of the Cambodian Association of Victoria.
“There was a death threat to myself and my family and it’s [the subject of] an ongoing investigation by the Australian Federal Police and Victorian police,” said Tak, a former lawyer who was born in Cambodia and relocated to Australia at age 16.
Cambodian leader Hun Sen at an election campaign event in Phnom Penh on July 1.Credit: Reuters
Victoria Police confirmed it was leading the probe into the anonymous letter, which was received by the MP on June 8.
News of the letter comes five years after a written death threat was made to Lim and Bou Rachana, the widow of slain Cambodian political commentator Kem Ley. Bou Rachana was granted asylum in Australia after her husband was shot dead in Phnom Penh in 2016.
It was received soon after Hun Sen – the longest serving prime minister in the world – had told protesters in Australia that he would “pursue them to their homes and beat them up” if they burnt an effigy of him during his visit to Sydney for an Australia-ASEAN summit.
The new threat was sent six weeks before the CPP’s election victory became certain, as political rivals were marginalised during a sustained crackdown on dissent in recent years, and the only serious opposition party was barred from contesting the polls on a technicality.
Hun Manet, Hun Sen’s eldest son and the chief of Cambodia’s army, is positioned to take over as prime minister.Credit: AP
However, Hun Sen and his party, which holds all 125 seats in Cambodia’s National Assembly, are also bidding to consolidate control ahead of the foreshadowed transition of power, in which 45-year-old Hun Manet, the West Point-trained chief of the Royal Cambodian Army, would become prime minister.
In Australia, members of the Cambodian community – as recently as at a demonstration on Sunday – have called on the Albanese government not to recognise the “undemocratic elections”, but say they have faced pressure from loyalists to the CPP, which has established networks in most capital cities in Australia.
“It’s an open secret, this intimidation,” Tak said. “If you want to express something at all, if you want to participate in community activities, if you want to participate in protests like last Sunday, people think twice before they participate due to that threat being created through CPP activities in Melbourne and in Australia.”
In an interview in Phnom Penh, CPP spokesman Sok Eysan denied the party was involved in any intimidation of diaspora communities in Australia.
“The Cambodian People’s Party have sent their own people to work in Australia and they were accused of putting threats against the Cambodian community in Australia,” he said.
“I know this accusation. This is the accusation by the opposition and some Australian parliamentarians. Our position is it’s not based on fact.”
Asked about the letter sent to Tak, he added: “I don’t know about this threat. If there is a threat against someone, one should report to the local authority of Australia. [The] Cambodian government is not involved in this threat in the foreign country.”
Sawathey Ek, a Sydney lawyer and head of the Cambodian Action Group, said the tentacles of the Cambodian ruling party in Australia exposed the shortcomings of foreign interference legislation.
He is calling for a federal parliamentary inquiry into CPP activities in major cities and for extra conditions to be attached to visas for Cambodian students in Australia.
The Coalition is expected to propose a motion after parliament resumes on July 31 that urges the Albanese government to fully investigate claims of infiltration and monitoring of the Cambodian community in Australia, and reports of multi-million dollar property purchases in Australia by wealthy members of the ruling elite in Phnom Penh.
Federal Labor MP Julian Hill has been a critic of high-level Cambodian officials being permitted to visit Australia to give weight to the CPP presence in the country. He has alleged there has been interference in temples and temple elections in Australia and that fake charity events were held to raise money.
“This is an organised outfit,” he told parliament in March. “I know of people, both Cambodian-Australians and Cambodians studying in Australia, who were forced to join these [propaganda] events and the implicit threat ... was, ‘We know who you are, we know where you are and most importantly we know where your family is in Cambodia’.
“Cambodian-Australians and others from diaspora communities must be able to exercise their democratic rights and freedoms without being threatened or coerced. It’s a difficult problem to tackle and the government is doing what we can.”
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s office was contacted for comment.
With Nara Lon
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