Cambodia Demonstration at Place Luxembourg

Cambodia demonstration: Thursday, 18 October 2018, 12.00-15.00, Place Luxembourg, Brussels

There is one country which tried this year to learn from the Stalinist way of parliamentary democracy: Cambodia. Their Prime Minister started with forbidding the main opposition parties, arrested key leaders, manipulated the elections on 29 July – and finished with 125 seats out of 125. What a persiflage of democracy. Such a result – accompanied by repression of all opposition voices – is a wrong signal for a population of some 16 million inhabitants, still traumatized by the genocide in the 70’s, with its some three million victims.

As Daran Kravanh, the President of the Khmer Anti-Poverty Party (KAPP), decided to live outside the country he could not be arrested – and has now traveled to Brussels to alert the EU about the situation in his country and to pledge the international community to act.Why?

Brussels will host the EU Asia Summit 2018. Established in 1996 as a forum for dialogue and cooperation between Europe and Asia, it is organized every two years and is held alternatively in Asia and Europe. This year 53 Presidents and Prime Ministers will come together on 18/19 October in Brussels.

As the Prime Minister of Cambodia will be among them, the KAPP and civil society representatives from Cambodia have decided to demonstrate this week in the EU quarter in Brussels. This demonstration is asking the other participants of the EU Asia Summit to express towards the Cambodian delegation that they support the position of the EU, the US and Australia, not recognizing this election; they ask their Cambodian counterparts to stop the repression in the country, to free the political prisoners, and to follow the way of good and responsible governance.