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Cambodia’s Top Court Dissolves Main Opposition Party

There was heavy security outside the Supreme Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Thursday as the court dissolved the main opposition party, effectively ending the country’s post-Khmer Rouge experiment with pluralistic democracy.Credit...Tang Chhin Sothy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia’s highest court on Thursday dissolved the main opposition party, eliminating the most popular and viable challenger to the country’s authoritarian leader before elections next year.

Human rights groups and the United Nations said the decision to shutter the Cambodia National Rescue Party, or C.N.R.P., would render the country essentially a one-party state, ending its post-Khmer Rouge experiment with pluralistic democracy.

The ruling followed a lawsuit filed last month by the government against the opposition, asserting that it was involved in a United States-backed plot to overthrow the Cambodian People’s Party and its powerful leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen.

In announcing the ruling, Dith Munty, the chief judge of the Supreme Court, said, “It is a serious crime, so the party will be dissolved according to Article 38 of the Law on Political Parties.” The judge is also a high-ranking member of the governing party and a close associate of Mr. Hun Sen.

There is no right to appeal.

The decision, which will see scores of opposition officials barred from politics and their party stripped of its parliamentary seats, was the culmination of a crackdown in which the opposition leader was jailed, media outlets closed and activists harassed, with a particular focus on groups linked to the United States.

The International Commission of Jurists, a nongovernmental rights group, said the hearing and Judge Dith Munty’s role in it made “a mockery of justice.”

“The Supreme Court is irreparably interfering with the rights of potentially millions of Cambodians to freely choose their political representatives and vote for them in the upcoming elections,” said Kingsley Abbott, the group’s senior legal adviser in Southeast Asia.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith, warned last month that the dissolution of the opposition would be a dangerous move toward one-party rule, saying it “would affect Cambodians’ voice and choice at all levels of government.”

The opposition has insisted that the charges of sedition are spurious, and that its activities have been aimed only at winning national elections and forming a legitimate government. It did not send a lawyer to Thursday’s hearing, saying that there was no use contesting what appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

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Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia this month. After elections in June, he began one of the country’s harshest crackdowns in years.Credit...Samrang Pring/Reuters

Mr. Hun Sen has spent the past month publicly boasting about the opposition party’s imminent elimination. In an address last week, he set odds of 1 to 100 that the C.N.R.P. would be dissolved, and urged Cambodians to place cash bets at noodle shops.

The push to eliminate the opposition has coincided with a turn away from the West, which had long kept the Cambodian government in check with aid that had conditions for democratization.

Nonetheless, Mr. Hun Sen has expressed a personal affinity for President Trump that seems to transcend his antipathy for the United States. On Monday, at a summit in Manila for Southeast Asian leaders, the two posed for a photograph — Mr. Trump giving a big thumbs up — and Mr. Hun Sen gave a gushing speech in which he said, “I don’t know if you are like me, or I am like you.”

Mr. Hun Sen also praised what he called Mr. Trump’s lack of interest in human rights and interventionism, and suggested that the State Department and the United States Embassy in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, were not appropriately implementing the Trump “policy line.”

On Thursday, the White House expressed “grave concern” about the dissolution of the opposition party and said the United States would withdraw financial support for Cambodia’s 2018 elections. “On current course next year’s election will not be legitimate, free or fair,” it said in a statement.

The European Union threatened to exclude Cambodia from a program that gives impoverished countries tariff-free access to its markets, which has been highly beneficial to Cambodia’s garment industry.

The Cambodia National Rescue Party, formed in 2012, has garnered widespread popularity with a blend of rights-oriented liberalism, economic populism and anti-Vietnamese nationalism. It has been welcomed by many simply as a fresh choice in a country that has been led by Mr. Hun Sen’s party in some form since 1979.

In general elections in 2013 and in local elections this past June, the C.N.R.P. nearly matched the popular vote tally of the governing party, which had maintained tight control over local political networks, the military and the judiciary. Significantly, the opposition party took control of a third of local administrative bodies across Cambodia in the elections in June.

A little more than a month after that vote, Mr. Hun Sen began one of his harshest crackdowns in years.

Forty-four of the opposition party’s lawmakers have fled the country since early September. Of the 11 remaining, two are in prison, including the party’s leader, Kem Sokha, charged with treason and accused of spearheading a plot.

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Supporters of the opposition leader Kem Sokha during a rally after his arrest in September. He is accused of treason.Credit...Heng Sinith/Associated Press

Hundreds of local officials have been targeted by the crackdown, in which Mr. Hun Sen pressed them to join his party or face serious consequences. Some have reported being detained until they agreed.

In August, the National Democratic Institute, an American nonprofit group, was expelled from Cambodia, and Radio Free Asia, run by the United States government, was shut down for alleged tax offenses.

Late Tuesday, two of Radio Free Asia’s former employees in Phnom Penh were arrested, accused of continuing to work covertly for the broadcaster. They are to appear Friday in court to face charges of “supplying a foreign state with information prejudicial to national defense,” which carries a prison term of up to 15 years, police officials said.

As proof of the supposed plot, the government and its lawyers cited videos and pictures of opposition party activists demonstrating and meeting “foreigners,” including State Department officials and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and John McCain of Arizona.

However, the government’s main evidence appeared to be a video clip of Mr. Kem Sokha from 2013 telling a crowd of supporters that he had received advice and support from the United States. He has been jailed since September over the footage.

In an effort to prove the United States had backed a revolution, the government’s lawyers also quoted a speech last year by Mr. Trump, then president-elect, in which he said, “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.”

“This clearly shows the U.S. had a policy to topple the government of other countries,” the lawyers told the Supreme Court.

The mood in Phnom Penh was tense in the days leading up to the decision, with the government mobilizing hundreds of police officers and army personnel and banning political protest. Barricades blocked major roads leading to the Supreme Court in the city center.

On Wednesday night, armed government forces raided several offices of nongovernmental organizations, checking for hidden protesters.

In a speech delivered on Thursday while the Supreme Court was still in session, Mr. Hun Sen announced that he planned to continue leading the country for at least another decade — despite the fact that elections are scheduled for next July.

“We are Cambodia,” he said. “We don’t give the opportunity to foreign countries to interfere with our internal affairs.”

Sun Narin contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Democracy Fades as Cambodian Court Dissolves Main Opposition Party. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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