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By Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, July 20, 5:40 AM
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A gunman fired a shot early
Saturday into one of the main offices of Cambodia’s opposition party, a day
after the exiled leader of the opposition returned home to an exuberant welcome
by supporters ahead of this month’s general elections.
The office in the capital Phnom Penh was closed for the
night and nobody was injured by the attack. But it was immediately denounced as
an effort to intimidate the opposition after the long-awaited return of its
leader Sam Rainsy.
“This attack was orchestrated by those in power,” said
opposition party spokesman, Yim Sovann. He said security guards were sleeping
when the shot shattered a window at about 3 a.m.
“They shot at our office to attack our spirit ahead of
the election, but this attack doesn’t scare us at all,” he said.
Police were sent to investigate, said Phnom Penh’s police
chief, Lt. Gen. Chhun Sovann.
Huge, exuberant crowds turned out Friday to greet Rainsy
when he returned home to spearhead his party’s election campaign against
well-entrenched Prime Minister Hun Sen.
The French-educated leader of the Cambodia National
Rescue Party had been in exile since 2009 to avoid serving 11 years in prison
on charges many consider politically motivated.
Rainsy, 64, received a royal pardon last week at the
request of Hun Sen, his bitter rival whose ruling party is almost certain to
maintain its ironclad grip on power in the July 28 general election.
A charismatic and fiery speaker, Rainsy is expected to
draw large crowds on a whirlwind schedule taking him to over a dozen provinces
in a week.
He started his tour Saturday in Kampong Speu province, 45
kilometers (30 miles) west of the capital.
“I condemn all types of violence,” Rainsy said in
response to the shooting. “All of us have to respect the law.”
The crowd that welcomed Rainsy on Friday was one of the
largest ever for a political event in the country, and included well-wishers at
the airport, throngs along the route into the city and tens of thousands at the
capital’s Democracy Square, where he spoke at a campaign rally.
“I have come home to rescue the country,” Rainsy told the
crowd after arriving at Phnom Penh’s airport. Supporters chanted, “We want
change!”
Hun Sen has ruled for 28 years, and his party has 90 of
the 123 seats in the National Assembly. The 60-year-old prime minister recently
said that he intends to stay in office until he is 74 — cutting back from an
earlier vow to stay in control until he’s 90.
Rainsy’s pardon came after the U.S. and others had said
his exclusion from the campaign would call into question the polls’ legitimacy.
Because he was absent during the registration periods, he will be unable to run
as a candidate, or even vote, although his lawyers have said they were seeking
a way to allow his participation.
This month’s election will be the fifth parliamentary
poll since the United Nations brokered a peace deal for Cambodia in 1991, a
process meant to end decades of bloodshed that included the communist Khmer
Rouge’s catastrophic 1975-79 rule, during which an estimated 1.7 million people
died in torture centers and labor camps or of starvation or disease.
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