Fwd: CAM: Police open fire on protesters (BKKPost)
Alex G Bardsley
News Banner
September 11, 1998
CAMBODIA
Police open fire on defiant protesters
UN agency rescues wounded student
Phnom Penh, AFP, Bangkok Post
Cambodian police clashed with thousands of defiant anti-government
protesters for the fourth day running yesterday, shooting one and
charging up to 10,000 others in bids to disperse them.
Demonstrators led by Buddhist monks and students opposing the
government of strongman Hun Sen swelled in number as they marched
through the capital in defiance of a ban against public protests.
The march followed an early morning shooting in which one student was
injured after police opened fire on about 300 opposition party
supporters near the US embassy.
Hundreds of riot police in trucks and jeeps eventually charged and
dispersed the demonstrators as they passed outside the Royal Palace in
central Phnom Penh.
The crowd quickly turned and ran as police poured into an area bounded
by the "Democracy Square" protest base, the palace and the National
Assembly, enabling security forces to rapidly secure the area, an AFP
correspondent at the scene said.
No shots were fired and there were no injuries reported when police,
mostly armed with batons and shields, stormed the area, which has been
the site of weeks of anti-government sit-ins.
With the crowds dispersed, police trucks quickly moved on in search of
other protesters thought to be gathering elsewhere in the city.
Supporters of the royalist Funcinpec party of Prince Norodom Ranariddh
and dissident Sam Rainsy's party have demonstrated throughout the city
centre for more than two weeks, alleging Mr Hun Sen won the July 26
elections through fraud and intimidation.
There were chaotic scenes when police opened fire with automatic
weapons at a crowd gathering close to the US embassy and Prince
Ranariddh's residence yesterday.
The crowd of more than 300 people were calling for the lynching of
ethnic Vietnamese, blamed for a spate of recent poisonings and linked
to Mr Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party which led Hanoi-backed
governments here in the 1980s.
A United Nations car collected one injured man, who was bleeding from
the head and neck, and took him to hospital.
He was identified as an 18-year-old student by the UN's Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia. His condition was not
known.
The crowds were defying an Interior Ministry ban issued on Wednesday
prohibiting public gatherings, in the fourth day of a violent police
crackdown on mounting protests.
"We want a democracy like the United States. We came here because we
are against the military rule of Hun Sen," said an angered law
student.
Up to 400 protesters returned to the US embassy in the afternoon
before beginning the march through the city centre.
Riot police were in attendance but did not intervene until the crowd
had grown to number about 10,000, according to UN monitors on the
scene.
Around 50 young Buddhist monks were at the head of the march, with the
crowd carrying Buddhist symbols including tree branches and
multicoloured flags. Monks held aloft banners denouncing Mr Hun Sen.
The UN human rights office said a Buddhist monk was killed on
Wednesday near the US embassy when riot police violently broke up an
anti-government protest.
THAI puts five jets on standby
Thai Airways International is ready to evacuate Thais from Cambodia if
the political conflict deteriorates further.
Pisit Kusalasaiyanon, THAI's vice-president, said yesterday the
national airline had put five 150-seat Boeing 737 aircraft on standby
for an emergency evacuation.
At present, THAI operates two weekly flights between Bangkok and Phnom
Penh.
© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 1998