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Sourn Serey Ratha, president of the fledgling Khmer Power Party, announced at a press conference on Friday that he would sue For­eign Minister Hor Namhong for defamation and incitement after the minister described him and fellow party members as terrorists last week. Mr. Serey Ratha, a longtime dissident who spent years abroad, was convicted earlier this year of incitement, plotting against the government, and obstructing elections, and sentenced to seven years in prison before receiving a pardon brokered by Prime Minister Hun Sen and returning to Cambodia to launch the Khmer Power Party. Several party members were also convicted of similar offenses and later pardoned.Khmer Power Party President Sourn Serey Ratha holds up a copy of the criminal code during a press conference in Phnom Penh on Friday.During a press conference in Phnom Penh on Friday, Mr. Serey Ratha played an audio clip of Mr. Namhong speaking to reporters on December 7 about the CPP’s commitment to promoting political diversity. “Especially the party of Sourn Serey Ratha in the United States of America, whose members have even committed terrorism in Cambodia, we also pardoned them and we want to strengthen multiparty democracy,” Mr. Namhong says in the clip.Mr. Serey Ratha said he found the comments unacceptable and that he would sue Mr. Namhong if he did not receive a public apology for the accusation of terrorism.“We cannot accept this, because by saying that there were members who committed terrorism, it is incitement to discrimination and it might make some supporters who are interested in joining the Khmer Power Party scared about being arrested or sentenced, because the government has accused them of joining a group that committed terrorism,” he said. Mr. Serey Ratha said that if no apology was forthcoming, he would file suit against the minister at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court at 10:30 a.m. on Monday for def­amation and incitement to discriminate. He said he would seek 500 million riel (about $125,000) in dam­ages, which he would donate to the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals if he won the case. He predicted that he had only a “0.000001 percent chance” of prevailing in the suit, but said he felt it was important to push forward with it to defend his party’s reputation.“Leaders and officials of the Cambodian People’s Party have used this law, and they have always sued politicians and other people who criticize them over their public affairs,” he added, justifying his threat to sue.Indeed, the suit, if launched, would be a novelty for Mr. Nam­hong, who has filed many defama­tion lawsuits over the years against those who have accused him of col­laborating with the Khmer Rouge. Most recently, an arrest war­rant was issued last month for exiled op­position leader Sam Rainsy based on a conviction for defaming Mr. Namhong in 2008.Chum Sounry, a spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, declined to comment on the matter.“You can contact his [Mr. Nam­hong’s] lawyer, Kar Savuth, because I am not an expert in the law,” he said.Mr. Savuth declined to comment.Also at the press conference, Mr. Serey Ratha said he wrote to the Foreign Ministry this month to ask why Cambodia’s ambassador to Switzerland, Ney Samol, had used government letterhead to invite Cam­­bo­dians living in the country to a dinner in early December to meet the prime minister’s son, Hun Manet. Mr. Serey Ratha provided copies of the invitation letter to journalists at the press conference, and displayed pictures that he said showed Mr. Manet meeting with Cambodians in Switzerland in a room bedecked with CPP flags. “Are [Cambodian] ambassadors in that area representatives of the Cam­bodian government or representatives of the Cambodian People’s Party?” said Mr. Serey Ratha, arguing the meeting had violated principles of diplomacy and fair play. “If the Cambodian People’s Par­ty travels to join the meeting abroad and has the right to use ambassa­dors to issue the invitation letter to invite the people to meet with their party, that means that other parties —the Khmer Power Party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party and other parties—when we have a meeting abroad, ambassadors also need to issue the same kind of invitation letter. It is only fair,” he said.The Khmer Rouge tribunal an­nounced on Friday that the judicial investigation into the slew of crimes allegedly committed by former Khmer Rouge district chief Im Chaem had concluded, bringing the possibility of an indictment one step closer.The announcement comes more than six years after the investigation was opened and represents a key sign of progress in the government-opposed case, paving the way for the court’s international co-investigating judge to either issue an indictment or dismiss the charges.“If no parties request further in­vestigative action within 15 days, the case file will be forwarded to the co-prosecutors so that they can make a final submission,” said Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the tribunal.“After they receive the final submission, the co-investigating judges will prepare a closing order, ei­her sending the case for trial or dismissing the case,” he said.In March, Im Chaem was charged in absentia in Case 004 with crimes against humanity—including murder, enslavement, imprisonment and other inhumane acts—and homicide alleged­ly committed at the Phnom Tra­young security center and the Spean Sreng worksite in Banteay Mean­chey province, where the suspect was a district chief during the Khmer Rouge regime.She is the only accused person in the tribunal’s two government-opposed cases, 003 and 004, not to have been charged before a judge.Suspects Ao An, Yim Tith and Meas Muth have all met with either former Investigating Judge Mark Harmon or his successor, Judge Michael Bohlander, this year to be formally charged.Prime Minister Hun Sen has publicly criticized the tribunal’s decision to pursue cases 003 and 004 on several occasions, warning that an expansion of the tribunal’s scope beyond Case 002—against “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea and Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan—could plunge Cambodia into a bloody civil war.The judicial investigation into Im Chaem is the first in the disputed cases to reach a conclusion.As Cambodians continue to de­bate the government’s whitewashing of a street artist’s multistory mural this week, the information minister publicly critiqued the decision on Friday and drew a comparison to the retrograde attitudes of Soviet leaders toward modern art.The huge turquoise-hued mural depicting a local seamstress with needle in hand was painted on the north wall of Phnom Penh’s White Building earlier this month by American artist Miles MacGregor, known by the handle “El Mac.”In response to a Facebook post by City Hall spokesman Long Di­manche announcing that the mu­ral would be whitewashed because it had been painted without permission, Information Minister Khieu Kanharith suggested lo­cal government officials would have done better to congratulate Mr. MacGregor on his achievement.“If we had called him to meet and praise him, this would have been better,” Mr. Kanharith wrote.In response, Mr. Dimanche wrote: “Yes uncle, we told him al­ready that he might be a really good artist, but the authorities do not allow art like this, including graffiti in Phnom Penh.”Mr. Kanharith then hit back with a proverb, implying that City Hall could have avoided the tirade of criticism it has faced since the mural was ruined.“Scatter the firewood before the flames arrive,” the information minister wrote.“Next time, [Mr. MacGregor] can push for international participation in beautifying Phnom Penh.”Contacted on Friday for further comment, the information minis­ter appeared to draw an analogy between the government’s whitewashing of street art and the negative effects Nikita Khrushchev—the leader of the Soviet Union be­tween 1958 and 1964—had on art in his country.“Street art (not graffiti) must have its place in Cambodia,” Mr. Kanha­rith wrote in a Facebook message.“I remembered the day when Nikita Khrushchev…[visited] the art gallery and expressed his horror of modern painting. For dec­ades Russian people knew nothing about new art because just one man disliked it,” he added.On Friday, reports also emerged that other graffiti and street art had been painted over in Phnom Penh, including a well-known alleyway off Norodom Boulevard whose walls were covered in vibrant paintings.Asked about this whitewashing, Mr. Dimanche declined to comment. He also declined to re­spond to Mr. Kanharith’s suggestion that the attitudes of City Hall were comparable to those in So­viet Russia.Kimchean Koy, a 17-year-old street artist from Phnom Penh, said he had mixed feelings about the removal of graffiti from city walls.“Part of me thinks if it was there before, why do it now? But at the same time, it’s part of a constant battle. With street art, it’s part of the cycle, like painting and then it being painted over, and then paint­ing it again.”

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