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Aid money represents roughly half of Cambodia’s national budget. (Photo: Mio Cade) |
By IRWIN LOY / IPS WRITER
PHNOM PENH — A proposed law governing NGOs in Cambodia will impose severe restrictions on civil society groups and tighten control over public discourse, critics in this Southeast Asian country say.
International analysts and local groups have widely condemned Cambodia’s draft Law on associations and non-governmental organisations, arguing the proposed rules foist unnecessary restrictions on freedom of expression.
Groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Global Witness have all called the law deeply flawed. At a donor conference in Phnom Penh this week, a US official took the unusual step of publicly linking government restrictions on civil society to valuable aid funds from one of the country’s largest donors.
"In these times of fiscal constraint, justifying increased assistance to Cambodia will become very difficult in the face of shrinking space for civil society to function," Flynn Fuller, the Cambodia mission director of the American development arm, USAID, said at a meeting between donors and government.
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