50 Political Deaths in Cambodia Reported

Fifty opposition figures have been killed in Cambodia since August, more than doubling the previously known toll of political slayings following a mid-1997 coup, the United Nations said. Thomas Hammarberg, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special representative for human rights in Cambodia, announced the new evidence on the killings at a Geneva news conference. Information about the killings, some as recent as March and coming on top of a previously documented 41 executions blamed by U.N. investigators on security forces, will be submitted to Cambodia in a memorandum. Most of the victims of the 50 summary executions documented by the U.N. were supporters of ousted Co-Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Hammarberg said.