Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Opposition leader Sam Rainsy says he is committed to return to the Southeast Asian nation from self-imposed exile on Saturday, despite government attempts to stop him.
Party officials and human rights organisations estimate more than 40 opposition supporters have been arrested since Rainsy announced in August his plan to return, while Prime Minister Hun Sen has said he will deploy thousands of troops at the border to prevent Rainsy crossing into Cambodia from Thailand.
Rainsy’s deputy Mu Sochua was turned away when she attempted to enter Thailand last month and the country’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan O-cha said this week Rainsy would not be allowed in.
But Rainsy, president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), insists he will board a flight from Paris to Bangkok on November 7, and will make his way to Cambodia on Saturday.
“I have no alternative,” the veteran politician told Al Jazeera from the French capital where he has lived since 2015. “I have tried all the different possibilities: the peaceful, the mature, the real democratic one, but it doesn’t work with Hun Sen … I have to try to create People Power in 2019, because there is no election now.”
The People Power protests in the Philippines in 1986 led to the fall of the country’s dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the restoration of democracy.
Decades-long struggle
Born into Cambodia’s political elite in 1949, Rainsy studied economics and accounting in France before taking a job in the financial sector.
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He remained in Europe until 1992, when he returned to Cambodia following the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and won a seat in parliament for the royalist Funcinpec Party in UN-backed elections.
