http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/read.php?newsid=30029590

March 18
Cambodian prince charged with adultery

PHNOM PENH – A Cambodian court has charged ousted royalist leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh with adultery over his affair with a classical dancer, a court official said Sunday.

Ranariddh — who is currently in Europe and was on Tuesday sentenced in absentia to 18 months in jail for fraud over a land deal — could face up to one year in prison if found guilty under Cambodia’s new monogamy laws.

The charge follows a complaint filed in December by his estranged wife, Princess Norodom Marie Ranariddh.

Sok Kalyan, deputy prosecutor at Phnom Penh Municipal Court, said the charge was issued in January, but was only made public on Friday, the first day of campaigning for upcoming local administrative elections.

“It is true that I charged Prince Norodom Ranariddh with adultery, and I think it is fair because the accused had a relationship with a new partner,” said Sok Kalyan.

He said the court would invite both Princess Marie and Ranariddh to court once the investigation was complete. No date for the hearing has yet been set.

The prince, 63, has publicly acknowledged his relationship with a classical dancer, with whom he has a three-year-old son.

Cambodia in September passed a monogamy law which punishes unfaithful spouses and bans polygamy and incest. Perpetrators face between a month and a year in prison, plus a fine of up to 205 dollars.

Ranariddh’s defence lawyer Liv Sovanna labelled the charge “a great injustice”, but admitted that he had little hope that they could win the case, accusing the courts of bias.

Ranariddh, who was sacked as leader of the Funcinpec party in October, was on Tuesday sentenced to 18 months in jail and ordered to pay 150,000 dollars to Funcinpec over the illegal sale of his former political party’s headquarters.

The charges against the prince are at the heart of a battle with his former political allies for royalist support ahead of local elections next month and national polls in 2008, which are likely to see royalist influence in the government plummet.

Ouk Socheat, the prince’s information adviser, said Ranariddh was currently in Belgium.

He did not say when Ranariddh would return to Cambodia, but told AFP that members of the prince’s newly-established Norodom Ranariddh Party would issue a petition requesting a royal pardon from King Norodom Sihamoni.

Agence France-Presse

Streckfuss, David. 1995. “Kings in the Age of Nations – The Paradox of Lèse-Majesté as Political Crime in Thailand.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (3): 445-475. (Reprinted in David Streckfuss, ed. 1996. Modern Thai Monarchy and Cultural Politics: The Acquittal of Sulak Sivaraksa on the Charge of lese majeste in Siam 1995 and Its Consequences. Bangkok: Santi Pracha Dhamma Institute, pp. 54-80.)

Streckfuss, David Eirich. 1998. “The poetics of subversion: Civil liberty and lese-majeste in the modern Thai state.” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. 669 pp.

“Talking of Fah Diew Kan, they interviewed (PDF) David Streckfuss – who wrote his dissertation on lese majeste law in Thailand. It is certainly worth a read particularly as his dissertation and an earlier journal article were written in the 90s. He has same interesting statistics on lese majeste cases in the last 10 years. 22 cases and everyone was found guilty and in 21 of the cases the person was sentenced to jail.”

Anon: It was certainly not a joke about the Crown Prince. Streckfuss goes through the case in detail in both his dissertation and a journal article he wrote. The politician was imagining what his life would be like if he was a prince and living in a palace, he did not refer to a member of the Royal Family. He was found guilty because his statement was found to be indirectly insulting as it suggested members of the Royal Family were lazy.

Here is screenshot from Streckfuss’ article with the words in question.

anon: I bet the King does pardon Oliver if he happens to be convicted.