Cambodia’s Supreme Court on October 14 denied opposition activist Voeung Samnang’s request to serve his two sentences concurrently, meaning he will spend 11 years in prison. Samnang had been convicted on charges of “plotting an attack on the state” and received sentences of five and six years.

The case illustrates the Cambodian government’s increased use of vague plotting charges to prosecute opposition activists and social media users and sentence them to long prison terms.

Samnang had been a local commune official for the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the opposition party dissolved by the government-controlled Supreme Court in 2017. He fled to Thailand in 2020 after charges were filed against him.…