{{Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen met the country’s main opposition leader on Monday after violence broke out at a rally the previous day to protest July’s contested general election result and one man was shot dead.}}
At least 1,000 protesters were camped out in the rain in makeshift tents in Freedom Park in the capital Phnom Penh late on Sunday and many remained on Monday in a tense standoff.
The electoral authorities say Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which has been in power for 28 years, won the election, but the opposition claims the CPP rigged the vote and wants an independent inquiry.
Clashes broke out in several places in Phnom Penh on Sunday as supporters of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) tried to remove razor-wire barricades and refused to restrict their protest to a designated site in Freedom Park.
Chan Soveth, a worker for human rights group Adhoc, said a man was shot in the head and died when CNRP supporters tried to move razor-wire barricades set up by the authorities in the Kbal Thnal Bridge area near their party headquarters.
He said the man was not a political protester but someone who lived in the area and was among a group of local residents angry that they could not reach their homes.
Chan Soveth said he had visited five other people in hospital who had been hit by live rounds. “These bullets came from where the authorities were,” he told Reuters.
Kheng Tito, National Military Police spokesman, said police had used only teargas, batons and smoke grenades and he could not say how the man died.
“I don’t know how he was killed. We didn’t use live bullets,” he said.
The capital has been tense since the election on July 28 but protests were mostly calm until this weekend and the security forces, prone to cracking down on dissent in the past, had also been restrained.
King Norodom Sihamoni summoned Hun Sen and CNRP leader Sam Rainsy to a meeting on Saturday morning but it lasted just 30 minutes and apparently produced no results.
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