Meach sovannara biography for kids
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It was a moment Jamie Meach thought would never come.
When a Cambodian court sentenced her husband, Meach Sovannara, to 20 years in a hellish prison following what human rights observers dismissed as a “show trial” in 2015, the Long Beach woman feared she had seen him for the last time.
On Saturday, she was happily proved wrong.
Sovannara, a Long Beach resident and Cambodian political activist, was nearly tackled by his wife and daughters when he appeared at Los Angeles International Airport, returning to the U.S. for the first time in years and marking the end of an international legal saga that many feared would end with his death in a prison cell on the other side of the world.
“I never thought that he would be released,” Jamie Meach said as more than a dozen friends and well-wishers surrounded the family and snapped pictures.
A former teacher and journalist-turned-political activist, Sovannara was acting as a spokesman for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party when he was arrested for criticizing Prime Minister Hun Sen during a speech in 2014. Although no evidence was presented at trial, Sovannara was sentenced to 20 years in Prey Sar prison, an infamous, overcrowded complex in the nation’s capital where many of those who oppose H
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With a loved one held prisoner in Cambodia, a Long Beach family has been living an international nightmare
When Meach Sovannara boarded a flight to Cambodia in 2015, his wife and three daughters knew there was a chance he might never return to their modest Long Beach home.
Jamie Meach was no stranger to her husband’s battles with the Cambodian government. It was Sovannara’s activism, after all, that forced the family to seek asylum in the United States more than a decade earlier. He had returned to Cambodia since then, but protests that followed a controversial national election had endangered Sovannara’s safety once more.
A dual citizen of the U.S. and Cambodia, Sovannara was charged with attempting to incite an insurrection in 2014 after delivering a speech at a protest in Phonm Penh, the country’s capital.
Sovannara returned to the U.S. after being released on bond, but with a court hearing looming, he had a choice to make: Live safely in exile in Long Beach, or risk imprisonment to continue the fight against a government that has been widely criticized for human rights violations.
Despite the risks, Jamie Meach and her husband knew he had to return home.
In July 2015, Sovannara and 10 others were convicted of various crimes connected to the protests after what huma
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After three eld in a foreign put inside, a Asian political activistic wonders agricultural show he glance at help his homeland suffer the loss of California
If Asian government officials thought Meach Sovannara would stay still after they threw him in jail, they were wrong.
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The months that followed were “misery,” according softsoap Sovannara, who said why not? and bay political prisoners were