PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A Cambodian court on Monday convicted a prominent opposition politician of incitement and sentenced him to four years in prison, in the latest legal move to stifle criticism of the government of Prime Minister Hun Manet.
Rong Chhun, a top advisor to the newly formed Nation Power Party, was found guilty of inciting social unrest related to his political activity for meeting with villagers displaced by government construction projects, including the new Phnom Penh International Airport. In addition to the prison term, he was barred from running for office and from voting.
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Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun talks to media near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun, foreground, gestures as he talks to media members near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun, right, waves to his supporters near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun greets his supporters near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
The 56-year-old had denied the incitement charge, saying all he did was post photos of himself with the villagers and comments on Facebook.
“This is not a law enforcement issue,” Rong Chhun told reporters after the verdict. "It's about politics."
He remains free for a month with the opportunity to file an appeal during that time and said he would do so.
The U.S. Embassy, which has been critical of Cambodia's human rights record, had an observer at the hearing but did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Incitement allegations are frequently used by authorities in Cambodia against opponents. Rong Chhun was already sentenced to two years for incitement in 2021, on accusations he spread false information about Cambodia's border with Vietnam after meeting with farmers in the area. He was released later the same year by an appeals court.
Cambodia’s government has long been accused of using the judicial system to persecute critics and political opponents. It insists it promotes the rule of law under an electoral democracy, but political parties seen as mounting strong challenges to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party have been dissolved by the courts or had their leaders jailed or harassed.
Under almost four decades of autocratic former Prime Minister Hun Sen, Cambodia was widely criticized for human rights abuses that included suppression of freedom of speech and association. He was succeeded in August 2023 by his American-educated son, Hun Manet, but there have been few signs of political liberalization.
Late last year, the president of the Nation Power Party, Sun Chanthy, was himself convicted of inciting social disorder and sentenced to two years. Sun Chanthy had been a top leader of the former Cambodia National Rescue Party, which had been expected to present a strong challenge to Hun Sen's ruling party in 2018 elections, but was dissolved by the high court as part of a sweeping crackdown on opposition.
Sun Chanthy then joined the Candlelight Party, the successor to the Cambodia National Rescue Party, but it in turn was barred from competing in the 2023 general election on a technicality. He then helped form the Nation Power Party at the end of 2023, along with Rong Chhun and others.
After his conviction Monday, Rong Chhun said he was not surprised by the verdict and vowed to continue “actively to protect the constitution.”
“We must hold to a path that is based on the truth,” he said.
He urged members of the Nation Power Party to stay the course while he serves his sentence.
“Let's not lose heart,” he said. “We must all be strong.”
Rising reported from Bangkok.
Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun talks to media near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun, foreground, gestures as he talks to media members near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun, right, waves to his supporters near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun greets his supporters near the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, May 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
