Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said he had been invited by the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and wanted to investigate reports of rising violence and intimidation.
Since early April, more than 112,000 refugees have fled Burundi to Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), amid rising violence and intimidation, mainly by the Imbonerakure, in the runup to June's presidential elections.
Conventional wisdom in recent years has been that, outside of dissident intellectual circles, rising prosperity and state intimidation have ensured basic public tolerance of Communist party rule.
If this is the case, Mr Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will have to decide whether to compete again, amid rising government-sponsored violence, intimidation and preparations for more thorough rigging.
A grand jury indicted five men on charges that they were involved in a firebombing at the Baltimore home of a woman who helped the police fight drug dealing, an attack that underscored the rising number of witness intimidation cases in the city.
Indeed, people are rising against fear and intimidation.
ROP's presence encourages those who disagree to the far right's prescriptions to rise above the intimidation they use to silence their opponents.
The hope within the Administration, which is spending $2.3 million to underwrite private groups that will monitor the election, is that Cambodians will rise above the intimidation and violence that have marked the election campaign and vote their conscience on Sunday.
The demands had been accompanied by a rise in intimidation, threats and harassment, he said.
The department's director general, Lou Sanson, said the rise in intimidation was "extremely nasty" and the police were now involved.
