(Photo: Hun Sen shooting in the air -AFP)
Hun Sen stands credibly accused of war crimes. In one eyewitness report, “Hun Sen’s troops threw hand grenades and later slit the throats of critically ill patients” in two hospitals in Kompong Cham. Relief troops “discovered hundreds of bodies of men, women and children, young and old, including Buddhist monks who had been first tortured and then killed — some executed by a gunshot to the back of the head, others chopped to death with hoes, still others strangled to death or suffocated by plastic bags tied over their heads.”
By Michael Benge
Recently, I watched Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio — who is allegedly
short-listed as a vice-presidential candidate — on TV, dancing around to
avoid answering whether he supports Mitt Romeny’s position of cutting
foreign aid to reduce the budget deficit. While totally ending foreign
aid is unnecessary, countries with repressive and corrupt regimes are
prime candidates for such a move. First, a diplomatic démarche should be
issued with a concrete timetable for ending human rights abuses and
theft of aid.
Cambodia is high on the list of problem nations in this regard. Free
and fair elections were held for the first and last time in 1993, when
the Royalist FUNCINPECParty (the United Front for an Independent,
Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia) won. However, in 1997, Hun
Sen, the number-two official in the communist Cambodian People’s Party
(CPP), backed by 300 Pol Pot Khmer Rouge (KR) fighters commanded by the
notorious butcher Keo Pong, led a coup d’état against FUNCINPEC. The new
regime then committed extrajudicial executions of around 100 top Army
officers and party officials. Since then there have been no free and
fair elections, but instead only façades — rigged elections under
control of the CPP. Hun Sen is now prime minister of Cambodia.
Hun Sen stands credibly accused of war crimes. In
one eyewitness report, “Hun Sen’s troops threw hand grenades and later
slit the throats of critically ill patients” in two hospitals in Kompong
Cham. Relief troops “discovered hundreds of bodies of men, women and
children, young and old, including Buddhist monks who had been first
tortured and then killed — some executed by a gunshot to the back of the
head, others chopped to death with hoes, still others strangled to
death or suffocated by plastic bags tied over their heads.”
Hun Sen was also in charge of enforcing the K-5 Plan, referred to as the “Petite
Genocide,” during the Vietnamese invasion, in which Cambodians were
forced into KR mine fields along the Thai border to plant bamboo
thickets, create fields of punji stakes, and lay additional mines. They
had to choose between the risk of being blown up constructing the”bamboo
wall” and being shot if they tried to escape. Tens of thousands of
Cambodians were killed.
Hun Sen has also placed many Khmer Rouge commanders in positions of power in the army and government. His
penchant for brutality and use of death threats cow most members of the
opposition and intimidate the Cambodian population in general. He
routinely uses the CPP’s parliamentary majority to strip opposition
deputies of their immunity and uses the judicial system to bring
defamation proceedings against those who refuse to kowtow to him.
These are either imprisoned or driven into exile. The International
Genocide Trials of Khmer Rouge leaders have ground to a halt after
interference by Hun Sen and his controlled judges resulting in the
resignation of three Western judges. Only one war criminal has been
tried and convicted, and the remaining indicted and imprisoned KR
leaders are said to enjoy special privileges — reportedly because they
have threatened to “rat out” Hun Sen for his real role in the Khmer
Rouge killings.
The CPP controls all media. Freedom of expression
and information are curtailed; journalists are arrested and imprisoned,
and newspapers, magazines, and radio stations are shut down for
publishing anything the Hun Sen regime dislikes. The right to freedom of
assembly has been severely violated, as in a case in Bavet, Svay Rieng
province, where the Bavet Mayor shot three factory workers on February
20 who were protesting against squalid working conditions. The mayor
admitted to shooting them, was charged with a misdemeanor, and released —
thus, the shooting victims live in fear. This is not an isolated
incident, for the cases of the murder of several union leaders remain
unsolved.
On April 26, Chut Wutty, one of the highest-profile Cambodian
environmental activists, was murdered in Koh Kong province for taking a
stand against greed and corruption by illegal loggers (Phnom Penh Post,
04/27/12). Cambodia’s most powerful logging syndicate is led by relatives of Hun Sen, including his wife
(Global Witness’ 2007 report, “Cambodia’s Family Trees”). Three weeks
after Wutty’s murder, soldiers hired to protect the economic concession
of a company killed a 14-year-old girl. She was part of a group of
villagers organized to defend their land against further encroachment.
Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said the murder was justified and
necessary to crack down on an association for a democratic movement
against illegal land-grabbing.
Hun Sen, in his infamous “cockroach” speech in 2011, when responding
to the suggestion by a Cambodian critic that he should be worried about
the overthrow of a dictator in Tunisia, replied, “I not only
weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead … and if anyone is
strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs
and put them in a cage” (Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch, NYT commentary 05/31/2012).
Forced evictions have steadily risen in Cambodia. Tens of thousands
of people around the country, including indigenous populations and
marginalized families and individuals living in poverty, have been
forcibly evicted, and some killed, in land-grabs, often in connection
with economic land concessions granted to powerful foreign-owned
companies. Evictions are carried out by the Cambodian Army and
police, who are paid by the companies. Cambodia’s Army, commanded by Hun
Sen’s son, is for hire to private and foreign interests, and yet the
U.S. provides military aid to this corrupt and repressive army.
Corruption is rampant in Cambodia, which is ranked 164th out of 183 countries by Transparency International.
Billions of dollars of aid funding by Western taxpayers, and now China,
has done relatively little to improve the lives of ordinary Cambodians,
or to produce needed reforms. Instead, the government is successfully exploiting international aid as a source of political legitimacy
(Global Witness, “Country for Sale”). The U.S. Department of State is
major enabler, which recognizes Cambodia as “a constitutional monarchy
with an elected government.” In fact, “King” Norodom Sihamoni is
nothing more than an emasculated figurehead under the complete control
of the CPP, the government is a repressive kleptocracy, and Cambodia’s
rigged elections are but a façade. However, State was honest
enough to state that members of the security forces commit arbitrary
killings and act with impunity. In May 2009, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia
Carol Rodley proclaimed that approximately U.S. $700 million a year of
foreign aid is lost through corruption.
“Cambodia today is a country for sale and the country is rapidly being parceled up and sold off”
to foreign interests, including its extractive resources. The proceeds
are pocketed by the Cambodian nouveau riche billionaire kleptocrats,
with little going to the Cambodian citizenry.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (the more things change,
the more they remain the same). The band plays on — and all too often,
our foreign aid does more harm than good, while America ends up looking
like a paper tiger.
Michael Benge spent 11 years in Vietnam as a foreign service
officer and is a student of South East Asian politics. He is very active
in advocating for human rights, religious freedom, and democracy for
the peoples of the region and has written extensively on these subjects.
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