November 15, 2010
Barbara Crossette
The Nation
Surrounded from its inception by squabbles between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, mired in charges of corruption and perennially short of cash, the tribunal set up to judge surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime is once again in jeopardy.
The question of where the tribunal is headed arose again in early November because of two events: an unusually candid and critical farewell message from the departing chief of the defense support section and the publication by the New York–based Open Society Justice Initiative of a report acknowledging that the court will sooner or later be wound down, and that plans should be made now to avoid having its work cut short by the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has made no effort to hide his distaste for it.
In a third, separate but not unrelated development, Hun Sen has told the UN that unless it removes its chief human rights representative in Cambodia, Christophe Peschoux, the government will close down the Phnom Penh office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the first of its kind to be established in a national capital. Peschoux, who is accused by officials of favoring opposition politicians, has been outspoken on threatened political and economic rights, including the beating of protesters and the practice of "land-grabbing," when poor Cambodians' properties are seized illegally for the use of politically well-connected people or foreign companies.
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