Hun Sen's Homegrown Political Risk

Op-Ed: Leadership Skills

There is a compelling case to be made that over the last several years, we have witnessed the front end of an “ASEAN spring.” Citizens and voters across Southeast Asia have told their governments about their new and rising expectations for empowerment,governance, and rule of law. 

Indonesia’s transformation from an autocratic regime under Suharto to a dynamic democracy today is the starkest example. But voters from Thailand to Malaysia, Singapore to Vietnam, and beyond have challenged their governments to either improve delivery of services and allow for greater participation, or see their mandates diminished and new competitors established. 

Only a handful of ASEAN countries are bucking that trend, and at the top of the list is Cambodia. Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country since seizing power in a 1997 coup, is poised to win his fourth consecutive term as prime minister when Cambodians go to the polls on July 28. While his victory is assured, a bright economic and political future for Cambodia is less certain. 

Unlike other Southeast Asian countries that are opening political systems created during the Cold War and investing in developing institutions by moving toward increasingly responsive and transparent regimes, Cambodia has not responded to similar signals. Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have not demonstrated that they will tolerate real political competition. Instead, there are signs that politically related violence, corruption, and nepotism are characterizing the run up to national elections. These trends suggest that Cambodia is not moving forward with its ASEAN partners and instead is home to a political instability that should concern its neighbors and ASEAN colleagues, including the United States. 

Earlier this month, the CPP stripped all 27 opposition lawmakers of their parliamentary status, rendering them ineligible to run in next month’s elections. The move is sadly consistent with other steps by Hun Sen and the CPP to undercut political rivals and thereby stunt the growth of a maturing political system in Cambodia.  

Read the full article below:

130627_SoutheastAsia_Vol_4_Issue_13 

Original source

Summary of 21st Anniversary of Paris Peace Agreement

Op-Ed: Venerable Luon Sovath

In conclusion, PPA or Paris Peace Agreement this year has been celebrated by Cambodian people worldwide such as Canada, United States of America, Australia, Cambodia, French, Switzerland and many other countries. There are Cambodian people demonstrated in front of the United Nations in New York, and at the headquarter of the UNs in Switzerland. This commemoration has been seen as the public education, unification and peace building for all people regardless of their political tendency, color, age or social status. The participants and organizers have expected to build lasting peace and sustainable development for Cambodia. All participants and organizers got off home to the union or street to commemorate this day in order to stop all culture of pointing finger and coloring on each others. May all being experience Peace, Progressive and Justice!!

 21st Anniversary Organizer

  Watching all movies non-stop

Brief History of Vietnamese Expansionism vis-à-vis Cambodia

Brief History of Vietnamese Expansionism vis-à-vis Cambodia

In 1941, Ho created the Viet Minh, an abbreviation of "Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi," or "League for the Independence of Vietnam," and spread its anti-French activities to Laos and Cambodia, where the Viet Minh later fragmentized the anti-French local Khmer Issarak front into a Khmer Viet Minh front. In 1949, the Viet Minh instituted the "Ban Van Dong Thanh Lap Dang Nhan Cach Mang Cao Mien" ("Canvassing Committee for the Creation of the Revolutionary Kampuchean People's Party") and created the Kampuchean People's Liberation Army in 1950.

By Gaffar Peang-Meth
Professor of Political Science (retired)
University of Guam

Originally posted at: http://www.khmerinstitute.org/articles/art13vietnamization.html
On Christmas Eve 1978, more than 100,000 Vietnamese troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, crossed the border into Cambodia. In 14 days of fighting, Hanoi's army sent Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge fleeing. The Vietnamese captured Phnom Penh Jan. 7, 1979, installed a puppet regime and stayed for the next 10 years.

For victims of Pol Pot's genocidal rule, which began April 17, 1975 and resulted in the deaths of upwards of two million people, Jan.7, 1979 was the day of deliverance by Vietnam. Surely, Vietnam was their "savior" and their "liberator" at a time when the world watched and did nothing about the horrors of the Killing Fields. However, for many Cambodians, Jan. 7th is also a day of infamy. Pol Pot was replaced by those referred to as Cambodians with Khmer bodies but Vietnamese heads, the Khmer Viet Minh. This cohort was created by the Vietnamese Communist Lao Dong, trained at the Son Tay Military Academy and the Nguyen Ai Quoc political school, and led by a disgruntled regional field commander, Hun Sen, who became indebted to Hanoi for his return to power. Many Cambodians felt that substituting the Khmer Viet Minh for the Khmer Rouge was like replacing cholera with the plague.

A host of foreign governments also worried. The world was still governed by the well-specified rule of law founded on the principle of absolute, comprehensive, permanent and inviolable sovereignty and independence. As Singapore argued before the international community at the United Nations, the world is no longer safe, and peace and security are no longer assured, if a more powerful state is allowed to invade a weaker one like Vietnam had done. The Association of South East Asian Nations spearheaded calls for Vietnam to withdraw its troops from Cambodia.

As a result, the United Nations and other international organizations became a political-diplomatic battleground for many years between proponents and opponents of Vietnam's invasion. And so it was that the anti-Vietnamese Khmer Resistance was born, first as separate armed bands with similar goals, and later as a loose coalition of Cambodians of the fallen Khmer Republic, Cambodians of the monarchy, and the leftovers of the Khmer Rouge. Despite their differences, they worked together toward pressuring Vietnam into withdrawal and to seek Cambodian self-determination.

China-Cambodia: More than just friends?

Southeast Asia

But China's interests go even farther. It wishes, by these informal alliances with authoritarian regimes of the region, such as those in Cambodia and Myanmar, first, to counter US influence in the region, and second, to neutralize, if not undermine, the cohesion of ASEAN. Since a number of ASEAN states, discreetly supported by the United States, are challenging China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, the alignment of those states within ASEAN considered to be pro-China would in effect prevent the association from adopting a united front on that issue. Finally, China wishes to weaken Hun Sen's links with Vietnam, which go back to the time of the United States' intervention in Vietnam and, subsequently, Cambodia in 1970. Vietnam has long been seen by China as its most serious strategic rival in the Southeast Asian region. Apart from past acrimonious relations between the two countries, Vietnam currently has two territorial disputes with Beijing - both countries claiming sovereignty over the Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands (see South China Sea: It's not all about oil, September 6). By Julio A Jeldres In July, in a message of congratulation to the leadership of the People's Republic of China on the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and China, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen hailed China as Cambodia's "most trustworthy friend", despite that country's past support for the Khmer Rouge. Indeed, since the Vietnamese army drove the Chinese ambassador and thousands of advisors out with the Khmer Rouge in January 1979, China has gradually regained a foothold in Cambodia and has become Cambodia's most influential trade and political partner. Relations between Beijing and Phnom Penh are the closest they have been since the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge regime collapsed.

Senior CPC official meets Cambodian PM, hails longstanding friendship

Zhou Yongkang (L), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs, meets with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (R), in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Aug. 20, 2011. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

PHNOM PENH, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Visiting senior Communist Party of China (CPC) official Zhou Yongkang met with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen here on Saturday, pledging further efforts to deepen the time-honored traditional friendship between the two countries.

Zhou, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said there has been rapid growth in bilateral exchanges and cooperation in the fields of politics, trade and economy, and culture.

During his visit to China last year, the Cambodian prime minister and Chinese leaders lifted the bilateral ties to the level of a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, writing a new chapter in the Sino-Cambodian traditional friendship, Zhou said.

Zhou, also secretary of the the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, said China and Cambodia should seize opportunities and meet challenges together.

He said the two countries should work to achieve the target of 2.5 billion U.S. dollars in bilateral trade at an early date, after it exceeded one billion dollars in the first half of this year.

China is ready to boost the the bilateral comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership through the implementation of specific plans and projects between the two countries, thus bringing more tangible benefits to the two peoples, he said.

Cambodia Then and Now: Commemorating the 1991 Peace Agreement by Gareth Evans

Via Cambodia Watch Blog

Professor Hon. Gareth Evan
Keynote Address by Professor Hon. Gareth Evans, Former Foreign Minister of Australia and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group, to Seminar on Measuring Cambodia’s Progress Toward Equality, University of NSW Law School, 6 August 2011.
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The truth of that observation has been amply demonstrated in the course of events since 1993. The democratic process has remained fragile, the biggest shock coming with Hun Sen's coup in July 1997, but with plenty of other things to be legitimately concerned about before and since, including the continued obstacles put in the way of Sam Rainsy and his party operating as a full-throated opposition voice. The legal system is still in very poor shape, with far too many still having a sense of impunity, i.e that they can do just about anything without the justice system touching them, and continuing troubling signs of politicization of the courts, including for example the renewed detention just last month of human rights defender Leang Sokchuen in a case that has been taken up by Human Rights Watch, with the offence for which he was convicted being changed in the course of his appeal to one that did not exist at the time he committed it: the only crime he seems to have committed was criticising the government.

Cambodia first made its claim on my heart and mind in 1968, as some of you in the Cambodian community will have heard me say before, I was travelling across Asia, as so many young Australians have, to study in the UK, and spent a few fantastic days here, staying in a very downmarket hotel near the Central Market, drinking beer and eating noodles in student hangouts, and taking a wild ride in a share taxi up to Siem Riep -- scattering pigs, chickens and children in villages along the way-- to confront the majesty of Angkor Wat.

I had similar experiences in a number of other Asian countries, but there was something very distinctive about Cambodia. In later life I kept on running into a number of those young men and women I had met in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Nepal or Afghanistan – or people exactly like them. But I never again met any of the young Cambodians I had spent time with, or any of their contemporaries. The sad and horrible truth is that they all died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge – executed outright as middle class enemies of the state, or worked to death through malnutrition or disease out in the fields.

As the horror of the genocide unfolded, and then the protracted misery of the civil war which followed it, I made a pledge to myself that if I could ever do anything for the wonderfully kind people of this country to relieve some of that misery then I would certainly try hard to make a difference. The opportunity to do so came after I became Australian foreign minister in 1988. And of the various things I managed to achieve in the nearly eight years I held the position, nothing has given me more pleasure and pride than the Paris peace agreement concluded in 1991, whose 20th anniversary we commemorate this year, and at this seminar, one of series being held around the world.

Case 004 sites investigated

Case 004 sites revealed

Tuesday, 09 August 2011 15:03

Thomas Miller

The investigating judges at the Khmer Rouge tribunal released a list of 30 crime sites connected to the court’s controversial fourth case yesterday, but said there are “serious doubts” as to whether the case’s suspects fall within their jurisdiction.

The list includes security centres, execution sites and forced labour areas in Kampong Cham and Kampong Thom provinces, then part of the Khmer Rouge’s Central Zone; Pursat, Battambang and Banteay Meanchey provinces, then under the Northwest Zone; and Takeo province, then in the Southwest Zone.

Co-investigating judges You Bunleng and Siegfried Blunk said they had not previously released the list of crime sites in Case 004 “because, unlike in Case 002, there are serious doubts whether the suspects are ‘most responsible’,” referring to the tribunal’s mandate to try only “senior leaders” of the Khmer Rouge and those “most responsible” for the crimes of the regime between 1975 and 1979.

“If the court had no jurisdiction, it would be inappropriate to encourage civil party applications further to the 200 already received in this case, as this could raise expectations which might not be met later on,” the judges said.

The judges’ statement was apparently sparked by a call from international co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley, who on Friday pointed out that the judges were legally obliged to keep victims informed “throughout the proceedings” so they could apply for civil party status.

Cayley said yesterday he was “relieved” and called the judges’ publication of crime sites an “enormous step” for victims and the court.