Cambodia today: From democracy experiment to one-party kleptocracy

Excerpt from "Country for Sale" Global Witness

“Human dignity, equity, meeting the basic needs of the people, participation and the development of people’s capacity and choice are among the principal values and objectives of human rights. Economic and political policies and practices in Cambodia do not accord any particular importance to these values.” - Quote from statement to the UN Human Rights Council by the Special Representative of the Secretary General in Cambodia for Human Rights, Yash Ghai, 12 June 2007.

After decades of war and one of the most horrific episodes in recent human history – the Khmer Rouge regime – Cambodia’s warring factions signed a peace agreement in 1991. This heralded the start of one of the biggest and most costly peacekeeping operations in history, and the beginning of international efforts to bring democracy and development to Cambodia. Expectations that the UN-organised elections in 1993 would bring major political change were not realised, however. The incumbent Cambodian People’s Party, whose leadership is drawn from former Khmer Rouge cadres, refused to accept that they had lost the vote and muscled their way into the government. They completed their reversal of Cambodia’s tentative progress towards democracy in July 1997, when they dislodged their coalition partners in a bloody coup d’état.

It is now 17 years since the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, and the country once regarded as the international model for post-conflict nation-building has become Southeast Asia’s newest kleptocracy; its reputation marred by massive corruption, human rights abuses, impunity, repression and undemocratic governance. Contrary to the spirit of the 1991 Peace Accords, Cambodia’s political influence and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small ruling elite. The misappropriation of the country’s rich natural resources – its forests, land and fisheries – has been central to this accumulation of wealth and consolidation of political power.

Government officials, senior military figures and their business associates use the police and armed forces as their own private armies, with little balance from a politically-controlled judiciary or a civil society slowly beaten down over the years by killings and threats. State officials and powerful interests around them are able to appropriate natural and economic resources as well as the property of others, harass any opponents and suppress their rights.

Cambodia’s natural resources could have provided the means with which to kick-start the post-conflict economy. Revenue generated from logging, plantations and fisheries should have gone towards poverty alleviation and rebuilding essential infrastructure. Instead, systematic and institutionalised corruption and economic mismanagement have deprived the entire population of the revenue that could have come from these public goods.

Since the suspension of the country’s logging concessionaire system in 2002, focus has shifted to alternative sources of income generation through the exploitation of remaining state assets, including fisheries, land and mineral deposits. The rise of Cambodia’s mining and oil sectors represents just one part of the diversification of natural resource exploitation in Cambodia.

An examination of Cambodia’s business sector reveals that the country’s beaches, casinos, forests, hotels, islands, land, national buildings and ports and are now predominantly controlled by a handful of government-affiliated tycoons, high-ranking police and military brass, or family members of senior political figures. Meanwhile, residents who have lived on the land are simply forced to leave, often with brutal evictions enforced by the police, military police and the armed forces.