CAMBODIA: "Knock, Knock -- Anybody Inside?"

FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ETC-039-2010
November 15, 2010

An article by Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth published by the Asian Human Rights Commission

As a student of politics, I understand the usefulness of letter writing, petitioning, appealing to foreign leaders for help. I myself have used these tools. But not today, I have stood as only an observer of Khmer democrats who write, petition, appeal to outside agents to intervene as "elected" dictator Hun Sen, and his ruling Cambodian People's Party, trample the 19 year old Paris Peace Accords, the country's Constitution, democracy, human rights, the rule of law.

As one feels feeble and unable to throw off the yoke of a dictatorship on one's own, one tends to look to others for help. But, are Khmer democrats and rights activists truly weak and incapable, or do their entreaties to foreign governments and international agencies confirm what a Western writer dubbed the "Cambodian dependency syndrome"?

Lessons I learned

I left the Khmer national resistance 21 years ago this month, after nine years of struggle for rights and freedom. I spent nearly a decade working with Khmer nationalists to establish a government for the country of my birth that would serve its citizens well and respect their civil rights; rights about which I learned in high school, college, and graduate school. My belief in the inherent right of individuals to these freedoms has not waned, but I learned in the course of my activism that no outside influence can deliver to oppressed Khmers the rights and the freedom they so badly want; and that an outside force considers helping only if it sees potential in the Khmers and an ability to provide a honorable and credible alternative to the tyranny they oppose.

I left the field in November 1989. At the Khmer-Thai border, the language of transforming the battlefield into a market place, and transforming bullets into ballots, was in vogue; national reconciliation was hopefully anticipated. I had no doubt in my mind that the world was in the process of changing. Some of the old guard were nervous about their roles in the change all could sense was coming; noncommunist resistance officials were busy seeking alignment and realignment for future political position. Lord Buddha taught: "Everything changes, nothing remains without change."

Fast forward: From the island of Guam where I began a university career teaching politics, I told a reporter from Bangkok's English daily, The Nation, in an interview, to beware of a coup d'etat, and I wrote in the Far Eastern Economic Review warning that temporary "political calm" was likely the precedent to a new storm.

October 2010: A busy month

October was a busy month for Khmers who oppose Premier Hun Sen's dictatorship.

Mental health professionals might define Sen's behaviors as those of a "baby king" who wants what he wants when he wants it. Sen is a Khmer Leviathan with absolute powers. America's great founding father, James Madison, called such a man "a tyrant." Recently, Professor Joel Brinkley dubbed Sen "a living definition of the word 'impunity'."

This Leviathan has destroyed the democracy and civil rights that the Paris Peace Accords ending the long civil conflict intended for Cambodia’s citizens. Cambodians and foreign donors of aid are not ignorant of Sen's oppressive rule. As I have observed many times, the more we write and discuss about Premier Sen's government's policies that have brought suffering to increasing numbers of Khmer citizens, the homeless, landless, farmless and victimized by gross abuses of civil rights and about how the world knows what goes on in Sen's Cambodia, the more things in Cambodia remain the same.

I wrote in this space that Khmer democracy and rights activists must realize they are on their own in their fight for rights and freedom in this dog-eat-dog world.

Appeals to idealism, humanity and compassion can evoke emotion and sentiment, but dictatorships don't crumble this way. In the world of competitive national interests, no foreign power would risk its relationships with a ruling dictator in favor of fractious democracy and rights groups that cannot even agree on a common platform for the same goal.

The 19th Anniversary of the Signing of the Paris Peace Accords

The Oct. 23, 1991 Final Act of the Paris Accords to restore peace to Cambodia was adopted by 18 participating governments, including the four warring Cambodian factions, and representatives of the non-aligned movement and the United Nations Secretary General and his special representative. The Accords outlined for Cambodia "a system of liberal democracy" with an independent judiciary and described what human rights and fundamental freedoms entailed. The agreements stipulated the signatories' agreement to maintain, preserve, and defend Cambodia's sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and inviolability, neutrality and national unity.

They would have been the best instrument and hope for Cambodia if only they had been implemented.

The necessary neutral political environment and the strict neutrality of Cambodia's administrative agencies were never implemented; the U.N. Transitional Authority was ineffective; Hun Sen, supported by Vietnam, but loser of the first U.N. organized general elections in 1993, threatened a civil war; Cambodia's last god-king, Prince Sihanouk, sacrificed his own son, Prince Ranariddh, winner of the elections, when he devised an unworkable "two-head" formula, making Sen, the loser, prime minister next to Ranarridh, dividing Cambodia. Two leaders and two cohorts running the same government was a prescription for failure.

In 1997, Sen launched a military coup against Ranariddh, as the world watched the birth of a ruthless Khmer Leviathan.

On the occasion of the 19th anniversary of the signing of the Accords, Cambodian democracy and rights activists called for the reactivation of the Accords and the abrogation of border treaties signed with Vietnam by the Hanoi-installed Sen regime. But wasn't it the regime's elected parliament and Cambodia's king who legitimized the treaties and their supplements to benefit Vietnam?

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Visit

The Khmer dictator invited the U.N. Secretary General to Cambodia. He visited the country on Oct. 26-28. On the day Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cambodia, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights welcomed and encouraged Ban "to use your visit to publicly address pressing human rights in Cambodia."

Yet, right in front of a hospital Ban was visiting, 23-year-old Suong Sophorn of a housing rights group lay in blood-stained clothes, beaten unconscious by Sen's security forces in United States military helmets, an example of U.S. aid because he led about 30 Boeng Kak residents, representing those facing eviction from their homes, towards Ban's motorcade to hand him a petition.

The best defense is an offense. When Ban was meeting with Sen, the Khmer Leviathan surprised Ban: The U. N. human rights office in Phnom Penh would have to close down if its representative, Christophe Peschoux, accused of acting as a spokesman for the opposition, was not replaced. In addition, Sen said the U.N. sponsored Khmer Rouge Tribunal cannot seek more indictments beyond the four top Khmer Rouge leaders in Trial 2; no Trial 3, as it would bring a civil war!

Although only Sen's security forces and the military have guns, is Sen worried that he, himself a former Khmer Rouge regional commander, and his Khmer Rouge comrades now in the government, may be implicated in the killing fields?

The tribunal hearing charges against former Khmer Rouge leaders already is a laughing stock. Despite the time and enormous international resources devoted to the tribunal, it has found guilty only one lower level Khmer Rouge executioner, Duch, for the death of up to 2 million people.

Ban, who left Phnom Penh on Oct. 28 for Hanoi, before heading to Beijing, was given bitter pills by Sen. But, what have the Khmer activists learned?

Bludgeoned protester Suong Sophorn never made it to Ban's motorcade. But Sophorn focused the eyes of the world on the brutalities of Sen's forces. Khmer Web sites, newspapers, Khmer radio broadcasts, are excellent vehicles to educate, to awaken the conscience of Khmer officers and soldiers, and Khmer functionaries, to behave less harshly when directed to mistreat Khmer citizens by Sen and his CPP.

Sophorn is very unlike opposition leader Sam Rainsy, whom former Senator Ung Bun Ang of the Sam Rainsy Party dubbed a hero "for at least five seconds," for declaring from exile in Paris after he fled Sen's arrest in Phnom Penh, "I am willing to die so that the country can live." Sophorn lay in his blood on a failed mission. Had opposition party members come out to pick up Sophorn from the ground, what image that would have projected!

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Visit

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's turn came on Oct. 30-Nov. 1. Again, the CCHR welcomed and urged her "to show leadership by encouraging Cambodia to reverse the drift towards authoritarianism."

Radio Free Asia reported that six members of two opposition parties met Clinton on Nov. 1 at the U.S. ambassador's residence. They asked Clinton to intervene with Sen to allow Sam Rainsy, sentenced to prison for a total of 12 years, to return to Cambodia without fear of imprisonment! A top diplomat, Clinton said that she would follow closely the situation in Cambodia and would look into Rainsy's case. But RFA also reported the Sen regime's response: The U.S. "has absolutely no power to interfere in Cambodia's internal affairs."

Recall, in July 2009 Secretary Clinton signed, under President Obama's executive authority, the Association of South-East Asian Nations' 1976 Bali Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the core of which supports noninterference in member states internal affairs.

Truly intriguing was what opposition members at the meeting found to be revelatory: They reported that Secretary Clinton said that in order to "......beat the ruling party, the opposition parties should unite". Clinton allegedly said she could not understand "why both parties (the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party) cannot unite." Nay, said one democrat, Clinton meant a political merger and that the Secretary "encouraged opposition parties to form a comprehensive political platform with which to compete against the ruling party."

Son Soubert of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, e-mailed front cadres that Clinton encouraged the unity of Khmer democrats and urged Khmers not to focus on one particular leader but on a common political platform.

Were these new thoughts, or were the thoughts important because they came from Secretary Clinton?

At the end of her visit, Secretary Clinton told a press conference held with Sen's deputy premier Hor Namhong that she was very optimistic about Cambodia's future. "The last years have been transformative for this country. And I hope that the United States can be a good partner and a friend, as the Government and the people of Cambodia make the necessary steps to improve your democratic institutions, to improve the economy, to provide the kind of opportunities that the young people I met with earlier today deserve to have," said Clinton.

She concluded: "This visit has left me encouraged that our partnership can deepen and grow to serve both our peoples in the years to come."

As the Obama administration sees Asia as key to the future and seeks to balance China's influence in the region, on Nov 1 Secretary Clinton told students at a meeting: "You don't want to get too dependent on any country, don't rely too much on China!"

So, when Sen's deputy Namhong said that putting lower-ranking Khmer Rouge officials on trial in Trial 3, could jeopardize peace and stability, the Secretary said her priority is to raise million to prosecute Nuon Chea, Ieng Thirith, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan in Khmer Rouge Tribunal's Trial 2!

America’s secretary of state has spoken. What did Cambodian democrats and right activists hear?

Full Circle

This brings me back to my conviction that Cambodian democrats and rights activists cannot depend on outside agents to win for the oppressed Cambodians their rights and their freedom. The responsibility of Cambodia’s democrats is to popularize the idea that Cambodians themselves must fight for their rights and their freedom through a disciplined and unwavering struggle, accept to endure continued repression and suffering, as housing right activist Sophorn did, in order to highlight the current brutalities. Democrats must come up with an intelligent common strategic plan for liberation. The Albert Einstein Institution, dedicated to the defense of freedom, posits, you don't have to have a charismatic leader to fight dictatorship.

You must have better thinking!

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The views shared in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the AHRC, and the AHRC takes no responsibility for them.

About the Author:

Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. He currently lives in the United States. He can be contacted at peangmeth@gmail.com.

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About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.