Cambodia’s NGO law targets ‘unwanted opposition’

April 1, 2011
Democracy Digest

Democracy and human rights groups are warning that Cambodia’s draft law to regulate non-governmental organizations threatens to undermine freedom of association and expression, confirming the country’s authoritarian drift.

The government made slight amendments to an earlier draft following objections from civil society organisations, but the changes fail to address NGO concerns, said Sok Sam Oeun, executive director of the Cambodian Defenders Project, in a statement released by the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, NGO Forum and the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee.

The CHRAC is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.

The new draft “makes it easier for the government to shut down civil society organizations, or deny registration,” the NGOs complained.

Dozens of civil associations denounced the law at a press conference in Phnom Penh this week.

The proposed legislation will reduce political space and stifle independent voices in a country where rights to free expression and assembly are already restricted and democratic institutions barely functioning.

“The current legal framework is open to discretion and its implementation saddled by a weak understanding of the concept of civil society,” according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit-Law. “There is no effective judiciary or effective rule of law.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen has presided over a pronounced democratic regression which come observers attribute to the growing influence and soft power of China.

“NGOs involved in advocacy, legal rights and human rights are seen by the RCG as unwanted opposition and the environment for their activity is restrictive,” the ICNL notes. “The power of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) is increasing and the Cambodian state is becoming increasingly authoritarian.”

Cambodia has not undertaken a truth and reconciliation process, and the regime’s refusal to appropriately address the Khmer Rouge genocide has cultivated a culture of impunity, rights activists suggest.

An estimated 1.7 million people (21% of the population) were killed over four years of Khmer Rouge rule but few of the perpetrators have been held to account. Kaing Guak Eav, more widely known as Comrade Duch, last year received a 35-year prison sentence for his active participation in atrocities at the S-21 detention and torture camp.

The only person so far convicted, Duch is appealing his sentence and claims he was coerced into committing abuses by more senior Khmer Rouge figures. Four such leaders will go on trial later this year in what is known as “Case Number 2” and he could face a reduced sentence for testifying against his former comrades.

That prospect scandalizes lawyer Theary Seng (left), founder of the Cambodian Center for Justice and Reconciliation, whose parents were murdered by the Khmer Rouge. She says that a reduced sentence for Duch would be an outrageous injustice and fears that his inconsistencies could jeopardize the bigger Case Number 2.

Seng is lodging an application to become a civil party in a third case, the prosecution of Khmer Rouge commanders Meas Muth and Sou Met, both of whom she holds “personally, individually, criminally responsible” for the murder of her parents. They are two of the five suspects currently under investigation by United Nations personnel at the Office of Co-Investigating Judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

But local rights activists suspect that the Cambodian government is likely to sabotage the prosecutions. Prime Minister Hun Sen is himself a former Khmer Rouge official. He has publicly declared his reluctance to let government officials testify at the trial.

“Allegations of political interference have also caused uncertainty over the likelihood of further indictments beyond Case 002, complicating the development of a completion strategy for the tribunal,” according to the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.