Cambodia's Unjust Election

Wall Street Journa

OPINION ASIA

July 4, 2013, 1:03 p.m. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324853704578585053150130268.html

Cambodia's Unjust Election

  Hun Sen's government has ramped up a campaign to intimidate the opposition in advance of this month's vote.

It's election season in Cambodia, a time that once held hope and promise. Twenty years ago the world cheered as the country held its first, United Nations-sponsored vote after decades of war.

On July 28, Cambodia will hold its fifth National Assembly vote since that historic 1993 election. This time, the political atmosphere is one of fear and resignation. A scripted victory for Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Asia's longest-serving leader, is virtually assured.

Foreign governments midwifed the birth of Cambodian democracy two decades ago. Today, they provide half the budget of a government bent on restricting citizens' freedoms. As evidence of political and human rights abuses continues to pile up, it is hard to fathom why Western democracies treat the Cambodian government as a friend, or how private investors could feel safe in such a repressive climate.

Cambodia's culture of injustice starts at the top, with a Hun Sen government working to erase any semblance of political fair play—a process that intensified last month as elections loomed. The government started by kicking every member of the opposition party out of Cambodia's National Assembly. Then Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened that there might be civil war if his party lost the elections.

Next, the government organized massive nationwide demonstrations against Kem Sokha, the vice-president of Cambodia's opposition coalition. (The coalition's president, Sam Rainsy, remains in self-exile to avoid a spurious 12-year prison sentence).

 

AFP/Getty Images

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen

For good measure, the prime minister also accused Mr. Sokha of adultery, pedophilia and denying Khmer Rouge crimes. Finally, the government banned Khmer-language foreign media for the duration of the 31-day campaign period—though it quickly backpedaled after a wave of domestic outrage.

This year Hun Sen's campaign of political intimidation has been coupled with a program of land title giveaways orchestrated by the prime minister's Cambodian People's Party (CPP) using private money. The inability of rural Cambodians to secure legal recognition for their land holdings is a genuine problem. But it is one that must be solved by strengthening Cambodia's courts and property laws, not by election-time handouts.

Unsurprisingly, land conflicts have continued unabated despite Hun Sen's latest scheme. Some of the most contentious disputes involve land taken from poor farmers and converted into sugar plantations. Sugar is a lucrative crop now that the European Union allows Cambodian sugar into the continent duty free. But sugar cultivation is also connected to some of the country's worst human rights violations, including violent evictions, military brutality against civilians, child labor and attacks on community activists.

Meanwhile, Cambodia's garment sector—a multibillion dollar industry that serves many international brands—is finding new and innovative ways of embarrassing itself.

Take the case of Chhouk Bandith. In 2012, while serving as governor of Bavet district, Bandith opened fire on thousands of striking garment workers, seriously injuring three women. After 12 months of legal wrangling, he was finally convicted in absentia of "causing unintentional injury" and received an 18-month prison sentence. He has yet to be apprehended, however, and authorities show little interest in doing so.

The rest of the garment industry has not inspired much confidence, either. A February report jointly published by the Worker Rights Consortium and Stanford University uncovered systemic abuses ranging from union busting to prison labor. On May 16, an overloaded upper level of a factory owned by Wing Star Shoes collapsed, killing two workers and injuring 11 more.

The international community has met these varied assaults on Cambodia's rule of law with little outrage, and concrete actions are even rarer.

The U.S., to its credit, was the only major donor to criticize the opposition purge in Cambodia's parliament, saying the move "deprives the Cambodian people of their voice and hurts the democratic process." Yet the U.S. continues to provide aid and training to the Cambodian military, which has a history of rights violations and interference in the electoral process.

The world's largest garment brands, for their part, have remained disappointingly quiet—or say the wrong thing altogether. Puma, which is supplied by the factory where Chhouk Bandith shot three workers, issued a statement applauding the shamefully light verdict. It said the company was "pleased" with the court sentence of 18 months for a crime that in most countries would be considered attempted triple homicide. The statement described the victims as being "incidentally shot."

The European Union has refused to investigate human rights abuses related to sugar plantations. Any investigation, of course, might force the EU to pull back on its treasured duty-free treatment of Cambodian sugar, which saves money for European companies and provides a feel-good "development" story to boot. The EU has gone so far as to publicly praise the CPP's private land giveaways, hailing the politicization of land titling as a step forward for human rights.

When will this charade of willful ignorance end? If the July elections go as planned, not anytime soon. Hun Sen has said he wishes to remain in power for at least another decade. Cambodia's international partners should think long and hard about whether they want to come along for the ride.

Ms. Pilorge is director of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO).