[Japanese] Crown prince honors [Japanese] policeman killed in PKO [in Cambodia]

Jun. 28, 2012

PHNOM PENH (Jiji Press)--Crown Prince Naruhito laid flowers Wednesday at a memorial in Phnom Penh to a Japanese police officer who was killed in 1993 during U.N. peacekeeping operations in the Southeast Asian country.

After putting his hands together in front of the memorial, the crown prince was briefed by Ambassador to Cambodia Masafumi Kuroki about the fallen officer, Haruyuki Takata.

Takata was transferred to the National Police Agency from the Okayama prefectural police and joined the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia.

Soldiers on Cambodia Mission Brought AIDS to Bulgaria [-These soldiers were having too much fun in Cambodia?]

01 Dec 2010
Standart News (Bulgaria)

Bulgarian soldiers, who took part in the peacekeeping mission in Cambodia in the beginning of the 1990s, brought AIDS to Bulgaria, Major General Stoyan Tonev, chief of the Military Medical Academy told the Darik radio. Bulgaria’s military mission in Cambodia, part of the UN peacekeeping mission, started in 1992 and involved 820 troops, including soldiers from the reserve.

In the battalion under my commandment alone we had seven HIV-positive soldiers, reserve Lieutenant Colonel Yanko Yankov told The Standart. He was a commander of one of the battalions during the first Bulgarian military mission after the beginning of the democratic changes.

December 1, World AIDS Day was marked across Bulgaria.

The Killing Fields and Indonesia's Relations with Cambodia Revisited

Dr. Benny Widyono with Prime Minister Hun Sen who after the clash in 1997 continued to consolidate his power until today 2010.
Benny eventually represented the U.N. Secretary General in Cambodia after the Killing Fields in which about two million Cambodians perished
In his capacity of UNTAC Governor, Benny inspected U.N. forces in Cambodia.
Benny Widyono, Mrs. Bintari Sudarpo, King Norodom Sihanouk, Queen Monineath,
with Indonesian Ambassador Taufik Sudarpo, and Benny's wife Francisca.
Benny sits on the Board position of an NGO running slum area schools in Phnom Penh
founded one of his former staffers honored as a CNN hero for her work with children.

September 16, 2010
Jim Luce
The Huffington Post (USA)

I first met Benny Widyono at an Indonesian Consulate fete years ago. I knew upon meeting him that he had an extraordinary mind and knew Asia's southeast as well as he knew this nation's northeast. Living in Connecticut and commuting to his office at the U.N. for decades - when he wasn't living in Phnom Phen, clued me into that reality. I told him if he ever wrote his memoirs I wanted to read them. Sure enough, they arrived by post last week. And they are riveting.

The book Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations in Cambodia has just been published. It is excellent. I had planned to read it next month, but I could not put it down. It is well written, engaging, and highly informative. I now understand so much more of Cambodia's Cold-War history and how it led to the Killing Fields in which about two million Cambodians perished. Google reviewers have given this excellent book 4.5 stars.

Dr. Benny Widyono was born "Hong Lan Oei," but during the madness of the anti communist/anti-Chinese period in Indonesia that killed 800,000 suspected Communists including ethnic Chinese - also a result of the Cold War - his name was "nativized" under the Suharto regime. Indonesians were still not allowed to read or speak Chinese when I first arrived there in 1995. Thus, my struggle to adopt an Indonesian Chinese infant then to get him away from there. However, today normalcy has returned to the Republic and Chinese language and culture are no longer criminalized.

Benny is thus an excellent guide to post-colonial Cambodia. As a recipient of the title of Commandeur de L'Ordre Royal de Sahametrey in 2004, the highest title for civilians bestowed by H.M. King Sihanouk of Cambodia, Benny played an integral role working with the U.N. in the recovery from the death and destruction of Pol Pot in a way that a non-South East Asian could have. Another key player at the time was the Japanese head of United Nations in Cambodia, Yasushi Akashi.

Benny notes in his book the King's words to the Japanese head of the U.N. presence in Cambodia:

"I wish to thank you, Excellency Mr. Yasushi Akashi, for sending another prince from Java to help bring peace to Cambodia," quipped Norodom Sihanouk, the King of Cambodia, referring to me.

We were at the official inauguration of my office, the provincial headquarters of the U.N. Transitional Authority on Cambodia (UNTAC) in Siemreap, Cambodia in 1992, the U.N. Peacekeeping operation established to bring peace to Cambodia.

Prior to our arrival, Cambodia was, due to its political location, been for 20 years the subject of turmoil, civil war and Khmer Rouge induced genocide. To end the stalemate of Cambodia having two governments... the U.N. became the temporary government until elections could be held.

Yasushi Akashi was the head of UNTAC and therefore, temporarily, the head of the country. I was his "governor" of Siemreap Province, home of the world famous Angkor Wat temple.

Benny's life is fascinating because he was raised in Indonesia in a minority religion - Roman Catholicism - and yet he attended the most prestigious university there, the University of Indonesia in Jakarta. He went on to study economics in the University of Texas. His Ph.D. dissertation compared the role of petroleum in economic development in Mexico and Indonesia. One week after he graduated he was offered a position with the United Nations in Thailand, beginning his professional and personal odyssey.

In 1981, Benny was transferred back to New York to work on helping countries cope with multinational corporations. In his new capacity he writes of coming home late from New York City as now his work at the U.N. consisted of "going to endless cocktail parties to lobby with ambassadors and other diplomats of member states. Most of the work gets done in these parties."

At the U.N. cocktail parties, he notes ruefully, the poorer the country the more lavish its reception:

One day Ethiopia celebrated its tenth anniversary of the Marxist revolution in that country with unlimited shrimps and other delicacies and whiskey and wine flowing all evening while we see pictures on BBC TV of starving Ethiopians looking like corpses.

Another anomaly was that the Khmer Rouge ambassador, who was responsible for killing 1.7 million of its own people, would strut about shaking hands with everybody to lobby against that bad fellow Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia who de facto ruled the country since 1979, because the U.S. and China spearheaded a resolution in the U.N. to continue to recognize the Khmer Rouge instead of the People's Republic of Kampuchea.

It is this encounter with the Khmer Rouge ambassador, plus his experiences in Thailand where he had witnessed Cambodian refugees escape the Khmer Rouge atrocities and appear -- one by one -- from the jungle like emaciated corpses. These survivors reminded him of those in Ethiopia which made me decide to volunteer for Cambodian service for the U.N. I wrote about such survivors such as my good friend Ambassador Sichan Siv, whose story I have also told.

We all have this myth that we control our lives. Benny tells it as it is:

One day, in the restroom of my floor, the 31st floor of the United Nations, I stood next to Yasushi Akashi, who just became the head of UNTAC in Cambodia. I congratulated him and asked whether he can take me along to Cambodia. Knowing me well he said yes, you will be the governor of Siemreap Province., which has Angkor Wat and is the most Khmer Rouge invested province.

I said yes as I did not want to languish in some idyllic province on the beach where nothing happened. Thus the last five years I was transferred to Cambodia, where I was at the political forefront of the political turmoil in the tragedy of Cambodia. It turned out to be the best assignment and I found out that my real fascination was with politics which I watched first hand. It is like studying while getting paid at the same time.

Benny writes in his book that Akashi was right:

I got plenty of excitement and adventure in Siemreap where the Khmer Rouge murderers were ever present although at day time Hun Sen's People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) reigned supreme in almost all the country.

Siemreap was attacked many times by the Khmer Rouge. Since it was too dangerous for wives to join their husbands my wife stayed in Connecticut although she came to visit me several times. Live was very primitive as the Hun Sen government was isolated by the U.N.

Danger was ever present and at night I could not sleep if I don't hear mortar fire as Hun Sen's troops were fighting the Khmer Rouge. One day Siemreap was attacked by 800 Khmer Rouge. I called my wife in Stamford from the only telephone at my headquarters. After a full day Hun Sen troops drove them away.

Soon he received a phone call from the powers that were in U.N. Headquarters in New York and he was appointed the political envoy of the Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali in Cambodia.

Soon, his wife joined him full time. They were often invited, together with other ambassadors, to dinner with the King. He watched over dinners and diplomatic dispatches - and reported to his new boss Kofi Annan - that as Cambodia acquired two prime ministers who were former enemies, and with the "wily king pulling the string from behind the scene," he smelled trouble. Both sides clashed and in 1997 Hun Sen became the only prime minister. Benny then reached the age of 60 -- the mandatorily retirement age at the U.N. - and he moved back to the U.S. to teach at several universities including Cornell.

Benny has remained active with Cambodia and continues includes a board position with the Peoples Improvement Organization, an NGO running slum area schools in Phnom Penh now with 850 students who each day get lunch and education in English. These schools were founded one of his former staffers, Phymean Noun, who became a CNN hero in 2009 for her work with children.

I have been delighted to know Dr. Benny Widyono, born "Hong Lan Oei," as an outstanding Indonesian-American active with the United Nations in Cambodia and around the world. His compassion for all - especially children - has impressed me greatly. Above and beyond being a thought leader and global citizen, Benny has been able to share his gripping life in an exceptional book. I highly recommend it.

Cocktails with Khmer Rouge killers

Jul 30, 2010
By Angus MacSwan
Reuters

The sentencing of Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav this week and the forthcoming trial of former leader Khieu Samphan by a United Nations-backed court has brought renewed attention to their murderous rule of Cambodia in the 1970s — and a certain amount of satisfaction in the “international community” for its role in seeing justice done.

But there was a time when you could meet Khmer Rouge officials at cocktail parties in Phnom Penh, with the drinks provided by the United Nations.

It was one consequence of a Faustian pact between the Khmer Rouge and the United States, Britain and other countries following the Pol Pot regime’s overthrow by Vietnamese troops in 1979.

The relationship illustrates the sometimes bizarre nature of Cold War politics and is one that today’s governments probably hope is forgotten.

I found myself next to Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot’s right hand man, at a party at the U.N. mission’s headquarters in Phnom Penh at the end of 1991. Standing behind him was Son Sen, who had run the Khmer Rouge’s torture apparatus during their “Killing Fields” rule from 1975-79, in which at least 1.5 million Cambodians had died.

They had just returned to Phnom Penh after years in jungle camps and friendly foreign capitals and were in the decrepit city as the representatitves of the Party of Democratic Kampuchea — as they prefered to be known — in a new national council set up under a peace accord aimed at ending decades of war.

How had the Khmer Rouge survived and prospered in the decade since their reign of terror was ended by the Vietnamese invasion?

Their main supporter was China — an enemy of both Vietnam and its backer the Soviet Union despite their shared communist beliefs. The United States was still smarting from its defeat in the Vietnam War and saw China as an indispensable regional ally with a bright future.

Thus a coalition government was formed, dominated by the Khmer Rouge and including two non-communist factions, even though they controlled hardly any territory other than border enclaves. Its nominal head was Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who actually spent most of his time in North Korea of all places, but despite this fig leaf the military muscle in the bush war was provided by the Khmer Rouge.

Throughout the 1980s, this body held Cambodia’s seat in the United Nations, supported by the United States, Britain and other European nations, China and pro-Western Asian countries. The Vietnamese-backed government — which included Khmer Rouge defectors — was recognised only by the Soviet bloc.

Denied international aid and trade, Phom Penh was one of the most forlorn places on earth as war raged in the Cambodian countryside.

Thailand played a crucial role in supporting the coalition and Thai officials got rich through timber and gems deals with the Khmer Rouge based in the border enclaves.

U.S. officials in Bangkok and Washington would play a game of smoke-and-mirrors when asked about Washington’s support for an alliance spearheaded by some of the 20th Century’s worst mass murderers.

Arms and other other aid only went to the non-communist groups, they said. The Khmer Rouge had changed and was now genuinely popular in some areas, they ventured. While the film “The Killing Fields” made many people aware of the horrors of Khmer Rouge rule, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told a British children’s TV show in 1988 “There’s a much, much reasonable grouping within that title, Khmer Rouge…who will have to play some part in the future government.”

The British elite military unit the SAS were later revealed to have trained their fighters.

The guerrilla factions also ran the vast refugee camps on the Thai border, so the Khmer Rouge were able to keep tens of thousands of people in their grip with generous helpings of United Nations aid. With the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia in 1989 and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, a peace agreement was painstakingly hammered out.

All four parties joined the national council pending elections and a huge U.N. peacekeeping mission swept into the country.And so the Khmer Rouge came back to Phnom Penh.

Khieu Samphan was run out of town by an angry crowd at his first attempt to return in October 1991. A few months later, though he was back and looking relaxed.At the U.N. party, he was dressed in a neatly-pressed grey safari suit and looked well-manicured — quite different to the black pyjamasand checkered scarves of the iconic Khmer Rouge image. After a few pleasantaries, I asked him about their bloody rule. Nonplussed, he replied almost by rote that yes, some mistakes were made but that most of the accusations were just propaganda. Cambodia’s real problem was Vietnam’s plan to annex the country, he said with a smile.

With Son Sen lurking sinisterly in the background, I thought the conversation had probably run its course.

This accommodation with killers threw up many other surreal situations. A few months after the cocktail party encounter, I was in the town of Kompong Thom when Indonesian peacekeepers arrived to police the area. For some reason, they sang the old British army song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” as they marched down the street.

A Khmer Rouge general, Men Ron, stood by the roadside, smiling as if this was the jolliest knees-up this side of the Emerald Isle. That night, he dined at a lakeside restaurant with a British envoy and an Australian general.

The next day, refugees were fleeing down the highway outside the city from Khmer Rouge attacks to the north.

An election to bring peace and democracy to Cambodia was held in 1993. The Khmer Rouge boycotted it and went back to war, but without the backing they previously enjoyed, they dwindled.

Son Sen was killed in 1997 in an internal power struggle and Pol Pot died the next year in mysterious circumstances. Khieu Samphan was arrested in 2007 and the next year was charged in court with crimes against humanity and war crimes.

I’ve not been back to Phnom Penh since 1993 but I’m told its a very different place, with bistros, night clubs and fast cars for the new rich elite. Its a favourite destination for Western youths on gap years.

The angy reaction from ordinary Cambodians to what they saw a light sentence for Kaing Guek Eav showed many of them still want atonement for the past. In some quarters though, the past will probably remain a closed chapter.

A Peacekeeping Success, With Caveats

"Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares" United Nations, New York (Photo by Soeung Sophat)

By Soeung Sophat, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
12 March 2010

In recent years Cambodia has sent peacekeepers to three African countries. It is poised to host a major multi-national peacekeeping exercise later this year. And although Cambodia has not yet achieved all its goals, the author of a new book on peacekeeping says Cambodia’s experience was a success.

Mats Berdal is a professor of war studies at King’s College in London and the author of a new book about peace-building.

He warns that peacekeeping goals can often be over-ambitious. But he said in the case of Cambodia, peacekeepers brought many benefits that should not be overlooked.

“Cambodia perhaps doesn’t meet the standards of a mature liberal democracy, but it’s a very different place from what it used to be. It has a flourishing civil society, it has a free press, it has had elections.”

Berdal acknowledged that he had not been to Cambodia, but he noted that the country could have benefited from more follow-ups on issues like human rights following the UN withdrawal.

“The UNTAC mission was designed to transform, or help transform, the political, institutional, and social fabric of society in order to overcome deep-seated internal animosities,” he said.

But while the $1.6-billion mission helped restore fundamental peace in Cambodia, it did not stamp out rights violations and left an internal power struggle well after the UN had left.

In a recent discussion of his 2009 book, “Building Peace After War,” at a think-tank in Washington, Berdal noted that peacekeeping can be difficult anywhere, because it is so broadly defined.

“According to the UN, peacekeeping covers everything from integrated and coordinated actions aimed at addressing the root causes of violence where the political, legal, institutional, military, humanitarian, human rights related, environmental, economic, social, cultural and demographic,” he said.

He said the problem is that such comprehensive term lacks "any sense of priorities." Nor does it seek “to differentiate in the strategic sense between these objectives.”

Peace operations have traditionally been ambitious in their mandates and numbers. Professor Berdal said their number exploded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US, and at present stands at 61 missions with 170,000 troops deployed worldwide.

Ambassador Wegger Strommen of Norway, who was a participant in the book discussion, called peace-building a tedious process with multiple phases that requires sustained commitment.

“You need to take a look at institution-building as well and we try to do that,” he said. “Take Haiti for instance. What we’re trying to do in Haiti is to help out a little bit. We’re trying to build up certain institutions. No matter what Haiti is going to look like in the future, they really need to get some of these institutions up and working.”

Berdal says this governance structure is crucial to the legitimacy of intervening outsiders, but that traditionally there has been an overemphasis on a Western approach of social “re-engineering,” ignoring local dynamics of conflict.

He cited Iraq as an example. A 20-year record suggests that “stability cannot really be imposed on war-torn societies from the outside” and has to be elicited, he said.

“The relative success of a peace-building intervention depends not only on the conduct and actions of the outsider, but also on the degree to which governance structures are put in place and promoted and that it command legitimacy in the eyes of local parties, neighboring states, and the wider international community,” he said.

However, Berdal believes that given the seemingly “operational overstretch” of peace missions at a time of global economic crisis, we should be more “humble” and realistic about goal-setting in peace-building.

Comrade Hor 5 Hong denigrates the Paris Peace Accord and UNTAC

Foreign Minister Critical of Untac’s Efforts

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
12 May 2009

The UN’s transitional authority, which occupied Cambodia in the early 1990s, did little for the country except put an election in place in 1993, but failed to end the country’s war, Cambodia’s foreign minister said in recent remarks.

The Paris Peace Accords, in 1991, did not bring full peace to Cambodia, the minister, Hor Namhong, said, during the recent opening of a Cambodian consulate in Lowell, Mass. Hor Namhong praised the efforts of Prime Minister Hun Sen in eventually bringing peace to country.

“The only success of Untac was the national election in 1993,” Hor Namhong said at the April 26 opening of the consulate. “This was a victory for Untac, but Untac failed in its efforts to make the Khmer Rouge guerrillas drop their weapons.”

Untac came to Cambodia in February 1992, following the Paris accords, which ended fighting between four Cambodian factions: the State of Cambodia, the government led by Hun Sen; the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front; the royalist National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia, known by its French acronym, Funcinpec; and the Khmer Rouge, known officially as Democratic Kampuchea.

Under the accords, all parties agreed to compete in elections, but Hor Namhong said the scheme failed to bring peace.

When Untac’s peacekeepers withdrew, in September 1993, “all the Khmer Rouge soldiers were still in the jungle,” he said. “When Untac had completely withdrawn from Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge rebels still fought us.”

Eventually, Prime Minister Hun Sen “set up a win-win policy to integrate those Khmer Rouge soldiers into the Cambodian government,” Hor Namhong said.

Lao Monghay, a former member of the KPNLF who is now a researcher for the Asian Human Rights Commission, said Hor Namhong’s criticism of Untac overlooked the work the peacekeepers did accomplish.

The UN’s efforts brought about civil society, independent media, political parties and other organizations.

In fact, he said, Cambodia enjoyed more rights and freedoms in the years after Untac that it has in the years since Hun Sen led a coup, in 1997, to oust his co-prime minister, Norodom Ranariddh.

Nguon Nhel, a member of the central committee of the Cambodian People’s Party, said in an interview the Khmer Rouge turned away from the accords, despite the efforts of Untac and others.

“After the election in 1993, the Cambodian people were thankful for the Paris agreement and thankful for the presence of Untac, which came to help Cambodia maintain public and social security, in order to enable an election process with multiparty and democratic standards,” he said.

Beyond the elections, said opposition leader Sam Rainsy, the UN and the accords helped oust a Vietnamese force that would have had people living under a communist regime even today.

“I think that we should be grateful to the United Nations and the entire international community, which intervened and pulled Cambodia up from the communist regime and from the Vietnamese invasion,” he said.

The Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge, in January 1979, and began a decade-long occupation that ended when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. Some analysts argue it was the fall of the Soviet Union that necessitated the Paris accords.

Hun Sen reveals secret during the search for peace [-Hun Sen and Sihanouk share a lot of secrets: Hun Sen]

19 March 2009
Kampuchea Thmei
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

Considering that 18 March is a historical date for the start of the war by the reactionary group 39 years ago, Hun Sen said that he will reveal a secret that no Cambodians nor foreigners knew about. The secret that Hun Sen revealed was about the origin of the president of the Supreme National Council (SNC).

Hun Sen said, during the yearly meeting of the ministry of Education Youth and Sport, that it was during the 6th SNC meeting presided by Sihanouk, that the Cambodian side was putting effort because if it were to leave it to the foreign side, the law involved would be a failure, and the SNC would not even have a president.

According to the history revealed by Hun Sen, he said that he provided many formulas to Sihanouk. One of the formula that the Phnom Penh government (i.e. the PRK regime installed by Hanoi) could not accept was the one in which the SNC would be presided by Sihanouk and Hun Sen would act as its vice-president.

The other formulas that were advanced at the time included: Sihanouk and Hun Sen would become co-president of the SNC, another one in which Sihanouk and Hun Sen would rotate the SNC presidency one month each, and another formula in which the SNC would be presided by a party of 12. Hun Sen said that there was one formula supported by Sihanouk: in this formula, Sihanouk will be the sole president of the SNC, but he would resign from his position as the chief of the joint tri-partite government and he would also resign from his position as president of Funcinpec. According to Hun Sen, Sihanouk accepted this formula, and Sihanouk said that when he becomes the SNC president, he will resign from his positions as chief of the joint tri-partite government and president of Funcinpec.

Hun Sen claimed that there are many other secrets that no one knows about [KI-Media: Isn’t that why they call them secrets to start with?], and only he and Sihanouk share with each other. He said that he kept all these secrets and he will write them down in a book that will be sold at a very high price.

Regarding history, Hun Sen said that 18 March was the date of the start of the destructive war in Cambodia, but this fact was hidden and people did not dare talk about it because it is a shame. He said that in reality, these people (meaning those involved in the 18 March 1970 event) should be put or trial first. Hun Sen said that he told Shinahara, the former Japanese ambassador to Cambodia that: “I rather take defeat, but I would not allow my country to face war again, make no mistake about it.”

Hun Sen’s declaration on Wednesday appears to aim at the progress of the KR Tribunal which is currently facing budget shortage. Hun Sen said that he spoke to the Japanese ambassador, telling the latter that Japan should provide a lot of money [to Cambodia], not just that much because Japan had always supported the Khmer Rouge also. He said that Japan has a lot of issues with him, including lengthy negotiations filled with secrets. He said that he needs to talk about these issues so that history does not repeat itself again.

Hun Sen said that if there was no 1970 coup d’état, there would be no war, and Cambodia would develop significantly if Sihanouk were left to lead the country until now. If Sihanouk was not deposed, there would be no war, and no Pol Pot either [KI-Media note: and there would be no Hun Sen, nor CPP either]. Hun Sen said: “We had a lot of difficulties to seek peace using the Cambodian approach, however, if a foreign approach was used instead, there would be no success because foreign countries are only good at talking over institutions only.”

Hun Sen said: “We have already protected peace, that is we have protected human lives, protected development, therefore, we do not allow war to restart again.”
-----------------
Development of the SNC

The Cambodian Supreme National Council (SNC) was formed in September 1990. On May 1, 1991, the four factions announced a voluntary cease-fire and arms moratorium. Since then, under the leadership of Prince Sihanouk, the SNC moved forward rapidly to reach consensus on a final comprehensive settlement based on the Permanent Five framework. It met five times--in Jakarta; Pattaya, Thailand (twice); Beijing; and New York--to work out differences over the draft agreements.

The SNC members agreed to elect Prince Sihanouk as President of the SNC and to designate him the final arbiter in the absence of a consensus. They then decided on at least 70% demobilization of all factional forces during the transitional period, with the rest to be demobilized or merged into a new national army after elections. They agreed that the first election will be conducted through a proportional representation system along provincial lines. Finally, they delegated to the UN the last word on all matters relating to the organization and conduct of the elections during the transitional period.

There is a consensus among the four Cambodian factions and interested countries that representatives of a Supreme National Council should be seated in the UN General Assembly as the Cambodian delegation.

Prince Sihanouk and the SNC returned to Phnom Penh in mid-November to establish the SNC headquarters.

Source: Gist: Cambodia settlement agreement - Comprehensive Settlement, US Department of State Dispatch, June 8, 1992

Hun Sen: UNTAC brought AIDS to Cambodia

Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

Prime minister Hun Sen criticized UNTAC (peacekeeping force) which came to Cambodia in 1992, and spent $2 billion, but did not resolve the peace issue for Cambodia, and instead, Cambodia has to resolve the peace issue by herself. To the contrary, UNTAC left behind the AIDS disease in Cambodia, and it stayed here until now. During a speech given at an inauguration of a building in Battambang province, on Monday, Hun Sen said: “The most UNTAC left in the Cambodia was the AIDS disease. They spent $2 billion, but when they left, the Cambodian factions were still fighting each others,” and Cambodia had to resolve the peace issue on her own.

Dancing in 'Shadows' Stamford professor writes about experiencees as UN official in Cambodia

December 30 2007
By Scott Gargan
Special Correspondent
The Advocate (Connecticut, USA)

"I was quite critical of him [Sihanouk], so I wasn't sure if he would like the book ... But he likes to have his name mentioned everywhere and my book revives him. He is even in the title" - Benny Widyono

Benny Widyono was talking by phone with his wife, Francisca, who was at home in Stamford, when a UN soldier screamed "get down!" Siem Reap, where the Indonesian diplomat served as provincial governor for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia - the peacekeeping mission deployed in 1992 after decades of civil war in the country - was under attack by the Khmer Rouge.

"They were fighting us with 900 people," says Widyono, who called his wife from a phone inside UNTAC's Australian communications unit. "She was up all night worrying about me."

Before their ouster by the Vietnamese-led People's Republic of Kampuchea in 1979, the KR starved or executed some 2 million of their own people in a four-year campaign to force Cambodia's population into agrarian labor communes. Now 14 years later, they were shelling Widyono's city in protest of UNTAC-coordinated elections.

Widyono admits he could have waited to call his wife. But, he says UNTAC "timidity" toward the KR - born out of a UN mandate recognizing the group as a legitimate administrative faction in Cambodia - gave them the audacity to strike in the first place.

"How can you recognize a genocidal regime? Without UN recognition, the KR wouldn't have been as confident," says Widyono, who discusses his experiences as part of UNTAC from 1992-1993 and later, as a UN special envoy to Cambodia from 1994-1997, in his memoir, "Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge and the United Nations in Cambodia."

As the title suggests, Widyono's narrative focuses on the role of what he calls the "unholy trinity" - King Norodom Sihanouk, the KR and the UN - in fomenting political chaos. Widyono writes how the UN refused to recognize the PRK, even though it freed Cambodia's citizens and worked to rehabilitate the country. Instead, it was slapped with economic sanctions (withholding aid for thousands) and denied representation at the UN.

Those seats, Widyono says, were kept for representatives of the Sihanouk-led Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea - comprised of the KR and other anti-Vietnamese groups - at the behest of western nations like the United States. Rather than support Cambodia's de facto rulers or leave the UN seat open, Widyono explains, the West backed a powerless government in exile - all because the PRK was installed by Vietnam's communist government, a hated enemy of the United States in the Cold War.

"It's like letting Hitler represent Germany at the UN," Widyono said during a Dec. 11 lecture at the University of Connecticut in Stamford, where he teaches economics. "Did anyone ask the Cambodian people who they wanted to represent them?"

On the ground, this meant Widyono and his UNTAC colleagues could not disarm Cambodia's warring factions (the KR was non-compliant) or protect civilians from the KR's pre-election violence.

Widyono says his comments have "raised eyebrows" at the UN, which views UNTAC as an overall success for its organization of elections and repatriation of refugees. He still believes UNTAC's mission was fundamentally flawed.

"The Paris Peace agreements (ending the civil war) were born with original sin because UNTAC had to recognize the KR," says Widyono, who wrote the book during a three-year stint as a visiting scholar at the Kahin Center for Advanced Research in Southeast Asia at Cornell University. "Our mandate was a joke."

Oddly enough, Widyono didn't hear complaints from Cambodia's ostentatious King Sihanouk, whom he criticized for backing the KR. He was surprised to receive a thank-you note from Sihanouk for the copy of "Dancing..." he sent to the former king for his birthday.

"I was quite critical of him, so I wasn't sure if he would like the book," says Widyono. "But he likes to have his name mentioned everywhere and my book revives him. He is even in the title."

Widyono may be firm in his criticisms of UNTAC and pessimistic about the UN, but he still thinks there can be lessons for future missions, such as the United Nations-African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur.

"The UN is constrained because they don't have their own troops," Widyono says. "But that doesn't mean they can't stand up to those who have committed atrocities."

Khmer Intelligence News - 23 May 2007

23 May 2007

Commemoration: First democratic elections organized in Cambodia exactly 14 years ago (1)

Today is the 14th anniversary of the first democratic elections ever organized in Cambodia. On May 23, 1993, the United Nations, through the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), held general elections as stipulated by the October 23, 1991 Paris Peace Agreements. In 1993, there were facilities given to overseas Cambodians to take part in the poll. Special polling stations were organized in New York, Paris, Geneva and Canberra for Cambodians living in North America, Europe and Australia.

Most additional MP seats would go to SRP (2)

The ruling CPP and the government are reluctant to increase the number of National Assembly seats for the 2008 election in accordance with the election law because they know that most additional parliamentary seats would go to the opposition SRP. In particular, in several constituencies with only one seat each that is controlled by the CPP (Sihanoukville, Preah Vihear), the creation of a second seat as legally justified by the increase in the population over the last ten years, would benefit the SRP, which has become the country's second largest party. Documents in English and French by clicking here.

All TV stations are controlled by the CPP (2)

All the seven TV stations operating in Cambodia are directly or indirectly, politically and/or financially controlled by the ruling CPP, which wants to make sure that no rival political parties have access whatsoever to the electronic media. CPP top leaders or their close relatives have a significant portion of the equity of most of the following television companies/stations: TVK (State-owned; channel 7); Phnom Penh Municipality (channel 3); Army (channel 5); Bayon (channel 27); Apsara (channel 11); Khmer TV (channel 9); CTN (channel 21).

Funcinpec to expel other parliamentarians (2)

After Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Prince Norodom Chakrapong, former Funcinpec Secretary-General Chhim Seak Leng, a number of other prominent Funcinpec members could be expelled from the oldest royalist party and would ipso facto lose their parliamentary seats. They are former Interior Co-Minister You Hockry, former CPP Interior Vice-Minister Sin (Pin) Sen who defected to Funcinpec in 1998, and Prince Norodom Sirivudh. Princess Norodom Vacheara has declared that she would leave politics soon.

Cambodian MP in Pakistan (1)

National Assembly member Tioulong Saumura was in Islamabad last week as a member of a team led by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute and charged with assessing the pre-election situation in Pakistan. General elections are expected to be held in that country by the end of this year. The delegation was received by the Prime Minister. More information at www.samrainsyparty.org

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