Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer
Is Burma heading for genuine reform, or is it just following the Cambodian model? asks Daniel Quinlan
Three thousand members of civil society from across ASEAN met in Burma earlier this month to discuss human rights and development, including the record of the host country.
Not so long ago such a gathering would have been unthinkable and the event marked another symbolic step in the country’s reform process, while highlighting stalled democratization of certain neighbors.
The ASEAN Civil Society Conference (ACSC), also known as the ASEAN People’s Forum (APF), is held each year in the country that holds the ASEAN Chairmanship. Like the ASEAN summits, it provides an opportunity to discuss regional concerns and local views and experiences, albeit from a less lofty perspective.
Despite being monitored by Burma’s infamous special branch, participants were allowed to meet and discuss a host of issues that remain extremely sensitive both in Burma and across the region. The fact that participants were allowed to meet unhindered is in itself worthy of praise.
While the event itself is another symbolic example of Burma’s reform process, many of the issues brought up by local participants indicated just how far it still has to go on its road to democratic reform. Land grabbing and sexual abuse, not to mention a 60-year civil war, were just some of the local issues yet to properly addressed by government.
For local activists it was an opportunity to meet colleagues from around the region for the first time in a country long synonymous with political repression.
The meeting also highlighted another county’s failure to reform. In 2012, 19 years after the UN sponsored elections, Cambodia hosted its own ACSC/APF meet, an event that was to become symbolic of the failings of its democratic reforms. The government refused to allow discussions on land issues – or, ironically, Burma’s land issues – to take place. They pressured hotels and conference rooms to cancel events and even cut the electricity to one venue.
The brutal crackdown earlier this year on protesting garment workers after an sometimes violent election marred by allegations of fraud has only highlighted Cambodia’s democratic shortcomings and provided unfavorable comparisons.
One of the participants, returning from this year’s event, Rong Panha, an officer from the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions said, “it’s great that we can share and have discussions on finding strategies related to human rights issues amongst ASEAN countries”.
But referring to the crackdown earlier this year he warned Cambodia could end up “far behind Myanmar [Burma] as they are on their way to fast reform on their democratic journey.”
A report released two days after the end of the conference highlights some of the shared ground between the two countries.
From 2000 to 2013, Burma’s forests were relieved of some US$8 billion worth of timber which left the country through illegal and illegal trade, according to a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). US$5.7 billion of that remains off the government books, raising serious questions over who is benefiting from the 22.8 million cubic meters of wood Burma has lost.
Land grabs continue to devastate urban and poor rural communities in both countries as the environment is stripped of its natural wealth.
Media reports of riots from Rakhine State in Burma last week again drew attention to another issue that offers reasons for serious concern: inter-communal violence. While inter-communal tensions in Cambodia have been simmering for years, in Burma they have exploded with worrying consistency throughout the reform period, resulting in the murder of some 240 people and the displacement of 140,000 since June 2012.
The issue remains the largest elephant in the room of Burma’s reforms and one that local activists are struggling to come to terms with. The fact that the issue was not brought up at the conference is an indication that it’s not only governments that have problems addressing certain issues.
Aid workers, seen as biased towards the country’s besieged Muslim and Rohingya minorities, were targeted by Buddhist-led mobs last week and were holed up in the police station in the regional capital of Sittwe.
Just before one of Burma’s first highly symbolic moments, its 2012 bi-elections, an ex-political prisoner and member of the student group the 88 generation joked he hoped they would not follow the Cambodian model of democratization.
Unfortunately, Hun Sen’s 29 years in power have not gone unnoticed. His example of taking millions in aid while promising reforms year after year – all the while using brutal repression and overseeing a state of epic corruption – raises serious questions about how seriously Western governments engage with reform. The ‘reformers’ that have brought ‘disciplined democracy’ to Burma owe far more of their political thinking to Hun Sen than Thomas Paine. Democracy activists and civil society in either country are unlikely to run out of work any time soon.
Labels: Burma, Prime Minister Hun Sen
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March 23, 2014
By Michael Benge
Most of the major media recently missed a chance to give democracy a boost, choosing instead to ignore events in Cambodia of major significance. Millions of Cambodians overcame the horrors of the Khmer Rouge genocide and their fear of the repressive Hun Sen regime, Khmer Rouge holdovers, and turned out in en masse to vote for a coalition of democratic opposition parties known as the CNRP (Cambodian National Rescue Party) in last July’s elections.
Unfortunately, the government-appointed National Election Commission gave Hun Sen’s ruling party, the CPP (the communist Cambodian Peoples Party) 68 parliamentary seats (still a loss of 22) and the CNRP only 55. The CNRP claims that a free and fair election would have given it 63 parliamentary seats, leaving just 60 for the CPP. Even so, the CNRP did quite well in spite of being denied access to TV, radio and most print media.
Adhering to Mao Zedong’s principle that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” Hun Sen and his Nouveau Khmer Rouge cohorts have “won” a series of elections by controlling the ballot boxes and the National Election Committee. The late Congressman Steven Solarz, an observer of the July 1998 elections, told the author his satirical remark that those elections were a ‘Miracle on the Mekong’ was taken out of context by the media, which then blessed the elections as being legitimate – far from it! The international community rolled over and legitimized Hun Sen’s regime and the US followed suite. All parties conveniently forgot or forgave Hun Sen’s1997 coup d'état in which his forces brutally tortured and murdered more than 100 high-ranking members of the democratically elected Royalist FUNCINPEC party in a fashion reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. "Plus ça change, plus c' est la même chose." (The more things change, the more they remain the same.)
The CNRP called for an investigation into alleged fraud in last July’s elections, demanded a new election, and began a series of demonstrations against Hun Sen and the CPP. The democratic coalition also vowed to boycott the parliament pending a resolution of the fraud investigation, thus setting up a tense political standoff. Nearly eight months later, neither the CPP nor the CNRP has mustered sufficient leverage to end the stalemate.
Besides election fraud, the Cambodian people also began protesting the kleptocratic Hun Sen regime for its corruption, land grabs, repression, human rights abuses, muzzling of the media, and near slave-labor in the garment industry. The protesters demanded greater government transparency, improvements in the rule of law, more accountability, a halt to government-sponsored killings, and the prosecution of those responsible. According to a recently released International Labor Organization (ILO) report, 10 percent of Cambodia’s annual GDP [gross domestic product] is lost to corruption
The rising swell of pro-democracy protests started in July. In mid-December, the CNRP launched its third and most impressive protest to date by staging a permanent occupation of Freedom Park in Phnom Penh. After a week of street rallies, CMRP called for a large protest march in which an estimated million people, young and old, converged on Phnom Penh and took over the streets in the largest such demonstration in the country's history.
Just before Christmas, approximately 350,000 out of an estimated 600,000 impoverished garment factory workers who toil at near slave-labor wages in unsanitary and unhealthy working conditions went on strike for higher wages and better working conditions. They produce garments at some 500 factories for US companies like Nike, Levi Strauss, Puma, H&M, Gap, Gap, Old Navy, American Eagle and Walmart, generating more than US$5 billion a year in exports, primarily to the US -- about 35 percent of Cambodia’s GDP. The workers are demanding that the $80-per-month minimum wage be doubled to $160 (garment workers in Thailand receive an average of $243 a month). The present wage is barely enough to survive on, let alone support a family. However, the Hun Sen regime offered a raise of only $20 and refuses to compromise further. This propelled the garment workers into the waiting arms of the CNRP, further heating up the ongoing political mêlée.
Hun Sen first banned all demonstrations and even small gatherings, then he “let the dogs out” and used his 80 new tanks and APCs – a gift from China – to block the streets in Phnom Penh and roads in and out of the city. Next, he mobilized the notoriously brutal Brigade 911, an elite National Counterterrorism Committee’s (NCTC) Special Forces unit commanded by Hun Sen’s son, Lieutenant General Hun Manet, a West Point graduate (Latian America Déjà vu). On December 27, Brigade 911 and other units of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces were set loose against the protestors, dismantling Freedom Park, destroying a Buddhist shrine, and brutalizing demonstrators, reporters and innocent bystanders. These attacks were supported by official threats to and restrictions on the independent media.
In his infamous “cockroach” speech in 2011, given in response to the suggestion by a Cambodian critic that he should worry about the overthrow of a dictator in Tunisia, Hun Sen had stated, “I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage” (Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch, NYT commentary 05/31/2012).
According to reports, an “elite paratrooper unit showed up armed with batons and steel pipes and with brutal force beat a dozen monks and scores of demonstrators in front of a factory run by Yakjin, a joint Korean and American corporation” in the Canadia Industrial Zone. The troops then opened fire on the protestors with automatic weapons, killing five and wounding scores of others, detaining at least 23. More than 100 people are still missing. One is a 16-year-old boy who eyewitnesses say was shot and seriously wounded, then carried away by military police in their vehicle. He father fears that “he may have been thrown to the crocodiles.”
South Korea is Cambodia’s largest investor in the clothing industry and owns the majority of the 500 garment factories. There are six Korean companies in the Canadia Industrial Park, including the US/Korean-owned Yakjin factory.
Days before the attacks, the Carlyle Group had announced in a press release that it had acquired a 100% stake in Yakjin Trading Corp. and set up Yakjin Holdings Inc. Tim Shorrok of The Nation wrote that Carlyle has an array of dignitaries on their board and on their payroll, including ex-Presidents and former high-ranking officials such as George H.W. Bush, James Baker III and Frank Carlucci. Carlyle is strategically located on Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown Washington.
After the attacks, rumors spread around Phnom Penh that they had been encouraged by the South Korean government. A video showed that an individual accompanying the troops wore a South Korean flag emblem on his army fatigues, and the image was posted on Facebook. It is well known that (supposedly retired) Korean military officers act as advisors to units of Hun Sen’s elite troops. Geoffrey Cain wrote in the Global Post on January 9 that the South Korean embassy had issued a statement taking credit for convincing the Cambodian government to “understand the seriousness of this situation and act swiftly.” It cited “high-level lobbying over the past two weeks as contributing to the ‘success’ of protecting business interests.”
The Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC) dismissed the five deaths as “collateral damage” – merely the cost of doing business in Cambodia. The Cambodian Daily reported, “The group complained that weeks of labor unrest will cost the industry $200 million.” Cambodia’s equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce, composed largely of representatives of foreign businesses exploiting Cambodian workers, claimed that “the garment workers have no legal right to strike.”
As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Murdering journalists and shooting garment workers seems to be par-for-the-course for the Hun Sen regime, for example:
- In Bavet, Svay Rieng province, the Mayor shot and killed three garment factory workers who were protesting against squalid working conditions and for higher wages. The mayor was charged with a misdemeanor and released.
- Several union leaders have been murdered, but no one has been brought to justice and the cases remain unsolved.
- The November 12 shooting death of 49-year-old street vendor Ms. Eng Sokhum by police during an SL Garment factory protest has not been investigated.
- In September 2012, Cambodian journalist Hang Serei Odom, who was investigating illegal logging, was hacked to death and stuffed in the trunk by a military officer and his wife.
- On January 31, news reporter Suon Chan was brutally killed by a group of men on January 31, in Cholkiri, Kampong Chhnang province, reportedly in retaliation for his work for the Maekea Kampuchea newspaper on illegal fishing in the province,
- On Easter Sunday in 1997, four grenades were thrown into the midst of a rally led by opposition leader Sam Rainsy in front of the National Assembly building, killing 17 people and wounding more than 100, including one American. It has been reported that the FBI tentatively pinned responsibility on Hun Sen’s personal bodyguards; however, no one has ever been indicted for the murders.
The list goes on….
The suffering inflicted on the Cambodian people by Hun Sen’s regime doesn’t stop there. Cambodia is a country for sale, which enables the regime to get away with pillage, plunder and murder! Like no other country in the world, Cambodia “permits investors to form 100% foreign-owned companies in Cambodia that can buy land and real estate outright - or at least on 99-year-plus leases.” According to the Cambodian human rights NGO LICADHO, more than 400,000 Cambodians have been affected by “land grabs” and evictions since 2003. An additional 150,000 people are currently threatened with eviction. Forty-five per cent of the entire country has been sold off – from the land ringing Angkor Wat, to the colonial buildings of Phnom Penh, to the southwestern islands. Rhodri Williams of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions pointed out that as Hun Sen began to privatize the land, “he simultaneously cut off the rights of 360,000 exiled Cambodians, awarding prime slices to political allies and friends.” The Cambodian exiles that had fled the Khmer Rouge into Thailand after 1975 had titles to the land, but when they were able to return, their titles meant nothing.
David Puttnam, member of Britain’s House of Lords and recently appointed as the British Prime Minister’s trade envoy for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, “stunned journalists, diplomats and others by praising the current Khmer government and its leader Hun Sen, for its commitment to ending corruption.” Puttnam, the once-brilliant film-maker, is best known for producing the amazing movie of Khmer Rouge terror, “The Killing Fields.”
Adding insult to injury, both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have spent millions of dollars on programs that do little more than disfranchise even more Cambodians. According to Human Rights Watch, “the World Bank’s Land Titling provided little more than a modicum of political cover for Hun Sen’s continued land grabs. In practice it was subject to domination by wealthy and powerful interests who diverted it to increase their land-holdings and leverage over the rural poor.” The project has no legal protections or recourse for those who lost out in the process, ensuring that thousands more will be dispossessed from their land.
The ADB’s resettlement program for the rehabilitation of Cambodia’s railway network affected an estimated 4,000 Cambodian families, mostly very poor, who were forcibly relocated without just compensation to make way for the railway upgrade.
In addition, both the World Bank and the ADB were found to be incompetent, failing in their planning, implementation, oversight, and accounting of their programs.
Meanwhile, Hun Sen and the CPP continue to govern with half of the National Assembly empty, while the same foreign governments that urge Cambodia to investigate election irregularities continue to do business as usual with the repressive kleptocracy.
Hun Sen’s regime is rife with brutal Khmer Rouge holdovers, such as Chea Sim, Heng Samrin, Keat Chhon and Hor Namhong, top-ranking CPP and government officials who Hun Sen ordered to ignore summons to appear before international judges at the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The court was founded in 2006 to investigate crimes against humanity and hold those responsible to account; to date it has delivered just one conviction at a cost of some $200 million. Many Cambodians view the court as a sick joke. It is rumored that these Khmer Rouge commanders threatened to expose Hun Sen’s role in the genocide if they were indicted.
Hun Sen was reportedly educated by Buddhist monks in Vietnam, joined the communist party there at an early age, and then became a Khmer Rouge battalion commander under Heng Samrin in the Eastern Zone of Cambodia, which was controlled by Vietnam. In 1977 they fled back to Vietnam when Pol Pot (ANGKAR) put out a kill order on the leaders of the Vietnamese controlled Khmer Rouge. Hun Sen stands accused of genocide in attacks on Kompong Cham province, where hundreds of men, women, children, and Buddhist monks were slaughtered (Washington Post 10/30/89). In 1975, his battalion also oversaw a brutal crackdown against the Muslim Cham minority group, ruthlessly killing an untold number of people. During Vietnam’s invasion, occupation and attempt to colonize Cambodia from 1979-1989, the Vietnamese put Hun Sen in charge of the K-5 Plan (also referred to as the Bamboo Wall or the Petite Genocide) in which he sent tens of thousands of Cambodians to their deaths in an attempt to build an impenetrable barrier of mines and other obstacles along the Thai border to stop an invasion from there.
Two groups of International lawyers representing victims of the recent crackdown, human rights abuses and the Khmer Rouge genocide are collecting evidence to file cases against Prime Minister Hun Sen at the International Criminal Court.
Until recently, China has been a most important ally of Hun Sen; however, it is now hedging its bets and easing support in case the opposition succeeds. In turn, the dictator has reached out to Hanoi for political and economic support, even though there is a growing resentment among Cambodians of the Vietnamese, their historic enemy. Hun Sen has always enjoyed a warm relationship with his longtime patrons in Hanoi. Intelligence reports indicate that Hanoi maintains a contingent of 3,000 troops, a mixture of special-forces and intelligence agents, with tanks and helicopters, in a huge compound 2½ kilometers outside Phnom Penh right next to Hun Sen’s Tuol Krassaing fortress near Takhmau. They are there to ensure that Hanoi’s puppet, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, doesn’t stray far from Hanoi’s policy of neo-colonization of Cambodia. The Vietnamese compound bristles with electronic surveillance equipment that would make any group’s electronic eaves-dropping outstation proud. When Vietnamese troops were forced to withdraw in 1989 from Cambodia, as a compromise, Vietnam installed its Hanoi-trained Khmer Rouge marionette Hun Sen as Prime Minister. Vietnamese “advisors” are entrenched throughout Hun Sen’s regime, including the Cambodian army.
In an attempt to improve his image for the international community, Hun Sen has adopted Vietnam’s “talk-fight strategy” (AT 09/22/13). On Feb. 18th he allowed senior officials in the ruling party (CPP) to meet with the opposition CNRP. They agreed in principle to the creation of a joint-party commission to “prepare a framework” to implement electoral reform, although Hun Sen reiterated that he would not agree to a re-vote. Coming out their first meeting, senior CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap said that the government is considering modifying Cambodia’s nationality law to ban those with dual citizenship from running for the office of prime minister. Of course, the CPP is targeting opposition leader Sam Rainsy, among other leaders, “and will be in the nationality law.”
As another propaganda move, Hun Sen stated he once again opened Freedom Park and lifted the ban on on public assembly, but warned that any CNRP demonstrations will be met with counter-demonstrations by the CPP.
A day after the ban was lifted, CNRP’s leader Sam Rainsy said that if Hun Sen tries to use government forces to quash future opposition-led protests, he will call upon the police and the military to disobey the prime minister’s orders and join the opposition, as occurred during the recent political upheaval in Ukraine. He believes that more than two million people will join the opposition protests, as they did there.
Soon after, the Cambodian Daily reported that Interior Minister Sar Kheng banned a scheduled rally in Freedom Park and distributed $54, 477 (not a paltry sum in Cambodia) among his police officers as incentive pay “for their work in suppressing protesters.”
Hun Sen has also created a government Committee to Solve Strikes and Demonstrations of All Targets that is tasked with dealing with protests, and appointed to it the commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), his deputy, who commands Hun Sen’s Prime Minister Bodyguard Unit, his son, who heads the Ministry of National Defense’s counter-terrorism department, the secretary of state at the Defense Ministry, the National Military Police commander, and the National Police chief.
A Cambodian folk tale seems to be an appropriate metaphor for the present state of affairs. One day a beautiful young Cambodian maiden walking in the forest found a sick snake that begged her for help. She picked up the snake, took it home and nursed it back to health; after which the snake bit her. As she lay dying she asked, “Why?” The snake answered, “You knew I was a snake when you picked me up. Besides, it’s my nature!”
To summarize: the CNRP wants a new election; the CPP says, no way. The CPP insists that the CNRP must occupy its Assembly seats for talks to begin; the CNRP says it will not join with an illegitimate government. The tense political stalemate has continued for eight months, with no resolution in sight. Hun Sen insists that the government will continue working as normal while the opposition’s boycott of parliament continues.
Recently, a US spending bill was signed into law that included the symbolic gesture of suspending some funding to Cambodia until the government carries out an independent investigation of last July’s disputed national election and reforms its electoral system, or until the opposition ends its boycott of parliament. The only reason this happened is that it was attached to a huge spending bill that Obama and the democrats were anxious to pass. The only other response from the Administration has been tepid; a “dishonorable mention” of a few of the Hun Sen regime’s abuses in the State Department’s “Annual Country Reports on Human Rights” – comparable to twenty lashes with a wet noodle.
The plight of and the human rights violations against the workers in the garment industry in Cambodia must be addressed by the Obama Administration before seeking congressional support for fast-track approval of its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); a trade agreement that includes many developing countries with low wages and poor working conditions. Some democratic critics see this and other trade agreements as a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions for American workers. But the Cambodian deal could be used to help raise labor standards abroad rather than lowering them at home. However, that would require the administration to have the fortitude and resolve to bring pressure to bear in the right places, seemingly as scarce as hen’s teeth in today’s U.S. foreign policy.
Given the major media’s attention-span deficit disorder, perhaps the outrages in Cambodia have been overshadowed by other political news in the Ukraine and Egypt, or political sideshows as Dennis Rodman’s debacle in North Korea. Had the media chosen to cover these events it would have strengthened the Cambodians’ resolve to force a democratic change and sparked worldwide condemnation of Hun Sen’s repressive and kleptocratic regime. It’s about time for the “free press” to stand up for what is right and provide Cambodia’s democracy movement with the international coverage it deserves.
And the band plays on ….
Michael Benge spent eleven years in Vietnam as a Foreign Service Officer; five as a POW . He is a student of Southeast Asian politics. He is very active in advocating for human rights, religious freedom and democracy for the countries of former Indochina and has written extensively on these subjects.
Source: AmericanThinker.com
Labels: Cambodian Spring Tsunami, CNRP, hun sen, Khmer Rouge, Sam Rainsy
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Exclusive Interview - THE NATION
Cambodia's best-known opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), says he is determined to overthrow the entrenched "Hun Sen regime". He claims he won the July 28, 2013 election. He has led a series of protests in Phnom Penh. He has now agreed to join a "Joint Committee for Electoral Reform." Is he willing to strike a deal with Hun Sen? The Nation's Suthichai Yoon caught up with him in Phnom Penh last week. Excerpts from the hour-long exclusive interview:
You have agreed to set up a joint committee for electoral reform with Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodia People's Party. Do you think there will be a breakthrough?
I hope so. I don't know the intention of the other side, but as for us, we want to reach a political and peaceful solution; we want the holding of a new election as soon as possible.
But it seems like PM Hun Sen is not looking at this from your angle. He said there will be no new election, the electoral reform is for the next election, but the past election is done, finished.
It's a bargaining position, I think he's prepared for some concessions, because without concession, there can be no negotiation.
But before you agree to this joint committee, did you detect any signs of concessions from Hun Sen?
Yes, we have received signals, received some indication that the election could be held … before the normal end of the term, which is July 2018, so it could be held before.
But you have been demanding elections before the end of this year.
Yes, we have to make some concession also. Actually, we would like to have elections within six months, within this year, this would be excellent for us, but we couldn't have everything we want. So we will be flexible, and hope that the CPP will also show some flexibility.
Is there a timeframe you are debating or trying to reach an agreement between the two sides?
I hope that we can reach an agreement in the next few months, because the country is facing problems.
Will you go back to the streets if negotiations fail?
Then we would, but if negotiations proceed smoothly, then we'll continue to negotiate without calling for a new demonstration.
But the government has banned new protests; you cannot gather more than 10 people?
Yes, but many friends of Cambodia from the international community are putting pressure on the Hun Sen government to restore our liberties.
You think you can win the next election?
Definitely, we have already won the last election. We won the last election.
How many seats you think you won?
More than the CPP, there only 2 parties, we actually won more seats than CPP, at least 63, the most for them is 60 seats, making a total 123.
So you had a majority?
In reality, yes, but the result as proclaimed by CPP is not reflective of the will of the people. It's a distortion, that's why we are asking for an investigation into the irregularities that have marred the last election.
But Hun Sen says there will be no investigation into alleged fraud in the election?
But the whole world condemned the election, we have recently got resolutions from the European Parliament, the Australian Senate, and the US Congress re-cently passed a bill calling for an investigation as independent observers have exposed the irregularities, and have shown that the last election was not free and fair.
Between your two demands - early election and investigation into fraud - which is more important to you?
Now it would be early election, because we have to think ahead, as our supporters and the vast majority of Cambodian people are asking for new election, but provided the new election will be better organised than the previous one. That is why before holding a new election, we have to implement election reforms. This is why we have to set up the joint commission with CPP to revise and implement election reform.
So you're not demanding the resignation of Hun Sen?
I think … we would be happy with an early election because we know that after the next election, if they are organised election properly, PM Hun Sen will go anyway.
So you're ready to be prime minister?
I think it would reflect the mandate of the Cambodian people.
You think you can run the country better than Hun Sen?
Of course.
Why and How?
Because this country is going down the drain. The people are not happy, they suffer from the fact that the current regime, Hun Sen's family, cronies are just selling the country to foreign interests.
Some critics do not believe that you or your team can run the country yet; that you do not have enough experience in running the country?
Sometimes it is better to have no experience rather than to have experience in corruption, in crime, in destroying the country. It's better not to have that kind of experience, but we have many supporters who have experience, expertise in all fields and we'll mobilise all the human resources available, including those working for the current regime. They are just part of the bureaucracy, civil servants, they have been receiving bad orders, but they are looking forward to have a new leadership for the country, and they will serve the country with loyalty.
What will be your top your agenda if you are PM?
I will put forward three words: Rule of law. This is what needs to be implemented.
You don't think there's rule of law here now?
No. Today there is rule of the guns, rule of money and rule of PM Hun Sen and family. This has to be replaced with rule of law.
But PM Hun Sen's influence has been so deeprooted, he's been running the country for at least 28 years, how do you uproot such an entrenched power base?
I think a few days or a few weeks before the fall of many dictators, people could have made the same remark about the fall of Nicholae Ceausescu, Saddam Hussein, Mubarak, Ben Ali. Many people said those dictators have been in power for decades, so they will stay in power forever. This kind of reasoning is wrong. On the contrary, the longer they stay in power, the shorter the time they will be in power.
Do you think the army will follow your orders if you suddenly become prime minister?
The whole population, and the army, they have their parents, relatives, wives, children with us. They are not going to kill their own parents and relatives.
I notice that the young people are more outspoken, they now express their opinions openly, but when I came here 10-12 years ago, they would not talk publicly against the govt, but now they talk openly. How has this change come about?
Because this is the new generation. About 70 per cent of the population are under 30. So they are more educated, more critical, more demanding and they want to change the leadership of country, because since they were born, less than 30 years ago, they have only seen Mr Hun Sen as PM.
They have seen only one PM in their life so far?
Yes, but they are more educated, have access to Internet, they travel as migrant workers especially to Thailand and they see and compare Cambodia with neighbouring countries, which have changed leadership on a regular basis. That's why neighbouring countries are more developed, people are more happy. Countries that keep the same leadership for 30-40 years are the most backward countries like North Korea, some African countries, leadership like Mr Mugabe [Zimbabwe president], all kinds of dictators. Young people understand that we need new ideas, new inspiration, new leadership.
But you are not a young man. How do you inspire young people; you are 64 this year, not young?
But I share the same ideas and same hopes as these young people.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, social media you think have a role to play in what you call a big change?
Definitely, the new generation is better informed and can be better mobilised quickly thanks to Facebook mainly. The opposition does not have any access to any TV or modern broadcast media.
You are not allowed on TV at all?
No.
Never get interviewed on TV?
No.
Newspapers cannot interview you?
No. TV is the monopoly of the ruling party for 30 years.
Not even one minute?
Not even 1 minute.
When you speak publicly, they are never reported?
Never, they ignored us. But even so, people support us, they know what we are doing and fighting for, it's mainly through Facebook.
So you have been using Facebook, quite actively too?
Yes.
I've been watching yesterday and you put up the clips when you went out to meet villagers.
Yes.
And you also have web TV?
Yes, but it is through FB, YouTube. It's not traditional TV.
But a lot of people follow you?
Yes, fortunately, and more people will do so.
This is quite a recent trend, but before social media, how did you reach out to the people?
Mobile phones. Much better than nothing. Word of mouth. Effective enough.
How do you see the influence of social media on the next election? Do you think it will have more influence than before?
You've just mentioned that the people in general, and young people in particular, are no more afraid, because they know that they - those who support the opposition - outnumber the supporters of Hun Sen. In the villages, people come out and say they want change, and they support the opposition. Ten years ago, they would never dare to do this. But now in any village, the villagers know that the majority of the people in any village support the opposition, so why should they be afraid of the ruling party. It should be the other way around.
What would you tell your voters about your strong points? Why should they make you PM? Tell me three strong points?
Give the country back to them, give Cambodia back to Cambodian people, give their land back to the farmers because Hun Sen has granted 99-year-concessions to a large number of private and foreign companies. Land grabbing and land confiscation is a major problem in this agricultural country. Countless farmer have lost their land. The situation is ripe for big change. And also corruption is so rampant. The government has no money to pay decent salary to civil servants. They are obliged to resort to petty corruption but they are not happy. They say the real problem is not survival corruption at the low level, the real problem is the corruption at the top level of the government. Also, factory workers get very low salary, also because of corruption. Private companies, especially garment companies, have to pay heavy bribes to government officials, to army generals, and they don't have enough funds or resources left to increase the salaries of workers. So, workers understand this. We have to put an end to government corruption in order for workers to get salary increases.
When you talk of strong points, people will ask you in what way are you better than Hun Sen - as a person, as a leader?
I serve my country and I only serve my country. Whereas Hun Sen serves a foreign country. A foreign country…
You mean…
The country which has put him in power since the very beginning, more than 30 years ago.
One of your weak points, according to your critics, is they say you are anti-Vietnam?
I'm not anti anybody, anti any foreign country. I'm pro-Cambodia. I have to defend Cambodia's interests and to resist any attempt to control or even to destroy my country for another country to swallow.
So if you become PM, you would have a neighbour who doesn't like you and you don't like them either - Vietnam. How would you improve relations with Vietnam if you become PM?
It is not a matter of liking or not liking. It's a matter of respecting each other, but you must start by respecting yourself first. If you sell your country to a foreign country, [it means] you don't even respect yourself, so other people will look down upon you. But when a new leadership in Cambodia shows that they want to defend their country, love and respect their country, then countries around us will also start to respect Cambodia.
You have been accused of using the word Yuon, which is considered by Vietnamese as insulting?
It's the same way, same word you in Thailand use to call the Vietnamese. So there's nothing wrong.
But maybe the intonation in Thailand and Cambodia is different. It's the same word, I know. We also call Vietnamese Yuon, but not in an insulting way?
In Cambodia also, it's similarly neutral. It's the CPP propaganda backed by Vietnam. They want us to call them Vietnam, the way they like to be called. But this is against our tradition, language and culture. We have known them as Yuon for centuries, 4-5 centuries and the world Vietnam was invented 50-60 years ago. And they want to change our habit. You know in the 1980s, 1810-1820s Vietnam at that time, it was not Vietnam. They invaded us and they forced us to change our habits, language to speak Vietnamese, to use the same words as them. We refused and we got killed, massacred. And now it's the same, because they control Cambodia, they want us to use the same words as them but the resistance has continued and will continue.
Among the Cambodian people, do you sense that there is negative feeling towards the Vietnamese?
Not negative against anybody. They are unhappy, and they suffer because their country is going down the drain. It is controlled through our current government, which is a puppet government. Our country is controlled by a foreign country. So we are very sad.
In what way has Vietnam influenced Hun Sen in a bad way. Any examples?
They have colonised Cambodia. Look at the economy, it is under control of a Vietnamese company: telecommunications, telephone. In Thailand it is a very sensitive industry, the tourist industry. Airline is a Vietnamese company. Even Angkor Wat is controlled and managed by a Vietnamese company or someone very close to Vietnam. The Vietnamese company has received as 99-year concession hundreds of thousands of hectares and they have been destroying the forests in order to say that they are developing the country…They have destroyed a large portion of Cambodia forests.
But there are also Singapore, Japanese and Thai investors?
Very little. If you look at the breakdown, the investment, especially the most destructive investment, is controlled by Vietnamese companies.
So if you become PM, how are you going to handle Vietnamese economic influence in Cambodia?
Everybody, whether they are Cambodian, foreigners, Vietnamese, Thai , Chinese, American, Japanese will be treated in the same way. Equality before the law. So they will have to respect the law and we will not allow 99-year concessions. We have to think of our farmers' interest first. We must give back their land to farmers because nothing is a worse situation than the one of landless farmers. They have become beggars, desperate. They have nothing to sell except their children going to prostitution, human trafficking. So it's terrible. We have to give back their land to farmers.
So you don't regret your role in the incident at the Vietnamese border, where you were accused, and sued in court for encouraging local people to remove the border marker?
You know the current situation vindicates me, because I just went to the place where I uprooted the so-called border pole.
You did it yourself at that time?
Yes, with supporters. Now the Vietnamese have gone back to the original border, so the land is still Cambodian. Had I not uprooted those border poles, Vietnam would have taken the lands already. So, the farmers, they like me very much. They are very grateful. They say 'we're fortunate that Sam Rainsy came to defend our land'.
So you will do it again and again if it happens again right?
Yes, because our farmers' land is our country's territory, so it's our duty to defend our country.
What would be your weak points compared to Hun Sen?
I would never kill anybody. Hun Sen would not hesitate. Hun Sen is very good at clinging on to power, at surviving as the political leader and in the Cambodian context, he would do anything to remain, at any cost, to remain the top leader of this country. For me, I would give up if I have to kill, if I have to destroy the country, to make millions of people unhappy, I would give up. Okay, whoever would continue, let them do so. So this is why we have only peaceful and non-violent ways. We have to be patient, and sometimes we have to sacrifice some of our people in a non-violent way, but when they kill us, we don't respond.
So, you're saying you are not as tough as Hun Sen?
Yes, but I believe that in the modern world, you don't need to be a criminal to be in power.
Will you be a soft leader?
No . What do you mean by soft?
Meaning that you would hesitate to make decisions that are difficult?
No, you have to stick to the principle. You have to be firm. Because if you fight for your country for a cause that is supported by the vast majority of the people, then you have to be strong, strong in your will, determination.
Apart from Vietnam, there are also issues with Thailand. How would you handle Thailand if you are PM, especially the Preah Vihear issue?
You know I've lived in Europe for many years, and I'm fascinated by the European Union, the EU as a regional grouping. I dreamed of a new Asean built on the same model as the EU. This trend of grouping would be based on common values, on democratic values, on respect for human rights, good governance, rule of law. I think if we share common values, we will become the best of friends and the best of allies, working for common prosperity, I'm also fascinated and inspired by the reconciliation between France and Germany, which had been fighting each other for centuries, but eventually, after the end of war, they achieved reconciliation. They work together, share common values, built the core of the EU which is a real success story. I dream of an Asean built on the same model, even though Cambodia-Thailand on the one hand, Cambodia-Vietnam on the other hand have not always been friendly to each other. But we can, and must and will achieve reconciliation. Like France and Germany we must work together for peace and common prosperity.
(Part 2 of this interview will be published in The Nation tomorrow.)
Labels: CNRP, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Sam Rainsy, The NATION
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