Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer
By Michelle Penna | AsiaSentinel
Hun Sen continues repression tactics to stay in power
After taking a relative drubbing during 2013 elections, when the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won only 68 of the 123-member parliament’s seats, the government headed by Hun Sen, is now trying to silence the opposition. Fearing a worse election result, Hun Sen is determined to intimidate the opposition stay in power after community and general elections scheduled for 2017 and 2018, respectively.
A review of recent reports by Human Rights Watch makes for a grim reading. “Cambodia became engulfed in a human rights crisis after national assembly elections,” the human rights watchdog wrote about events unfolding in 2013.
The following year, the country witnessed “Killings by security forces, arrests of activists and opposition politicians, summary trials, and crackdowns on peaceful protest.” Last year, “Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government launched new assaults on human rights in Cambodia.”
The upper echelons of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the main opposition, have unsurprisingly been attacked. Last November, a court issued an arrest warrant for Sam Rainsy, the party’s president, who stands accused of defamation in a case dating back to 2008, when he claimed that Foreign Minister Hor Namhong used to run a Khmer Rouge prison.
Judges found the CNRP’s leader guilty and condemned him to two years in prison in 2011. He was forgiven by royal pardon two years later, but the lawsuit was “reactivated” in 2015 as Rainsy was traveling in South Korea. He has not returned yet, choosing self-exile in France instead.
Kem Sokha, the CNRP’s vice-president, has spent the past few months hiding inside the party’s headquarters, refusing to appear in court after being summoned in a controversial case related to prostitution. On September 9, a court convicted him in absentia for failing to show up, handing him a five-month sentence plus a fine.
Tensions reached a climax with the murder of Kem Ley, a political analyst and outspoken activist, who was gunned down in July. While there is no solid proof of responsibility, swirling rumors have it that the shooting was the icing on the cake of the ongoing crack-down.
Hardly any of this is unprecedented. Going back to the end of the Vietnamese occupation in 1989 and the creation of a formal democratic state, Cambodian politics has never been a peaceful affair. Violence marred the administration of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) in the early 1990s, and tensions between the then-two Prime Ministers – Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh – exploded in 1997, as a bloody coup d’état engulfed Phnom Penh.
In the following years, cycles of repression have been followed by political deals and rapprochements between the ruling and the opposition groups. “The current crackdown is part of a long-standing pattern of loosening and tightening that Hun Sen and the CPP have employed to great political effect since 1993,” said Sebastian Strangio, the author of Hun Sen’s Cambodia. “Throughout this period the party’s aim has remained constant: to strengthen their grip on power while maintaining just enough ‘democracy’ to keep foreign donor nations from pulling up stumps.”
But some see a difference this time around. For the first time since the putsch, the government appears truly at risk of losing out, as better educated and better informed citizens have grown increasingly resentful of the mismanagement their country is subjected to.
There is little doubt that such mismanagement is a real issue. Reports by the media and various NGOs have piled up over the years, detailing the systematic looting of the country’s riches and the injustice suffered by common people.
Interestingly, the connection between private and political interests appears to be part of the reason why the government is so reluctant to give up power, observers say, for doing so would precipitate the personal fortunes of many powerful individuals. As Sotheara Yoeurng, an analyst with Politikoffee, a political discussion forum, puts it: “If they lose, what happens to their relatives, to their cronies, to the people who are connected to them?”
He argues that a political compromise should be sought, with the opposition committing itself not to damage Hun Sen’s and his close associates’ safety as a way to ease a transition, but such a deal is nowhere in sight. Hun Sen has once again raised the specter of civil unrest should the opposition win and remove CPP loyalists from the military and the police. Meanwhile, the opposition has been keen on attacking the government as a Vietnamese puppet – a popular claim, given that anti-Vietnamese sentiments run high in the kingdom.
The resulting political polarization raises a number of questions. The first is whether repression will intensify in the coming months or the ruling and opposition parties will manage to find a deal, as it happened in 2013, when Rainsy, who at the time was also in exile, was allowed to return to contest the polls.
Another is whether the CNRP can win even if the crackdown drags on. Most of those who spoke with Asia Sentinel claim that if the elections are free and fair, the opposition stands a chance, but few are optimistic. From his base in France, Sam Rainsy is out of reach, besides being blamed by some for once again beating a hasty retreat in the face of danger. So is Kem Sokha, a man known for his ability in raising support among the Cambodian rural population, a significant chunk of which constitutes the CPP electoral base.
“I doubt a repeat of 2013 is possible because the CNRP appears to be in disarray,” says Sophal Ear, an associate professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles and author of Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy. “What’s different pre-2013 versus now is that they’ve neutralized Kem Sokha so he is out of commission, cooped-up in CNRP headquarters and unable to rally people.”
According to Cham Bunthet, another analyst with Politikoffee, even a return of the CNRP’s leader would be unlikely to make a significant difference. “If Mr. Sam Rainsy is allowed back, there will be a political deal and any deal benefits the CPP more than the opposition,” he says. “Maybe they just want to destroy the CNRP. They have taken the head away and are now breaking them into pieces.
Labels: CNRP, CPP, Election, Kem Sokha, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Sam Rainsy
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The mob that beat up two Cambodian opposition lawmakers outside the National Assembly building in Phnom Penh early this week included about 200 young men from Prime Minister Hun Sen’s corps of bodyguards who were driven in trucks to the protest and later boasted about beating the politicians, a driver who transported the attackers said .
The attack on Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) lawmakers Nhay Chamreoun and Kong Sophea on Monday occurred as more than 1,000 pro-ruling party demonstrators surrounded the parliament building in Phnom Penh, calling for Kem Sokha, vice president of the CNRP, to step down from his position as first vice president of the National Assembly.
On Friday 68 lawmakers from the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) voted to remove Kem Sokha from National Assembly first vice president.
In Monday's incident, the two opposition lawmakers were dragged from their vehicles and punched and kicked in view of some parliamentary security officials . The attacks left Chamroeun with a triple arm fracture, broken nose and chipped front teeth, while both men sustained significant facial injuries including their eyes. They were flown to Thailand for medical treatment on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, Hun Sen, writing on his official Facebook page, urged authorities to arrest the perpetrators of the attack.
“We cannot tolerate those who committed the act, no matter who they are—be they CPP supporters, government supporters or opposition supporters! Anyone who commits such a cheap act must be arrested and sentenced at any cost,” he wrote. He noted that National Assembly president Heng Samrin had donated U.S. $10,000 to each of the two injured lawmakers to assist with their medical care.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, however, a hired driver from a town outside of Phnom Penh told RFA’s Khmer Service on Thursday that he drove one of 10 open-backed transport trucks used to take nearly 200 young men from a fortress called Commissionaire of Bodyguards of Hun Sen, and known as Banteay Pong Loeung in Khmer. The fortress lies just down a river from the capital at Prek Samrong village in a town called Takhmao, near Hun Sen’s official residence.
The driver said that on October 25, a day before the protest and attack, a man called him saying that he wanted to hire a driver and vehicle to attend a meeting at the price of U.S. $40 per truck.
When he went to pick up the passengers at the fortress, he saw 10 vehicles ready to transport the bodyguards, each carrying 18 people. Among the passengers in his vehicle, some carried sticks, some carried rocks and some others carried banners, he said.
The men had apparently shed their uniforms and dressed as civilians to blend in as ordinary citizens and were wearing scarves around their waists, he added.
The men with scarves were later seen prominently in photos and video of the protests posted by Cambodians on social media.
“The bodyguards in Pong Loeung fortress, all are armed forces. There are no civil servants living there,” he told RFA
He described them as all “male, young and maybe under 30 years of age.”
“Those who were riding in the trucks were just communicating among themselves and they didn’t talk to us drivers.”
Bragging about punching lawmakers
The driver was then told to take the men to the protest site in front of the National Assembly, and then to take his truck to a parking spot at nearby Koh Pich.
“Before they got ready to go to Phnom Penh, they were each given a box of rice, a white box, like the kind that the military used to use, and they were allowed to eat before we took off,” he said.
“When they came back [after the protest], then they were given more rice,” the driver added.
When the demonstration was over, the driver took the bodyguards them back to their base. During the trip, the driver said the passengers were talking and boasting about the protest, with several claiming they had landed two or three punches on the lawmakers.
“When they came to the National Assembly, they were carrying sticks. When they returned, they had no sticks,” the driver said.
“I didn’t know where they put them. Maybe they threw them away,” he said of the sticks.
The driver’s account was confirmed by a second driver, who also drove a fan full of body guards to the protest, but told RFA he was afraid to be quoted.
In a separate interview with RFA, a man who identified himself as a member of CPP youth group in Kandal said he was tricked into taking part in Monday's protest.
Called to what he told was a meeting at CPP headquarters in Tuol Kror Saing, the man said when he and others arrived and entered the building, organizers started to dole out packets of rice to everyone. Instead of conducting the meeting at party headquarters, however, they were transported to the protest in front of the National Assembly.
“We are just like tools, for them to use," he said, adding that he believed he and others were used to make the protest crowd look bigger.
“They didn’t tell us that we were going to a protest to demand that [Kem Sokha] resign," he said. "They just told us to come by saying that we came for a meeting.”
“If we were told that we would be going to protest, then there would probably be no one who would come,” said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Reference
Labels: CNRP, CPP, Kem Sokha, Prime Minister Hun Sen
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Over a year after Cambodia's two main parties agreed on a "culture of dialogue," the deal looks to have unraveled, with the PM warning only his re-election would keep the nation from civil war. Robert Carmichael reports.
The July 2014 agreement between Prime Minister Hun Sen and opposition leader Sam Rainsy was born of a close-run general election the previous year and a subsequently deadlocked, and at times bloody, political process that saw the opposition refuse to take the 55 seats they had won until allegations about electoral fraud were addressed.
But eventually, after months of opposition-led protests and increasingly violent suppression by the authorities, the two sides came to an arrangement. Under its terms, Hun Sen and Rainsy agreed to discuss key issues, while party worthies would resolve lesser disputes.
The idea behind the détente, which saw a marked improvement in relations between members of the two parties, was to ratchet down tensions. For a few months, at least, it worked. The bonhomie reached its high-water mark in mid-July this year when the two men and their families dined together at a luxury hotel.
Situation has 'turned around'
Now, laments opposition chief whip Son Chhay, it appears to be at an end. "To have [the two leaders] able to sit down, to talk, at least to get to know each other, was a very good thing," he told DW. "That the situation has now turned around is very disappointing."
When it comes to the culture of dialogue, Chhay says, both Hun Sen and Rainsy were focused less on the national good and more on what they could get from it for themselves. He says the two leaders share the blame for its failure.
"When you're only thinking, 'what can I gain, what can I manipulate from this kind of dialogue to benefit my personal interest,' it's not going to work," he says.
But the truth is that things were going awry before July's landmark evening meal. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), for instance, repeatedly angered Hun Sen by engaging in months of rhetoric over allegations that Vietnam was annexing Cambodian land - a deeply sensitive issue - and that included tense visits to the border by opposition supporters and legislators.
For his part, Hun Sen had called months earlier for - among other things - the country's pliant courts to consider charging CNRP deputy leader Kem Sokha with trying to overthrow the government.
The wheels finally came off just days after the hotel dinner when a court jailed 11 opposition officials and supporters for up to 20 years each for insurrection, a charge that was widely seen as politically motivated. The case against them followed a violent clash in Phnom Penh a year earlier in which some opposition supporters had turned on often-violent government thugs.
A subsequent prosecution for forgery and treason of opposition senator Hong Sok Hour, who posted a faked border treaty document on his Facebook page, was described by one prominent commentator as "the nail in the coffin" of the culture of dialogue.
Little wonder that, more than a year after the smiles and handshakes that launched the deal, the culture of dialogue has been dismissed variously as "a charade," "a culture of monologue" and "a farce."
No Surprise
Given the deep divisions and mistrust that characterize Cambodia's politics, this apparent demise comes as little surprise, says Sebastian Strangio, author of the book Hun Sen's Cambodia. Its very existence is simply part of Hun Sen's standard carrot and stick approach.
"This pattern - making nice with his enemies and rivals when it suits him to do so, and then turning on them when the political tides shift - is one that's been going on for the whole of Hun Sen's career," says Strangio.
Ultimately, the culture of dialogue is a means for Hun Sen to try and win the 2018 election by creating tensions within the opposition and then trying to divide it.
"So when they announced the culture of dialogue in mid-2014, there was every reason to be skeptical and there was every reason to believe that at some stage this would break down," he says. "It's always been a strategic pact."
For his part, Rainsy presented the culture of dialogue as "a fundamental rethinking of the destructive patterns in Cambodian politics," although Strangio sees little evidence that either the prime minister or the leader of the opposition has done much to implement any such changes.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan, however, insists the culture of dialogue remains in play, citing as proof an August meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng and the opposition deputy leader Kem Sokha.
However, he adds, opposition statements about possible prosecutions of the wealthy if and when it comes to power (among other "provocative" comments) need to be more measured. The culture of dialogue requires staying within the law.
"I think the opposition party will adjust [its behavior]," he says of the future direction of the culture of dialogue. "And we will [be patient] as much as we can."
Poisoned Atmosphere
The genesis of the culture of dialogue was the close-run 2013 general election when Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) came within a few hundred thousand votes (in an electorate of nearly 10 million) of losing the popular ballot to Rainsy's CNRP.
With a youthful population tired of the cronyism, poor services and lack of opportunities available to them under a CPP government - and unreceptive to the ruling party's mantra that it brought peace to Cambodia by defeating the Khmer Rouge - the trend was towards change.
The opposition is banking on that continuing and, with two-thirds of the population under 35, is confident of its chances in 2018. The CPP is understandably fearful, and has begun improving education (whose budget in 2016 will, at nearly $500 million, be double its 2013 level) while at the same time, perhaps ominously, shoring up the amount allocated to defense and the police (up nearly two-thirds over the same period to a combined $650 million).
In April, Hun Sen announced his candidacy for 2018 and said that a civil war could be averted only if he was re-elected prime minister.
All eyes are now on the next general election. Meanwhile, new political parties are springing up claiming disillusionment with the CNRP, leading to suspicions that the ruling party is funding them in order to split the opposition vote.
Quite what that means for the culture of dialogue remains to be seen. Hun Sen is headed to France for an official visit from October 25-27. Given that Sam Rainsy is in France too, a meeting is not out of the question, says the CNRP's Son Chhay. But nothing has been arranged.
Strangio predicts the culture of dialogue, such as it is, will "limp on in a sort of rump form" as both parties seek to gain the advantage ahead of 2018 - with Hun Sen seeking to sow discord in the ranks of the opposition, and Rainsy "trying to keep the peace" until as close to voting day as possible.
Beyond that Cambodia's political culture, centered as it is on dominant personalities rather than strong institutions, hampers meaningful forecasting.
"When individuals are in charge, there's nothing that any seasoned observer would put beyond the scope of possibility," Strangio says.
Reference
Carmichael, R. (2015). Cambodia - Fractured politics and a culture of monologue. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved from http://www.dw.com/en/cambodia-fractured-politics-and-a-culture-of-monologue/a-18799477Labels: CNRP, CPP, Culture of Dialogue, hun sen, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Sam Rainsy
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PHNOM PENH Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen is taking a belated leap into the digital age in a bid to court young, urban voters as he tries to fend off unprecedented competition from the opposition after three decades in power.
The former Khmer Rouge soldier has started to enthusiastically embrace Facebook for the first time, coming round to the platform after almost losing a 2013 election when the opposition won a surge of support online.
The self-styled "strongman" has until recently denied using Facebook, but when an account bearing his name received its millionth "like" last month, he finally admitted it was his, coinciding with the government's moves to ramp-up its cyber presence.
"He uses his own messages to reach out to people and to answer questions people want to ask him," said government spokesmen Phay Siphan, when asked why Hun Sen started using Facebook.
Seventy percent of Cambodia's 15 million population are under 30 years of age, while nine million of its citizens use the Internet.
Hun Sen's Facebook, which how has 1.2 million "likes", carries images and videos of new infrastructure and credits him with Cambodia's speedy economic development.
Some of the 63-year-old's most recent activities were sharing links to what he says are his favourite TV shows, "Cambodian Idol" and "The Voice" - local spin-offs of hit U.S. talent contests.
In June, Sen's government held two mandatory classes for 400 heads of Phnom Penh schools, which included showing them how to get Facebook accounts and write supportive messages for the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), according to people who attended the sessions.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan said the classes were part of a broader exercise to train civil servants across the country to use social media to improve lines of communication
PROMOTE AND PROTECT
Lesson materials obtained by Reuters included instructions on accessing and linking to social media accounts and websites of the CPP and its youth wing, while teachers were urged to try and defend the government from negative messages online.
"We must promote what's really happening, about what government has really done," said Huot Yary, head of the capital's education department, recalling instructions during the classes.
Political analysts say the CPP is trying to counter a swell of online criticism since the last election, when the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) carved off a chunk of CPP's house majority, winning 55 seats to CPP's 68, down from 90 before.
Part of the opposition's gains were due to rapid online courting of young, urban Cambodians angered by issues like forced evictions, low factory wages and state graft.
There are concerns, however, that the government's new social media focus is not just about using it, but controlling it. The creation of Internet laws and a cyber crime task force are being considered and some critics fear the real aim is to intimidate opponents and block-out dissent.
Independent political experts forecast the 2018 election to be the closest ever in Cambodia and say the CPP has realised the battleground will now be on social media.
"It is scrambling to enter the digital age and counter the active opposition presence online," said Sebastian Strangio, a journalist and author of the book, "Hun Sen's Cambodia".
Many in Cambodia's younger generation doubt though that the government's bulked up online presence will have much sway on their opinions.
"There are all sides of information available now already, and youths know a lot - we have education," said 21-year-old university student Kim Hong.
(Editing by Martin Petty and Rachel Armstrong)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Labels: CNRP, Facebook, hun sen, Prime Minister Hun Sen
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Author: Vannarith Chheang, Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies (CISS)
To strengthen national unity and identity, Cambodian leaders have for generations tried to construct, or reconstruct, nationalist ideology around Cambodia’s enduring border disputes. The border disputes have become the main topic in Cambodian domestic politics and foreign policy since Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953. The disputes are the result of the unclear frontier demarcation by the colonial administration, and have led to armed conflicts between Cambodia and its neighbors.
But some political leaders have gone too far and become ultra-nationalist. In Cambodia’s electoral democracy, some political parties have promoted a type of nationalism that positions itself explicitly against the country’s bigger neighbors to gain popular political support. A lack of political transparency, understanding and participation has made the general public more vulnerable to populist and nationalist policy agendas.
Anti-Vietnam nationalism and a perceived Vietnamese threat gained momentum since 2009, when the current opposition leader Sam Rainsy allegedly encouraged villagers to uproot border markers on the Cambodia–Vietnam border in Svay Rieng province. The border disputes intensified after lawmakers from the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) led a few hundred activists to the to-be-demarcated border region in north eastern provinces, leading to clashes and violence in June.
The border tension is compounded by an anti-Vietnamese political rhetoric that has gained steam since the general election in July 2013. The opposition parties have accused the government under the leadership of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) of being under strong influence from Hanoi, of ceding territory to Vietnam and of allowing Vietnamese immigrants to illegally enter and work in Cambodia. Since April 2014 more than 2000 illegal Vietnamese immigrants have been deported. The opposition parties will continue to use the ‘Vietnam threat’ factor as a key part of its strategy to gain popular votes in the upcoming commune election in 2017 and the national election in 2018.
The stance of Cambodian opposition parties, including the CNRP, further complicates border negotiations with Vietnam. In 1985, Cambodia and Vietnam signed a treaty on border delimitation. And in 2005, both sides reached another complementary treaty on border issues. But these agreements were deemed illegitimate and rejected by Cambodia’s opposition parties.
On 9 June 2015, amid the renewed border tension between two countries, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen asked Vietnam to maintain peace and stability along the border during his meeting with Le Hong Anh, a member of the politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party, in Phnom Penh. A few days later, Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation sent two diplomatic notes, dated 12 June and 14 June, to protest Vietnam’s violation of Cambodian territory. But Vietnam did not respond and accused ‘extremist groups’ in Cambodia of provoking the border tensions and clashes.
A key issue fueling domestic opposition in Cambodia is allegations that the maps being used by the Cambodian government in its border negotiations with Vietnam are fake or inaccurate. In July 2015, to ‘verify the authenticity of maps’ being used by the Cambodian government, Hun Sen requested that the United Nations, France, the United Kingdom and the United States loan Cambodia the original maps that were prepared by France during the colonial period. After verifying the maps received from the UN and France, the Cambodian government confirmed the authenticity of the maps that were used to conduct border negotiations with Vietnam.
The Cambodian government has now called for an end to the politicisation of the maps and border disputes with Vietnam. Foreign Minister Hor Namhong stated, ‘The maps issue must be finished at this time. … We don’t want political parties using the border issue to incite people to go against the government.’
Instead, the Cambodian government tasked a group of technical experts to compare the borders detailed on these maps with the existing border markers. The Royal Academy of Cambodia was tasked with conducting objective research on border demarcation and providing policy recommendations. The Academy is expected to finish their research within the next two years.
But border-related political tensions between the government and opposition party have not receded. A number of people have been arrested for trying to stir anti-Vietnam nationalism by accusing the government of using fake border maps. In August CNRP Senator Hong Sok Hou was arrested for posting a fake version of the bilateral treaty between Cambodia and Vietnam in 1979 on his personal Facebook page. The fake treaty in the Facebook post purported that Heng Samrin, Cambodia’s then head of state, had proposed to dissolve the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. Hong Sok Hou is now being tried in court.
The border disputes will continue as long as domestic political dynamics in Cambodia continue to evolve around assertive nationalism. More transparency and public participation are urgently needed in the border negotiations and demarcation process between Cambodia and its neighbours. In the absence of these checks, the general public will remain vulnerable to political manipulation.
Vannarith Chheang is a Chairman of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies (CISS).
Labels: Anti-Vietnamese, Border, CNRP, CPP, Hong Sok Hour, Hor Nam Hong, Vietnamese
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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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As the government deploys AK-47s against protestors, an official asks, 'Do you want to wear clothes made by people who live in fear?'
BANGKOK, Thailand — In Cambodia, garment workers who stitch the jeans and hoodies that hang in American closets are demanding a raise. Instead, they’re receiving beatings and bullets.
In the past decade, clothing tagged “Made in Cambodia” has grown increasingly common in the malls of America. Shoppers who peel back lapels in H&M, The Gap, Urban Outfitters and other outlets will find many items sewn in the troubled Southeast Asian nation’s factories.
But this booming industry is now in crisis.
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Rallies for pay hikes have descended into chaotic scenes in which protesting Cambodians, some armed with sticks and Molotov cocktails, have been shot dead by government forces with AK-47s. The death toll stands at four with nearly 30 injured, according to the Cambodian NGO Licadho.
Images of protesters pummeled and soaked in blood have circulated on Cambodians’ Facebook pages. Districts in the capital of Phnom Penh where garment stitchers work and live are now patrolled by Cambodia’s military, which is enforcing a ban on assembly.
Many factories are closed after workers have fled the city to their home provinces, said Mu Sochua, an activist and parliamentarian-elect with the nation’s opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.
“The workers are now hiding. They’re living in fear,” Mu Sochua told GlobalPost. “Do you want to wear clothes made by people who live in fear?”
The striking workers’ primary demand is a raise. They want $160 per month — a near doubling of the current typical payout. The government has offered to raise the minimum wage but not beyond $100, a salary many workers deride as too low to cover rising costs of food, schooling and medical care.
“With the wages they get today,” Mu Sochua said, “they can’t even get three nutritious meals in a day.”
Stitching blouses and T-shirts for the West — namely America, the top destination for “Made in Cambodia” clothes — has helped transform the nation’s economy. According to the International Labor Organization, garment stitching is the country’s “largest industrial sector” employing 400,000 workers and accounting for $5 billion in annual exports, 35 percent of GDP.
Economists call the garment industry a “first rung” on the ladder from farm-based society to industrialization. Sewing jeans in a hot factory is dull and exhausting. But for many, particularly uneducated women born on farms, it is preferable to toiling in sun-baked rice paddies. Foremen may be fickle and cruel but so is nature.
Western clothing conglomerates favor Cambodia for the same reasons they like countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh. All are poor enough to provide a large pool of people who’ll work long hours for little money. But they’re not as unruly as, say, Somalia or Sierra Leone, where the chaos is so thick that trucks and ships can’t effectively get shipments to market.
Meeting the workers’ $160-per-month demand probably wouldn’t price multinationals out of Cambodia, said David Birnbaum, an Asia-based American garment industry consultant and five decade veteran of the trade. That wage is still competitive with China’s provincial minimum wage ($141) and that of the Philippines ($177).
“The problem is not raising to $160 per month,” Birnbaum told GlobalPost. “The problem is they feel $160 per month will give rise to future expectations that are unsupportable. There is a feeling in the industry that this is a bad road to follow.”
Part of the blame for Cambodia’s raucous strikes, he said, can be laid upon Cambodia’s unions, which have failed to secure ample wage hikes for workers through negotiations.
“This is because the Cambodian union system is corrupt,” Birnbaum said. “The factory management will take union leaders and say, ‘I think you should take a course in management. The course, by the way, is in Paris and lasts three years.’ They just pay off union leaders instead of paying the workers.”
“When unions don’t do their job,” he said, “people just go out on the street.”
The protesters’ brutal handling by Cambodian cops and troops is lamentable.
But it’s not entirely surprising.
Practically all of the country’s institutions — from courts to police — are dominated by a single party helmed by a strongman premier, Hun Sen, who has controlled Cambodia for 28 years. With Middle Eastern leaders such as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak deposed during the Arab Spring, he is now among the world’s longest-running non-royal heads of state.
Hun Sen has little patience for dissent. Asked if he might fall as did Arab Spring dictators in 2011, the premier is quoted by Human Rights Watch’s Asia director, Brad Adams, as saying, “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.”
Despite his dictatorial style, since the early 2000s Hun Sen has presided over a period of relative stability by Cambodian standards. Those, standards, however, are anything but typical. The country’s 20th-century history is a litany of massacres, starvation and foreign occupation.
In recent decades, Cambodia has suffered perhaps more than any other nation except for North Korea. During the US-Vietnam War, American bombers dropped more bombs by tonnage into Cambodia (then a haven for Viet Cong guerrillas) than all Allied Forces aircraft dropped during World War II.
The ensuing chaos gave rise to the Khmer Rouge, a hyper-communist regime that controlled Cambodia from 1975-1979. This violent revolution led by the infamous Pol Pot sought to remake society into a peasant utopia through brute force.
The result: nearly 2 million dead from starvation, killing and forced labor. Hun Sen, now 61, was a Khmer Rouge battalion commander who defected to help lead an invading Vietnamese-installed government that ran Cambodia from 1979 until the late 1980s.
Any future negotiations between the garment strikers and the government are complicated by the fact that protests are now aligned with Hun Sen’s major opposition: the Cambodia National Rescue Party. The political faction is actively protesting July 2013 elections that, according to party leaders, relied on fraud to nullify its rightful victory.
The party has co-opted the garment strikers’ campaign. The government, as the Phnom Penh Post reports, has since portrayed the strikers as a “group of anarchists” that have “used violence, burnt private property, intimidated investors ... and threatened to set fire to factories.”
The International Labor Organization has warned protesters that “violence and destruction of property are not legitimate tools of industrial action,” a Britishism that loosely translates to non-violent striking. During protests last week, bonfires and hurled stones heightened tension in police-patrolled factory zones in Phnom Penh.
“But you have to look at proportionality,” Mu Sochua said. “What is proportional between rocks — or even Molotovs — and AK-47s?”
“Now it’s totally confrontational,” Birnbaum said. “It’s a very complex and unfortunate situation. And it’s a shame because Cambodia is a poor country that has the potential for a very solid industry.”
But Mu Sochua, one of the opposition’s leading voices, insists the factory workers’ demands fit in with a louder chorus of voices demanding the end of Hun Sen’s rule. Roughly half the country’s GDP is supplied by foreign donors — including the US — and their aid, she said, is wrongfully propping up his regime.
“This is the crusade of a dictator. The crusade of a former Khmer Rouge. Does the international community want to continue to support this kind of dictatorship ... and support international buyers who make billions while our workers are deprived of basic rights?”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/cambodia/140106/the-cambodians-who-stitch-your-clothes-are-riskin
Labels: Clothes with Blood, CNRP, Garment, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Workers
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By THOMAS FULLER - The New York Times
Published: January 4, 2014
After months of inaction in the face of growing public dissent to his rule, Prime Minister Hun Sen appeared to signal that he was entering a more aggressive posture toward his critics. The crackdown came after a clash on Friday between protesting garment workers and the Cambodian police that left four of the demonstrators dead. The workers have been at the forefront of growing protests against Mr. Hun Sen’s government.
Mr. Hun Sen’s party claimed victory in July elections, which the opposition and independent observers say were riddled with irregularities. Since then, the opposition has called for him to step down.
In a country with a history of violence against opposition figures, the two opposition leaders wanted for questioning, Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, appeared to go into hiding.
“They are in a safe place,” said Mu Sochua, an opposition politician who was elected as a lawmaker in July but has boycotted Parliament along with the rest of the opposition.
Last weekend, the opposition staged a protest march of tens of thousands of people through the streets of Phnom Penh, an act of defiance on a scale rarely seen during Mr. Hun Sen’s more than 28 years in power. After the crackdown Saturday, the opposition announced it was canceling a march planned for Sunday.
In a statement, the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party urged its followers to remain calm “while the party seeks alternative ways” to continue its campaign against Mr. Hun Sen’s government.
Many parts of Phnom Penh were unaffected by the crackdown, including the main tourist area along the Mekong River. But elsewhere, hundreds of police officers and soldiers blocked roads, broke up crowds of bystanders and cordoned off the public square, known as Freedom Park, where the protesters had been gathering.
The dispersal of demonstrators from Freedom Park by the police and others was highly symbolic. In 2009 the government officially designated the square as a place where Cambodians could express themselves freely, roughly modeling it on Speakers’ Corner in London. The square has been the center of protests led by the opposition since the elections in July. Protesters who have camped out there since mid-December have included Buddhist monks, elderly farmers and human rights advocates.
The Cambodian Center for Human Rights, an independent advocacy organization, accused the government on Saturday of a “violent clampdown on human rights” and said protesters were chased out of the square by “thugs dressed in civilian clothes” who were armed with steel poles and other makeshift weapons, an observation corroborated by journalists who were present.
A number of protests during Hun Sen’s time in power have been broken up by shadowy groups. In 1997, a grenade attack on a protest led by Mr. Sam Rainsy left at least 16 people dead.
On Saturday, Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior issued a statement saying that the eviction of protesters “was conducted in a peaceful manner without any casualties.” Recent protests, the statement said, “led to violence, the blocking of public roads and the destruction of public and private property,” an apparent reference to the clashes between garment workers and soldiers on Friday, among other recent episodes.
The statement said all protests and public assembly were banned “until security and public order has been restored.” It also advised “all members of the national and international community to remain calm and avoid participating in any kind of illegal activity that could have negative consequences on the national interests.”
Mr. Hun Sen has been credited with stabilizing the country after the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, whose genocidal policies led to the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians. But in recent years he has accumulated highly centralized power, including a praetorian guard that appears to rival the capabilities of the country’s regular military units.
Economic growth that has brought modernity and prosperity to Phnom Penh has exposed stark inequalities in the country, where well over a third of children are malnourished. Only one-quarter of the Cambodian population has access to electricity. The streets of Phnom Penh are shared by luxury cars and families of four squeezed onto dilapidated motorcycles.
Garment workers, who number in the hundreds of thousands, have been the most aggressive in seeking higher wages. Striking workers are demanding a doubling of the monthly minimum wage to $160 from $80, an increase that the industry says will make it uncompetitive.
In the clash on Friday, garment workers confronted officers with rocks, sticks and homemade firebombs. The police fired into the crowd with assault rifles, witnesses said. In addition to the protesters killed, at least 20 people were injured.
Labels: Chaum Chao, CNRP, Mass Rally, Mu Sochua, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Sam Rainsy, Veng Sreng, Workers
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