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Thailand-Cambodia Dispute Overshadows Summit
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By SIMON ROUGHNEEN Saturday, October 24, 2009
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CHA-AM, Thailand — An uncharacteristically edgy summit of the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) threatened to boil over yesterday as
Thai-Cambodian relations took another turn for the worse.
A visibly exasperated Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjjiva hit back at his
Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen, calling him “seriously misinformed” over
the latter’s remarks comparing fugitive former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra
with Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Hun Sen had earlier offered Thaksin, who was deposed in a 2006 coup, a job
as an economics advisor and said that if the exiled media mogul chose to
come to Cambodia, he would not face extradition to Thailand to face
corruption charges.
“Thaksin can stay in Cambodia as the guest of Cambodia and also be my
guest as my adviser on our economy,” said Hun Sen.
Cambodian Pime Minister Hun Sen at the 15th Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Cha-am, Thailand October 24, 2009. (Photo:
Reuters)His remarks comparing the former Thai prime minister with Aung San
Suu Kyi raised many eyebrows among summit delegates, as he attempted to
capitalize on the international media attention on Asean this weekend to
highlight his view that Thaksin’s plight is politically driven.
“Hun Sen’s comments are being seen as an attempt to intervene in Thailand’
s precarious domestic political situation,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak,
the director of the Institute of Security and International Studies
(Thailand) at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
Last week, Hun Sen gave a pointedly high-profile reception to former Thai
prime minister and Thaksin ally Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyuth. Chavalit said “
Mr Hun Sen is my old friend and I am visiting him at his invitation.”
Last month, Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy was in Bangkok, where
he addressed the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand on press freedom
in Cambodia. Rainsy slammed the Hun Sen administration, saying that it gives
token assent to freedom of speech but uses state resources to hit critics
with defamation suits, backed by a pro-government judiciary.
Thitinan said he thinks that Hun Sen has taken umbrage at Rainsy using his
time in Thailand to attack the Cambodian government.
Speaking to The Irrawaddy on the sidelines of the Asean summit, Cambodian
opposition MP San Cchay said that Hun Sen’s reaction shows that he does not
understand how a liberal democracy works.
“Just because Sam Rainsy talks in critical terms while in Thailand does
not mean it has anything to do with the Thai government. Hun Sen merely
betrays his own anti-democratic leanings with such an assumption,” he said.
Yesterday, the anti-government and pro-Thaksin United Front for Democracy
against Dictatorship (UDD) called on Asean to withdraw support for Abhisit
as the bloc’s chairman.
The UDD is seeking a royal pardon to enable Thaksin return to Thailand
without having to face jail time on corruption charges. The UDD is also
seeking a general election and deems the Abhisit government as illegitimate.
Thaksin is regarded as the most popular yet divisive head of government in
recent Thai history, implementing pro-poor policies and developing the
northeastern Isaan region, but periodically clamping down on media, launching
a draconian war on drugs and seeking a military solution to the southern
Thailand Muslim rebellion.
Interestingly, Hun Sen’s comparison of Thaksin’s situation to that of Suu
Kyi comes as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate marks a total of 14 years in
detention today. She was first arrested in July 1989, ahead of a landslide
electoral victory by her party, the National League for Democracy, in May
1990.
The comparison was made even as five Asean member states, including
Cambodia, refused to allow NGO representatives other than those handpicked by
the
governments to attend a scheduled “civil society” meeting with regional
heads of government.
Nay Vanda of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association—
selected by the Asean People’s Forum as his country’s representative at the
meeting—said he was disappointed with the outcome.
“Cambodia is supposed to be a democracy that respects the rule of law. I
was chosen via a democratic process, yet the government refused to meet me.
Even Communist, one-party state Vietnam was not afraid to meet the NGO
representative selected by the Asean People’s Forum,” he said.
An hour after that meeting, Asean launched a new human rights body, known
as the Asean Intergovernmental Human Rights Commission, which has no scope
to punish or even draw attention to human rights abuses in Southeast Asia
and includes the Burmese junta among its representatives.
Cambodia has usually backed the Burmese regime when it is faced with
criticism from the international community.
Hun Sen’s comments came just a day before his Thai counterpart hosted a
three-day gathering of sixteen Asian leaders, with the ten-member Asean
grouping having a series of meetings on Friday before being joined by
counterparts from Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea
on
Saturday.
The summit aimed to make progress on Asean integration across a number of
sectors. However, Abhisit took Hun Sen’s comments as an attempt to
undermine this, saying “[Asean member states] have no time to pay attention to
a
person who wants to destroy unity.”
This weekend’s summit is a re-run of an April meeting in Pattaya, which
was cancelled after Thaksin’s red-shirted backers clashed with troops and
pro-government protesters.
That melee further blemished tourist-oriented Thailand’s international
image, already sullied after yellow-shirted royalists blockaded Bangkok’s
international airports in late 2008. This time around, 36,000 soldiers and
police were deployed around Cha-am and Hua Hin, 90 minutes south of Bangkok,
to
prevent any attempted repeat by the red shirts.
However, Thaksin’s shadow was cast over this summit, albeit by proxy, with
Hun Sen apparently seeking to needle his Thai counterpart, with whom
relations are already touchy over a long-running border dispute centering on
the
Preah Vihear temple and surrounding land area.
One month ago, 30,000 Thaksin supporters gathered in Bangkok mark the 3rd
anniversary of the military coup that deposed him. The same weekend,
royalist protesters caused mayhem around the Preah Vihear site, tussling with
locals and exhorting the Thai government to take a more assertive stance with
Phnom Penh over the disputed site.
Thitinan told The Irrawaddy: “Thailand and Cambodia have had rocky
relations for a number of years. The reasons are multifaceted, but
underpinning
the divide is the fact that Thailand has somewhat of a superiority complex,
while Cambodia perhaps retains an element of colonial baggage, and now sits
between two much bigger countries in Thailand and Vietnam.”
Giving an insight into the level of acrimony generated by this latest
spat, a press conference given by members of the Asean Inter-Parliamentary
Myanmar (Burma) Caucus on Saturday afternoon discussed how Burma was pushed
down the priority list as a result.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
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