-----Original Message-----
From: Gaffar Peang-Meth <[email protected]>
Sent: Tue, Aug 17, 2010 7:46 am
Subject: CAMBODIA: "Cambodians can remain pawns, or can hang together against
Sen's autocracy"
FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ETC-007-2010
August 17, 2010
An article by Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth published by the Asian Human Rights
Commission
CAMBODIA: "Cambodians can remain pawns, or can hang together against Sen's
autocracy"
August 15, 2010
Two weeks ago, I presented in this space a contrast of reporter Benoit
Bringer's "Cambodge: Les enfants de la decharge" (Cambodia: The Children of the
Garbage Dump), a five minute video, and his gallery of photos, showing how
Cambodians scavenge Phnom Penh's public garbage dump just to survive; and
Andrew Marshall's "Khmer Riche," published in the Jan 12 Sydney Morning Herald,
showing the life at the opposite end of Cambodians' economic spectrum –
Cambodia's "rich kids" who can spend "$2,000 on drinks in a single night" and
whose parents' "newly built neoclassical mansions (are) so large that (Phnom
Penh's) old French architecture looks like Lego by comparison."
The contrast serves to forecast Cambodia's unpleasant future, a future the
international community sought to avoid when it established the 1991 Paris
Peace Accords and invested $3 billion to set Cambodia on a productive course.
The current situation in Cambodia and the future it foretells represent an
international failure.
Economic Inequality, Conflict, Revolt
Theories abound about economic inequality and its linkage with dissent, unrest,
and rebellion by the disadvantaged.
Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC) had linked the well-being of a
political community with the well-being of the citizens who make it up, and
economic inequality with the revolt of the disadvantaged. His analysis on the
causes of revolution—"The passion for equality is at the root of revolution,"
Aristotle said--has inspired students of politics and theorists until today.
One of Aristotle's often-quoted statements reads: "It is in the interest of a
tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost
of protecting themselves by arms and be so preoccupied with their daily tasks
(subsistence) that they have no time for rebellion."
Inequality in Cambodia
Much has been written about inequality in contemporary Cambodia. A few
examples: the London-based Global Witness, an anti-graft international
nongovernmental organization, detailed in its 2007 "Cambodia's Family Trees"
report, Premier Hun Sen's family members, business associates and senior
officials, dubbed the "kleptocratic elite," as allegedly engaged in illegal
logging and stripping of Cambodia's public assets for personal profit. In 2009,
Global Witness's "Country for Sale" report charged, "Over the past 15 years, 45
percent of the country's land has been purchased by private interests." The
March-April 2009 Foreign Affairs Magazine's "Cambodia's Curse," by Stanford's
Joel Brinkley, exposed United States Embassy-funded studies in Phnom Penh that
"showed in stunning detail that Cambodian government officials steal between
$300 million and $500 million a year (most years, the state's annual budget is
about $1 billion). "
Foreign donors of aid are not blind to what has been happening in Cambodia.
But, in the contemporary world in which big and small states still compete for
power, influence, wealth; and as all governments are susceptible to their
respective interest groups that may clamor for unrestricted economic investment
opportunities in Cambodia; there should be no surprise that foreign governments
that abhor the current situation of the average Cambodian citizen will not risk
upsetting the ruling autocracy and denying the economic pursuits of their
domestic constituents by advocating for the civil rights of a foreign people.
The global civil society organization, Transparency International, that leads
the fight against corruption, reported Cambodia ranked 158thof 180 countries
surveyed on a TI corruption perception index for 2009. In the Aug. 2 Jakarta
Globe's "Cambodia's Struggle With Globalization," Australian National
University Professor Hal Hill, Asian Development Bank economist Jayant Menon,
and Cambodia Economic Association chairman Chan Sophal, reported Cambodia ranks
166th on the TI corruption perception index, and 135th in the World Bank's
Doing Business Indicators, out of 181 countries surveyed. They warned:
"Achievements over the past decade in particular could be undone by economic
crises, or rising civil unrest driven by outrage at the political and
bureaucratic excesses."
Politics does strange things
Today's Cambodia of Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Decho Hun Sen, (an
aristocratic title bestowed by King Father Nororom Sihanouk, himself a former
president of a loose coalition of three Khmer factions -- noncommunist
nationalist KPNLF, royalist FUNCINPEC, and Khmer Rouge DK -- which fought
Vietnamese occupation troops and the Vietnamese-installed Heng Samrin-Hun Sen
regime), is far better than the Cambodia of Pol Pot, the master of the
1975-1979 killing fields that took some two million lives.
Without the King Father, China-backed Pol Pot could not have brought down the
U.S.-backed Khmer Republic in 1975, a prelude to the occupation of Cambodia by
Vietnamese troops in 1979-1989; and without the King Father, Sen's autocracy
and his Cambodian People's Party cannot survive in today's Cambodia.
Making Cambodia's current crisis more complex, Hun Sen, who was installed in
power by the Vietnamese but is a former Khmer Rouge commander, is now the King
Father's adopted son; and the King Father's biological son is now king of
Cambodia. The King Father and Premier Sen need one another. Sen needs the King
Father to legitimize his rule; the King Father needs Sen to shield him from
criticisms of his policies in the Vietnam War era. And the Khmer traditions
that inculcates blind obedience and unquestioned loyalty to authority, ensures
the Cambodian autocracy's survival.
The Love for Material Gain
Many Cambodians simply love Sen's transformation of Pol Pot's ghost capital of
Phnom Penh into a bustling city of 1.5 million residents, with huge villas,
modern supermarkets, a 92-floor Gold Tower skyscraper, in a Cambodia that
attracts over two million tourists annually.
Recall a survey by a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization, the International
Republican Institute, that showed 79 percent of those Cambodians polled say
Premier Sen's Cambodia is moving in "the right direction," and cited Sen's new
roads, modern bridges, new schools, modern complexes.
Indeed, many Cambodians are now clothed better, housed better, and eat better,
too.
Except the more than 30 percent of the population of 14 million live below
poverty line--many on less than 50 cents a day.
The discovery of oil off Cambodia’s coastline may be a boon or a curse.
Stability vs. Rights Conflict
Oppression occurs when those who favor stability and security do so at the
expense of individual rights. On the other hand, when individual rights and
free expression are exercised without restraint, a state of "licentiousness" is
reached which breeds instability, insecurity, and chaos. This is no less
"oppressive."
In 2006, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights
(French acronym Licadho), issued "The Facade of Stability" report that accused
the world community of failing to "speak out" against Sen's regular human
rights breaches, and warned, "Cambodia's current period of relative calm is no
guarantor of meaningful long-term stability, and ongoing, systematic human
rights violations will, to the contrary, promote instability."
Fast-forward. On June 2, as Sen's Supreme Court issued a guilty verdict against
Cambodian lawmaker Mu Sochua, for demanding justice following Sen's televised
abusive public speech against her, foreign donors who met in Phnom Penh awarded
$1.1 billion in development aid to Sen.
A day earlier, 15 nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia released a briefing
paper, "Cambodia Silenced: The End Days of Democracy?" charging, "Since 2009
freedom of expression has continued to be seriously undermined, with the Royal
Government of Cambodia crackdown targeting the pillars of democracy in
Cambodia: parliamentarians; the media; lawyers; human rights activists; and
ordinary citizens."
"Dogs continue to bark, Oxcart continues its trip forward"
The quotation above from an e-mail to me from one of Sen's officers in Phnom
Penh, served to remind that national and international critics and rights
groups can say what they will, but the ruling Cambodian People's Party moves
forward with the aid and recognition of foreign governments – a circumstance
that legitimizes Sen's autocracy. Criticisms that break no bones are a
tolerable irritant. The regime banned books, makes threats, violates rights and
freedom and the rule of law, makes opponents disappear, intimidates opponents,
because it can.
The international community should, and could have, nearly 20 years ago,
pressured Sen (and other Cambodian parties) to abide by the stipulations of the
1991 Paris Peace Accord. That, the international community didn't do.
To the contrary, it allowed the Khmer Rouge to contest the Accord; it allowed
former Khmer Rouge commander Hun Sen, who lost the first United
Nations-organized elections (1993) to seize the co-premiership with the winner
to rule the country – an impractical and unworkable formula of a two-headed
bird, devised by the King Father to appease Sen and the losing CPP at the
expense of his son, Norodom Ranariddh. In 1997, Sen's coup d'etat ran Ranariddh
out of town for safety abroad and killed his top officers and cadres. It was
the international community that pressured Ranariddh to return to participate
in the 1998 elections, thereby, legitimizing Sen's autocracy.
Today, Sen profits from China's unconditional aid as an alternative to the aid
from Western nations that preach at him as they write their checks. With
Beijing tapping its feet waiting for Sen to run into its arms, the Western
nations have lost leverage on Sen.
The Future
Man's hope for the future of a world order in which human rights and free
expression can flourish must rest, in the final analysis, on how the world's
democracies choose to deal with the world's autocracies.
Former British diplomat, Robert Cooper, of the Council of the European Union,
was quoted as saying, today's "struggle for power and prestige goes on as it
always has," and "Power is at the service of ideas, but the key ideas are also
ideas about power: democracy and autocracy."
While the world's democracies ponder how to use their power and will to shape
the world, Cambodian democrats and rights activists can choose to remain pawns
while the democracies and the autocracies deal, or Cambodians can "hang
together" in their opposition to Sen's autocracy. If they do not, they risk
being hung separately by the dictator.
We live in an interdependent, interconnected, globalized world. Cambodians can
act, or not.
...............
About the Author:
Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught
political science for 13 years. He currently lives in the United States. He can
be contacted at [email protected].
The views shared in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the AHRC,
and the AHRC takes no responsibility for them.
# # #
About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental
organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong
Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
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