The Khmer Rouge Trial (KRT) and the Destiny of the Cambodian People.

 

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A Suggestion on the Roadmap to Freedom for the Cambodian People

(Diagnostics, a detailed suggested roadmap for the survival of Cambodia and its people, and Conclusion)

Diagnostics:

Despite recent high growth rate of GDP, the finding & conclusion on why Cambodia is a failed state remains unchanged, and can be summarized as follows. The contributing internal and external factors to this failure are:

I. Internal problems

For more details on the internal problem under the dictatorship of Hun Sen and his CPP, please, see a recent report see a recent report (February 2008) by Mr. Yash Ghai, the special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General in Human Rights in Cambodia, (posted just below). Judging from its current state of affairs in Cambodia, namely:

a. Systemic and pervasive corruption, an anti-corruption law is not in existence, today in Cambodia

b. Uncontrollable illegal Vietnamese immigration. No result from a recent population census was allowed by the CPP to be published on the number of Vietnamese living legally or illegally in Cambodia

c. Abject poverty, extreme imbalance in income distribution. Cambodian economy is controlled by Hun Sen and his extended family as reported by 'Global Witness;' according to a legal analysis (Due Diligence) done by an American legal firm on SOKIMEX, it was revealed that it has the monopoly of all he most important industrial and trade activities in Cambodia, it also was revealed that SOKIMEX is controlling more than 80 percent of all manufacturing and services business in Cambodia, is 60 percent owned and managed by Sok Kong, a Vietnamese national and a close friend of Hun Sen

d. Systemic destruction of the environment

e. Epidemic spread of AIDS and other deadly diseases

f. Human traffic especially women and child prostitution and trade

g. Concentration of wealth and land ownership due to insatiable appetite for wealth accumulation by members of the CPP and Funcinpec, and the eviction and the taking over of the land from poor.

h. Gross pervasive abuse of human rights and other civil rights

i. Extremely weak legal framework and the politicization of the Judicial system, especially the use of the courts of justice to oppress and suppress members of the opposition parties

j. The sale of diplomas and degrees at the high school and university levels has jeopardized the future of Cambodia by diluting the quality of manpower, thus economically disadvantages Cambodia vis-à-vis other countries in this very competitive world.

Conclusion: Cambodia is a failed state

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II. External problems

a. Until very recently, Cambodia was facing aggression from both; Siam and Dai-Viet. However, since the early 1990s, because of the changes in the political system in Thailand, this country has become much less of a problem for Cambodia. By contrast, Vietnam, because of the autocratic and totalitarian nature of its political system remains extremely dangerous for the survival of Cambodia, and still practicing genocide against the Khmer Krom (Please, watch Rebecca Sommer videos titled "Eliminated Without Bleeding "posted below in this page).

b. In dealing with Vietnam naked aggression, Cambodia must start reforming from within. The main obstacles are the strong grip of power in Cambodia by the Hun Sen and his CPP with Sihanouk’s support. Therefore, isolating Sihanouk by fully protecting and implementing the content of the constitution is the first step. The next step is to use non-violent means and philosophy or AHIMSA to democratically and non-violently remove Hun Sen and his CPP from power. It will not be easy, but it can be done.

c. There is no question in my mind that, Cambodia can learn a great deal from the experiences of Thailand and Vietnam in fighting and overcoming their own respective foreign aggressions. Their experiences clearly show, that only by fundamentally reforming their society, and by embracing new honest and capable leaders, could they recover from national disaster caused by foreign aggressions. Nobody can save Cambodia but the Cambodian people themselves

III. A Suggested Roadmap to Freedom and Conclusion

The main causes for these economic, institutional, legal, political, and social problems in Cambodia rest mainly on the legacy from the past, especially the institution of the monarchy. The Cambodian people’s blindness and irrational trust and belief in the institution of the monarchy incarnated and perpetuated until today, by the concept of the god-king, since the Angkorian era, and exploited by former King Sihanouk for his personal ego and his family’s benefit, also contributes to the practically downfall of the Cambodian society and nation. Below are suggested recommendations on the details on how to address the problems in each sector of the society:

1. The pervasive and crushing role of the monarchy combined with the conservative nature of the Cambodian society, such as the belief in prophesies and the rigidity in social organization and behavior contribute to the inertia and the inability to allow new ideas and a capable leadership, and entrepreneurial spirit to emerge. This, in turn, leads to the inability to organize the people to defend and to resist foreign aggressions, especially today naked and unrelenting aggression from Vietnam, and to keep Cambodia perpetually underdeveloped. keep the monarchy within the constraints of the constitutional framework.

2. Only by a progressive and systemic overhaul of the Cambodian society can these problems be gradually being improved, thus allowing the Cambodian people to survive and to prosper.

3. Cambodian Diaspora can and must play a positive role in this challenging and difficult endeavor, by taking full advantage of their freedom and accessibility to education and management and skill formation for the pursuit of material and spiritual well-being, and last but not least, by exercising their constitutional rights to participate fully in the democratic process in those Western democratic countries to influence and to bring about international support to Cambodia. However, the main effort remains in the hands of the Cambodian people themselves to rise up and defend their land and culture (See our letter to senators and President Obama to intervene on behalf of the Khmer Krom, and also see a page in this web site entitled Why I support Barack Obama; Reasons why I support BarackObama).

4. The protection of the rights of the Khmer people should be extended to include those Cambodians who are now living in the Southern part of Vietnam, the Khmer Krom. Their right, Security, and dignity as a minority must be accepted and respected by Vietnam as Cambodia has already accepted this principle regarding the Vietnamese living in Cambodia. The right to return toCambodia(as Israel grants to all Jews living in the world) must also be granted to all those Khmer Krom who choose to come and live in Cambodia. This can only be done, if and only if, there is a genuine and representative government in Cambodia that can and want to protect all Cambodians against foreign aggressions.

5. On the economic and social front, the first corrective measure is to deal with extreme income in equality. Although significant real growth rates have been recorded in the last few years, due mainly to large inflow of foreign investment (mainly from South Korea and China, and other South East Asian countries), because of the concentration of wealth ownership in the hands of the few (Hun Sen and his extended family, and foreigner, especially the Vietnamese-owned SOKIMEX), all income been accumulated by the few politically-powerful families and their friends.

6. Recent flare in inflation caused by the spike in the prices of oil and gas, and the prices of primary commodities, especially rice and other goods and services, has exacerbated the level of poverty of the majority of the Cambodian people whose income is derived from the agricultural sector. Normally, the increase in the prices of primary commodities should favor those who make their living in the agricultural sector, i.e. the peasants.

7. However, this is not the case, as the intermediaries who collect the primary products from the peasants, do not pass on the benefit of these price increases to the peasants. The remedy is to have an non-profit and autonomous organization whose role is to facilitate the transfer of price increase to the primary commodities growers, and not to the intermediaries.

8. .The other main measure is the dismantling the monopoly of SOKIMEX in the industrial and financial sectors, especially in the petroleum sector and tourism (See article posted below).

9. Finally, the adoption of an anti-corruption law was adopted in 2010, and some conviction began to take place. However, this passing of the law is a necessary, though not sufficient condition to set the stage for a better and more equitable income distribution and the alleviation of the abject poverty of the majority of the Cambodian people who depend for their livelihood on the agricultural sector (Please, read an article titled "Anti-corruption profile - Cambodia

   " posted just below).

10. Last but not least, is to make sure that the rich and the powerful pay due tax on their income and wealth accumulated illegally. This can be done only if there is a law to make sure that Hun Sen and members of his extended family make public the extent and the amount of the enormous wealth they own, and on which would pay due wealth and income tax, in order to render less vulnerable the economy of Cambodia (See an article and a link entitled 'One big happy family in Cambodia' pasted below in this page).

11. A program of economic structural diversification must be put in place, backed up by an encompassing reform in the quality and level of education in order to increase the level of productivity thus competitiveness, and the income of the workers in all sectors in the Cambodian economy, and also to attract more foreign investment.

12. The role of the government should not be one of confrontation but one of an open partnership in development with both labor and management  in the private sector.

13. Finally, the Cambodian government should use the forthcoming income from oil and gas to develop further the physical and intellectual infrastructure in the form of building roads, bridges, roads, airport, sea ports, schools, and technological schools and higher learning institutions. But, this is too much to ask from a corrupt and foreign-controlled government run by an ignoramus like Hun Sen and his CPP to carry out such an ambitious, caring, and encompassing agenda in the sole interests of Cambodia and its people.

14. On the legal front, the rule of law must be fairly but strictly implemented, especially the anti-corruption law, without which there is no hope for change in Cambodia in the political, economic, and social fronts instituted. Only with an independent and non-politicized judicial system can this encompassing program be implemented.

15. In order to carry out all these required objectives and reform, an honest, capable, and responsible government must be instituted. That kind of government does not exist, at the moment, in Cambodia.

16. The United Nations and NGOs can play a crucial role in this case. It would not be an easy process in view of the current and dismal state of affairs in Cambodia.

17. Last but not least, all this proposed package of reform policies must absolutely be carried out with only non-violent means and principle also known as Ahimsa (please, read more on this important philosophy in an article posted just below)

Intractable, Yes; Impossible, No!

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Ahimsa or Non-Violence is the only strategic option for the liberation of Cambodia and why

(Comments: what strategy should Cambodians adopt to give Cambodia a better chance to remain free from Vietnamese genocide is as important as what kind of behavioral and social changes should Cambodia adopt.

The strategy to fight for our freedom is already contained in the previous suggestion of a roadmap to freedom for Cambodia. In view of its inherent political, military, , economic, and social weaknesses, there is no other choice but to choose that strategy based on the philosophy of non-violence or 'Ahimsa.'

Below is the philosophy of Ahimsa which was created by Jainism, in the fifth century B.C.

Why should Cambodians espouse the philosophy of Ahimsa? Because, Vietnam had succeeded in painting itself, - despite its overwhelmingly military strength and power, - as the victim of great powers ' aggressions; while Cambodia was demonized by the Vietnamese, their foreign supporters, and by their Cambodian allies, Hun Sen and Sihanouk, to be the worst demon in the world. In turn, this Vietnamese propaganda had put Cambodia in the worst position to use forces to defend itself, while to invalidate the Vietnamese choice of using military means to 'defend' itself. However, Ahimsa requires a more intelligent, capable, unselfish, and courageous leaders to successfully implement it. Unfortunately, Cambodia, at present and prevailing condition, cannot produce any such high-quality leaders. (Please, for more detailed information on the practice, conceptualization and organization of Ahimsa, see an article posted below. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC January 30, 2008.)

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MEANING OF AHIMSA

Ahimsa or non-injury, of course, implies non-killing. But, non-injury is not merely non-killing. In its comprehensive meaning, Ahimsa or non-injury means entire abstinence from causing any pain or harm whatsoever to any living creature, either by thought, word, or deed. Non-injury requires a harmless mind, mouth, and hand.

Ahimsa is not mere negative non-injury. It is positive, cosmic love. It is the development of a mental attitude in which hatred is replaced by love. Ahimsa is true sacrifice. Ahimsa is forgiveness. Ahimsa is Sakti (power). Ahimsa is true strength.

SUBTLE FORMS OF HIMSA

Only the ordinary people think that Ahimsa is not to hurt any living being physically. This is but the gross form of Ahimsa. The vow of Ahimsa is broken even by showing contempt towards another man, by entertaining unreasonable dislike for or prejudice towards anybody, by frowning at another man, by hating another man, by abusing another man, by speaking ill of others, by backbiting or vilifying, by harboring thoughts of hatred, by uttering lies, or by ruining another man in any way whatsoever.

All harsh and rude speech is Himsa (violence or injury). Using harsh words to beggars, servants or inferiors is Himsa. Wounding the feelings of others by gesture, expression, tone of voice and unkind words is also Himsa. Slighting or showing deliberate discourtesy to a person before others is wanton Himsa. To approve of another's harsh actions is indirect Himsa. To fail to relieve another's pain, or even to neglect to go to the person in distress is a sort of Himsa. It is the sin of omission. Avoid strictly all forms of harshness, direct or indirect, positive or negative, immediate or delayed. Practice Ahimsa in its purest form and become divine. Ahimsa and Divinity are one.

AHIMSA, A QUALITY OF THE STRONG

If you practice Ahimsa, you should put up with insults, rebukes, criticisms and assaults also. You should never retaliate nor wish to offend anybody even under extreme provocation. You should not entertain any evil thought against anybody. You should not harbour anger. You should not curse. You should be prepared to lose joyfully even your life in the cause of Truth. The Ultimate Truth can be attained only through Ahimsa.

Ahimsa is the acme of bravery. Ahimsa is not possible without fearlessness. Non-violence cannot be practiced by weak persons. Ahimsa cannot be practiced by a man who is terribly afraid of death and has no power of resistance and endurance. It is a shield, not of the effeminate, but of the potent. Ahimsa is a quality of the strong. It is a weapon of the strong. When a man beats you with a stick, you should not entertain any thought of retaliation or any unkind feeling towards the tormentor. Ahimsa is the perfection of forgiveness.

Remember the noble actions of great sages of yore.  Jayadeva, the author of Gita-Govinda, gave large and rich present to his enemies who cut off his hands, and obtained Mukti (liberation) for them through his sincere prayers. He said: "O my lord! Thou hast given Mukti to Thy enemies, Ravana and Kamsa. Why canst Thou not give Mukti to my enemies now ?" A saint or a sage possesses a magnanimous heart.

Pavahari Baba carried the bag of vessels and followed the thief saying: "O Thief Narayana! I never knew that You visited my cottage. Pray accept these things." The thief was quite astonished. He left off his evil habit from that very second and became a disciple of Pavahari Baba.

Remember the noble actions of saints like Jayadeva and Pavahari Baba, you will have to follow their principles and ideals.

GRADATIONAL PRACTICE OF AHIMSA

When thoughts of revenge and hatred arise in the mind, try to control the physical body and speech first. Do not utter evil and harsh words. Do not censure. Do not try to injure others. If you succeed in this by practice for some months, the negative thoughts of revenge, having no scope for manifesting outside, will die by themselves. It is extremely difficult to control such thoughts from the very beginning without having recourse to control of the body and speech first.

First control your physical body. When a man beats you, keep quiet. Suppress your feelings. Follow the instructions of Jesus Christ in his Sermon On The Mount: "If a man beats you on one cheek, turn to him the other cheek also. If a man takes away your coat, give him your shirt also." This is very difficult in the beginning. The old Samskaras (impressions) of revenge, of "a tooth for a tooth", "tit for tat", "an eye for an eye", and "paying in the same coin" will all force you to retaliate. But you will have to wait cooly. Reflect and meditate. Do Vichara or right enquiry. The mind will become calm. The opponent who was very furious will also become calm, because he does not get any opposition from your side. He gets astonished and terrified also, because you stand like a sage. By and by, you will gain immense strength. Keep the ideal before you. Try to get at it, though with faltering steps at first. Have a clear-cut mental image of Ahimsa and its immeasurable advantages.

After controlling the body, control your speech. Make a strong determination, "I will not speak any harsh word to anybody from today". You may fail a hundred times. What does it matter ? You will slowly gain strength. Check the impulse of speech. Observe Mouna (silence). Practice Kshama or forgiveness. Say within yourself: "He is a baby-soul. He is ignorant, that is why he has done it. Let me excuse him this time. What do I gain by abusing him in return ?" Slowly give up Abhimana (ego-centred attachment). Abhimana is the root-cause of human sufferings.

Finally go to the thoughts and check the thought of injuring. Never even think of injuring anyone. One Self dwells in all. All are manifestations of One God. By injuring another, you injure your own Self. By serving another, you serve your own Self. Love all. Serve all. Hate none. Insult none. Injure none in thought, word and deed. Try to behold your own Self in all beings. This will promote Ahimsa.

BENEFITS OF THE PRACTICE OF AHIMSA

If you are established in Ahimsa, you have attained all virtues. Ahimsa is the pivot. All virtues revolve around Ahimsa. Just as all footprints are accommodated in those of the elephant, so also do all religious and ethical rules become merged in the great vow of Ahimsa.

Ahimsa is soul-force. Hate melts in the presence of love. Hate dissolves in the presence of Ahimsa. There is no power greater than Ahimsa. The practice of Ahimsa develops will-power to a considerable degree. The practice of Ahimsa will make you fearless. He who practices Ahimsa with real faith, can move the whole world, can tame wild animals, can win the hearts of all, and can subdue his enemies. He can do and undo things. The power of Ahimsa is infinitely more wonderful and subtler than electricity or magnetism.

The law of Ahimsa is as much exact and precise as the law of gravitation or cohesion. You must know the correct way to apply it intelligently and with scientific accuracy. If you are able to apply it with exactitude and precision, you can work wonders. You can command the elements and Nature also.

THE POWER OF AHIMSA

The power of Ahimsa is greater than the power of the intellect. It is easy to develop the intellect, but it is difficult to purify and develop the heart. The practice of Ahimsa develops the heart in a wonderful manner.

He who practices Ahimsa develops strong will-power. In his presence, enmity ceases. In his presence, cobra and frog, cow and tiger, cat and rat, wolf and lamb, will all live together in terms of intimate friendship. In his presence, all hostilities are given up. The term 'hostilities are given up' means that all beings - men, animals, birds and poisonous creatures will approach the practitioner without fear and do no harm to him. Their hostile nature disappears in them in his presence. The rat and the cat, the snake and the mongoose, and other beings that are enemies of each other by nature, give up their hostile feelings in the presence of the Yogi who is established in Ahimsa. Lions and tigers can never do any harm to such a Yogi. Such a Yogi can give definite orders to lion and tigers. They will obey. This is Bhuta-Siddhi (mastery over the elements) obtainable by the practice of Ahimsa. The practice of Ahimsa will eventually culminate in the realization of unity and oneness of life, or Advaitic (non-dual) Consciousness. The Yogi then enjoys the highest peace, bliss and immortality.

LIMITATIONS TO THE PRACTICE OF AHIMSA

Absolute Ahimsa is impossible. It is not possible to the most conscientious Sannyasin or monk. To practice that, you must avoid killing countless creatures while walking, sitting, eating, breathing, sleeping and drinking. You cannot find a single non-injurer in the world. You have to destroy life in order to live. It is physically impossible for you to obey the law of non-destruction of life, because the phagocytes of your blood also are destroying millions of dangerous intrusive spirilla, bacteria and germs.

According to one school of thought, if by the murder of a dacoit many lives are saved, it is not considered as Himsa. Ahimsa and Himsa are relative terms. Some say that one can defend oneself with instruments and use a little violence also when one is in danger; this is not considered to be Himsa. Westerners generally destroy their dear horses and dogs when they are in acute agony and when there is no way of relieving their sufferings. They wish that the soul should be immediately freed from the physical body. Motive is the chief factor that underlies everything.

A renunciate or monk should not defend himself and use violence even when his life is in jeopardy. To an ordinary man, Ahimsa should be the aim, but he will not fall from this principle if, out of sheer necessity and with no selfish aim, he takes recourse to Himsa occasionally. One should not give leniency to the mind in this respect. If you are lenient, the mind will always take the best advantage of you and goad you to do acts of violence. Give a rogue an inch, he will take an ell: the mind at once adapts this policy, if you give a long rope for its movement.

Ahimsa is never a policy. It is a sublime virtue. It is the fundamental quality of seekers after Truth. No Self-realization is possible without Ahimsa. It is through the practice of Ahimsa alone that you can cognize and reach the Supreme Self or Brahman. Those with whom it is a policy may fail many a time. They will be tempted to do violent acts also. On the contrary, those who strictly adhere to the vow of Ahimsa as a sacred creed or fundamentals cannon of Yoga can never be duped into violence.

 

 

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Anti-corruption profile - Cambodia

TrustLaw

December, 2011

 

Cambodia Corruption News

• Associated Press:
  'Cambodia drug czar gets life term for corruption', 05 Jan. 2012

• Trust Law:
  'Cambodia: Women fight land grab around Phnom Penh's contested lake', 28 Dec. 2011

• The Guardian:
  'Third draft of Cambodia's associations and NGO law overlooks key concerns', 12 Aug. 2011

• The Guardian:
  'Cambodia's must not be the slippery slope to corruption and catastrophe', 21 Jun. 2011

• The Wall Street Journal:
  'Cambodia anti-corruption law sees first conviction', 12 May 2011

 

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Business anti-corruption portal

 

• Cambodia

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Anti-corruption snapshot

Corruption tops the list of obstacles for doing business in Cambodia. According to estimates, 10% of Cambodia's annual GDP is lost to corruption, signifying pervasive and large scale corruption. Cambodia is a cash-based economy, which facilitates corruption because many business transactions are made in cash. Only 1% of working capital comes from commercial banks. The use of bank transactions to counter corruption may not eradicate corruption, but it does make it harder because of the paper/electronic trail left behind. Bribes are paid to secure efficiency of services. In Cambodia, however, there does not seem to be any correlation between the size of the bribe and the speed of the administrative procedure. The primary reason for many small companies to pay bribes is to maintain good relationships with local officials. This indicates that the gift giving tradition to honour and strengthen relationships still has an impact on business conduct in Cambodia.

 

Positive developments in relation to corruption and investment:

• The revised Land Law, passed in 2001, provides the legal basis for real property security and a system for recording titles and ownership. Although the Constitution prohibits foreigners from owning land, the new law allows them a long-term lease (15 years).

• The National Assembly passed an Archives Law which grants public access to documents that are not harmful to national security.

 

Risks of corruption:

• Examples of areas where Cambodians encounter corrupt practices in their everyday lives include obtaining medical services, competing for school grades, dealing with alleged traffic violations, pursuing fair court verdicts, and obtaining birth and marriage certificates.

• Cambodia's business regulatory environment is both cumbersome and time-consuming. Setting up a business requires 9 procedures and can take up to 85 days, which is 40 days longer than the average of the Asia-Pacific region.

• Companies should be aware that they have to deal with extensive red tape when obtaining licences and permits, especially construction related permits and that the demand for and supply of bribes are commonplace in this process.

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General information

 

The Political Climate

Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953 and subsequently suffered from decades of civil war. It is now a democratic constitutional monarchy enjoying relative political stability. Since 1997, Cambodia has been governed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). Cambodia's coalition government is made up of two parties: the larger, dominant CPP and the much smaller National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC). Although having experienced substantial economic growth in recent years, Cambodia is still struggling with high levels of poverty and inequality. As a result, Cambodia has become a large recipient of financial assistance from international donors, which in 2004 amounted to 50% of the state budget to cover public services.

According to Freedom House 2008, Prime Minister Hun Sen and the CPP have outmanoeuvred the political opposition by selectively forming coalitions and gaining control of the courts and the military through parliamentary tactics. The stripping of parliamentary immunity of opposition leader Sam Rainsy and two of his fellow party members, Chea Poch and Cheam Channy, by the National Assembly in 2005 illustrates this point. Their immunity was removed by the passing of a proposal to put restrictions on lawmakers' immunity attached to a bill that granted pensions and perks to Members of Parliament. Channy was subsequently arrested, charged and sentenced to prison for organised crimes and fraud. Rainsy and Poch fled Cambodia, but were charged with the defamation of both Hun Sen and the FUNCINPEC leader and sentenced in absentia. A year later, on the condition that he took back his allegation of government corruption and issued a public apology to Hun Sen, Rainsy was granted a royal pardon. Furthermore, according to Freedom House, in order to silence FUNCINPEC accusations of government inefficiency and corruption, Hun Sen accused several FUNCINPEC members of nepotism and adultery in 2006 after having the CCP-dominated National Assembly pass an anti-adultery law. This resulted in leading members of FUNCINPEC fleeing the country.

 

According to several sources, including Global Witness 2007, abuse of power and corrupt behaviour permeates the highest levels of the Cambodian political and administrative systems. According to the Global Witness 2007 report, the ministries perceived to be most corrupt are the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Economics and Finance. The Cambodian government is subsequently under pressure from international donors as well as NGOs to take measures against corruption and to pass the anti-corruption law which has been in the pipeline for a decade. Furthermore, the government has been accused of siphoning off financial aid through ministries and government offices. For example, in 2006, the World Bank suspended USD 64 million in loans after finding evidence of corruption and fraud in 43 contracts, and asked Cambodia to repay USD 7 million in aid money. In 2007, the World Bank resumed lending for Cambodian development projects after a good governance framework had been adopted. Although the Cambodian government has adopted the Anti-Corruption Action Plan for Asia and the Pacific in 2003, it is of little practical use because no anti-corruption laws have been implemented. So far the Cambodian government has mostly paid lip service and only shown a minimum of commitment to the anti-corruption agenda.

 

Corruption in Cambodia is institutionalised, according to Global Witness 2009 and Indochina Research 2007. Many government officials have to pay for their job, and officials tolerate that their subordinates demand bribes of the public. It is common for a low level civil servant to give his superior a share of the bribes. Corruption has penetrated all aspects of Cambodian society, affecting the lives of its citizens on a daily basis. Examples of areas where Cambodians encounter corrupt practices in their everyday lives include obtaining medical services, competing for school grades, dealing with alleged traffic violations, pursuing fair court verdicts, and obtaining birth and marriage certificates etc. According to Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2007, 44% of Cambodians believe that the government's anti-corruption efforts are ineffective, while 43% believe that the level of corruption will increase over the next three years. Reportedly, having lost confidence in the government and public institutions, Cambodians tend to rely on personal networks rather than institutional setups in order to accomplish their personal or commercial goals. According to Indochina Research 2007, corruption awareness is increasing and due to the lack of confidence in authorities Cambodian citizens tend to equate anti-corruption activities with government protests, such as land disputes protests or protests against the rise in price of petrol etc.

 

Business and Corruption

In the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009 corruption tops the list of obstacles for doing business in Cambodia. According to estimates, 10% of Cambodia's annual GDP is lost to corruption, signifying pervasive and large scale corruption. Cambodia is a cash-based economy, which facilitates corruption because many business transactions are made in cash. Only 1% of working capital comes from commercial banks. The use of bank transactions to counter corruption may not eradicate corruption, but it does make it harder because of the paper/electronic trail left behind. Normally, bribes are paid to secure efficiency of services. In Cambodia, however, there does not seem to be any correlation between the size of the bribe and the speed of the administrative procedure. According to the Economic Institute of Cambodia 2006, the primary reason for many small companies to pay bribes is to maintain good relationships with local officials. This indicates that the gift giving tradition to honour and strengthen relationships still has an impact on business conduct in Cambodia.

The severe level of corruption in Cambodia is reflected in numbers from the World Bank & IFC Enterprise Surveys 2007 that indicate that corruption is the top concern for companies with 54% of companies surveyed identifying it as a major constraint for doing business. 61% of companies expect to make informal payments to get things done. The procedures through which government contracts are awarded are characterised as being non-transparent and full of irregularities. On average, facilitation payments/bribes amount to as much as 4.6% of sales compared to the average of 1.8% of sales in the Asia Pacific region. Some industrial sectors are more affected than others, with the garment industry taking the lead (more than 6% of sales) because garment factories need additional certificates to operate. Companies that planning to invest in or are already doing business in Cambodia are highly recommended to implement integrity systems and to conduct extensive due diligence when contracting agents to facilitate business transactions in the country.

 

Cambodia is in dire need of educated and qualified labour, but with more than 50% of the population below the age of 21 and the educational sector being under-funded (2% of GDP in 2004) it will take a long time to meet the demand. The government has either fully or partly privatised the following sectors: transportation, health care, education, and banking. The agricultural public companies, such as the rubber plantations, the fertiliser company, and the fish export company, have also been named as objects for privatisation. The process of privatisation has resulted in many state-owned companies as well as many land concessions being awarded to high level politicians and their associates. In fact 20-30% of Cambodia's land is now owned by 1% of the population.

 

Regulatory Environment

According to the World Bank & IFC Doing Business 2009, Cambodia's business regulatory environment is both cumbersome and time-consuming. Setting up a business requires 9 procedures and can take up to 85 days, which is 40 days longer than the average of the Asia-Pacific region. The cost is 151% of per capita income (down from 246% in 2006), whereas the average cost for Asia-Pacific countries is 32% of per capita income. The World Bank & IFC Enterprise Surveys 2007 indicates that senior management can expect to spend nearly 6% of its time dealing with the requirements of government regulations. Companies should be aware that they have to deal with extensive red tape when obtaining licences and permits, especially construction related permits and that the demand for and supply of bribes are commonplace in this process.

Cambodian courts are often understaffed, and judges are perceived to be either inexperienced or incompetent - only 1 in 6 judges have a law degree and positions within the judiciary are often bought. According to the US Department of State 2009, numerous cases of inconsistent rulings and outright corruption in commercial disputes have been reported. In Cambodia the traditional way of settling of disputes is through conciliation, and often the courts will attempt conciliation before an actual trial. It is not uncommon for parties in a dispute to favour a pre-trial compromise rather than going through an actual court procedure. Cambodia is a member of the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and has ratified the New York Convention 1958.

 

The revised Land Law, passed in 2001, provides the legal basis for real property security and a system for recording titles and ownership. However, the land title system does not function in practice, and most property owners lack documentation proving ownership. Even where title records exist, recognition of legal title to land has been a problem in some court cases where judges have sought additional proof of ownership. Although the Constitution prohibits foreigners from owning land, the new law allows them a long-term lease (15 years). There are examples of foreign companies being granted land concessions that run for 70 years, but these are illegal. Foreigners may also construct buildings and make improvements on the land that they lease. Access the Lexadin World Law Guide for a collection of legislation in Cambodia.

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• Private Initiatives

 

Public initiatives

• Legislation: Cambodia accessed the United Nations Convention against Corruption in September 2007. An Anti-Corruption Law in line with international standards has been in the works for more than ten years now. It was first drafted in 1994 and then again in 2006. However, despite pressure from donor countries and social activists, it has yet to be enacted by the National Assembly. Despite this, Global Integrity rates Cambodia's anti-corruption legislation as being 'strong', as corruption is covered and criminalised in the provisional Criminal Code. According to Global Integrity 2008, it is particularly article 38 in the criminal code which is concerned with corruption. It criminalises actual and attempted corruption conducted by any political official, civil servant, military personnel or official agent for the Cambodian parties. The law, however, does not cover the bribing of a foreign civil servant. Global Integrity 2008, the fact that the laws have not yet been passed hampers the institution building that is meant to help counter corruption. The National Assembly passed an Archives Law which grants public access to documents that are not harmful to national security. In principle, the law serves to make governance more transparent. In reality, the government strictly controls what is open to the public eye. Access the Lexadin World Law Guide for a collection of legislation in Cambodia.

 

• Anti-Corruption Agencies: No completely autonomous anti-corruption body exists. The Ministry of National Assembly Senate Relations and Inspections (MoNASRI) was created to investigate allegations of corruption. The Anti-Corruption Body (ACB) in the Council of Ministers is supposed to be the main anti-corruption agency and was charged with developing anti-corruption measures and presenting proposals to the government, while also mandated to supervise and follow up on corrupt activities. The anti-corruption law has not yet been passed and without a strong legal basis the ACB does not have the power to carry out its mandate. These two bodies are not independent, and they lack resources and expertise to handle their assigned duties. According to Global Integrity 2008, they cannot investigate corruption in practice.

 

 

• The National Audit Authority (Auditor-General) is empowered by law to audit all government bodies annually. While ostensibly an independent body, it is in fact closely tied to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, from which the auditing body receives its financing. According to Global Integrity 2008, which rate the National Audit Authority as 'weak', none of the reports that the National Audit Authority has written have been made public, despite the fact that this is stipulated by law.

 

• Ombudsman: Cambodian legislation does not contain anything on an Ombudsman Office, hence no Ombudsman exists. This means that a potential government body to resolve conflicts between citizens and public authorities and to address corruption is lacking.

• The National Assembly Commission for the Protection of Human Rights and Reception of Complaints, established in 2006, is a body that offers Cambodian citizens the opportunity to voice their complaints concerning human rights. Human rights violations that are related to corrupt activities may also be directed to this commission. It is also intended to be an advisory body to the National Assembly concerning relevant laws, and to promote knowledge on human rights. However, there are no signs that this body is efficient and independent.

 

• Public Procurement: A public procurement law has not yet been passed in Cambodia. The legal framework for public procurement consists of an insufficient set of decrees and guidelines. The government allegedly has plans to work out and pass a public procurement law, but when this will take effect is unclear. Tender bidding is complicated by a weak information system and by the fact that bidders must be registered with the Department of Public Procurement in order to participate. At the provincial level, bidders need a prequalification. As most public procurement in Cambodia is financed through external donations, manuals guiding the procurement process for foreign funded projects have been made. One is called Manual on Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), and another one is the Procurement Manual for Externally Financed Projects/Programs. Both can be found on the Ministry of Economy and Finance website. Both manuals state that competitive bidding is preferred, and it is mandatory for all projects exceeding USD 100,000. According to Global Integrity 2008, the Sub-Decree on Public Procurement states that international competitive bidding should be used for more expensive projects. Global Integrity 2008 rates the procurement system in Cambodia as being 'very weak'.

 

• Whistle-Blowing: Cambodian legislation as such does not contain provisions that offer protection to whistleblowers, mainly because of the absence of an anti-corruption law where one would normally find whistleblower protection provisions. This makes it very risky to disclose corrupt practices both within the public and private sectors. The Anti-Corruption Body's (ACB) complaint mechanisms has not been successful because people are afraid to disclose corrupt practices both within the public and private sectors, and also because they do not trust that the ACB is impartial and they run a risk to no avail if they blow the whistle. Global Integrity 2008 rates whistle-blowing mechanisms in Cambodia as 'very weak'.

 

• General Comments on the Public Anti-Corruption Initiatives: In general, Cambodian anti-corruption initiatives are only rudimentary. Lacking both resources and expertise, they are a long way from working efficiently. Furthermore, the Cambodian leadership does not posses the political will to combat corruption because this would entail that they first and foremost would have to purge themselves, as corruption is most rampant within the elite. International aid donors are becoming increasingly impatient with the Cambodian government's unwillingness to adopt and implement credible anti-corruption measures. As a result, Cambodian NGOs launched a campaign to collect a million signatures as an appeal to adopt an anti-corruption law in the beginning of 2008. Only in the area of public procurement do we see some progress. Since the procurement problems for seven World Bank-funded projects were discovered in 2006, resulting in bank suspension of disbursements on three active projects, the World Bank in collaboration with the Cambodian government have set up preventive and oversight measures to reduce the risk of corrupt practices.

 

 

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The Anti-Corruption Law Was Adopted with 100% of the Votes in Support – Friday, 12.3.2010

 

The Mirror, Vol. 14, No. 655

 

“Phnom Penh: An anti-corruption law was discussed and adopted by the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia in the morning of 11 March 2010 with 82 votes in favor from the 82 voters present.

“In the morning of 11 March 2010, the National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia held its session to discuss and to adopt an anti-corruption draft law, and the proceedings were completed despite objections and a boycott by opposition party parliamentarians. According to information available, after Chapter 4 of the anti-corruption draft had been discussed and adopted, during a break, the Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarians decided to walk out of the session, saying that the anti-corruption draft does not protect the interests of the citizens but rather the interests of corrupt people.

“A Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian from Phnom Penh, Mr. Son Chhay, said during the discussion in the morning of 11 March 2010 that if the government creates a law in such a way, it is not necessary to have an anti-corruption law. He criticized that the draft law has many problems.

“A Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian from Kompong Cham, Mr. Cheam Channy, said that if they want an active participation [against corruption] by the citizens, there should be no punishment against those who provide information [about corruption], otherwise no one dares to participate. As for Mr. Yim Sovann, he said he could not accept this draft law because it protects corrupt people. In addition, the budget of the Anti-Corruption Unit is to be part of the budget of the Council of Ministers. Therefore, he does not believe corruption can be prevented. He said that most corrupt people are working in the government. Thus, if the Anti-Corruption Unit is not independent, it is hard to trust it.

“Mr. Yim Sovann also mentioned that the declaration of assets must be made to be known publicly. If it is made only by a confidential letter, it is not a declaration. ‘We need to let our people know the assets of their leaders.’ At that time, he announced not to attend the session which was to start at 10:30.

“The Minister of the Council of Ministers, the representative of the Royal Government to defend the draft, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, said that the points raised by opposition party parliamentarians seem to imply that the law is useless. He said, however, that this draft law is crucial, and aims at combating corruption and some vicious people effectively. Also, this law involves various units and institutions to implement it cooperatively. In addition, even a good law is not always observed.

“Relating to the discussion and the adoption of the anti-corruption draft law, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights had sent a letter to the president of the National Assembly, saying that the draft law is prepared in a secretive way and it is not discussed with civil society organizations, and the Center asked the Royal Government to urgently deal with the concern that the goal of this law lacks political independency, it does not involve public participation, and it fails to protect informants disclosing cases of corruption.

“The United Nations released a statement welcoming the discussion and the adoption of the anti-corruption law by the National Assembly, saying that the anti-corruption law has been long awaited. The statement adds that the United Nations country team in Cambodia has been actively supporting the adoption of this important law since 2004. The draft law should be made available for public discussion with transparency and public participation, in order to ensure that it complies with international standard, as required by the Constitution, and to guarantee the protection of the rights and duties of the Cambodian citizens who are to benefit most from this law.

“The United Nations hopes that it is not too late to encourage the National Assembly to allow enough time for parliamentarians, civil society, donors, and the United Nations to study this law, and, if it is necessary, to amend some points. The United Nations in Cambodia hopes and encourages the National Assembly and the Senate to discuss this law in view of the possibility to amend it if it is necessary.

“The United Nations said that this statement is a contribution of the efforts to reorganize the law to make it more effective at present and in the future.” Kampuchea Thmey, Vol.9, #2199, 12.3.2010

Newspapers Appearing on the Newsstand:
Friday, 12 March 2010

 

 

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Corruption unchecked

Mary Kozlovski and Chhay Channyda

The Phnom Penh Post: Friday, 02 December 2011

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(Comments: Transparency International (TI) last year has lowered the ranking of Cambodia as one of the being  most corrupt regimes in the world from 154 to 164, or the score of 2.1 out  10 (1 being the most corrupt; while 10 being clean  or having no corruption. Corruption in Cambodia is pervasive and systemic. Corruption is a culture in Cambodia that dated back to the Angkor time, (please, see three other related articles posted below titled “Modern Cambodian politics in the long view: internal and external forces, “When of ancient glory meets modern tragedy,”  “Reflections on Cambodian History,” and “When ancient glory meets modern tragedy.” (Please, click on this link to read these highly recommended articles; Modern Cambodian politics in the long view, internal and external forces.docx)

As the authors of that article have pointed out that;

“It is very easy for political analysis of Cambodia to fall into one of two polarized camps. The first blames Cambodia’s problems on external influences, emphasizing the way in which Cambodia, as a small and poor post-colonial nation, was overwhelmed by the forces of unprincipled Cold War geopolitics in the 1970s, and has since been dominated and exploited by more powerful neighbours. The second argues that, enormous as these forces were, they should not mask recognition of the fact that there are strong threads of historical continuity in the nature of state-society relationships in Cambodia, arguably spanning pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial regimes, and that most of these persistent themes – a discourse of power which is profoundly incompatible with the principles of democracy or human rights, a weakness of formal state institutions vis-à-vis informal patronage networks – are profoundly anti-poor in nature. Long-term historical analysis, in other words, tends to encourage a pessimistic, “path dependent” interpretation of Cambodian politics.

Therefore, if the Cambodian people are to have any chance to survive at all, they must first understand these two aspects of Cambodia major cultural faults. It is not easy for most Cambodians to face and come up with a cool and rational solution for this extremely deadly and destructive cultural and behavioral weakness, as they tend to hide these weaknesses by invoking the glory of Angkor as the representation the perfection of Cambodia achievement, as Pol Pot was quoted to have said that “If we can build Angkor, we can do anything.”

Evading the problem is not solving it. Only by confronting it, can Cambodians begin to find a path to a solution to this deep-rooted and devastating cultural problem.

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. December 5, 2011)

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The release of the annual Corruption Perception Index from Transparency International (TI) yesterday left the Kingdom in a familiar position – low and lacking upward momentum.

The report, which ranks 183 countries across a broad range of categories including bribery, kickbacks and the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts in the public sector, saw Cambodia finish with a score of 2.1 out of 10, the same score attained in last year’s CPI.

Its ranking relative to the other countries on the list, meanwhile, slid 10 places – from 154 to 164 – though that was influenced to a large degree by the addition of five new countries.

Climbing up the list – the Kingdom is still looking up at Zimbabwe and neighbouring Laos among others – will require the fledgling Anticorruption Unit to take the lead role in battling public sector corruption, a representative from Transparency International said yesterday.

“The ACU is undertaking the most difficult job compared to the other institutions of the government,” said TI country representative Preap Kol, who credited the ACU for investigating high-profile corruption cases and addressing “facilitation fees” charged by officials in exchange for public services.

“It’s very new, so it needs some time to strengthen their capacity,” he said.

Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, said he was unsurprised the perception of corruption in Cambodia remained the same.

“Corruption is so widespread . . . [and] there are so many people considered to be untouchable, that I think it’s going to very difficult, even if there’s some political will, and I think the ACU hasn’t passed the test yet,” he said, conceding that the ACU’s performance has been hampered by a lack of resources.

The Anticorruption Unit was established following the passage of the Anticorruption Law in March of last year.

At a meeting in the capital last month, ACU head Om Yentieng announced that ministries must submit a set list of charges for public services to Prime Minister Hun Sen for approval to avoid allegations of bribery and corruption, after showing that all ministries were in some way overcharging for services.

Om Yentieng also said the ACU had been overwhelmed with complaints and lacked resources to adequately investigate them.

ACU spokesman Keo Remy was not available for comment yesterday. However, Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said there was “no specific formula” for identifying corruption and the ACU and the anticorruption law had helped to reduce corruption.

“We have arrested many corrupt officials, including high-ranking officials, to put in jail,” he said. “We are not tolerant [of corruption] anymore.”

Preap Kol said TI’s Corruption Barometer released last year showed Cambodians identified the judiciary as the most corrupt institution, followed by the police and public officials.

The CPI used 17 data sources from 13 institutions, including the World Bank and the ADB, to rank peoples’ perceptions of public sector corruption.

___________________________________________________________

Modern Cambodian politics in the long view: internal and external forces

Excerpt from: Understanding pro-poor political change: the policy process

Cambodia

By Caroline Hughes and Tim Convay

                                        Overseas Development Institute (ODI)

London

Second draft – August 2003

http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/DOC11.pdf

 

Executive Summary

This study analyses trajectories of change in state-society relations and their implications for pro-poor policy-making in Cambodia, using the concepts of political tradition, institutions and regime type form the key levels of analysis. A brief political history and a summary of the key known facts about patterns and trends in poverty provide a context for the discussion of political processes and policy-making. It takes a medium- to long-term perspective, tracing the principal features of contemporary politics to the ways in which the state was reconstructed in the 1980s in the aftermath of civil conflict, state collapse, and occupation by Vietnam. It details the impact of this historical context on the attitudes and relationships that exist among officials, and the effect of these on the institutions of state that have emerged in the 1990s; the relationships between state and society; and the opportunities for individual reformers within this context to initiate and promote pro-poor policy change. It goes on to examine the possibilities for engagement in policy making by non-state stakeholders, and finishes with recommendations for donor intervention.

It is very easy for political analysis of Cambodia to fall into one of two polarized camps. The first blames Cambodia’s problems on external influences, emphasizing the way in which Cambodia, as a small and poor post-colonial nation, was overwhelmed by the forces of unprincipled Cold War geopolitics in the 1970s, and has since been dominated and exploited by more powerful neighbours. The second argues that, enormous as these forces were, they should not mask recognition of the fact that there are strong threads of historical continuity in the nature of state-society relationships in Cambodia, arguably spanning pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial regimes, and that most of these persistent themes – a discourse of power which is profoundly incompatible with the principles of democracy or human rights, a weakness of formal state institutions vis-à-vis informal patronage networks – are profoundly anti-poor in nature. Long-term historical analysis, in other words, tends to encourage a pessimistic, “path dependent” interpretation of Cambodian politics.

An accurate and above all policy-relevant political analysis requires recognition that both perspectives have some validity, but that neither can provide a complete explanation. There are strong forces which mitigate against the production and implementation of pro-poor policy, but these cannot adequately described in terms of path dependency due to unchanging historical structures. By looking at the period since 1979 - and by examining political change in terms of the interrelationships between the three levels of institutions, regime type and political tradition - it becomes clear that many of the phenomena which structure incentives, opportunities and constraints in contemporary politics are distinctively modern, albeit reflecting elements of a historical tradition.

Post-conflict state-building, transition and contemporary political traditions

 The Cambodian state was rebuilt, almost from scratch, in the aftermath of the massive destruction of the “Khmer Rouge” regime of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), in a context of civil war, famine and international sanctions. International intervention throughout the 1980s comprised occupation by the Vietnamese Army, economic and diplomatic support by the Soviet Bloc, and sanctions and insurgency supported by China and the West. Arguably, contemporary behaviour reflects attitudes shaped during this formative period. During the 1980s the state suffered from low levels of material resources and political legitimacy. Its main rationale was to hang together and to prevent a resurrection of the DK regime. It undertook some institution building (including in the areas of health and education): but, in an atmosphere of insecurity and constrained by severely limited resources, achievements were limited. Efforts to exert discipline in the interests of policy effectiveness were secondary to efforts to promote loyalty, with the latter achieved to a great extent at the direct expense of the former. The move to the free market in 1989 opened the door to dramatic levels of corruption and a very low level of effective control over state officials by the centre.

The UN-sponsored ceasefire of 1991 was perceived and consequently both the will and the capacity to implement the policies being urged by incoming donors was limited. Today, state officials continue to emphasise loyalty over efficiency and to promote opportunities for rent-seeking which exploit the poor, as a means to ensure the loyalty of subordinates.

Loyalty within the state apparatus is organised through networks of personal allegiance, and it is these, to a great extent, which maintain the cohesion and residual effectiveness of the state apparatus. Forms of personal allegiance include political allegiances, friendships, kinship, and patron-client relations. These tie the state to the party and the civilian bureaucracy to the military. They are capable of very effective mobilisation at times – for example, during election periods they are mobilised to support the campaigning of the dominant party, the Cambodian People’s Party. However, they are also dependent to a significant extent upon informal flows of resources, including funds skimmed from international aid donations, “gifts” and bribes extracted from the population and foreign investors, and rents gained from illegal expropriation of natural resources such as timber and land.

The networks of loyalty that underpin the state apparatus consequently resemble informal networks for the extraction of resources from society- and frequently directly from the poor. Loyalty from state officials is elicited through the protection of rent-seeking activities conducted by officials at every level from the lowliest rural school to the office of the Prime Minister. The ubiquity of involvement of state officials in these networks can be attributed largely to the extremely low levels of official salaries which are far too low to support an individual, let alone a family.

To the extent that rent-seeking functions have come to dominate state activity, the state operates directly at odds with the interests of the poor. Although some resources are ploughed back into society to elicit support for example at election time, through the building of roads and schools, this is done in a manner designed for political rather than economic effect. The personalism, populism, and exploitative nature of the state apparatus mean that it not only operates in a significantly different manner from a Weberian rational bureaucracy, but that state officials will see it as being in their interests to actively resist rationalisation, since rationalisation limits freedom to use public positions to extract rents from the population.

Formal and informal institutions of governance

The 1993 Constitution envisaged liberal institutions of state, including an elected  legislature with oversight over the executive, and an independent judiciary. Local administration is organised into four layers – provincial (khaet), district (srok), commune (khum) and village (phuum). In 2002, elections were held to form commune councils to govern at the commune level. Other levels of local government are appointed.

The functioning of government as envisaged by the constitution has been seriously hampered by the networks of loyalty that run through the institutions of state, even though it is also likely that without these networks of loyalty, these institutions would have difficulty cohering at all. Networks of loyalty have tended to preserve the politicisation of state institutions, and to permit the dominance of those institutions, such as the executive and the armed forces, which have recourse to violence. The National Assembly has been largely unsuccessful in exercising vigorous oversight of the executive. The judiciary is poorly trained and resourced, and subordinate to other branches of power.

Within the executive branch, power and influence are concentrated in informal networks. The key power relationship that underpins all others is, arguably, the relationship between the Office of the Prime Minister and senior figures in the Armed Forces. In a highly militarised society, where law is poorly enforced, the allegiance of the military remains essential to power-holders. The military is a highly entrepreneurial operation, engaged in logging, smuggling and other illegal economic activities. Protection of these activities is the key to power in Cambodia.

It is important to note, however, that the state does not operate as a rational bureaucracy in pursuit of these interests. Contending networks exist and vie for control of resources. Over the course of the 1990s conflicts have been noted between different branches of government, between the military and the police, and between different factions in the Cambodian People’s Party. Power and influence are fluid and move around the system as individuals rise and fall. The star of any particular ministry tends to wax and wane, largely depending upon the personal relationship between the minister and the Prime Minister, and the ability of the ministry to capture resources, either from the local population or from international donors.

Approaches to donor-led reforms

Since 1998, donors have attempted to promote a far-reaching programme of public sector reform, including promotion of good governance, judicial and legal reform, anti-corruption, natural resource management and demobilization within the military.

The government has apparently engaged with these reform processes, but progress has been slow. Military demobilisation, for example, has been hampered by disagreements over numbers, with suspicions that these have been inflated drastically to render demobilisation cosmetic. Natural resource management continues to be problematic: the recent collapse of independent monitoring arrangements for the forestry sector, and the erection of a much weaker monitoring regime to replace it, raise concerns regarding the government’s priorities in an election year. Incidents of pro-reform political activism (e.g. to remove officials denounced for corruption) have occurred but these are isolated and have not been translated into a sustained drive for rationalisation. The response to reforms seems to have been to attempt to preserve the discretion of action necessary to facilitate the rent-seeking which supports the networks of allegiance which simultaneously sustain and constrain state effectiveness.

The political discourse of poverty and development While there are obviously differences between and within each, the Khmer discourse of the causes and nature of poverty overlaps reasonably well with that of most donors and international NGOs. Where there are differences, these are largely to do with the degree to which it is seen that the poor could or should be agents of development in their own right: development is seen as something to be brought to the countryside from outside, by government, parties, NGOs and donors. Officials interviewed in the study regarded poverty as closely associated with weakness, vulnerability and ignorance, and viewed these characteristics – which they attributed widely to the Cambodian population, particularly in rural areas – as inconsistent with development. Development was seen as technologically driven and state-led, requiring the input of resources from donors. Participation of the unruly and ignorant poor in setting development priorities was viewed as dangerous, and the poor were frequently blamed by government officials for problems such as environmental degradation.

Government’s role in poverty reduction was seen by government officials as problematic primarily due to a lack of state capacity, echoing views expressed widely by donors over the last ten years. Government officials regarded increased training of their own staff, access high-tech solutions and greater funds, particularly for higher salaries, as essential to increase motivations and abilities.

To an extent this approach to poverty and reform is a rationalisation of an inactivity that is chosen, rather than enforced. Problems of poor implementation of policies in the periphery are blamed on underpaid and undereducated staff with the implication, spoken or unspoken, that these staff are underpaid and undereducated because Cambodia “is a poor country.” What is rarely addressed is how public expenditure decisions - at the very highest levels - prioritise military spending (c. 50% of public spending over most of the 1990s) and resist pressure for greater spending on social services. Individual ministers claim ignorance and a lack of influence to exculpate themselves from any blame for the situation.

Dropping the presumption that the military must be continually placated would open up wide vistas for reform. However, dropping this presumption would be politically difficult for the Cambodian People’s Party, which continues to advance the defence of the country against “Pol Potists” and “terrorists” (perhaps justifiably) as its main achievement in nearly 25 years of power. Further, this is a case in which the end has been supplanted by the means – in other words, the hijacking of resources for the military, the promotion of loyalists into key military positions where they can accumulate these resources and disburse them electively to enhance their own power, has to an extent become an end in itself.

 

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Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific Affairs

 

Hearing on Post-Election Situation in Cambodia and US Policy Options

(October 2, 1998, at 10:00 a.m.)

 

Room 419 Dirksen

http://www.wccpd.org/activity/act17.html

 

 

"A Longterm and Integrated Look at the Cambodian Crisis: Some Suggestions for a Possible Solution"

 

By Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D.

 Professor

International Economics and Southeast Asian Studies

SAIS, the Johns Hopkins University

 

                                          --------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Executive Summary

 

According to both independent international observers such as the International Crisis Group (ICG), International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and the Asian Network for Free and Fair Elections as well as international human right groups such as Amnesty International, and Human Right Watch, the July 26, 1998 election in Cambodia was neither free nor fair.

 

Looking at the results of the 1998 rigged election, the democratic group of Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy together still gathered 58.5 percent of total popular votes and only 41.5 percent for Hun Sen’s CPP. However, because of the illegal manipulation of the formula for allocating seats to the National Assembly, the CPP obtained 64 seats or about 52 percent against 58 seats or 48 percent for the combined parties of Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy. This situation has led to a constitutional crisis because Hun Sen cannot form a cabinet without a two thirds majority.

 

Eager to legitimize Hun Sen and the CPP, the opposition parties are being heavily pressured by the international community, - especially by the European Union, Japan, and ASEAN - and the King, to join a coalition government dominated by Hun Sen and the CPP. The opposition parties have argued that before considering joining any coalition government they want that the National Election Commission (NEC) and the Constitutional Council (CC) to look seriously into their complaints of election frauds and irregularities. But the NEC and the CC which are dominated by Hun Sen appointees, have steadfastly rejected without seriously looking into the complaints. In turn, the opposition parties have had no choice but to lead a peaceful demonstration in front of the National Assembly. These demonstrators are now being brutally dispersed by Hun Sen’s security force, leaving many injuries and deaths.

 

Hun Sen’s decision to use force to suppress these demonstrations resulted from both the king’s decision to side with Hun Sen and from the international community’s, (including the State Department, and especially the European Union, Japan, and ASEAN) decision to rush to declare the election as reasonably free and fair and "broadly representative of the will of the Cambodian people." This is contrary to the independently observed conditions prior to, during, and after the election and the arithmetics of the results of the popular vote as discussed earlier.

 

The King needs Hun Sen’s support to change the constitution in order to make his consort queen a reigning queen upon his death or incapacitation. Therefore, the King can no longer be considered as a neutral party in any deal regarding the resolution of the current constitutional crisis. A new proof of the King’s partiality is revealed by his threatening to deprive the opposition parties members of their constitutional rights of immunity, if they don’t stop their public protest. In addition, the international community’s politics of expediency toward Hun Sen has emboldened him not to make any concession and to remain entrenched in his dictatorial behavior.

 

The United States policy in Cambodia was a failure because it was based on two erroneous premises: (1) Hun Sen is the only person who has an organization which can give stability and promote prosperity in Cambodia, and (2) Hun Sen is the only person who can subdue the remnants of the Khmer Rouge forces.

 

The kind of stability that Hun Sen is said to be able to provide has been achieved by suppressing all opposition through the exiling or killing of those who dare to oppose him. Cambodia where corruption is systemic, making it one of the most thriving centers in Southeast Asia for all kinds of criminal activities such as drug trafficking, money laundering, child prostitution, and illegal immigrant transit. Because of the uncontrolled and illegal deforestation by senior military officers and business tycoons supporting Hun Sen corrupt regime, forest resources in Cambodia will be depleted within three years. This depletion, in turn, will have a devastating consequence on the environment and will soon turn Cambodia into a wasteland. Since the majority of Cambodians depend on land resource as the most important asset for their subsistence, the ecological problems resulting from deforestation will make Cambodia a beggar nation in the near future. These are definitely not the signs of efficient and capable governance.

 

A closer look at how Hun Sen went about solving the Khmer Rouge problem showed that Hun Sen chose the most expedient approaches. He provided a blanket pardon to all Khmer Rouge leaders regardless of whether or not they are responsible for implementation or design of strategies and policies resulting in the slaughter of about two million Cambodians. This immoral approach completely disregarded the minimum of respect for the rule of law and human rights. As an example is the fact that ironically most of the notorious Khmer Rouge responsible for the Cambodian genocide, who were condemned by the international community at the 1991 Paris conference in as criminals against humanity, are now all in Phnom Penh under Hun Sen’s protection while the Cambodian democratic and freedom fighters are being persecuted. Is this a just and equitable way to solve the Khmer Rouge problem?

 

The rigging of the July 26 election by Hun Sen is only one of the phases in the CPP long term strategy to deliberately and often with violence undermine the democratic process put into place by UNTAC in 1993 . This deadly and well planned strategy was revealed at a hearing in the Australian Foreign Affairs Sub-committee in a recent testimony by Lieutenant- General John Sanderson, former Commander of UNTAC Force in Cambodia. He went on to add that the deficiencies of the recent elections were in no sense unavoidable or attributable to difficulties of conducting elections in a developing country. Rather they flowed from a series of conscious political acts by the ruling clique, reflecting a lack of genuine commitment to the process and the rights of individual Cambodians.

 

The solution of the Cambodian problem must start with the recognition that Hun Sen is the problem because he can neither bring prosperity nor stability to Cambodia. He is a war criminal for having summarily executed political prisoners while in his custody during the July 5, 1997 coup.

 

The Clinton Administration must disengage itself from defending Hun Sen and from making Hun Sen the sole person capable of maintaining stability Cambodia for fear that he can create more troubles because he has more guns at his disposal. In order to achieve this goal, the Clinton administration must consider taking the following measures to signal more openly to Hun Sen that he cannot get away with his inept mismanagement of the economy and environment, and his criminal conduct toward the opposition and the Cambodian people including Buddhist monks;

 

 1. continue to deny Hun Sen the seat at the United Nations because of the illegitimacy of his regime and gross violation of basic human rights and the rule of law.

 

2. continue to cut off the economic and financial assistance, except humanitarian aid and not to put pressure on the World Bank and the IMF to resume their financial assistance because of Hun Sen’s bad governance and destruction of the environment.

 

3. recall the current Ambassador as soon as possible, and not appoint a new one until Hun Sen makes substantial and verifiable efforts to respect democratic principles, human rights and the rule of law by not oppressing the opposition and by arresting all those who had committed murders during the July 5 1997 coup as well as during the grenade attacks of KNP of Sam Rainsy and BLDP of Son Sann.

 

4 review the GSP granted to Cambodia because of the fact that the labor movement in Cambodia is not free and is under the control of Hun Sen and the CPP.

 

5. instruct the State Department not to put pressure on the opposition parties to enter any coalition government that is dominated by Hun Sen, even if King Sihanouk favors such an idea.

 

6. intensify the initiatives for an early establishment of an international war crime tribunal similar to those in Bosnia and Rwanda to bring to trial those notorious Khmer Rouge senior officials responsible for the Cambodian genocide such as Ieng Sary (former Pol Pot minister of foreign affairs) and Ke Pauk (director of Toul Sleng interrogation and torturing center) who are now under Hun Sen’s protection.

 

7. consider, in the near future, the possibility of establishing a caretaker government in Cambodia to provide a suitable and neutral political environment for genuine administrative, military, economic, financial, social, and institutional reforms to take place, without which no real progress and stability can be secured on a sustainable basis.

 

 

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Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific Affairs

 

Hearing on Post-Election Situation in Cambodia and US Policy Options

(October 2, 1998, at 10:00 a.m)

Room 419 Dirksen

 

"A Long-term and Integrated Look at the Cambodian Crisis: Some Suggestions for A Possible Solution"

 

By Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D.

SAIS, the Johns Hopkins University

 

I am very grateful to you Mr. Chairman for convening this hearing at this critical time in the post- election situation in Cambodia. I am fully aware that you are all busy with the many critical problems in the world today such as the Asian financial crisis and the Russian economic and political crisis which are having a contagious and negative impact on the US economy and that of the world. This hearing shows once again that the US Congress continues to be sincerely concerned about the plight of all oppressed people in the world, including the Cambodian people. This hearing is only one of the many that this committee under your chairmanship has frequently been holding on the situation in Cambodia during the past few years. I thank you.

 

I am deeply thankful to you and your colleagues for having made possible to have an independent Cambodian voice to discuss and analyze as honestly and straightforwardly as I can , the quickly deteriorating economic, political, and social situation in Cambodia, especially since the bloody coup which was planned and executed by Second Prime Minister Hun Sen against the duly elected First Prime Minister of Cambodia, Prince Ranariddh.

 

To fully understand the depth of this ongoing Cambodian crisis and, more specifically, the obviously Hun Sen staged and rigged July 26, 1998 election and its aftermath, one needs to briefly assess the role and the motivation of different interest groups involved. The proposed period of analysis started just before the presence of United Nations Transitional Authorities in Cambodia (UNTAC) in Cambodia (1992-93) and continues until the present day. For analytical purposes, one can divide these interest groups into two broad categories; 1) the domestic factors such as the Cambodian political factions, the King, the Cambodian NGOs and the local media, 2) the international community encompassing the United Nations system, the major powers and regional powers as well as the international NGOs and media.

 

I.         Domestic Aspect of the Cambodian Crisis   

 

 

A. Cambodian People’s Party (CPP): origin, organization, ideology, strategies, and policies

 

The CPP is a splinter group from the deadly and monstrous Khmer Rouge Movement under the leadership of Pol Pot. All current senior CPP members were senior Khmer Rouge cadre including Hun Sen, Chea Sim, Heng Samrin, Sar Kheng, Tea Banh. The split came after Pol Pot started his periodical purges against party members. The current CPP group fled to Vietnam to save themselves from the Pol Pot purge and not because they wanted to liberate Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge as Hun Sen and his apologists have often stated. On December 25, 1978, the armed forces of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge back along the border with Thailand. In January 1979, Vietnam installed a new government, headed by Heng Samrin, a former Khmer rouge general, and the regime was renamed the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK).

 

Gradually, the PRK had no choice but to release its firm grip on the economic organization of Cambodia. However, it kept firm control on the economic, political, and social organizations of Cambodia. Essentially, the PRK remained a communist organization with a centrally controlled and hierarchical economic and political command system. This centrally controlled command system is still in place today in Cambodia. However, it now wears the mask of a market system. As all typical communist organizations, the CPP remains a secretive organization and a one party state-controlled system. It does not tolerate any decent or political opposition however mild this may be.

 

Only with the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the subsequent halt of all Soviet financial and economic assistance to its satellites did Vietnam officially announce its withdraw from Cambodia. Without support from the socialist block the PRK was forced to start opening up and negotiating with the United Nations which was backed up by the major and regional powers for an election to set up a democratic system and a market economy in Cambodia.

 

The successful conclusion of the second Paris Conference in October, 1991 led to the establishment of UNTAC, under whose mandate an election was organized and carried out in May, 1993. The result of the election gave a clear majority to the non-communist parties which garnered a total of 69 seats. These parties included FUNCINPEC (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Independent Neutre Pacific et Cooperatif) led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Buddhist Liberal Democratic (BLD) led by former Prime Minister Son Sann, and Moulinaka (Movement de Liberalization National du Kampuchea) led by Ros Roeun. Despite the advantage of the incumbency and a deliberated, and vicious campaign of intimidation and political killings of the members of the opposition parties, the CPP (formerly PRK), led by former senior Khmer Rouge officials, Chea Sim, and Hun Sen managed to grab 51 seats.

 

The elected representatives established a Provisional National Assembly which succeeded in promulgating a new constitution. After a threat of secession of seven eastern provinces by the CPP with a tacit approval of the King. a new coalition government coalition was imposed on the victorious non-communist parties. In coalition Hun Sen and his CPP not only obtained the crucial post of Second Prime Minister, but also the important post of Chairman of the National Assembly. To lock in their minority position in any decision making in the National Assembly, the CPP succeeded in imposing the rule of two thirds majority in any vote in the national Assembly. FUNCINPEC was given the post of First Prime Minister. They co-managed major ministries such as Defense, Interior. The economic ministries were split between CPP and FUNCINPEC. The army, the police, and civil administration remained totally in the hands of the CPP.

 

The Royal Coalition Government of Cambodia (RGC) was a tenuous coalition. Political infighting continued, both within and among the parties in the government. Corruption was and continues to be widespread. This combined with the extremely low capacity of government to manage, was increasing the threat of destabilization, which culminated in the July 5, 1997 bloody coup organized and executed by Hun Sen against Prince Ranariddh.

 

Last year’s coup was only a phase in a long term plan by Hun Sen and his CPP to completely take economic, and political control of Cambodia. Despite the claims by Hun Sen apologists, it was not a reaction to preempt a so-called coup by Prince Ranariddh in collusion with the Khmer Rouge. The CPP’s longterm plan to derail and undermine the democratic process which was established by UNTAC which was agreed upon and paid for by the international community. This conspiracy was clearly enunciated by two former senior UNTAC officials, Lieutenant-General John Sanderson, Commander of UNTAC force, and Michael Maley, Senior Deputy Chief Electoral Officer during a recent hearing at the Australian parliament Foreign Affairs sub-committee in Canberra during which they commented that the CPP has been deliberately, and often violently, undermining the democratic process begun in 1993 by UNTAC. They went on to say that the deficiencies of the recent elections in Cambodia;

 

 

" were in no sense unavoidable or attributable to the difficulties of conducting elections in a developing country. Rather they flowed from conscious political acts by the ruling clique, reflecting a lack of genuine commitment to the process and to the rights of individual Cambodians" (1)

 

There were several bloody incidents which preceded the July 5 coup, such as grenade attacks against the opposition parties of Mr. Son Sann in 1995 and a worse one against Sam Rainsy in March, 1997. These were not isolated incidents. They were carefully planned and well executed for specific purposes; first to silence the opposition, and second to test the degree of commitment to the defense of democracy and the rule of law in Cambodia by the international community.

 

After having rigged the July 26, 1998, election, Hun Sen started to implement the last phase of his grand plan to gain complete control of Cambodia’s destiny. On September 7, he ordered the arrest of one of his most outspoken critics, Mr. Sam Rainsy, (Under international pressure, that order of arrest was subsequently withdrawn). Some of Hun Sen’s false accusations against Sam Rainsy include 1) plotting his own death during the bloody incident in March, 1997 in which several peaceful and lawful demonstrators were killed and over 100 other demonstrators were injured including a US citizen, and 2) for having incited riots against the government after the election. Regarding the grenade attack, several eyewitnesses reported that they saw Hun Sen’s personal security guards prevent those who committed this crime from being caught by the demonstrators. Up to today, nobody has ever been arrested for that incident.

 

At first one is struck by the fact that unlike the other two major totalitarian Asian countries, China and Vietnam, there are no political prisoners in Hun Sen’s Cambodia. The main reason for this anomaly is the fact that Hun Sen does not take prisoners. He just has his opponents murdered in the most savage way. If they are lucky, they are sent into exile, despite the fact that the current constitution does not permit such an action against any Cambodian citizen.

 

 

B. King Sihanouk’s Role and His Influence in the Current Cambodian Political Crisis

 

It is no simple matter for anybody, and especially for a Cambodian, to criticize a national icon like King Sihanouk and to analyze his role in the political life in the current Cambodian crisis. However, it would also be irresponsible and imprudent to leave Sihanouk’s role out of any assessment of the contemporary political situation in Cambodia. Right or wrong, and although being only a constitutional monarch, he still can command a lot of influence both in Cambodia and internationally.

 

On the bright side, he is a tremendously charismatic, charming, shrewd, and talented person. However, on the dark side and from past behavior, he was also known to be very unpredictable and mercurial, and not very committed to moral or democratic principles. By birth, he is an autocrat and behaves like one. Judging from his preferred places of residence outside Cambodia (Beijing and Pyongyang) and the leaders he admired and befriended with (Kim Il Sung, Mao Tse Tung, Ceaucescu, Hodja, Sukarno, to mention only the obvious ones)(2) he is no friend of democracy. The dark and machiavellian side of Sihanouk was recently revealed and well captured in an article in the Phnom Penh Post - a well respected English language local newspaper - describing the role of Sihanouk’s role as a power broker in the current constitution crisis resulting from the charge of frauds during the July 26, 1998 election, when it wrote that;

 

 

"The King is ‘smiling his Bayon face’, as one Khmer politician described it - the Bayon being the four faced god statue of Angkor. Under this premise, Sihanouk selectively makes his thoughts and advice known to all actors, much of it probably contradictory - all the while muddying the waters further even as many look to him for a solution"(3)

 

He has always allied himself with those with strong preference for power, more specifically raw power. For instance, during the 1970’s and 1980s, he worked very closely with the Khmer Rouge leaders such as Pol Pot, Son Sen, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan and has often proclaimed publicly that they were the most patriotic people dedicated and the best equipped to defend Cambodia’s sovereignty. Recently, he appears to have decided to switch his allegiance to Hun Sen even though he knows that Hun Sen is no royalist. Why then did the King decide to choose Hun Sen as his ally and to go against his own son, Prince Ranariddh and his own brother, Prince Sirivudh in the current crisis? He refused to pardon Prince Sirivudh who was framed by Hun Sen to have plotted his assassination, while he has pardoned some of the most notorious Khmer Rouge responsible for the Cambodian genocide, such as Ieng Sary (former Khmer rouge foreign minister) and Ke Pauk (the executioner of the Toul Sleng interrogation center). More recently, he reluctantly pardoned his own son, Prince Ranariddh, only after a great deal of international pressure.

 

To better understand this apparent contradiction, It is important to analyze the King’s motivation. It is a well-known fact in Phnom Penh political circles that one of the King’s main goals is to make his beloved consort queen Monineath (formerly Monique Izzi) a reigning queen after his death or incapacitation. To achieve his royal wish, King Sihanouk needs the support of Hun Sen and the CPP. For that reason Sihanouk has recently struck a deal with Hun Sen to have the constitution changed (4) to make possible a female to become a reigning queen, which the present constitution does not allow for. Queen Monineath, in turn, would groom her son, Prince Norodom Sihamoni to become king of Cambodia after her retirement or death. Therefore, King Sihanouk can no longer be considered to be a neutral party in this current constitutional crisis and any future search for its solution.

 

It is also important to point out that under Hun Sen there is no credible legal or justice system. Hun Sen is the law. The members of the National Election Commission (NEC) as well as the Constitutional Court (CC), the highest institutions in which to settle constitutional disputes are all stacked with Hun Sen appointees. That is why these two influential institutions which have enormous power to determine the outcome of any election have been consistently refusing to listen to the complaints of the two major opposition parties regarding the electoral frauds and intimidations before, during , and after the election.

 

One of UNTAC’s legacies was the establishment of a vibrant and sometime unruly written media. However, this press freedom is quickly dwindling under Hun Sen’s unrelenting assault which has included assassinations of editors and reporters in broad daylight and threatening grave consequences if they don’t stop criticizing him and his regime. Now most editors and reporters who opposed Hun Sen and the CPP have either gone underground or are in hiding.

 

Another organization which came under Hun Sen’s attack was the free Cambodian labor movement which is now practically under total state control. This in turn, raises the question whether the granting of GSP to Cambodia is still legal under current US law. A representative of the AFL-CIO in Bangkok has recently filed a petition to the Congress on this issue calling into question the legality of the granting of GSP to Cambodia.

 

The opposition parties are being literally torn into pieces. Immediately after the 1993 elections the two main opposition parties, FUNCINPEC and the BLD were subjected to systematic assaults through bogus accusations against prominent politicians such as Prince Norodom Sirivudh, former Deputy Prime Minister, by assassination during the July 5, 1997 coup, and through corrupt practices such as buying the allegiance of those opposition politicians who were ready to leave their parties. In this latter case, the most favored tactic was to create a splinter group and then allow the pro-CPP splinter group to use the old party name while refusing to allow the original members to do so. This method was devised to confuse the international Community and the Cambodian electorate. That is why the BLD became the Son Sann party, and the old Khmer Nation Party is now the Sam Rainsy party.

 

II. The International Aspect of the Cambodian Crisis

 

 

A.        The Ambivalent role of the international community in the current Cambodian crisis

 

Despite the CPP’s maneuvering, and intimidations before and during the July 26 election the majority of the Cambodian people came out en mass (90 percent) and courageously voted in favor of the opposition. As a matter of fact, together FUNCINPEC and Sam Rainsy parties received about 59 percent, while the CPP received only 41 percent of the total popular votes. In other words, the opposition won the election. However, because of the secret change in the seat distribution formula by the NEC, the CPP received 52 percent of the seats in the new National Assembly while the two major opposition parties together received only 48 percent of the total. These numbers do not add up to make the July 26 anywhere near the "miracle on the Mekong" as suggested by former Congressman Steve Solarz. Additionally, the European Union and ASEAN observers have prematurely declared that the election was free and fair and "broadly representative of the wish of the Cambodian people" without even bothering to wait for the electoral process to be completed.

 

It is important to point out that the preconditions for a free and fair election were never there to allow the election to move as scheduled. Almost all of the independent organizations such as the International Crisis group (ICG), the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous local NGOs have indicated that the opposition parties were not allowed sufficient access the electronic media, and that the NEC and the CC were not neutral. I would like to also point out that some influential members of the US Congress such as Congressmen Benjamin Gilman, Dan Burton, Tom Campbell, Dana Rohrabacher, Chris Smith, and Gerald Solomon, have recently written a letter to Secretary of State Albright to draw the attention of the Secretary of State to the post- election intimidations and irregularities and to ask her to have; 

 

 

"the State Department immediately deliver a firm statement to Hun Sen informing him that all acts of violence and ballots manipulation will not be tolerated." (5)

 

There were also the issues of the politically-motivated killings of opposition parties members prior to the election and continued impunity for the perpetrators of politically motivated violence.

 

B.        Wrong and damaging premises and double standard of judgment for the support of Hun Sen by the international community

 

Why then was the international community including the Clinton Administration so eager to push for the election to take place despite all the major problems which were mentioned previously? The answer to that is the fact that 1.) there is a general compassion fatigue and 2.) the politics of expediency have been adopted by the major and regional powers. The rationale for such realpolitik approach is based on two wrong premises. The first premise is that the CPP is the only efficient political organization which can maintain stability and promote prosperity in Cambodia. The second premise is based on the perception that the CPP is the only organization capable of defeating the remnant Khmer Rouge force.

 

1. On the first premise that Hun Sen and his CPP can maintain stability and promote growth is untrue, in fact Cambodia under Hun Sen has wasted a lot of economic and financial assistance to maintain an army whose main objective is to eliminate all opposition and to maintain an atmosphere of permanent fear in which to subdue and to control the majority of the population. In that sense, the CPP is a very efficient organization in the tradition of communist countries which destroy rather than builds the society.

 

One can cite many examples to illustrate the fiasco of the Hun Sen’s management of the Cambodian economy and society. For instance, Cambodia is on the US list of narco-states. The other distinctive failures of the Hun Sen regime include the pervasive presence of money laundering, the exploitation of children for prostitution and labor, the use of Cambodia as a staging area for illegal immigration to third countries, the pervasive corruption and banditry and, last but not least, a dismal record in human rights, and the mismanagement of the environment, especially of forestry resources .

 

It is estimated by two independent and professional organizations, Global Witness and the World Bank that at current rate of exploitation there will be no more forest left in Cambodia within three years. This, in turn, will deprive the majority of the Cambodian people the necessary means to grow food and to raise animals for field works. The impact of deforestation on the Cambodian society is well captured by Kirk Talbot, Senior Director for Asia-Pacific at Conservation International.

 

"The Plunder of Cambodia’s forest is viewed by many as close to spiraling out of control. The resulting damage to the country’s natural resource base is huge, as the loss of revenue to its government. And less tangible, but also important, is the concomitant loss of the government’s credibility as the protector of the common good. As a result how Cambodia deals with logging is vital to the country’s economic and political future." (6)     

 

For these reasons, Cambodia may soon become a beggar nation waiting for the international community to provide the basic food to survive. Because of the more pronounced cycles of droughts and floods Cambodia is already confronted with a growing and prolonged food shortage. This problem will become more acute within two to three years. Are these signs that the Hun Sen administration is efficient and capable of promoting growth and stability?

 

2. On the second premise that only Hun Sen and the CPP are capable of solving the Khmer Rouge problem, one should ask the following questions. How did Hun Sen go about solving this problem? Where are those Khmer Rouge now?

 

Hun Sen’s immoral method of solving the Khmer Rouge problem was to offer a general pardon to all Khmer Rouge except Pol Pot (who was already dead), Khieu Samphan, Noun Chea, and Ta Mok. The rest of the Khmer Rouge including the most notorious executioners of the two million innocent Cambodians are all now integrated into the Hun Sen government or army. In other words, Hun Sen has disregarded all the basic principles of a modern society like justice, the rule of law, and human rights.

 

The main reason why Hun Sen has been able to continue to oppress and impose his tyranny on the Cambodian people, is the fact that the international community has been too expedient and indifferent in dealing with him. They lowered their standards in judging his behavior in the and the management of Cambodian society. This point was eloquently expressed by Martin Collacott, a former Canadian Ambassador to Cambodia and chief Canadian observer during the July 26 election when he wrote that;

 

"The argument has been made that Cambodia has suffered exceptional trauma and dislocation in recent decades and that it is therefore not reasonable to apply the same standards we expect of more settled and economically developed countries.

 

This approach makes sense up to a point. The fact is, however, that, after an impressive start following the United Nations-sponsored elections in 1998, there has for the most part been more erosion than consolidation of democratic value"

 

Only by comparing Hun Sen’s management style and behavior to those of the Khmer Rouge can there be any sign of progress. In contrast, the Cambodian democratic movement has been judged according to the international standard of value in terms of justice, the rule of law and human rights.

 

This double standard way which the international community including the State Department has been adopting to judge Cambodian politicians has allowed Hun Sen to continue to destroy the Cambodian society and to lead Cambodia to remain dependent on foreign assistance. Based on his academic and professional experiences as an economist specializing in the reform of many countries in transition, this writer is convinced that Hun Sen does not even have a minimal grasp or understanding of any democratic or civil society principles to lead Cambodia toward a path of modernity and prosperity. Well schooled in the Khmer Rouge culture of violence and corruption, Hun Sen can only bring Cambodia down toward the path of permanent dependence and misery.

 

III.      What should the United States Policy be With Regard to the Ongoing Crisis in Cambodia?

 

Cambodia is a very small and poor country with only 11 million inhabitants. However, its people have had their share of misfortune and tragedy. The international community has spent more than US$ 3 billion to help Cambodia return to normal conditions through the work of UNTAC. On the surface, the international community has every reason to have compassion fatigue. However, if the international Community decides to drop Cambodia from its radar screen, this would only fulfill the wish of Hun Sen and allow him to rule Cambodia as a primitive despot.

 

I argue that the Cambodian people, because of their courage and tenacity in their belief in democracy and the rule of law still deserve the attention of the international community only if one argues not in economic or financial terms, but in humanitarian and ideological terms. To allow Hun Sen to run Cambodia as his private fiefdom and to behave like a tyrant oppressing the Cambodian people on a massive scale could send a very strong but wrong message to countries like Indonesia, Myanmar even China, where democratic movements are getting stronger and more active, and like Russia where democracy and the market system are being questioned.

 

For the reasons discussed earlier, the Clinton Administration should recognize that its policy of picking Hun Sen as the only choice for governing Cambodia is fundamentally flawed. I would like to suggest that if the Cambodian people are to have any chance of escaping mass starvation and permanent dependence on international generosity, the Clinton Administration in consultation with the Congress should consider the adoption of the following measures:

 

 

1. disengage itself from the current policy of considering Hun Sen as the only leader who can bring stability and prosperity for the Cambodian people. This policy of expediently supporting Hun Sen, at all costs, is contrary to the principles upon which President Clinton has publicly and officially stated as the cornerstone of his administration foreign policy; namely the promotion of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights in the world. Based on the above analysis, it is clear that Hun Sen is not a "born again democrat" as some State Department officials have been suggesting, and his political organization is only efficient at destroying but not at building a nation.

 

2. continue to deny Hun Sen the right to be represented at the United Nations until he can sufficiently and sustainably demonstrate his willingness to respect human rights, the rule of law and democratic principles.

 

3. strongly communicate to Hun Sen that he must make all efforts to bring to justice all those responsible for the political killings prior to and after the July 5, 1997 coup before the United States sends a new Ambassador to Cambodia. This would send a strong message to Hun Sen that the US means business if the current Ambassador can be withdrawn from Phnom Penh as soon as feasible.

 

4. continue to deny Hun Sen economic and financial assistance, except humanitarian aid, from the United States and from the international financial institutions such as as the IMF and the World Bank until Hun Sen makes substantial and sustainable efforts to improve the governance of the country, by eliminating corruption in general and stopping the destruction of the environment in particular.

 

5. review GSP for Cambodia as soon as possible to see whether the current Cambodian government labor law and practice are conformed to the existing US legal conditions for granting such an economic privilege.

 

6. make renewed and sustained efforts in bringing to trial all Khmer Rouge senior officials whose records are on files with the Cambodian Genocide Project and who are now under Hun Sen’s protection as soon as possible within the framework of an international criminal court similar to those for Rwanda or Bosnia.

 

7. refrain from pressuring the opposition leaders to join a coalition government dominated Hun Sen, even if King Sihanouk supports that idea. More specifically, the Clinton Administration should instruct the State Department not to put pressure on the opposition parties to enter into a CPP-dominated coalition government whose economic and social policies will have no chance to succeed because of the pervasive corruption and the absence of the rule of law within the CPP organization.

 

8. consider the possibility of establishing a caretaker government in Cambodia in the near future. Only when Hun Sen and his CPP are politically neutralized can the Cambodian situation really improve. But this requires a firm commitment from the United States and its allies to put this plan into action. The Cambodian situation is at such a hopeless juncture that only a drastic policy change by the United States, as the world leader in the promotion of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, can really have a lasting impact. This situation has recently been forcefully and soberly argued by Henry Kamm of the New York Times.

 

"I see no other way but to place Cambodia’s people into caring and disinterested hands for one generation of Cambodians, who will have matured with respect for their own people and will be ready to take responsibility for them. Unrealistic? of course. Unrealizable? No."

 

Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee for your kind attention

 

 

Foot Notes:

 

(1) For a more complete view on how the CPP has been undermining the UNTAC program, see Phnom Penh Post (9/04/98) "UNTAC officials speak out on election"

 

(2) For more details on Sihanouk's friends, see, Charisma and Leadership, by Norodom Sihanouk, Yohan Puublications, Inc., Tokyo, 1990

 

(3) Phnom Penh Post, (9/04/98) "Relaxed Hun Sen Holds the Royal Key".

 

(4) As reported by the National Radio of Cambodia - a government-run radio (AFS No. BK25081 42598)

 

(5) See the letter dated August 6, 1998 from the six members of the Congress to Secretary of State Albright

 

(6) For a detailed description of the devastating effects of deforestation on the Cambodian people, and the corrupt practice in Hun Sen regime, see "Logging in Cambodia: Politics and Plunder" by Kirk Talbot in Cambodia and the International Community, Asia Society, New York, 1998

 

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Nobody can save Cambodians but the Cambodians themselves

 

(Comments: please, find pasted below, a set of articles showing what I have written my comments on an article announcing Hillary Clinton planned visit to Cambodia in the coming weeks that I have already posted in this web site.

 

These supporting articles show how Vietnam has been able to make itself indispensable to both sides of its worst enemies, nmaely; the US and China, and to be able to use them to promote its own national interests.

 

Cambodians with its well-known mentality of dependency, know only to ask for help from the big powers, but never to use them (US and China) to serve its national interests, as the Vietnamese have been able to do so.

(Please, read more this dependency mentality of the Cambodian leaders, and how Vietnam has been able to exploit it to its full advantage at the expense of the Cambodian people; Revised Understanding Nam tien is a necessary condition.ppt.)

 

Of course, by suggesting that Cambodians should and can learn from the Vietnamese, I expect that most Cambodians would consider me as their worst enemy.  Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. October 22, 2010)

 

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"US-Vietnam collusion" behind tension in South China Sea

 

Ta Kung Pao website, Hong Kong, in Chinese; 20 Aug. 2010 The United States and Vietnam are closely colluding with each other and strengthening their military ties with the spearhead directed against China, thereby complicating the South Sea issue, exacerbating the dispute over sovereignty, and turning the South China Sea into the powder keg for triggering Sino-US military conflict. China should treat concerned countries in the South Sea issue differently in order to search for a breakthrough point to resolve the US scheme of sowing discord.

 

The United States is the super hegemonic power in the world, while Vietnam has not only always wanted to dominate the Indochina Peninsula but also claimed to "own" the entire sovereignty of China's Xisha [Paracel] and Nansha [Spratly] Islands. Vietnam has gone all out to engage in arms expansion and ganged up with foreign powers in a vain attempt to forever occupy most of the island reefs of China's Nansha Islands and the nearby waters.

Vietnam has divided the waters surrounding China's Nansha Islands under Vietnamese occupation into nearly 100 oil and gas bidding zones and signed petroleum and natural gas prospecting contracts successively with the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and other countries in recent years, in an attempt to use the economic interests from oil and gas to lure and win over the aforesaid powers to support its continued occupation of most of the island reefs of China's Nansha Islands and the nearby waters. So far, aside from the United States, which has taken the initiative to collude with Vietnam, Japan and France have also expressed their support for Vietnam.

 

The United States Woos Vietnam as Ally

 

At the Japan-Vietnam strategic dialogue held in Hanoi in July this year, Japan promised to help Vietnam build up its armed forces, while Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada also repeatedly emphasized that Japan could not sit by idly and remain indifferent on the South Sea issue. In July this year, the French Foreign Minister said in Vietnam that France would meet Vietnam's demand for all weapons.

 

The United States has plotted to use the South Sea issue to return to Southeast Asia. On 23 July, US Secretary of State Hillary [Clinton] said at the Asian regional forum in Hanoi, Vietnam, that settlement of the dispute over the sovereignty of relevant islands in the South China Sea would be in line with the US national interests. Of all concerned countries in the South Sea issue, Vietnam has the biggest contradiction and sharpest and most longstanding dispute with China and is also the strongest militarily. For this reason, the United States has chosen Vietnam as the point of support for rivalry with China and return to Southeast Asia. Washington has claimed the South Sea as US national interests, which are actually hegemonic interests. To intervene in the South Ease issue, the United States has threatened not to rule out military intervention. The United States intends to develop Vietnam as its new ally.

 

On 5 August, the Captain of USS Blue Ridge aircraft carrier, the flagship of Seventh Fleet, said menacingly: The Chinese Navy should act prudently in "disputed" waters in the South Sea.

 

On 8 August, the USS George Washington aircraft carrier visited Da Nang City in central Vietnam and received a Vietnamese military delegation on board while at anchor in the South Sea wasters near Da Nang.

 

On 10 August, the USS John McCain guided missile destroyer visited Vietnam. When Captain Jeffery Kim of Korean descendent and his sailors on board the ship arrived at the Tien Sa Port of Da Nang City, they received a warm welcome from the Vietnamese Navy. The ship went to the sea the next morning and, together with the Vietnamese Navy, conducted a 4-day training in air defence, emergency maintenance and repair, and fire prevention. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier also took part in the training. Commenting on the training, an official of the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defence said ecstatically: Of late, Viet nam has been especially disturbed "by China's territorial ambition." "The appearance of US military vessels in Vietnamese seaports has tremendous strategic significance." "I believe that the United States can play an even more important role in this region."

 

Both Sides Have Strategic Interests

 

Obviously the visits to Vietnam by the US aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyer on 8 and 10 August and the joint training with the Vietnamese Navy are spearheaded against China and bound to deal a serious blow to Sino-US and Sino-Vietnamese relations.

 

On 5 August, the US Wall Street Journal reported: The US-Vietnam negotiations on sharing nuclear fuel and technology have entered the final stage. The United States has even considered allowing Vietnam to enrich uranium on its own. The report said: Under US-Vietnam nuclear cooperation, US businesses will be allowed to sell nuclear parts and reactors to Vietnam. In 2001, the United States and Vietnam signed an agreement on supply of nuclear fission fuel and development of nuclear energy for civilian use. Vuong Huu Tan, president of the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute, said: The two sides reached a tentative agreement on nuclear cooperation in March this year, which is expected to finalize later this year. This is another concrete example of the US double standards on countries enriching uranium on their own.

 

The Vietnam War ended in 1975. In 1995, Vietnam and the United States buried the hatchet and established diplomatic relations. Since the first US military vessel's visit to Ho Chi Minh City in 2003, bilateral military ties have continued to deepen, including meetings and training of high-level military officers. In 2009, the USS John Stennis aircraft carrier, Seventh Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge aircraft carrier, and guided missile destroyer Lassen visited Vietnam successively.

 

Washington wants to turn Vietnam into the point of support for US return to Southeast Asia, while Vietnam hopes to rely on US power to expand maritime rights and increase Hanoi's bargaining chips to play a bigger role in the international arena. Such strategic common interests have become the chief propelling force for the rapid development of US-Vietnam relations in recent years. In the initial period of the establishment of diplomatic ties, US-Vietnam relations were focused mainly on humanitarian aid. Since the turn of this century, bilateral relations have entered the stage of vigorous growth. The United States helped Vietnam become a WTO member; the volume of bilateral trade had increased 38.5 times from $400 million at the time of the establishment of diplomatic relations to $15.4 billion in 2009; the United States is currently the largest investor nation in Vietnam; and the number of Vietnamese students in the United States has increased from 800 at the time of the establishment of diplomatic relations to 13,000 at the present, an increase of 16.25 times.

 

However, Vietnam is not satisfied with the bilateral relations only in economic, trade, cultural, and educational fields. Hanoi wishes, even more, to increase cooperation with the United States in the military and defence aspects. While the US and Vietnamese militaries have carried out frequent high-level exchanges of visits, the two countries' armed forces have plans for strengthening cooperation. Washington intends to provide military training for Vietnamese officers, while Vietnam also hopes to dispatch military officers to study in the US military academies. During her visit to Vietnam in July this year, US Secretary of State Hillary exchanged views with Vietnamese leaders about bilateral military exchanges and cooperation in defence affairs.

 

The South China Sea Becomes the Powder Keg

 

In a nutshell, the United States and Vietnam are closely colluding with each other and strengthening their military ties with the spearhead directed against China, thereby complicating the South Sea issue, exacerbating the dispute over sovereignty, and turning the South China Sea into the powder keg for triggering Sino-US military conflict.

 

The new US strategy towards China aims to deepen the encirclement of China, step up efforts to curb China's development, and exploit the South Sea issue to drive a wedge in relations between China and the ASEAN in Southeast Asia. While resolving the US scheme of sowing discord and safeguarding the maritime rights in the South China Sea, China should maintain friendly and cooperative relations with the ASEAN, which pose a test to the Chinese leaders' wisdom. As the ASEAN is consisted of countries important to China, both China and the ASEAN should cherish the friendly and cooperative relations.

 

Vietnam's willingness to be the US foot soldier will put itself in a treacherous position. It is easy to invite a god to your house but difficult to ask it to leave. It will be too late to regret when independence is lost. If [Vietnam] remember "comrade plus brother," it should not requite kindness with ingratitude.

 

Countries involved in the South Sea issue are not monolithic bloc. When Vietnam promoted internationalization of the South Sea issue, Philippine Foreign Minister Romulo openly opposed US intervention in the South Sea issue. China should treat concerned countries in the South Sea issue differently in order to search for a breakthrough point to resolve the US scheme of sowing discord.

 

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While worried about China, ASEAN remains wary of a US role

Marvin Ott YaleGlobal , 27 September 2010

 

WASHINGTON: The second ASEAN-US leaders’ summit in New York may have conveyed the impression of an emerging alliance. Sure, after years of keeping a low profile on Southeast Asian problems, the United States is more engaged than ever. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing by taking a public position supporting Association of Southeast Asian Nations efforts to seek peaceful resolution of territorial disputes with China through multilateral diplomacy and for status of the South China Sea as a “maritime commons” rather than a territorial sea.

 The image of Chinese expansion and US resistance has been reinforced by events to the immediate north in the East China Sea, after a Chinese fishing boat rammed a Japanese Coast Guard vessel off the disputed Senkaku-Diaoyu islands. China demanded release of the arrested captain, reparations and an apology from Tokyo. Japan agreed to the release, but declared acquiescence to the latter two demands “unthinkable.” Japan has been bolstered by Clinton’s assertion that Japanese “administration” of the islands falls under the purview of the US-Japan Security Treaty and Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ terse observation that the US “would fulfill our alliance obligations.”

Beijing’s strategic ambitions in Southeast Asia are real. From China’s perspective, Southeast Asia is its southern doorstep.

However, it would be a mistake to construe the New York summit as the beginning of a new Asian-American alliance against China. Despite anxieties about China’s growing power, no ASEAN countries would be willing to put their money where their mouths are. Suddenly the US is seen as standing athwart Chinese strategic ambitions in Southeast Asia – with ASEAN governments apparently lining up in support of Washington against Beijing. While much is valid in this characterization, it’s crucial that US policymakers and strategists not over-read Clinton’s comments in Hanoi, particularly when it comes to ASEAN support.

 

Beijing’s strategic ambitions in Southeast Asia are real. From China’s perspective, Southeast Asia is its southern doorstep – China has deep roots in the region derived from geography (a common border with Vietnam, Laos and Burma), ethnicity (large, economically powerful urban Chinese communities throughout the region) and history (the “tribute system” that expressed Southeast Asian deference to China over millennia).

 

In terms of strategic outlook, Chinese leadership evokes the classic realists of 19th century Europe – vitally concerned with prerogatives of sovereignty and the sanctity of borders, animated by calculations of power and influence. From the standpoint of the Chinese regime, Southeast Asia is properly understood as a natural and rightful Chinese sphere of influence, a region where China’s interests are paramount. When these are properly acknowledged, China is prepared to adopt policies that benefit Southeast Asia as well as China – a dominion of Confucian harmony and benevolence. Since the mid-1990s China has emphasized the latter with a sophisticated diplomatic “charm offensive” designed to portray a good neighbor dedicated to the economic advancement of Chinese and Southeast Asians alike.

Statements and actions over the years left no room for doubt that China viewed the South China Sea as Chinese sovereign territory.

 

The South China Sea is central to this ambition, but in a special category. China presented an ox-tongue-shaped dotted line, calling it historic waters, effectively encompassing the entire South China Sea and cutting across the major sea lanes. Until recently Chinese officials have cloaked the Chinese claim in a shroud of ambiguity, epitomized by careful avoidance of the key word “sovereignty.” Yet careful examination of Chinese statements and actions over the years left no room for doubt that China viewed the South China Sea as Chinese sovereign territory. Because China lacked the military capacity to enforce this assertion, it made strategic sense to obfuscate rather than clarify intentions. Deng Xiaoping often reminded his countrymen of a traditional Chinese aphorism: “Bide your time and conceal your capabilities until you are ready to act.” 

 

Clinton’s statement at the Asian Regional Forum in Hanoi was delivered in the context of growing concern among Southeast Asian governments regarding China. For months Vietnam had complained publicly and through diplomatic channels about Chinese “bullying” of Vietnamese fishermen and international oil company crews that want to prospect off Vietnam’s coast. Other ASEAN governments, while less overt, showed signs of disquiet over China’s buildup of its armed forces, particularly those designed for offshore power projection. China’s dam building on the upper Mekong, giving it control over that vital river system, has alarming implications for downstream states. The willingness of several ASEAN Ministers to speak out in support of Clinton in Hanoi was testimony to US diplomatic preparatory spadework and growing unease.

Clinton’s initiative has provided a dose of courage and self-confidence for ASEAN in its relationship with China.

 

There’s no question that the US willingness to stake out a position in support of a maritime commons, not a territorial sea, and multilateral diplomacy, vice China’s determination to deal with the Southeast Asian countries one at a time, was welcome in many regional capitals. It provided a vital, long overdue signal that ASEAN governments did not have to cope with China alone. In that sense Clinton’s initiative has provided a dose of courage and self-confidence for ASEAN in its relationship with China.

 

That said, US policymakers must have a healthy respect for the limits of what Southeast Asian governments are able and willing to do. To employ an overused metaphor, at least some ASEAN members may be prepared to show up and hold America’s coat if Washington duels Beijing. But don’t expect them to get into the arena in any but carefully circumscribed ways – for a number of compelling reasons.

First, it’s long been a truism that the Southeast Asian governments fear being forced to choose between China and America. No Southeast Asian country wants to make such a choice, but no less an authority than Singapore’s widely respected ambassador to Washington, Chan Heng Chee, has observed that, if forced, the Southeast Asians would generally opt for China. There’s a consensus in the region that the US-China relationship is vital to all concerned. When asked what kind of relationship best protects Southeast Asian interests, the answer is the proverbial Goldilocks principle – “not too hot and not too cold.” A cooperative but not deeply collaborative relationship is just right.

Despite significant investments in military modernization, no Southeast Asian country is prepared to confront China militarily.

 

Second, as previously noted, China’s “influence and strategic reach into Southeast Asia is deep, powerful and growing. This is particularly evident in the economic sphere. As the global financial crisis weakened the credibility of the US and European economies, China emerged as the largest trading partner of ASEAN. Between 2009 and 2010, aggregate trade is up roughly 50 percent year on year. Not coincidentally, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area entered into force at the beginning of 2010.

 

Third, despite significant investments in military modernization, no Southeast Asian country is prepared to confront China militarily. The only country that has done so in recent decades is Vietnam in response to China’s 1979 invasion across its northern boundary. Vietnamese forces acquitted themselves well in that encounter, but Hanoi is under no illusion that such success could be replicated today. The only naval and air forces that can credibly face off against China in the South China Sea are American – and if it came to that, US commanders should expect little or no operational support from ASEAN, with the possible and limited exception of Vietnam.

 

Fourth, ASEAN is not the feckless cave of winds that some Westerners describe. But it’s also not a unified, purposeful actor regarding the South China Sea. Several ASEAN governments, including Laos, Cambodia and Burma are highly responsive to Chinese interests and have no proverbial dog in the South China Sea fight. The best Washington can expect – and only if assiduously nurtured – is cautious diplomatic support along the lines of what was seen at the ASEAN forum. It’s an important shift from the past that Washington should welcome, with realistic expectations.    

 

Marvin Ott is a public policy scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and adjunct professor and visiting research scholar with Johns Hopkins University.

 

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HK daily article questions endurance of US-Vietnam "alliance"

BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific - Political
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

September 2, 2010 Thursday

Text of report by Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao website on 25 August

[By Shih Chun-yu, "Can US-Vietnam 'Alliance' Last?"]

 

At a moment when the situation in northeast Asia has suddenly become tense because of the US-Republic of Korea [ROK] military exercise and when Sino-US confrontation is keeping heightening, Vietnam has added fuel to the flames in Southeast Asia -it has reached an agreement with the United States on holding a joint military exercise, prompting the South China Sea security issue to heat up. All of a sudden, words that the United States and Vietnam have joined forces in dealing with China and a war in the South China Sea is inevitable have spread widely, casting a shadow on Sino-Vietnamese relations. Of course, there is some common foundation for joining forces between the United States and Vietnam -the United States is attempting to return to Asia and, while strengthening its relations with its old allies, it is actively seeking new cooperation partners; Vietnam is attempting to become the leader of Southeast Asia and is feeling uneasy about China's overall national strength growing day by day. The two countries chime in easily in guarding against and containing China. The consistency of their interests has prompted the long-time foes in the past to get together.

The South China Sea issue has always been a very sensitive issue in Sino-Vietnamese relations. With its geographical advantage, Vietnam, since the 1970's, has begun to nibble the Spratly Islands. So far, it has occupied 29 islands and isles, making it the country that, over the South China Sea disputes, has occupied most isles and reef islands in the South China Sea for the longest time, and whose attitude has been very tough, as well as the country that has been involved in the most problems with China over the South China Sea dispute. Vietnam knows that, with its own strength, it is unable to rival China for a long time, and thus has worked hard in an attempt to internationalize the South China Sea issue -economically, it has invited Western consortiums in a high-profile manner to cooperate on prospecting and exploiting petroleum and natural gas in the South China Sea in order to make huge profits; politically and diplomatically, it has kept raising the South China Sea issue on multi-lateral occasions, in an attempt to cozy up to other powers in order to boost itself and to balance its relations with China.

In the eyes of the United States, its dominating position in the Asia-Pacific region has met unprecedented challenges and its role in the west Pacific region has visibly slid. Furthermore, the rapid development of the process of the integration of the Southeast Asia region all the more has worried the United States. The "10+1" and "10+3" cooperation mechanisms have become perfect day by day and the China-ASEAN free trade zone has been established and has developed steadily. The momentum of China's development has been robust and its influence in the Asia-Pacific region has increased across the board, and so the United States is worried about being quietly squeezed out of Asia-Pacific. Thus, making use of Vietnam's delicate mentality towards China, the United States has deliberately played up "China threat" and quickened its pace of returning to Southeast Asia. The US-Vietnam agreement on holding a joint military exercise has important significance of indication -while symbolizing that the two long-time foes of the past have mended fences for their past squabbles and buried the hatchet, it makes clear to all that the Asia-Pacific region still is the world of the Americans.

However, in the current stage, the US-Vietnam "alliance" is but an ad hoc combination to cope with a particular event at a particular time. Putting aside that the old grudges for decades between the two countries cannot be buried overnight, the difference between the social systems of the two countries alone will make it very difficult for them to build mutual trust within a short period. The interests of the United States are global, and Vietnam's strategic focus is in Southeast Asia. The interests of the two countries are not completely in accord, a nd sometimes are even contradictory. For the United States and Vietnam, their relations with China occupy a prominent and important position in their diplomatic settings. Therefore, it is very difficult to imagine that a war will break out between China and the United States because of the South China Sea disputes. The ASEAN countries' attitudes on the expansion of the US influence are mixed, and the elevation of the US-Vietnam military relations also may arouse worries of many ASEAN countries. As the economic and trade relations between China and the countries around it have become increasingly close, integration of the Southeast Asia region without the presence of China is unimaginable. Vietnam's dream to become the regional leader relying on the support of US military strength can never be realized.

In the new international situation, the times of ensuring a country's national security relying on forming alliance are over. Adhering to the principle of "putting aside disputes and developing jointly" is very important to building the South China Sea into a sea of peace, stability, communication, and exchange, and a sea of promoting joint development. On the basis of mutual understanding and respect, resolving the disputes among the relevant countries through dialogue and cooperation is the only way to ensure regional peace and stability. This also is the maximum national interests of all relevant countries as well as a responsibility they should assume.

Source: Ta Kung Pao website, Hong Kong, in Chinese 25 August,20 10 

Vietnam hedges its China risk By The Hanoist Jul 30, 2010 As Vietnam and China celebrate an official "Year of Friendship" marking the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties, Hanoi is quietly pursuing a balance of power plan against its neighbor to the north. The contours of the still-evolving strategy consist of developing a common position vis-a-vis China within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), engaging the United States and forging security ties with other key regional powers. How this approach unfolds, however, will depend as much on domestic Vietnamese politics as the interests of the individual countries involved. Hanoi has used its chairmanship of the 10-member ASEAN to put territorial disputes in the South China Sea. on the grouping's agenda. China and ASEAN signed a non-binding code of conduct in 2002 and since then Beijing has sought to resolve differences through bilateral negotiations, where one-on-one it often dominates the other side. Within ASEAN only Vietnam has a contested land border with China in addition to ongoing maritime disputes over the Paracels (called Xisha by the Chinese) and Spratlys (called Nansha by the Chinese), two island chains in the South China Sea. The Philippines also claims ownership of the Spratlys, while Malaysia and Brunei have partial claims over the archipelago. Other ASEAN countries have been happy to let Vietnam bear the brunt of Chinese pressure while they develop stronger trade and investment ties to Beijing. So far, cooperation between Vietnam and Malaysia seems to be the most advanced. Last year, they made a joint submission to the United Nations commission that administers the Convention on the Law of the Sea. The filing, which delineated Vietnam's and Malaysia's respective exclusive economic zones in the lower part of the South China Sea, was quickly rejected as "illegal" by China, which claims the entire maritime area from Taiwan to Singapore. China's aggressive behavior has made other ASEAN nations without a direct stake in the island disputes take notice. When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared at the ASEAN Regional Forum on July 23 that the US had a "national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea", Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Vietnam were among the dozen countries that expressed support for a "collaborative diplomatic process". By openly wading into the South China Sea dispute, the US has given ASEAN support to develop a more coherent regional response. Vietnam reportedly urged the US in private talks to take a stronger stand, and Hanoi would have the most to gain if ASEAN countries stuck together more consistently when dealing with China. Hanoi's poor human-rights record makes it unlikely that the US and Vietnam will pursue an outright military alliance, but the two former adversaries now hold annual security talks and periodic military exchanges. In recent years, the US Navy has made over a dozen visits to Vietnamese ports and on at least two occasions Vietnamese officers have been flown out to visit US carriers. While the Communist Party leadership in Hanoi remains deeply ambivalent about getting too close to Washington, there is a growing realization that the US is essential to counter-balancing China's rise. Asian allies On the other hand, Vietnamese leaders have no qualms about partnering with Russia, a former Cold War communist ally. A deepening security relationship with Moscow now provides an additional hedge against China and has helped to modernize Vietnam's military, which is still largely reliant on Russian equipment dating from the 1970s. Hanoi is now among Russia's top arms clients, including recently signed contracts for six Kilo-class diesel submarines and 20 Sukhoi Su-30 multi-role fighters. Later this year, Vietnam will take possession of two Russian-made Gepard-class frigates, and discussions are underway for Russia to build and help operate a new submarine base in Vietnam, possibly in the strategic Cam Ranh Bay. India is another regional player finding common strategic cause with Vietnam. On July 27, the countries agreed to strengthen their defense cooperation during a visit by Indian army chief General V K Singh. New Delhi is wary of Beijing's efforts to extend its reach into the Indian Ocean. China and India also have a longstanding border dispute, which flared into war in 1962. New Delhi and Hanoi share China-related strategic concerns and have enjoyed historically close ties forged from their common anti-colonial struggles. Both militaries also operate similar Russian equipment. An ostensibly commercial deal could deepen India-Vietnam strategic ties. BP, which is raising capital to cover the cleanup costs of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has put various of its global assets up for sale, including an investment in the Nam Con Son basin off the southern coast of Vietnam. According to press reports, Vietnam's government has given approval to a consortium of state-owned Indian energy firms and Petro Vietnam to buy out BP's stake Significantly, this large-scale natural gas project is located in an area of the Nam Con Son basin where BP announced in March 2009 that it would cease exploration in response to pressure from China. By turning to Indian firms less likely to be intimidated by Beijing, Vietnam is now strongly asserting energy rights in its 200-mile exclusive economic zone Meanwhile, Japan and Vietnam have just announced the establishment of a bilateral security dialogue involving foreign and defense ministry officials. The security talks represent a significant evolution in the bilateral relationship, which until now has concentrated on trade and aid. Japan currently holds such talks with the US, Australia and India It is not surprising that Vietnam is hedging against China's strategic threat. The two countries have a long history of conflict, including China's seizure of the Paracels from Vietnam in 1974. The two neighbors also fought a brief border war in 1979 and fought a short naval battle in the Spratlys in 1988. According to diplomatic sources, the two sides have also engaged in unreported military clashes at sea as recently as 2005 and perhaps again in 2008. To be sure, Vietnam is not in a diplomatic or geographical position to lead an international coalition against China. Within the Communist Party leadership, especially among cadres responsible for public security and ideology, there are many who aim to emulate China's model of liberal economics and closed politics. A pro-China faction has recently backed a crackdown on bloggers and activists who have protested against China's encroachment on Vietnam-claimed territories For now, however, there appears to be a relative consensus within Vietnam's leadership to balance China's influence by cultivating relations with other regional powers, including the US, Russia and India. How that consensus evolves and strategic ties develop will depend largely on how the balance of power is struck among Communist Party factions at next year's highly anticipated National Party Congress. The Hanoist writes on Vietnam's politics and people (Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

 

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A tale of two tribunals

Written by Long Panhavuth

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

 

(Comments: this article written by Mr. Long Panhavuth is perhaps the best yet anything written by a Cambodian or a foreigner on the masquerade of the so-called ECCC or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. He definitely has no agenda except not to make the ECCC look like another show trial as the one that was hastily organized by the Vietnamese and their Cambodian protégés in 1979. As I have always used the word “show” to characterize that trial, Mr. Panhavuth does the same in his article.

Perhaps, more importantly, he also unmasked the hidden hands of the Hun Sen regime to use this show trial to demonize the Khmer Rouge in order to make his regime more acceptable to the international community and to legitimize his murderous regime by saying that Hun Sen may be bad but not as bad as the Khmer Rouge, and allow the Vietnamese to proclaim themselves as the ‘liberator’ of the Cambodian people, when in fact, they are the ones who created and nurtured the Khmer Rouge to be their surrogates in Cambodia. Only when the Khmer Rouge rejected their domination, did the Vietnamese turn against the Khmer Rouge, but not before allowing the Khmer Rouge to massacre one quarter of Cambodia’s population.

Why, because, by allowing the Khmer Rouge to mass-murder their own people, the Vietnamese have gained a lot in weakening the Cambodian capability to defend itself against Vietnamese imperialism. So, the crime of the Khmer Rouge was not only that they had committed mass murder, but more tragically, they had committed murder against the whole nation of Cambodia, by weakening the Cambodian ability to defend itself and by allowing the Vietnamese and Hun Sen to be the lesser evil.

This article is therefore one of the best ever written by anybody, no less by a Cambodian. Congratulations Mr. Panhavuth for your courage and belief in the truth and real justice. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 25, 2009)

 

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The ECCC must be beyond reproach in its form and function, or risk lethal comparisons to its 1979 predecessor.

 

The atrocities committed in Cambodia between April 17, 1975, and January 6, 1979, by the Khmer Rouge Regime were the focus of a trial in August 1979, conducted by the People's Revolutionary Tribunal with support from Vietnam and other communist-bloc countries. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were tried and sentenced to death in absentia. The judgement of that tribunal, however, was not internationally recognised as legitimate and was generally considered to be a show trial. The 1979 tribunal was not independent and utterly failed to respect the right of the accused to basic due process. The 1979 tribunal was conducted precisely to legitimise the political goals of the regime at that time. 

 

The current Khmer Rouge tribunal, with the sexy name Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), is the result of more than 10 years of effort and difficult negotiations between the United Nations and the Cambodian government, and is designed to avoid the flaws of the 1979 tribunal. It is a partnership between the government of Cambodia and the United Nations that features a cumbersome structure designed in large part to ensure that the court meets basic international standards for fair trials.

 

The participation of international professionals at all levels of the court - including the judiciary - and a requirement that decisions of the chambers be achieved by "supermajority vote" (a voting process that ensures at least one international judge concur with the decision) flow from concerns about the political commitment of the government to an independent court that meets international standards.   

 

How will the ECCC be different from the 1979 tribunal?  It should be different in that international participation in the prosecution, judiciary and administration will bring wisdom acquired from the emerging international criminal justice movement rather than from communist leadership with no commitment to judicial independence or fair trials. At the ECCC, it is probably fair to say, further, that the current international participation is not to collude or to legitimise the political goals of the current elites. Their participation is to ensure that the international standards for fair trials are upheld and that political interference or other illegitimate actions are prevented or exposed, but it is probably too early to give the international actors the credit as some of them may, indeed, be here just to collude or to legitimise.

 

A second basic difference between the 1979 tribunal and the ECCC should be demonstrated by the respect of the ECCC for the fair trial rights of the accused, but the ECCC is still struggling to gain credibility and to be a competent court amid corruption allegations within the administration of the Cambodian side. In addition, concerns about basic independence from political interference - evidenced by the disagreement among prosecutors about whether to investigate additional suspects - raises doubts about the hallmark of a fair trial: judicial independence. Furthermore, recent remarks by the government's spokesperson that more prosecutions are unnecessary feed concerns that the decision over who to prosecute is being made by politicians rather than by prosecutors.

 

Finally, unlike the 1979 trial, the ECCC proceedings shall be transparent from beginning to end in order to allow the Cambodian people to have a basic minimum understanding of the proceedings. The current policies of the court to protect almost completely the confidentiality of the investigation process and of proceedings to resolve differences between co-prosecutors or co-investigating judges harms the ECCC's claim to transparency.

 

The ECCC must reassess whether it is making sufficient efforts to distinguish its operations from the 1979 tribunal. The purpose of the ECCC is not merely punishment. It is also to tell more of the truth about the Khmer Rouge and to offer reconciliation with that truth. To succeed in fully distinguishing its work from that of the 1979 tribunal, the ECCC, its partners, donors and all those who act on its behalf must renew efforts to ensure that the court operates consistently according to international standards of justice, free of the taint of corruption or political interference. Furthermore, it must make much greater efforts to ensure that the people of Cambodia have a basic understanding of the proceedings.

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Long Panhavuth is a program officer with the Cambodia Justice Initiative, a legal NGO monitoring the Khmer Rouge tribunal.  

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Cambodia: Vietnamese Invasion of Cambodia

(http://www.photius.com/countries/cambodia/national_security/index.html)

 

For a view on Soviet policy toward Vietnam and Cambodia under Gorbachev go to

 

(http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19870201faessay7828/dimitri-k-simes/gorbachev-a-new-foreign-policy.html), and

http://www.photius.com/countries/cambodia/national_security/cambodia_national_security_vietnamese_invasion_~50.html

 

Sources: The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook

 

 Back to Cambodia National Security

 

(Comments: This is a credible account behind the real motivations  behind Vietnam’s decision to invade Cambodia and who are involved in this invasion. Vietnam clearly had cleverly planned and plotted the invasion very carefully. They have picked a group of Khmer Rouge, now known as the Cambodian People’s Party of Hun Sen, to be used as front to turn their invasion into “liberation.”

 

First, they had denied that there was any Vietnamese troop in Cambodia, then they had admitted it. Knowing the Cambodian mentality very well, even better than the Cambodians themselves, the Vietnamese Communists maneuvered the Cambodians to corner them in the international arena by using the Khmer Rouge genocide as the real motivation behind their invasion.

 

This article also shows that the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia not to save the Cambodian people as they publicly proclaimed, but to bring the recalcitrant Khmer rouge under their control. Once, they have succeeded in kicking out the Khmer Rouge of Phnom Penh, they went on to secure the control of Cambodia by using any means including the infamous K 5 plan in which they had sent Cambodians  to plant mine field in malaria infested areas in the west of Cambodia to build the so-called “Bamboo Wall.”

 

More importantly the article clearly shows how Sihanouk was then working very closely with the Khmer Rouge to fight against the invasion. Now, Sihanouk is supporting Hun Sen and declared publicly that Vietnam did not invade Cambodia but liberate it.  Why did Sihanouk change his mind on this important historical fact on which the destiny of the Cambodian nation and people strongly depends on. The answer is the fact that Hun Sen control the Khmer Rouge trial process, he can bring Sihanouk to be tried under the accusation that the former king was indeed a collaborator of the murderous Khmer Rouge. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington January 25, 2009)

 

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The public unveiling of the KNUFNS dashed any remaining expectations that Cambodian-Vietnamese disagreements could be solved without further armed conflict, because the Hanoi-backed front openly called for the ouster of the "reactionary Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique." Because the KNUFNS was far too weak to topple the regime of Democratic Kampuchea, virtually the entire combat burden would fall on Vietnamese forces, which, for this purpose, had been steadily building up troop strength on the border during the preceding months.

 

Nervous Khmer Rouge leaders in Phnom Penh did not have long to wait after the KNUFNS announcement, for, on December 25, 1978, Hanoi launched its offensive with twelve to fourteen divisions and three Khmer regiments (that later would form the nucleus of the KPRAF), a total invasion force comprising some 100,000 people. Vietnamese units struck across the Cambodian frontier in five spearheads that thrust initially into northeastern Cambodia. One task force drove west from Buon Me Thuot (in Dac Lac Province, Vietnam) along Route 13 and Route 14 to capture Kracheh City (the capital of Kracheh Province). A second column attacked west from Pleiku (in Gia Lai-Cong Tum Province, Vietnam), and followed the circuitous Route 19 to capture Stoeng Treng City (the capital of Stoeng Treng Province). In thus concentrating its initial thrusts in the northeast, Hanoi may have had several objectives. One of these may have been to capture quickly substantial expanses of the Cambodian territory that had been an early spawning ground for the Khmer Rouge and its fledgling RAK in the late 1960s. The remoteness of this region would have rendered it difficult to dislodge Vietnamese forces, no matter what the outcome of the war. An early occupation also would have preempted Khmer Rouge units, if they were pressed harder elsewhere, from falling back to this area where they might have enjoyed a measure of public support. The attacks in the northeast also may have been intended to confuse the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea about where the full brunt of the Vietnamese offensive would fall.

 

Khmer Rouge commanders were not deceived by the Vietnamese thrusts toward Kracheh and Stoeng Treng, however, and made no attempt to reinforce the northeast. Instead, they erected their main defense line in an arc across the flat, rice-growing plains of southeastern Cambodia, astride the most probable Vietnamese axes of advance. Their calculation of Vietnamese intentions proved correct, as Hanoi's forces unleashed the full weight of their offensive in this area. From Vietnam's Tay Ninh Province, heavily armed Vietnamese units drove along the axis of Route 7 toward their objective, the river port of Kampong Cham. Farther south, Vietnamese units with air support attacked along Route 1, in the direction of Phumi Prek Khsay (also known as Neak Luong), the Mekong River gateway to Phnom Penh. The fifth and final Vietnamese spearhead drove west from Ha Tien, Vietnam, to capture the ports of Kampot and Kampong Saom, and thus to prevent the resupply by sea of retreating Khmer Rouge forces.

 

Resistance to the invading Vietnamese units by the RAK could have been suicidal, given the disregard for human life previously displayed by the forces of Democratic Kampuchea. Instead, heavy fighting was localized. Major engagements were fought before Kampong Cham and Phumi Prek Khsay and at Tani, inland from the coast of Kampot Province. RAK units, already deprived of experienced commanders by party purges, withered under sustained pounding by Vietnamese artillery and airstrikes, and many of them simply scattered before the Vietnamese offensive, some to regroup later in western Cambodia.

 

By January 5, 1979, the main Vietnamese spearheads had driven to the eastern banks of the Mekong River. Incomplete evidence hints that the Vietnamese offensive originally may have intended to go no farther. The way to Phnom Penh lay open, however, because the Khmer Rouge units were falling back. Vietnamese forces paused briefly, perhaps to wait for bridging and ferrying equipment and the latest orders from Hanoi, then proceeded to carry out the final assault on Phnom Penh. Khmer Rouge leaders elected not to defend the city, and it fell on January 7.

 

After the fall of the capital, Vietnamese units continued their advance in two columns into western Cambodia, capturing Batdambang and Siemreab. The columns met at Sisophon and drove on to the Thai border, where there was heavy fighting in March and in April. In the meantime, some remaining Khmer Rouge units offered scattered resistance before they melted away into less accessible areas. There the Khmer Rouge leaders soon rekindled an insurgency against the new government in power, just as they had in the late 1960s, and insecurity persisted in the countryside in spite of the continued Vietnamese presence.

 

On the diplomatic front, Vietnam, maintaining it had no troops in Cambodia and attributing the lightning-like victory to the KNUFNS, at first denied responsibility for the invasion. When called before the UN Security Council, however, Hanoi's representative, tacitly admitting the presence of Vietnam and citing numerous Western press reports of Pol Pot's genocidal actions, implied that his country had overthrown the Pol Pot regime in the name of humanitarian and human rights.

 

The Vietnamese sweep through Cambodia produced an unprecedented level of turmoil on the Thai border, as disorganized and bypassed Khmer Rouge units and civilian refugees fled before their advancing enemy. Amid this chaos, in 1979, two anti-Vietnamese insurgent movements, besides the Khmer Rouge, came into being. The first of these was the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces (KPNLAF--see Appendix B), the armed wing of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF--see Appendix B), which gave allegiance to Son Sann, a noncommunist, perennial cabinet minister in successive Sihanouk administrations. The other was the Sihanouk National Army (Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste--ANS--see Appendix B), the armed wing of the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendant, Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopératif-- FUNCINPEC--see Appendix B), which owed allegiance to Sihanouk. Fighting independently, these noncommunist guerrilla movements and the Khmer Rouge fomented continuous rebellion in the early 1980s that could not be quelled, despite a substantial Vietnamese military commitment to this purpose. Operating from refugee camps on the Thai frontier, the insurgents made forays into the Cambodian border provinces and kept the countryside in a permanent state of insecurity.

In the 1984 to 1985 dry season, the Vietnamese military command in Cambodia, frustrated because of depredations by the guerrillas, undertook a sustained offensive to dislodge them from their sanctuaries in the refugee camps. These installations were pounded by artillery and were overrun by Vietnamese tactical units. The operation, which was intended to cripple the Khmer guerrillas, had the opposite effect, however. It drove them away from the border, and they undertook prolonged forays deeper into the Cambodian interior.

 

To restrict guerrilla activity, the Vietnamese erected a physical barrier on the Thai-Cambodian border. Code-named Project K-5, the effort consisted of clearing jungle growth; of erecting obstacles, such as ditches, barbed wire, and minefields; and of building a road parallel to the border. Construction of the project, which began in 1985, was performed by corvée labor. All districts in Cambodia were tasked to provide able-bodied males for tours of duty on the project that ranged from three to six months. Living conditions were primitive in the construction camps, and the diet was inadequate; the area was malarial, and unexploded ordnance from past conflicts was a constant threat. The barrier was completed in 1987 at an unrecorded cost in Cambodian lives. Preliminary indications shortly thereafter revealed that it was having little effect on guerrilla movements to and from the Cambodian interior.

Data as of December 1987

 

NOTE: The information regarding Cambodia on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Cambodia Vietnamese Invasion of Cambodia information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Cambodia Vietnamese Invasion of Cambodia should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA.

 

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Press Release: Genocide Prevention Task Force Releases Report

 

For Immediate Release

December 8, 2008

Contact:  Andrew Hollinger, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

202-488-6133 Lauren Sucher, United States Institute of Peace.  202-429-3822

 

Prevent Genocide and Mass Atrocities

 

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen and other leading figures call on new administration and Congress to make preventing genocide and mass atrocities a national priority

 

Washington, DC - The Genocide Prevention Task Force today released its final report on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  The report makes the case for why genocide and mass atrocities threaten core American values and national interests, and how the U.S. government can prevent these crimes in the future.

 

Jointly convened by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace, the Task Force began its work last November with the goal of generating concrete recommendations to enhance the U.S. government’s capacity to recognize and respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities.

 

'The world agrees that genocide is unacceptable and yet genocide and mass killings continue,' said Madeleine K. Albright, former Secretary of State and Co-Chair of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. We believe that preventing genocide is possible, and that striving to do so is imperative both for our national interests and our leadership position in the world.

 

'This report provides a blueprint that can enable the United States to take preventive action, along with international partners, to forestall the specter of future cases of genocide and mass atrocities,' said William S. Cohen, former Secretary of Defense and Co-Chair of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. There is a choice for U.S. policymakers between doing nothing and large-scale military intervention.  We hope this report will help us utilize those options.

 

Other Members of the Genocide Prevention Task Force include:  John Danforth, Thomas Daschle, Stuart Eizenstat, Michael Gerson, Dan Glickman, Jack Kemp, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Thomas R. Pickering, Vin Weber, Anthony Zinni, and Julia Taft who passed away earlier this year.

 

The report, which is entitled ‘Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers’, asserts that genocide is preventable, and that making progress toward doing so begins with leadership and political will. The report provides 34 recommendations, starting with the need for high-level attention, standing institutional mechanisms, and strong international partnerships to respond to potential genocidal situations when they arise; it lays out a comprehensive approach, recommending improved early warning mechanisms, early action to prevent crises, timely diplomatic responses to emerging crises, greater preparedness to employ military options, and action to strengthen global norms and institutions.

 

'We are keenly aware that the incoming president’s agenda will be massive and daunting from day one,' Secretaries Albright and Cohen noted.  ‘But preventing genocide and mass atrocities is not an idealistic add-on to our core foreign policy agenda.  It is a moral and strategic imperative.’

 

The Task Force calls for the development of a new government-wide policy on genocide prevention, which would include the following specific actions designed to better equip the U.S. government to prevent genocide and mass atrocities:

- Having the president himself demonstrate that preventing genocide is a national priority, for example by an early executive order, and continuing public statements on genocide prevention.

 

- Creating an interagency Atrocities Prevention Committee at the National Security Council to analyze threats of genocide and mass atrocities and consider appropriate preventive action.

 

- Making warning of genocide or mass atrocities an ‘automatic trigger’ of policy review.

- Developing military guidance on genocide prevention and response and incorporating it into doctrine and training.

- Preparing interagency genocide prevention and response plans for high-risk situations.

- Investing $250 million in new funds for crisis prevention and response, with a portion of this available for urgent activities to prevent or halt emerging genocidal crises.

- Launching a major diplomatic initiative to create an international network for information-sharing and coordinated action to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.

- Providing assistance to build capacity of international partners including the UN and regional organizations to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.

- The report concludes that the core challenge for American leaders is to persuade others in the U.S. government, across the United States, and around the world, that preventing genocide is more than just a humanitarian aspiration, but a national and global imperative.

 

The Task Force was funded by Humanity United and other private organizations.

 

About the Convening Organizations:

 

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a living memorial to the Holocaust, inspires citizens and leaders to confront hatred, promote human dignity and prevent genocide.  Federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanence, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by donors nationwide.

 

The American Academy of Diplomacy is dedicated to strengthening the resources and tools America brings to managing its diplomatic challenges, and accomplishes this through outreach programs, lectures, awards, and writing competitions. In doing so, the Academy promotes an understanding of the importance of diplomacy to serving our nation and enhancing America’s standing in the world.

 

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, and increase peace-building capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peace-building efforts around the globe.

 

The report may be downloaded for free at: www.ushmm.org, www.academyofdiplomacy.org, www.usip.org.

 

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"Scream Bloody Murder"; a CNN Program on Genocide

Voices of hope in the face of evil

 

Story Highlights

CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled the globe for documentary on genocide

Amanpour: The few people who stand up and confront evil give me hope

Watch "Scream Bloody Murder" on Thursday December 4 at 9 p.m. ET

 

Read 

       

VIDEO

By Christiane Amanpour
  CNN Chief International Correspondent

 

(CNN) -- No one teaches reporters how to cover a war, much less wars that include genocide. Most of us rely on the wisdom of experienced colleagues and a lot of on-the-job training.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour in a Sarajevo cemetery; she returned to Bosnia for "Scream Bloody Murder."

 

My first war assignment -- Bosnia, in the 1990s -- included visits to the Sarajevo morgue to see the bodies. How else would a journalist know exactly how many Muslim children were cut down by Bosnian Serb snipers? How else could we put names to civilians left faceless by mortar shells from the surrounding hills? I learned what it means to bear witness.

I found my voice and my mission in Bosnia. I learned to seek the facts, to tell the truth no matter how difficult or unpopular. I learned that objectivity meant covering all sides and giving all sides their hearing, but never to draw a false moral equivalence when none exists. I learned never to equate victims with their aggressors. I learned that there are limits to the style of journalism that goes: "On the one hand, on the other hand."

 

Most of all, I learned that as reporters our words and our actions have consequences and that we must use this powerful platform, television, responsibly.

 

But how many times have people asked me, when I've come back from a place like Bosnia or Rwanda: Is it really that bad? I have found that many people want to believe that I am exaggerating. I guess they do not want to believe such evil can exist. Or perhaps they just do not want to be pushed into that moral space where they would have to take a stand and do something.

 

Genocide is hard to imagine -- despite all we know about the Holocaust. Or perhaps, ironically, as a result of it being the most documented event in modern history. Many people now believe that if the extermination is not done on the Nazis' industrial scale or is less than complete, it is not genocide.

 

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  In Depth: Scream Bloody Murder

 

They are wrong. Genocide is mass murder with the intent to wipe out a significant part of an ethnic, religious or national group. It means killing people not because of what they did, but because of who they are.

 

It is the world's most heinous crime.

 

And it continues, despite an international treaty written 60 years ago this month. With a unanimous vote on December 9, 1948, the fledgling United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. The signatories committed themselves to act, although the convention does not say what intervention is required. And sure enough, instead of using the convention as a springboard to action, political leaders in the ensuring years have invoked reason after reason not to stop the bloodshed.

 

If there is any hopeful sign, it is in the voices of people with the emotional and intellectual courage to stand up and scream bloody murder -- often at personal or professional risk.

 

Some are members of the political establishment who believe that doing the right thing is also the pragmatic thing to do. Others are ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. What makes them do it? Over the course of filming a two-hour documentary, I found a few common threads. Watch "Scream Bloody Murder," Thursday December 4 at 9 p.m. ET

 

Unlike politicians who make policy from the detachment of their national capitals, these men and women have been on the front lines. Like Father François Ponchaud, a French missionary in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, they have seen the victims' suffering first hand.

 

Scream Bloody Murder

 

Christiane Amanpour introduces you to the courageous few who saw evil and tried to stop the killing.
December 4, 9 p.m. ET

see full schedule »

 

Like Peter Galbraith, an idealistic staff member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee who wanted the U.S. to punish Saddam Hussein for using chemical weapons against the Kurds, they are convinced that the accounts of refugees are true.

 

And like Richard Holbrooke, a U.S. diplomat whose Jewish grandfather fled Germany when Hitler came to power, they see where action -- sometimes military action -- can make a difference.

 

None considered himself a hero. And some, like Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, who led a U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, believe they did not do enough.

 

Dallaire was one of those good men who put on a uniform and felt that it meant something, that he was actually there to make a difference.

 

Unfortunately, he was sent to Rwanda with an impossible mandate and without the backing of the international community. He was helpless to stop the slaughter of 800,000 to 1 million ethnic Tutsis at the hands of their Hutu countrymen.

 

Imagine if that had happened to you or me? How would we be able to live with ourselves?

 

In any single crisis, I can understand that political leaders are under pressure not to intervene. But stepping back to look at the consistent pattern, one must ask: Is it acceptable?

Amanpour Live

CNN's Christiane Amanpour takes your questions about genocide in a 30-minute special on CNN.com Live
December 4, 1 p.m. ET

iReport.com: Submit questions »
see full schedule »

 

In the 1970s, the Carter administration touted human rights as a core value in U.S. foreign policy, but knew that military intervention against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was politically inconceivable after the disastrous war in Vietnam.

 

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration was courting Iraq as an ally against Iran and as a market for U.S. exports when Saddam Hussein was gassing the Kurds; a punishing trade embargo would have destroyed the budding relationship.

 

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration would not take military action against the Bosnian Serbs without backing from the European allies.

 

And some U.S. officials even avoided characterizing the slaughter in Rwanda in 1994 as genocide lest it lead to a call for action under the U.N. Genocide Convention. Military force: The last resort? Or the first resort? »

 

But three years into the Bosnian war -- after the massacre at Srebrenica -- the U.S. finally forged a coalition of previously reluctant allies to bomb the Bosnian Serb military positions. They stopped the war, then led the peace process and the peace enforcement that has survived to this day.

 

And because we the press, the storytellers, finally made it impossible for our Western democratic governments to tolerate mass murder of men women and children in the age of 24/7 satellite TV, 3½ years later, the U.S. led its allies in a pre-emptive strike against genocide in Kosovo. NATO, established to protect the West during the Cold War, had launched its largest military strike -- for a purely humanitarian mission.

 

And today, there is a grass-roots American movement that has brought the genocide in Darfur to such prominence.

 

We're always told that evil happens when good men do nothing. And the question -- my question as a reporter and as a witness to history is: Will we ever learn? Or will I or my children or my successors be reporting on this same kind of atrocity and inhumanity for years and years to come? This is what I don't understand about the human race.

 

So thank goodness for the few good men and women who summon the courage to do something in the face of evil, to stand up and confront it. They give me hope.

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All About Genocide • Nazi Party • Cambodia • Rwanda • Bosnia and Herzegovina • Darfur

 

 Priest tried to warn of Cambodia's insanity

 

Story Highlights

Francois Ponchaud was sent to do missionary work in Cambodia in 1965

A priest, he became a crusader against the worst genocide since the Holocaust

Ponchaud kept a dossier of refugee accounts and radio transmissions

His articles and book helped expose the Khmer Rouge's brutal totalitarian regime

Next Article in World »

 

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 VIDEO 

 INTERACTIVE

By Erika Colin
CNN

 

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (CNN) -- Francois Ponchaud was a newly ordained Catholic priest when he arrived in Cambodia in 1965 from a small village in France.

Francois Ponchaud said refugees' accounts of the genocide "went beyond my wildest imagination."

1 of 3

He was sent to do missionary work. But within a decade he would become a crusader against the worst genocide since the Holocaust.

"I was staying by the Cambodian people's side," Ponchaud said, "through the good and the sadness and the suffering."

 

When he arrived at age 26, Cambodia was a peaceful place: a bucolic land of villages, peasants, rice paddies and Buddhist monks. Ponchaud studied Cambodian history and Buddhism, became fluent in Khmer, made friends and immersed himself in the culture -- falling in love with the country and its people.

 

But the peacefulness was short-lived.

 

By 1970, Cambodia was descending into chaos as the Vietnam War spilled across its borders. In the countryside, the Americans were carpet-bombing Vietcong outposts. In the capital, Phnom Penh, Washington was propping up a corrupt government.

 

From the jungles, a sinister and brutal communist rebel group called the Khmer Rouge was fighting to overthrow Cambodia's U.S.-backed regime.

 

Scream Bloody Murder

 

Christiane Amanpour introduces you to the courageous few who saw evil and tried to stop the killing.
December 4, 9 p.m. ET

see full schedule »

 

On April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge. They began to reinvent Cambodia according to an insane blueprint. They emptied the cities, including some 3 million in the capital, forcing all the residents into the countryside -- and toward a dark future.

 

"As of noon, all the people started leaving," Ponchaud said. "Then I saw all my friends who were leaving. ... There were hundreds of thousands of people who were trudging along a few kilometers an hour. It was truly a staggering sight. Incredible." Watch Ponchaud describe the exodus from Phnom Penh »

 

Ponchaud was told to stay at the French Embassy, where thousands fleeing Phnom Penh desperately sought asylum. One of the few foreigners able to communicate with the Khmer Rouge, he spent days at the embassy gate, trying to negotiate. Watch Ponchaud discuss the significance of the embassy gate »

 

In the weeks that followed, the Khmer Rouge let him leave the embassy twice. Both times he searched for clues about what was happening in the country. But Phnom Penh was empty. Read a reporter's notebook of his journey through Cambodia's killing fields »

 

Ponchaud was expelled from the city in the last evacuating convoy, as the Khmer Rouge forced all foreigners onto trucks and out of the country. At the border, Ponchaud broke down, weeping.

 

"It was as though we had gone mad," he said. "We were getting out of a country of the living dead."

 

With the country sealed, the Khmer Rouge went about creating their new Cambodia -- and the killing began in earnest.

The Khmer Rouge envisioned a return to Cambodia's medieval greatness -- a "pure" nation full of noble peasant farmers.

 

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Killing fields survivor documents Cambodian genocide

 Reporter's notebook: Cambodia's killing fields

 

Fothat, though, they had to purge everyone else: the rich, the religious, the educated, anyone from a different ethnic group.

 

"All those who were opposed to the government were killed," Ponchaud said. "And all those who didn't work quite hard enough were killed."

 

Hundreds of thousands were worked -- or starved -- to death. "Perhaps a good chunk -- a solid half -- died from sickness and lack of health care," he said.

 

By September 1975, Ponchaud was back in France and ready to resume his work. His missionary society in Paris asked him to keep track of events in Cambodia. He quickly became the "go-to" person for Cambodian refugees arriving from Thailand, and he began documenting their stories.

 

At first, Ponchaud had a hard time believing the accounts of execution, torture, deportation, forced labor and starvation. Read how a Khmer Rouge survivor is documenting the genocide

 

"They were burning villages ... sending people into the forest without giving them anything to eat," Ponchaud said. "It went beyond my wildest imagination."

 

Horrified, Ponchaud devised a plan to gather more information: A friend living on the Cambodian border would record and send him broadcasts from Radio Phnom Penh -- the official voice of the Khmer Rouge -- in which the government described its transformation of the country. Read a former Khmer Rouge member's account of the killings

 

Ponchaud found that the broadcasts substantiated the refugees' claims. As unbelievable as those claims were, the broadcasts told of the same policies. What the refugees were saying was true.

 

"I decoded the radio -- the official declarations. And then the refugees would give me the 'experienced' side. It matched up," he said. "On one hand, the ideology, and on the other, the lived   experience." Watch Ponchaud describe how he was able to decode the Khmer Rouge ideology »

 

For months, Ponchaud gathered and documented information, repeatedly denouncing the Khmer Rouge. His testimonials appeared in the French press as early as October 1975.

 

He also wrote to the president of France and Amnesty International, and appeared before the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Watch Ponchaud discuss his efforts to alert people to the genocide »

 

In 1976, angered by inaccuracies in Le Monde's reporting on the Khmer Rouge, Ponchaud fired off a letter to the newspaper's editor -- along with a dossier of refugee accounts and radio transmissions. He was contacted immediately and asked to write for the newspaper. His articles were published in February 1976. Watch Ponchaud tell the Le Monde story »

Though few accounts of Cambodia's nightmare were appearing in the press, the U.S. government was receiving frequent briefings about what was happening there. In a meeting in November 1975, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger acknowledged the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. But he also knew that they shared an enemy with the U.S. -- Vietnam.

 

"Tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them," Kissinger told an official in the region, according to a declassified State Department account. The Khmer Rouge "are murderous thugs," he said, "but we won't let that stand in our way." Read Kissinger's words in the declassified State Department document (pdf)

 

By 1977, the Khmer Rouge had been in power for two years, and much of the world remained unaware or uninterested. Many who did hear accounts of Khmer Rouge brutality found them hard to believe. Even prominent liberals and intellectuals doubted that a supposedly egalitarian peasant movement would perpetrate such horrors on their own people.

 

Amanpour Live

 

CNN's Christiane Amanpour takes your questions about genocide in a 30-minute special on CNN.com Live
December 4, 1 p.m. ET

 

iReport.com: Submit questions »
see full schedule »

 

Ponchaud then published a startling book called "Year Zero." It was one of the first to expose the brutal totalitarian regime of the Khmer Rouge to the world. Still, no help came for Cambodia.

 

"I was pretty frustrated," he said. "The governments did not react. You know, countries don't defend human rights. They are always subservient to politics."

 

In January 1977, the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter promised a change. Carter vowed to put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. But it would take 15 months for him to publicly condemn the Khmer Rouge as the world's "worst violator of human rights."

 

Even then he took no action to stop the slaughter. Invasion, he said, was not an option for a country still recovering from the Vietnam War.

 

Instead, in December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia after years of cross-border skirmishes. The Vietnamese quickly overthrew the Khmer Rouge, who fled back into the jungle.

 

The world would finally start to see that all Ponchaud had said was true. More than 2 million Cambodians were dead. The scope of the catastrophe quickly became clear. In the fall of 1979, Carter responded, raising $32 million to help the refugees.

 

Today, Ponchaud is back in Cambodia, continuing his efforts for the Cambodian people, building schools, holding Mass and working on local projects. Often referred to as "the friend of the Cambodians," he is considered an expert on the country. But this time he has no illusions.

 

"No one defends human rights," he said. "Governments are cold beasts looking out for their own interests."

 

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Our Cambodian-American group's activites to help Cambodia

 

In my suggest Road map to freedom for the Cambodian people (posted just above in this page), I had specifically mentioned the role of the Cambodian Diaspora as follows;

 

Cb    "Cambodian Diaspora can and must play a positive role in this endeavor, by taking full advantage of its freedom and accessibility to education, management and skill formation for the pursuit of material and spiritual well-being, and last but not least, by exercising their constitutional rights to participate fully in the democratic process in those Western democratic countries to influence and to bring about international support to Cambodia. However, the main effort remains in the hands of the Cambodian people themselves. "

 

Following that prescription, here are some selected acitivities of our group, as part of our efforts to save our people from certain death, namely, consisting of allerting members of the US Congress on the tragic condition and plight of the Cambodian people living in South Vietnam, known as the Khmer Krom (Cambodians from lower Cambodia). They have been subjected to wholesale mistreatment byu the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), which by definition, amounts to a genocide, as reported by a German  human right advocate and film-maker, Rebecca Sommer entitled "Eliminated without bleeding." (please, see that video from the link contained in tour letter to the US senators posted below)

 

Unfortunately, the majority of Cambodians, especially the Hun Sen government with the tacit approval of Sihanouk, not only did not help our Khmer Krom compatriots, but, instead, they are helping the SRV in its continued policy systemic and systematic mistreatment of the Khmer Krom people, For instance, the Hun Sen government had kinapped the Reverend Tim Sakhorn, a Bhuddist monk, Patriarch of a pagoda in Takeo province, and  then secretely delivered him to the SRV to be tried and quickly condemned for breaking the so-called treaty of' Friendship and cooperation' between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Hun Sen's government.

 

As part of my 'suggested road map to Freedom for the Cambodian people', and as Cambodian-Americans, our group has written letters (posted below) to all 100 US senators to allert them of this plight of the Khmer Krom people, and to ask them to take up and incorporate the wholesale mistreatment of the Khmer Krom by the SRV issue when the Senate will discuss House Resolution 3096 on human rights violation in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and to incorporate the Khmer Krom genocide issue into the US Senate version of that resolution.

 

Wahsington DC. February 17, 2008

 

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D.

 

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Khuang Abhaiwongse

(Prime Minister of Thailand of Khmer origin)

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(Comments: Recently, a lot of Cambodians, especially those who are from overseas have been very excited and very nationalistic with regard to the row with Thailand on the recent Preah Vihear dispute. By so behaving, these well-meaning people have forgot that they are playing into the bloody and treacherous hands of Hun Sen who has been using the old conflict between Thailand and Cambodia to deflect the real and deadly problem for Cambodia's survival, that is the Vietnamese imperialism and genocidal practice against the Khmer people and the Khmer Krom, in particular.

 

These so-called nationalists should have asked themselves the following questions: (1) which one of the two neighboring countries is more deadly for Cambodia, Thailand or Vietnam; (2) which of the two Cambodian minorities who are now living in Soutn Vietnam (Khmer Krom) and Surin province (Khmer Surin) in Thailand are being liquidated, the Khmer Krom or the Khmer Surin? (3) Is Hun Sen a nationalist or a Traitor? 

 

Without any doubt in my mind, it is the Khmer Krom who are being physically and culturally eliminated (defined as genocide according to the geneva convention on genocide), and not the Khmer Surin. On the contrary, the Khmer Surin are being totally integrated into the Thai society, and even one of them (Khuang Aphaivong became prime minister of Thailand three times during the 1940's, as the article pasted below has shown.

 

Please, think again, before pushing Cambodia even closer into the abyss, by emotionally and blindly supporting Hun Sen in his Marchialvelian scheme to make Thailand the enemy number one of Cambodia; when in reality, it is Vietnam that is the main enemy of the Cambodian people as the whole content of this web site has shown. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. November 24, 2008)

 

Khuang Abhaiwongse พันตรีควง อภัยวงศ์
4th Prime Minister of Thailand
In office August 1, 1944 – August 31, 1945 January 31 - March 24, 1946 November 10, 1947 - April 8, 1948
Monarch	Ananda Mahidol Bhumibol Adulyadej
Preceded by	Plaek Phibunsongkhram (1944) Seni Pramoj (1946) Thawal Thamrong Navaswadhi (1947)
Succeeded by	Tawee Boonyaket (1945) Luang Praditmanutham (1946) Plaek Phibunsongkhram (1948)
Born	May 17, 1902(1902-05-17) Battambang, Cambodia
Died	March 15, 1968 (aged 65)
Nationality	Thai
Spouse	Leka Abhaiwongse

 

Major Luang Khuang Abhaiwongse (May 17, 1902 - March 15, 1968; Thai ควง อภัยวงศ์) was three times the prime minister of Thailand.

Khuang was born in Battambang now belonging to Cambodia as the son of the Siamese governor of the province Battambang, Chao Phraya Abhayabhubet. He visited the Debsirin school and the Assumption College, Bangkok, and studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France. After his return to Thailand he worked in the telegraph department, finally becoming the director of the department.

During World War II he received the title Major, as he joined the guard of King Rama VII. This service also earned him the title Luang Kowitabhayawongse. In the governments of Phraya Phahol Pholphayuhasena and Plaek Phibunsongkhram he became minister, and was elected as prime minister on August 1, 1944, after Plaek's plans to move the capital to Phetchabun and to create the Phutthamonthon park failed to get enough approval from the parliament. On August 17, 1945 he resigned to make way for a new administration.

In 1946 he was one of the founders of the Democrat Party, and became its first leader. The fourth national elections on January 6, 1946 were won by the Democratic Party, which gained him a second term as prime minister starting on January 31. Only 45 days later, on March 24, his government lost an election in parliament and he resigned.

He became prime minister a third time on November 10, 1947 following a coup d'état led by Phin Chunhawan. However, the coup leaders were not pleased with the performance of Khuang's government and forced him to resign on April 8, 1948. This also ensured Plaek to become prime minister again. Khuang continued in politics as the opposition leader and leader of the Democratic Party.

 

Preceded by Plaek Phibunsongkhram	Prime Minister of Thailand 1944–1945	Succeeded by Tawee Boonyaket
Preceded by Seni Pramoj	Prime Minister of Thailand 1946	Succeeded by Luang Praditmanutham
Preceded by Thawal Thamrong Navaswadhi	Prime Minister of Thailand 1947–1948	Succeeded by Plaek Phibunsongkhram

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Khmer Krom gather in Mekong Delta for festival celebrations

 

(Comments: Khmer from Kampuchea Krom are very resilient and continue to fight for their survival a race and a community. The chance for their success is very slim as long as the Hun Sen regime backed by Sihanouk continues to submit to the Vietnamese imperialism.

 

It is unfortunate that some Khmer krom In a recent telephone conversation, I heard a young Cambodian American of Khmer Krom ancestry told me that he felt more confortable with the Vietnamese than with the Thai. Despite all the ongoing genocidal acts committed against them by the Vietnamese, some Khmer Krom still believe that they are better treated by the Vietnamese than their compatriots, the Khmer Surin in Thailand.

 

This kind of irrational attitude makes me feel more pessimistic than ever before about the viability of the Khmer Krom community in South Vietnam, and about the survival of the Cambodian people in particular. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. November 15, 2008)

The Phnon Penh Post; Written by kay kimsong

Friday, 14 November 2008

LOST LANDS Kampuchea Krom covers an area of 89,000 square kilometres in southern Vietnam. The Khmer Kampuchea Krom Foundation claims eight million ethnic Khmers live in the region, facing cultural and religious persecution by the Vietnamese government.    Despite government restrictions on religious practices, Khmers in southern Vietnam take part in the traditional Cambodian festival THOUSANDS of ethnic Khmers known as Khmer Krom turned out Tuesday and Wednesday to celebrate the annual Water and Moon Festival in southern Vietnam, witnessing two days of dragon boat races and other festivities. Thirty dragon boats competed for prizes in the event, which was chaired by the Vietnamese provincial governor and the head Buddhist monk, according to the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Association. Yoeun Sin, head of the Khmer Krom Monks' Association, said up to a million Khmer Krom from across the Mekong Delta attended the Water Festival celebrations in Vietnam's Soc Trang province - known in Khmer as Khleang. In kampuchea krom, we can't implement everything we would wish for. "Many monks came to support the dragon boats from each province," said Yoeun Sin, adding that the celebration was vital to preserve Khmer culture inside Vietnam. "We have to organise the Water Festival every year to remember our traditions and cultural practices," he said. Yoeun Sin added that the Khmer Krom boat races, which were held at a local dike, lacked the support of concurrent events inside Cambodia. "There are no big sponsors here like in Phnom Penh," he said. "But Kampuchea Krom monks are following their boats and have supported them with food and money. The special thing [here] is that monks have freedom to support and watch the boat races freely." Preserving Khmer culture Hul Pirom, 26, a Khmer Krom student at Pannasastra University in Phnom Penh, said that cultural practices - including the celebration of the festival - were limited by the  Vietnamese government and less lavish than the national festival organised in Preah Vihear. "I am very proud of the government for an exciting celebration of the Water Festival," he said. "In Kampuchea Krom, we can't implement everything we would wish for," he added. Thach Setha, president of the Khmer Kampuchea Community, said the festival was a way for the Khmer minority in southern Vietnam to resist government oppression. "Every family in Kampuchea Krom celebrates the Water Festival to remember Khmer heroes and military commanders who once protected the territory," he said. "The special meaning of the festival is to demand freedom."

 

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One big happy family in Cambodia

By Bertil Lintner

Asia Times

March 20, 2007

 

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Cambodia’s family tree link by global Witness

(http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/546/en/cambodias_family_trees)

 

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PHNOM PENH - Cambodia's rough-and-tumble politics have long been bloody, marred by frequent political assassinations and violence. But never before have they been quite so blood-linked.

 

The English-language fortnightly Phnom Penh Post published without comment in late February a family tree it had compiled, revealing how the top leaders of the ruling Cambodia People's Party (CPP) have become more intimate through an old-fashioned Cambodian custom: arranged marriage. And the growing family ties run all the way to the top of Cambodia's political pyramid, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Southeast Asia's longest-serving leader.

 

For instance, there is Hun Sen's brother, Hun Neng, currently serving as governor of Kompong Cham, whose daughter, Hun Kimleng, is married to the deputy commissioner of Cambodia's National Police, Neth Savoeun. Meanwhile, Hun Neng's son, Hun Seang Heng, is married to Sok Sopheak, the daughter of Sok Phal, another deputy commissioner of the National Police. Hun Sen's 25-year-old son, Hun Manith, is married to Hok Chendavy, the daughter of Hok Lundy, the National Police commissioner.

 

Another of the premier's sons, Hun Many, 24, is married to Yim Chay Lin, the daughter of Yim Chay Li, secretary of state for rural development. One of Hun Sen's daughters, Hun Mali, 23, meanwhile, is married to Sok Puthyvuth, the son of Sok An, Hun Sen's right-hand man and minister of the Council of Ministers. The friendship between Hun Sen and Sok An dates back to the early 1980s, when Hun Sen was foreign minister and Sok An director of the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now those personal ties run blood deep as in-laws.

 

And that's just a sampling of the connections at the highest echelons. Heng Samrin, who was Cambodia's head of state from the Vietnamese invasion in January 1979 to the United Nations intervention in 1991, and now serves as president of the National Assembly and honorary CPP president, has a daughter named Heng Sam An, who is married to Pen Kosal, an adviser to Sar Kheng, deputy prime minister and minister of the interior - as well as brother-in-law of Senate and CPP president Chea Sim.

 

Heng Samrin's adviser, Cham Nimol, is the daughter of Cham Prasidh, minister of commerce. Another of Cham Pradish's daughters, Cham Krasna, is engaged to Sok Sokann, another of minister Sok An's sons. Sar Kheng's son, Sar Sokha, meanwhile, is married to Ke Sunsophy, daughter of Ke Kim Yan, commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. And Hun Sen's wife, Bun Ramy, currently serves as president of the Cambodian Red Cross, while its second vice president, Theng Ay Anny, aka Sok An Anny, is Sok An's wife.

 

Family traditions

 

There has been no official reaction to the Phnom Penh Post's revealing study. Intermarriage among members of the ruling political and business elites is not uncommon in Asia.

 

In neighboring Thailand, Field Marshal Phin Choonhavan's son, Chatichai Choonhavan, became prime minister of Thailand, while his daughter, Khun Ying Udomlak married Phao Sriyanond, director general of the Thai police. Another high-ranking Thai army officer, Thanom Kittikachorn, was the brother-in-law of fellow military dictator Praphas Charusathien, while his son, Narong Kittikachorn, also became a military strongman, while his sister Songsuda married Suvit Yodmani, who has served with several Thai governments.

 

Sino-Thai tycoons are known to have arranged their children's marriages to members of other top business families to progress their commercial interests. But in Cambodia's case, where many of the political elite were wiped out during Khmer Rouge-led purges between 1975 and 1979, the number of political marriages is extraordinary. And these new family ties between the children of ministers and top officials potentially set the stage for the CPP's grip on power to continue for generations.

 

Significantly, the CPP's family connection is emerging simultaneously with a waning of the royal family's influence over national politics. Ever since Hun Sen and his inner circle of friends and advisers ousted former prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a 1997 coup, the royalist Funcinpec party's political fortunes have waned.

 

Ranariddh was forced into exile after the bloody putsch that killed many of his party members, but later returned to Cambodia to become president of the National Assembly after inconclusive general elections in 2003, when the CPP was unable to garner enough votes to form a one-party government and after much squabbling joined with Funcinpec in a wobbly coalition.

 

One of the sons of former king Norodom Sihanouk and half-brother of the present monarch, Sihamoni, Ranariddh resigned that post last March and subsequently left the country again. While he was away, he was dismissed as co-chairman of the Council for the Development of Cambodia as well as the National Olympic Committee. He later returned to Cambodia - and was ousted as president of Funcinpec, the main opposition party, amid an internal power struggle in October that many political analysts believe Hun Sen had a hand in.

 

Not surprisingly, perhaps, several of Funcinpec's original leaders were also related. Ranariddh's uncle and former king Norodom Sihanouk's younger half-brother, Norodom Sirivudh, served as foreign minister in a Funcinpec-led government in 1993. Ranariddh's half-brother, Norodom Chakrapong, meanwhile, helped found Funcinpec but later defected to the CPP. Their half-sister and Sihanouk's eldest child, Norodom Bopha Devi, has served as minister of information and culture, while her latest consort, Khek Vandy, was elected to the National Assembly on a Funcinpec list in 1998.

 

But Funcinpec's family pride has waned considerably since it emerged as the biggest party in the UN-supervised elections in May 1993, when it captured 45% of the popular vote and outpaced the CPP, which came in a close second with 38%. Many political observers think Ranariddh's recent ouster from Funcinpec may represent his last political gasp.

 

His former Funcinpec colleagues recently sued him on allegations that he embezzled US$3.6 million from the sale of the party's headquarters last August. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found the prince guilty and sentenced him - in absentia - to 18 years in prison. Ranariddh had recently set up a new party, aptly named the Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP).

 

Funcinpec, the NRP and the opposition Sam Rainsy Party will be among 10 different political parties standing against the CPP juggernaut in upcoming commune council elections, which are scheduled for April 1 and widely viewed as a bellwether indicator for next year's general elections.

 

It may well be an April Fool's election, with the opposition fractured and vulnerable and the CPP allegedly pursuing a campaign of violence and intimidation against opposition candidates and their supporters in rural areas. Khieu Kanharith, CPP minister of information, predicted on February 22 that his party would win about 97% or 98% of the positions in the commune councils, and 95% of the vote in the general elections next year. That may well be the case, as Cambodia is fast morphing into a one-party state dominated by the CPP.

 

The Phnom Penh Post in its February 9 edition quoted a foreign diplomat as saying: "The CPP controls the government, the National Assembly, the Senate, 99% of the village chiefs, the provincial governments. Their influence goes through the judiciary, through the police ... Practically everything is controlled by one party."

 

That assessment would appear to jibe with 55-year-old Hun Sen's January 9 pronouncement that he does not intend to stand down from the premiership until he is at least 90 years old. By then, a third generation of CPP family-tied politicians and officials, if everything goes according to the apparent plan, will just be coming of political age.

 

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review, where he reported frequently on Cambodian politics and economics. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.

 

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

 

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Cambodia, Vietnam vow to boost bilateral ties

ASEAN BUSINESS; November 10-16, 2008

 

(Comments: the article posted below is another ominous sign that Hu Sen is just a stooge of the Vietnamese. He is no Cambodian patriot as he recently tried to fake his way through in the Preah Vihear controversy with Thailand. The sadest part obout this Preah Vihear confict is the fact that so many well-menaing but short-sighted Cambodians including those who are living overseas, were so worked up by Hun Sen's fake nationalism that they forgot who Hun Sen really is. All objective and well known observers have indicated that Hun Sen is not a Cambodian patriot but a Vietnamese stooge, as this article has shown. He is, to simply put, a traitor.

 

Now, let 's ask ourselves a  fundamental question; can a traitor be a nationalist at the same time? Think again, my fellow-Cambodians. Cambodia cannot afford to fight on two fronts. Hun Sen had used the Preah Vihear issue for the sole purpose to divert the attention from the deadly and long-standing grip of Vietnam on Cambodia, known as 'Nam Tien,' as he did in 2003, when he organized a frenzy mob to sack and burn a number of Thai business firms in Phnom Penh.  Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. November 11, 2008)

 

                                                          -------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Cambodia and Vietnam agreed Nov 4 in Hanoi to intensify their friendship and comprehensive cooperation to lift the ties to a new height in the years to come.

 

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Vietnamese counterpart Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung expressed their satisfaction at the development of bilateral relations over the recent past during their talks held after a welcome ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported.

 

Vietnamese PM Dung stressed the significance of the visit by the Cambodian PM, saying that the visit would help strengthen neighborliness and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries.

The Vietnamese government leader spoke highly of his Cambodian counterpart’s contribution to cementing friendly and cooperative ties between the two sides and congratulated him on being re-elected as Cambodian Prime Minister for the fourth term.

 

Hun Sen said his visit aims to enhance friendship and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries. He thanked the Vietnamese Government and people for their assistance to Cambodia in the past as well as during the current national construction and development.

The two PMs agreed to promote the exchange of visits by delegations at all levels to increase mutual understanding and give priorities to cooperation in human resources development, trade and investment, energy, mining, oil and gas, industrial crops and transport.

 

The two sides were unanimous in creating favorable conditions for trade and service activities in order to raise two-way trade to more than US$2 billion by 2010, and encouraging cooperation between localities.

 

They also agreed to continue their close cooperation in security and defense, as well as the fight against terrorism, transnational crimes, smuggling, and drug and human trafficking.

 

The two sides reaffirmed their principle of preventing all hostile forces from using the territory of either country to do harm to the other and undermining the Cambodia-Vietnam friendly and cooperative ties.

 

The two PMs highly valued the achievements made in the planting of border markers and affirmed their determination to accelerate the work in the principle of strictly observing the 1985 treaty on land border demarcation and the 2005 supplementary treaty. They were resolved to complete the historical work in the first six months of 2012.

 

During the talks, the two PMs also exchanged views on regional and international issues of mutual concern and agreed to further their cooperation at international and regional forums.

 

Following the talks, the two PMs witnessed the signing of five agreements, including the ones on visa exemption for ordinary passport holders, transit of goods and railway cooperation.

 

Other cooperation agreements were reached between the Cambodian and the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications, and between the Cambodian National Radio and the Radio Voice of Vietnam.

 

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Vietnam Genocide Against Khmer Kampuchea Krom

 

Link to Khmer Krom wholesale persecution by Vietnam entitled

‘Eliminated without Bleeding’ 

 

(Comments: a word of caution before watching this series of film clips on how Vietnam is committing an ongoing genocide to eradicate our brothers and sisters from Kampuchea Krom from the surface of the earth, while Sihanouk and Hun Sen claim that it is not a Cambodian problem but an internal problem of Vietnam. 

 

Please, click either on the underlining title "ELIMINATED WITHOUT BLEEDING' pasted below to watch this sequence of film clips showing an extemely detailed depiction of how much suffering our Cambodian brothers and sisters are enduring daily from the murderous hands of the Vietnamese government.

 

If the Khmer Krom are allowed to perish without anything done to help them from all of us, we certainly are going to disappear soon as well. So, wake up Cambodians, wherever you may be living now. The end is very near. Naranhkiri Tith Ph. D. Washington DC, November 27, 2007) 

 

ELIMINATED WITHOUT BLEEDING 

 

 is a one-hour documentary on the Khmer Krom (Cambodians from lower Cambodia) indigenous peoples who are living in their ancestral land in the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam. The Khmer Krom explain how they are oppressed and eliminated as a minority people. There is no freedom of speech, religion or culture. Aggressively Vietnamized, the Khmer Krom struggle to maintain their way of life and identity.

 

Please, to watch the tragic and horrible saga of the Khmer compatriots from Kampuchea Krom vividly captured by this set of film clips. to watch, please, either click on the link pasted below, or copy and paste it on a 'http' browser.

 

http://rebeccasommer.org/documentaries/Khmer-Krom/index.php

 

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Vietnam’s Expansionism in Indochina:

Strategies and Consequences on the Regional Security

by Kang P.

 

Summary 

 

(Below an excerpt from an article entitled ‘Vietnam’s Expansionism in Indochina’ by Kang, P. gave a vivid account of the barbarity with which Vietnam had inflicted on the Cambodian people.  Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. October 12, 2008)

 

The performance of Vietnam’s current expansionism in Indochina is a result of its Strategic Southward Move. In the space of a few hundreds years, Vietnam had managed to built its Empire through successive annexions and new forms colonization.

 

Not only the Fundamental Rights of People annexed [Cham, Montagnards (Mien, Mnong, Koho, Jarai, Degar), Hmong Khmer Krom] – representing in 1998-99 more than 13% of Vietnam’s total population * - or placed under Vietnam’s control (Cambodian and Laotian) are ignored and violated but South East Asia’s security order may also be threatened am’s hegemonic ambitions. That is why this expansionism performed by this country constitutes a real danger for regional and international security.

 

Based on the Cambodian case, this paper tries to analyse the strategies implemented by Vietnam for its expansionist process and assesses its consequences on the regional and international security.

 

Key Words:

 

Annexation – Ethnic Minorities – Strategic Manipulations - Violation of Self Determination Rights – Hegemonic Ambitions – Threat for Regional Security.

 

* Dang Nghiem Van, Chu Thai Son and Luu Hung: Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam, Culture & People, 2000.

 

                                         ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I - Southward Expansion Policy and Strategies

 

After breaking away from China, the cradle of the Vietnamese nation in the 10th century was only the area encompassed by the Delta of Tonkin. As early in the 13th century, Vietnam began its southward expansion policy. Initially, it encroached and definitely annexed the Kingdom of Champa (currently central Vietnam) in 1693. Then in early 17th century, it began encroaching and occupying Khmer territory of Cochin-China or Kampuchea Krom (present-day South of Vietnam). Today, this invading process is accelerating in an unprecedented pace.

 

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Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly

 

(9 December 1948)

 

Article I. The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

 

Article II. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

 

a) Killing members of the group;

 

b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

 

c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

 

d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

 

e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

 

Article III. The following acts shall be punishable:

 

a) Genocide;

 

b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

 

c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

 

d) Attempt to commit genocide;

 

e) Complicity in genocide.

 

Article IV. Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.

 

Article V. The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or of any of the other acts enumerated in Article III.

 

Article VI. Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.

 

Article VII. Genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article III shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition. The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force.

 

Article VIII. Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III.

 

Article IX. Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfillment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in Article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.

 

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Vietnam’s repression of the heroic nationalist movement led by Mr. Son Sann’s ancestors to liberate temporarily, Oknha Son Kuy of Kampuchea Krom, who was decapitated by the Vietnamese was brutal and can be considered as genocide, as defined by the 1948 Geneva Convention as posted above. Nevertheless, the revolt had succeeded, and gave Cambodia back their reduced land area and a temporary freedom, until the Khmer kings, because of their constant and destructive family disputes, had asked Dai-Viet and Siam to provide protection, and to take jointly control of Cambodia, under as co-suzerainty pact.

 

In 1863, King Norodom asked the French to come and ‘protect’ Cambodia, from these two perennial enemies of Cambodia. This request for help from France, a colonialist country, was a totally naïve and ignorant move by Norodom, not being aware of what colonialism really was. While king Mongkut or Rama IV, the great reformer of Siam, did the opposite, and successfully fought off the British and the French’s attempt to impose colonialism in his country. In addition, you can also see in that excerpt, the parallelism between the Vietnamization of Champa and Cambodia.

 

“Just to remember what happened in Kampuchea Krom. After presenting Princess Ngoc Van, in 1630, to young King Chey Chetha II, Vietnam asked the king the permission for Vietnamese to settle in Preah Suakea (Ba Ria) and Prey Nokor (Saigon). The king Chey Chetha II had to accept the pressures made by his newly wed wife, Ngoc Van. Thanks to this “sex and marital alliance ” tactics, which was already applied in the Kingdom of Champa with Princess Ngoc Khao, Vietnam managed to corrupt the soul of the khmer king and to realize its demographic conquests. Once its bases strongly consolidated, Vietnam was to commit ultra atrocious violence to repress khmers’ opposition.

 

During the period 1813 - 1815, Vietnamese perpetrated the infamous massacre, known to every Khmer as “Prayat Kompup Te Ong”. It was the most barbarous torture style in which the Khmer were buried alive up to their neck. Their heads were used as the stands for a wood stove to boil water for the Vietnamese masters. As they were burned and suffered, the victims shook their heads. At that moment, the Vietnamese torturers jokingly said “Be careful, not to spill the master’s tea”. Other kinds of massacre were the beheading and human collective autodafé (keeping Khmers locked up in granaries and burning them alive). Thousands of Khmers were so massacred in such a human collective autodafé. In 1841, Oknha Son Kuy (Chauvay Kouy), one of Khmer Krom leaders and the ancestor of defunct Son Sann, was atrociously beheaded.

In front of such barbary, Khmer people, under the command of Sena Sous, rose up, in 1859, against the Vietnamese first in the province of Srok Kleang (today Soc Trang in Vietnamese designation). After the murder of Sena Sous by a Vietnamese undercover agent, the revolt was pursued by two other Khmer Krom leaders Sena Mon and Sena Tea. In spite of the bravery of Khmer Krom leaders, Vietnam managed to control all Khmer Krom territory thanks to military and demographic conquests. And in June 1949, France, then colonizator of Indochina, transferred Kampuchea Krom, in spite of strong opposition from the Khmers, to Vietnam then under Bao Dai government.”

 

.................

 

Vietnam’s Expansionism in Indochina

 

Contemporary Motivations

 

In the contemporary period, the southward move is motivated by the will of becoming an unmissing regional power, even more, an inevitable interlocutor in Asia. At the time of the competition for the geopolitical repositioning, the control over Laos and Cambodia will enable Vietnam to gain/reinforce its position in the international scene.

 

Within ASEAN, Vietnam acts as one country with three potential voting rights (Vietnam+ Cambodia + Laos) and wants to do the same within the World Trade Organization.

With the concept “One Country, Three Voting Rights”, a concept the author will develop in next chapter, Vietnam hopes to become a courted country. Thanks to this concept, Vietnam holds a potential power to negociate with some countries in any domain and will be able to diplomatically make pressure on others.

 

Currently, Vietnam is trying to draft an institutional framework which will promote the free mobility of population within ASEAN zone. Once passed, this institutional framework will legalize Vietnam’s demographic conquests. The rate of Vietnamese settlement in South East Asia will be very high. With the redistribution of its population, Vietnam hope to extend, regardless the other countries’ boundaries, the geographic and political space of its Nation.

 

Clearly Vietnamese Leaders want to build a “Great Vietnam” through the following expression : “ Chõ Nào Co Nguòi Viêt, Chõ Do Se Là Dât Nuôc Viêtnam” that means “Where there are Vietnamese, there will be Vietnam”. All these contemporary motivations can be resumed by the author’s expression “Vietnamspansionism”.

 

2) Strategies and Machiavellian Manoeuvres

The conquest of the south was backed by several types of strategies : mainly military attacks, demographic conquests, manipulations and strategic alliances with other Powers. These strategies were/are not exclusive at all. They were/are often combined in order to obtain a better efficiency.

 

a -Strategies implemented within the victim countries

 

Contrary to what happened in the Kingdom of Champa and Kampuchea Krom, the strategies applied by Vietnam in Cambodia are very subtle and very well camouflaged making them imperceptible on the surface. As we will see it in the figure 2, Vietnam acted and is still acting through an “invisible hand”.

 

Vietnam essentially used violence and massacre. This method was/is very costly both in human and material terms for Vietnam. Because the physical agression did/does not only generate, in return, violence but increased/increases patriotism on the part of the victim country or the victim people.

 

 

Please, click here to read or to download a file on 'Vietnam's Expansionism in Indochina'

****

Please, click on the four links posted below, to listen to the interviews that I gave to Ms. Naline Pea, a broadcaster from Radio Free Asia (RFA) on October 23, 2007, on the main internal and external factors underlying the accelerated pace of the final phase of the Vietnamization of Cambodia.

 

RFA interview1 Vietnamiz final phas

RFA interview2 Vietnamiz final Phas

RFA interview3 Vietnamiz final phas

RFA interview4 Vietnamiz final phas

 

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Cambodian, VN Firms to Build Golf Resort at Border

 

(Comments: This is probably the only golf course in the world that is straddling along the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, two countries that are not known for their friendly relations. This is another sign that Hun Sen and Sihanouk are giving away, bit by bit, the Cambodian land to Vietnam - not not only without putting up any fight, - but willingly. That is sad but true. Nobody seems to care anymore. Naranhkiri Tith, Ph. D. Washington DC, June 10, 2007)

 

                                                -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Business Press, No. 155, June 4-10, 2007

 

Cambodian firm, CVI Resort Ltd. With assistance from a Vietnamese Provincial Committee, plans to build a golf resort straddling the nations’ borders, Vietnam News reported May 26.

 

The project is part of a Co-operative framework on neighboring development between Svay Rieng and neighboring Tay Ninh province, which was agreed and signed by leasers on January 12, this year.

 

Under the plan, the golf complex will cover an area of 120 ha. at Moc Bai border point, with half located in Vietnam and half in Cambodia. The resort will consist of a park, an 18 hole-course, hotels, restaurants, and tax-free shops.

 

According to the project’s investors, the area in Cambodia has been already granted a license by the government and they made detailed plans for Vietnamese government approval.

 

 

 

Sok Kong: I am a Vietnamese

 
20 March 2008
Translated from Vietnamese by Wanna
Originally posted at: http://www.xwanna.com

Original article in Vietnamese: “Tôi là người Việt Nam!"

Maybe some people are still skeptical about who is Sok Kong? Now, believe me and believe him (Sok Kong)!

Oknha Sok Kong said...

Tôi sinh ra ở Prey Veng. Ba mẹ tôi là người VN, tôi được sinh ra ở CPC. Năm 1975 sang VN làm ruộng ở Đồng Tháp. Lúc đó tôi 23 tuổi. Năm 1979 tôi trở lại CPC

Translation: I was born in Prey Veng. My parents are Vietnamese, I was born in Cambodia. In 1975, I backed to VN and do farming at Don Thap province. I was then 23. In 1979, I returned to Cambodia

Tôi giàu con lắm, có đến sáu đứa: ba trai, ba gái. Con trai đầu làm việc ở TP.HCM, con trai thứ hai quản lý khách sạn và xí nghiệp may số 1, con trai thứ ba quản lý xí nghiệp may 2, ba đứa con gái còn đi học ở Úc.

Translation: I have many children, including 6: 3 sons, 3 daughters. My eldest son works at HCM(Ho Chi Minh) city; My second son is a manager of a hotel and garment factory Number 01; My third son is a manager of garment factory Number 02; My three daughters are all studying in Australia.

Trước đây vì một số lý do tôi không muốn ai biết mình là người VN. Còn bây giờ thì không. Tôi là người VN. Tôi vinh dự về điều đó!

Translation: In the past, from some reasons, I don't want anyone to know that I am a Vietnamese. Now, it's NOT. I am a Vietnamese. I'm proud of that.

To learn more about Sok Kong, click on:

 Sok Kong via Cambodian Information Center - Search

 

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SOKIMEX; Sok Kong Import Export Co Ltd

 

(Comments: This article provides an in-depth view of the company known as SOKIMEX and owned by a Vietnamese citizen, Sok Kong, who is a close friend of Dictator Hun Sen. SOKIMEX owns practically every important businesses in Cambodia, including oil, tourism, and financial institutions. A recent research (Due diligence analysis) by an American law firm had discovered that SOKIMEX is 60 percent owned by the Vietnamese and 40 percent owned by Hun Sen and his extended family. So, Cambodia’s national resources are diverted to Vietnam through SOKIMEX in a big way. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. October 31, 2008)

 

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SOKIMEX organization and management structure

 

(http://sokimex.8k.com/page2.html)

 

Cambodian Economy Studies by US Government

 

 

  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

You arrive at Siem Reap full of anticipation. Three days, five days, perhaps a week you have set aside to explore some of the most magnificent ancient structures on the planet. Leaving the town of Siem Reap you head north along the road to Angkor Wat. Soon you see a large toll gate facility off the right side of the road. Your driver dutifully takes you there whereupon you fork over a hefty sum of US dollars for your pass to visit the temples. A single day - $20. Three days - $40. And a week - that'll be $60. You're even asked for a passport style photograph, or in the absence of one, you're led into a room and photographed. What next? Fingerprints. Well, not yet. You're then handed your laminated pass as the ticket seller politely runs down the list of rules - don't give/sell/transfer the ticket to anyone, don't lose it, don't be caught in a temple without it, etc. "Uh-huh, uh-huh," you nod your head in bewilderment.  As you head north towards Angkor Wat, capturing that first glimpse of the famous towers peaking out from behind the trees, you no doubt think, 'at least my money is going to save the temples... isn't it?'

 

Look at that ticket again. Above the picture of Angkor Wat it says "Sokha Hotel Co., LTD." They are the ones taking your money. Sokha Hotel is a division of Sokimex - a corporation founded in 1980 with close ties to the CPP government. Aside from the Angkor ticket concession, Sokimex is a petroleum company, and is a supplier to the government of military uniforms, medicines, and food for the military. It is also involved in import-export, rubber, transportation, and real estate.

 

In April 1999 with no public debate or prior warning the government of Cambodia quietly entered into an agreement with Sokimex to operate the ticket concession at the Angkor Archaeological Park. This deal required Sokimex to pay a flat $1,000,000 US per year to the government in exchange for the right to control the ticket concession. Whatever money Sokimex received in excess of the one million dollars was pure profit. Given the utter lack of transparency in this deal, combined with the perceived privatization of Cambodia's cultural heritage, there was immediate opposition to this deal. But the deal stood, taking effect on May 1, 1999, with only a fraction of tourist dollars going to the temples via the government agency - Apsara Authority - which oversees the preservation, restoration, etc. of the monuments.

 

This deal remained in place until August 15, 2000 when a new and better deal (for Apsara - and the monuments) was hammered out. But in the 15 months from the implementation of the original deal to the recent renegotiation of the contract the following changes have taken place at the Angkor Park. First, the souvenir sellers were kicked out of the temples. Good for the tourists, bad for the local economy. The second move was a proposal to ban all motorized traffic from within the park - a scenario that would require all tourists to be shuttled around in electric cars provided by a Korean firm. There was loud opposition from the motorcycle and taxi drivers and the idea was, at least temporarily, shelved. In an interview I had last March with the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Tourism, Dr. Thong Khon, he informed me that no such deal would be permitted, "although this deal is not with the government, we are committed to free choices for tourists."

 

The next visible change at the park came in the procedure for checking admission tickets. At almost every temple guards have been stationed who examine the ticket of every entering tourist. This policy has not been well received by the tourists, but to give credit where credit is due, most of the Sokimex employees do show a very high level of politeness and professional courtesy to the visitor.

 

Upon taking over the ticket concession, one serious problem Sokimex had to face was overcoming the extremely high incidence of fraud that had existed in the sale and usage of temple tickets.

 

Prior to the Sokimex deal there was minimal control over the sale of temple tickets. While most tourists were buying tickets and paying full price for them, who actually got the money was anybody's guess. The most common scam was the recycling of used tickets. The perpetrators were usually the guesthouses and their resident motorbike drivers. Relieving departing tourists of their tickets and using whatever available stripping agent was handy, nail polish remover was effective, they'd remove all the details of the previous user and resell the ticket to the unsuspecting tourist. In defiance of all regulation the guesthouse would offer to purchase your ticket for you, but in fact they were selling you a recycled ticket and pocketing the $20, $40, whatever. Under Sokimex's tight controls this scam has been eliminated, though some would argue it's all still a scam, but now it's a fat corporation taking all the money instead of the guesthouses and motorbike drivers. You decide.

 

In a recent interview I had with Ang Choulean, Director of the Department of Monuments and Culture for the Apsara Authority,  I asked him about the problems with fraudulent tickets, "There were an incredible number of fake tickets before Sokimex. But I think that after the first contract if there were still fake tickets there were much less than before. But I hope now there are no more fake tickets." From what I have observed the problem has been eliminated.

 

As the number of visitors to the Angkor Park has risen rapidly it should come as no surprise that the government, and certainly the Apsara Authority would seek to renegotiate the contract with Sokimex. In the original negotiation in April 1999 the Apsara Authority was not part of the process, but it had significant say in the renegotiation and as a result it now has a much better financial situation and far greater control over the doings of Sokimex. As reported in the Phnom Penh Post in the August 18-31, 2000 issue, the new deal provides for 50% of all income to the first $3 million dollars to be handed over to the government and 70% of all sales over the $3 million mark. This puts the Apsara Authority in a far greater position both financially and in terms of control of the park operations.

 

Based on these figures Ang Choulean has projected that roughly 28% of all park money will go directly to the temples and 31% will go to park maintenance and construction of much needed infrastructure. So for the time being approximately 59 cents of every dollar is landing in the proper hands, a vast improvement over a couple of years ago when that figure may have been as low as 5 cents of every dollar.

 

But with its new found wealth, what can we expect from Apsara and from Sokimex? According to Ang Choulean. "We are controlling them strictly because this is very clearly specified in the contract. We have two persons from our department of tourist development who are controlling every day the number of tickets sold because each ticket sold has to have the Apsara stamp." And... "The contract began from May 1999 and we were not at the direct negotiation for this first contract. But we are controlling them, we control Sokimex according to the terms of the contract already signed. We were directly involved with the renegotiation and we continue to have strong control of this." And... when asked if he was pleased with the new arrangement? "Happier than before. (Laughter) But we are ambitious to have more (control)."

 

-------------

 

For more information see:

 

O'Connell, Stephen, and Soeum, Yin. "All that glitters seems to be... Sokimex." Phnom Penh Post, 28 April-11 May 2000.

 

Sokheng, Vong, and Marcher, Anette.  "Sokimex and Government revisit Angkor deal." Phnom Penh Post, 18-31 August 2000.

 

The Phnom Penh Post internet site is at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

 

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Cambodia: Weakness in Family Structure and Relationship

(Comments: This article is one of the most important social analyses of the many major weakness of the Cambodian society, the family structure and relationship. This weakness in family structure and relationship dated back to the Angkorian time. Yet, it still persists until today, without much change. The worst is the fact that most Cambodians do not realize that this major social flaw exists amidst them. This suppression of identity of most Cambodians by the monarchy led to the lack of pool of potential leaders from which a country can its future leaders. Cambodians continue to depend only on the monarchy to solve all the problems in Cambodia, despite the fact that the royal family of Cambodia has only disdain for the Cambodian people than most other autocratic regimes in the world. Without changing this flaw, Cambodians cannot get out of the big mess it is now in created by internal and external foes. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC July 24,  2007)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        ------------------------------------------------------------ --                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

 In the late 1980s, the nuclear family, consisting of a husband and a wife and their unmarried children, probably continued to be the most important kin group within Khmer society. The family is the major unit of both production and consumption. Within this unit are the strongest emotional ties, the assurance of aid in the event of trouble, economic cooperation in labor, sharing of produce and income, and contribution as a unit to ceremonial obligations. A larger grouping, the personal kindred that includes a nuclear family with the children, grandchildren, grandparents, uncles, aunts, first cousins, nephews, and nieces, may be included in the household. Family organization is weak, and ties between related families beyond the kindred are loosely defined at best. There is no tradition of family names, although the French tried to legislate their use in the early twentieth century. Most Khmer genealogies extend back only two or three generations, which contrasts with the veneration of ancestors by the Vietnamese and by the Chinese. Noble families and royal families, some of which can trace their descent for several generations, are exceptions.  The individual Khmer is surrounded by a small inner circle of family and friends who constitute his or her closest associates, those he would approach first for help. In rural communities, neighbors--who are often also kin--may be important, too, and much of housebuilding and other heavy labor intensive tasks are performed by groups of neighbors. Beyond this close circle are more distant relatives and casual friends. In rural Cambodia, the strongest ties a Khmer may develop--besides those to the nuclear family and to close friends--are those to other members of the local community. A strong feeling of pride--for the village, for the district, and province--usually characterizes Cambodian community life. There is much sharing of religious life through the local Buddhist temple, and there are many cross-cutting kin relations within the community. Formerly, the Buddhist priesthood, the national armed forces, and, to a lesser extent, the civil service all served to connect the Khmer to the wider national community. The priesthood served only males, however, while membership in some components of the armed forces and in the civil service was open to women as well.  

 

Two fictive relationships in Cambodia transcend kinship boundaries and serve to strengthen interpersonal and interfamily ties. A Khmer may establish a fictive child-parent or sibling relationship called thoa (roughly translating as adoptive parent or sibling). The person desiring to establish the thoa relationship will ask the other person for permission to enter into the relationship. The thoa relationship may become as close as the participants desire. The second fictive relationship is that of kloeu (close male friend). This is similar, in many ways, to becoming a blood brother. A person from one place may ask a go-between in another place to help him establish a kloeu relationship with someone in that place. Once the participants agree, a ceremony is held that includes ritual drinking of water into which small amounts of the participants' blood have been mixed and bullets and knives have been dipped; prayers are also recited by an achar (or ceremonial leader) before witnesses. The kloeu relationship is much stronger than the thoa. One kloeu will use the same kinship terms when addressing his kloeu's parents and siblings as he would when addressing his own. The two friends can call upon each other for any kind of help at any time. The kloeu relationship apparently is limited to some rural parts of Cambodia and to Khmer-speaking areas in Thailand. As of the late 1980s, it may have become obsolete. The female equivalent of kloeu is mreak.

 

Legally, the husband is the head of the Khmer family, but the wife has considerable authority, especially in family economics. The husband is responsible for providing shelter and food for his family; the wife is generally in charge of the family budget, and she serves as the major ethical and religious model for the children, especially the daughters. In rural areas, the male is mainly responsible for such activities as plowing and harrowing the rice paddies, threshing rice, collecting sugar palm juice, caring for cattle, carpentry, and buying and selling cows and chickens. Women are mainly responsible for pulling and transplanting rice seedlings, harvesting and winnowing rice, tending gardens, making sugar, weaving, and caring for the household money. Both males and females may work at preparing the rice paddies for planting, tending the paddies, and buying and selling land.

 

Ownership of property among the rural Khmer was vested in the nuclear family. Descent and inheritance is bilateral. Legal children might inherit equally from their parents. The division of property was theoretically equal among siblings, but in practice the oldest child might inherit more. Each of the spouses might bring inherited land into the family, and the family might acquire joint land during the married life of the couple. Each spouse was free to dispose of his or her land as he or she chose. A will was usually oral, although a written one was preferred.

 

Private ownership of land was abolished by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Such ownership is also not recognized by the PRK government, which for example, refused to support former owners when they returned and found others living on and working their land. Some peasants were able to remain on their own land during the Khmer Rouge era, however, and generally they were allowed to continue to work the land as if it were their own property. In 1987 the future of private ownership of land remained in doubt. According to Cambodia scholar Michael Vickery, the PRK government planned to collectivize in three stages. The first stage involved allotting land to families at the beginning of the season and allowing the cultivators to keep the harvest. The second stage involved allotting land to each family according to the number of members. The families in the interfamily units known as solidarity groups (krom samaki) were to work to prepare the fields, but subsequently each family was responsible for the upkeep of its own parcel of land. At this stage, each family could dispose of its own produce. In the final stage, all labor was to be performed in common, and at the end of the season any remuneration was distributed according to a work point system. Livestock at this stage would still belong to the family. By 1984 the first stage groups accounted for 35 percent of the rural population, but the third level accounted for only 10 percent of the farms (see Agriculture , ch. 3).

 

Source: US Congress Library; Country Studies, 1990

 

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Justice in Cambodia: Past, Present, and Future

 

Margaret de Guzman Al

 

(Comments: this article entitled 'Justice in Cambodia: Past, Present, and Future' clearly shows how Hun Sen is still deeply involved in prolonging the Khmer Rouge Trial process by 'demonizing the demons,' as long as possible in order to make himslef look better in the eyes of the internaitonal community, and to give himself more time to consolidate his dictatorial power in Cambodia, fully supported by Sihanouk.

 

The future of the Khmer Rouge trial is on the brink of collapsing, and is as bleak as ever. This is why our group WCC (World Cambodian Congress for Progress and Democracy - http://www.wccpd.org/), had decided not to participate in this politically motivated seminar orchestrated by Hun Sen under the direction of Sean Visoth and Helen Jarvis, and with the cooperation of two Cambodian-Americans, Ronnie Yimsut and Leakhana Nou. Because of our refusal, Yimsut and Nou had blamed WCC for not cooperating with them and for obstructing the ECCC (Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia). For more detalis on this preposterous accusation, please see the set of emails exchange between me and Mr. Yimsut posted just below in this same page 

 

WCC is not against the Khmer Rouge trial and the ECCC at all. On the contrary, we have been advocating for real justice for the Cambodian people for a very long time, and is long overdue. This web site is the illustration of such an effort.

 

However, we have made it clear to the general public that we are against the parody of justice that Hun and his close associates have been practicing to hijack real justice by delaying and by taking over the trial process claiming to do so for protecting the sovereignty of Cambodia. What sovereignty does Cambodia have, today? It is common knowledge that Hun Sen a creation of Vietnamese imperialism over Cambodia. Unfortuantely, there are too few Cambodians who are interested in this crucial issue for Cambodia's future, and are willing to stand and fight for it. WCC did its best to expose this shameful manipulation and politicizing of justice by Hun Sen and his CPP. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. May 4, 2008)

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

            Reviewing: Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice: Prosecuting Mass           Violence Before the Cambodian Courts (Jaya Ramji & Beth Van         Schaack, eds.).  Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005, 441 pp.

 

November 20, 2007 marks an important and long-awaited milestone for Cambodia.  On that day the first public hearing took place in the prosecution of a Khmer Rouge member for his role in the massacre of approximately 1.7 million Cambodians from 1975-1979.[1][1]  The three-decade delay in achieving this milestone is a result of complex political dynamics both within Cambodia and at the international level.  Unfortunately, many of the same forces that delayed justice for Cambodia threaten to smother the embers of the judicial fire that has finally been lit.  Certainly, there has been significant progress in the two and a half years since the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Extraordinary Chambers or ECCC) finally became operational.  The relevant personnel are in place, internal rules have been adopted, and five defendants have been charged and are in custody.

 

Sadly, this progress is marred by serious concerns about the independence, impartiality, and competence of the Extraordinary Chambers.  Just three weeks after the co-investigating judges received the first Introductory Submission, Prime Minister Hun Sun requested that the King appoint the Cambodian investigating judge to the Cambodian Court of Appeal.[2][2]  Although a potential crisis was averted when Hun Sen announced that Judge You Bun Leng would remain at the ECCC despite his promotion, the incident raised concerns about political interference in the judicial process.[3][3]  The judicial independence of the Extraordinary Chambers was also put into question by a Cambodian cabinet minister’s statement that the government could “terminate” the ECCC if it attempts to bring charges against retired King Norodom Sihanouk.[4][4]  When the Open Society Justice Initiative made allegations of rampant corruption among Cambodian ECCC personnel, the Cambodian government responded by threatening to ban the Justice Initiative from Cambodia.[5][5]  Most recently, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released the results of an internal audit revealing serious deficiencies in the ECCC’s human resources practices with regard to its Cambodian staff.[6][6]  The UNDP went so far as to recommend that all recruitment of ECCC staff to date be nullified and the recruitment process begun anew.[7][7]  UNDP further recommended the UN consider withdrawing its support from the tribunal “if the Cambodian side does not agree to the essential measures that are, from UNDP perspective, necessary to ensure the integrity and success of the project.”[8][8]  It remains an open question, therefore, whether the Extraordinary Chambers will contribute to justice and the rule of law in Cambodia or instead reaffirm the entrenched culture of corruption and impunity that has characterized the country’s judiciary in recent history.

 

Nothing less than the future of democracy in Cambodia hangs in the balance, as the editors of this remarkable volume demonstrate.  Jaya Ramji-Nogales[9][9] and Beth Van Schaack were among the earliest advocates of a tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders when discussions began ten years ago between the United Nations and the Cambodian government.  As legal advisors to the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), they have conducted trainings, performed field research, and provided various forms of legal assistance relevant to the nascent efforts to bring Khmer Rouge leaders to justice.  With this book, the editors assemble a collection of authors equally impressive and well versed in Cambodia legal and political history.  The authors’ extensive range of experience and expertise – from Buddhist studies to politics, human rights, and documentation – yields a comprehensive study of the past, present, and future of justice in Cambodia.

 

In the introduction, the editors promise an exploration of the legal and political challenges facing the ECCC, but also a window into broader questions surrounding the evolution of international criminal law and practice.  The book delivers on this promise.  The dominant theme linking the various contributions is the imperative of molding the international community’s response to mass criminality to meet the needs of the affected populace and polity.  This is a time of experimentation in the bourgeoning field of international criminal law.  Early post-Nuremberg efforts at international criminal justice focused primarily on the international community’s desire for individual accountability and retribution, rather than on the preferences of the affected populations.  Thus, relatively little thought was initially given to how the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda could best contribute to the process of reconciling antagonistic sectors of those communities and rebuilding their civil societies.  The recent move toward hybrid tribunals is emblematic, at least in part, of an increased international awareness of the contributions such tribunals can make to rebuilding post-conflict societies.  A growing consensus among participants in the international criminal justice system holds that tribunals integrated with the affected communities are better able to address the populations’ specific needs than are entirely international tribunals with non-national staffs, laws, and facilities. 

 

Among hybrid courts, the ECCC is unique in the extent to which the balance of power rests in the hands of the national participants.  The Cambodian government believes it is only right that Cambodians try the Khmer Rouge in Cambodian courts.[10][10]  As a result, the ECCC is subject to a novel supermajority voting formula whereby the agreement of at least two Cambodian judges and one international judge is required for any decision.[11][11]  Many national and international participants and observers, on the other hand, see Cambodian control of the ECCC as its Achilles heel and fear that instead of justice for Khmer Rouge victims and a strengthened Cambodian judiciary the process will leave Cambodia further weakened and the international community with unclean hands.[12][12]  Ramji-Nogales and Van Schaack’s book explores the historical and political forces that brought Cambodia to this tipping point, engages normative questions of how best to adapt accountability mechanisms to meet population-specific needs, and posits the challenges for Cambodia and the international community to overcome if the ECCC is to be a success by any measure.

 

The academic contributions to the volume are enclosed between literary bookends that remind the reader of the profound human suffering that provides the raison d’etre of the analysis.  In the prologue, Peter Hammer offers a brief account of a dream that continues to haunt his partner, a survivor of the Cambodian killing fields.  Hammer posits several potential interpretations of the dream, including chillingly suggesting that it may symbolize the devastating effects on the Cambodian people of the international community’s inaction in the face of Khmer Rouge atrocities.  The dream is powerful and Hammer’s analysis insightful.  At the same time, with so many survivors still able to recount the horrors they experienced, a first hand narrative might have provided a more apt opening to the book’s legal and socio-political analysis.

 

Rithy Panh’s epilogue, in contrast, could not be more personal.  Panh gives a gut-wrenching account of how he became a documentary film-maker in order to expose the pure evil of Khmer Rouge atrocities.  He begins by expressing the guilt he feels that, although a mere boy, he was unable to help those dying around him.  He then powerfully states the imperative of remembering: To fail to come to terms with the history of genocide would be to “face the worst kind of death – the death of memory.”[13][13]  Looking to the future, Panh echoes a theme that resonates throughout the volume: Cambodia’s social, economic, and political development requires the rejection of impunity for the Khmer Rouge leadership through criminal trials.  Impunity according to Panh breeds fear, distrust, and an inability to imagine a future together.  Panh also reminds us, however, that criminal trials are not enough.  Cambodians need help rebuilding their economy, educating their children, and strengthening civil society if they are to overcome the legacy of the Khmer Rouge horror.  Above all, to build a truly democratic society characterized by equitable shared development Cambodia must come to terms with its memory, an endeavor that Panh has made his life’s work.

 

The book’s academic discussion of the Khmer Rouge trials begins with a helpful contribution by Peter Hammer and Tara Urs setting forth the historical and political context into which the ECCC was born.  Hammer & Urs divide their analysis into four historical “chapters:” the politics of Ideology (1975-89), of Reconstruction (1989-96), of Personality (1997-98), and of Politics (1998-2004).  In discussing each of these periods of Cambodia’s past, the authors highlight the many ways in which Cambodian and international politics conspired to deny justice to the Cambodian people.  The 1979 “show trial” in absentia of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary provides a poignant example of how legal proceedings can be used to fulfill political ends at the expense of justice.  The chapter concludes with a description of the drawn out and contentious negotiations between the United Nations and the government of Cambodia to establish a tribunal to try Khmer Rouge leaders.  The authors opine that justice this long delayed can be no more than “tokenistic,” serving a largely symbolic function for Cambodia and the international community.  Although the power of criminal justice has certainly been diluted with time, other contributions to the volume make clear the critical importance to Cambodia of holding nationally and internationally respected trials even at this late date.

 

In keeping with the editors’ goal of placing the search for justice after mass atrocities in the appropriate cultural context, the second chapter examines the role Cambodian Buddhism can and should play in framing the country’s approach to accountability.  Ian Harris elucidates some basic Theravāda canonical concepts relevant to the discussion of individual accountability for Khmer Rouge crimes and wonders whether it is “too much to ask that [Buddhist] influences might be deployed in the context of [the] tribunal.”[14][14] Unfortunately, the answer the ECCC has given, constrained as it is by political and economic forces, is that such cultural sensitivity is, in fact, too much to ask. 

Editor Jaya Ramji-Nogales has criticized the Extraordinary Chambers for failing to incorporate into the process such Buddhist norms as the emphasis on reconciliation over retribution.[15][15]  Given the book’s primary audience of legal academics and lawyers, many readers will find Harris’ religious exegesis elusive.  Nonetheless, his discussion of the legacy of traditional law and the importance of recognizing religious and cultural factors in the quest for justice are important contributions to the book and to the broader discussion of cultural specificity in international accountability mechanisms.

 

The premise that justice in Cambodia should be tailored to fit the needs of the Cambodian populace is addressed directly in the third chapter.  William Burke-White employs three theoretical frameworks to explain why the preferences of affected populations matter to the quest for justice after mass atrocities.  First, restorative justice theory emphasizes the importance of using accountability mechanisms not merely as ends in themselves, but to help rebuild shattered societies.  Second, liberal international relations theory, seen through the normative lens of democratic entitlement, requires that justice respond to population preferences.  Finally, the individualization of international law has refocused international legal efforts on addressing the needs of citizens.  These theoretical approaches support Burke-White’s thesis that the process of securing accountability for Khmer Rouge atrocities must respect the preferences of individual Cambodians if it is to facilitate national reconciliation and promote democracy.  Having established the importance of citizen preferences, Burke-White presents data from approximately 50 “in-depth individual and group conversations”[16][16] he conducted in 2002.  These conversations indicated a strong preference among participants for prosecutions over other forms of accountability.  The most frequently voiced rationales for prosecutions were a desire for vengeance and a need to remember and document the past. 

 

Burke-White makes such a strong case for the importance of ascertaining and incorporating Cambodian preferences in the accountability process that the acknowledged limitations of his data leave the reader wishing for a more comprehensive survey.  Unfortunately, no such study has been conducted to date.[17][17]  The only other survey Burke-White references is a study that editor Ramji-Nogales conducted in 1997 involving 25 interviewees, many of whom expressed a preference for peace and even amnesty over justice.[18][18]  Additional studies of Cambodian preferences are worth mentioning.  For example, in 2002, DC-Cam conducted a survey of readers of its monthly magazine.[19][19]  The 712 responses collected revealed, like Burke-White’s conversations and most available opinion data, that Cambodians overwhelmingly prefer criminal justice to other accountability mechanisms.[20][20]  Unlike Burke-White’s findings, however, very few respondents wanted revenge.[21][21]  In fact, most felt that trials alone, regardless of quality, would enable them to forgive.[22][22]  In 2004, the Khmer Institute of Democracy surveyed 536 people in Phnom Penh and ten provinces.[23][23]  Interestingly, almost half of the participants in this survey preferred no trial at all to a substandard trial.[24][24]  The conflicting results of the studies support Burke-White’s conclusion that: “Effort is needed to determine what [Cambodian] preferences actually are on a scale and in a more sophisticated way than this study does.”[25][25]  It is not too late for the Extraordinary Chambers to heed this call.  The ECCC office of Outreach and Media has conducted many interviews, meetings, press briefings, and tours since the court’s inception.  Perhaps the office’s outreach component could also include a nation-wide survey of Cambodian opinions regarding how the ECCC process can best contribute to national reconciliation.

 

The ECCC’s novel Cambodia-dominated hybrid model prompts Brad Adams to explore whether an internationalized tribunal entrenched in a corrupt and ineffectual domestic system can render justice.  An historical survey of Cambodia’s judicial system reveals long periods in which there was essentially no functioning judiciary and the majority of participants in the legal system were corrupt, incompetent, or both. Even today, political and military intervention in judicial decisions is common and sometimes violent, giving judges reason to fear for their lives.[26][26]  In light of this context, Adams is highly critical of the decision of the international community to entrust the Cambodian judiciary with the task of bringing the Khmer Rouge to justice.  Despite strong objection from the United Nations Secretary General, the international community accepted a supermajority formula for decision making at the tribunal that, according to Adams, virtually ensures that Prime Minister Hun Sen will manipulate the process to serve political ends at the expense of justice for the Cambodian people.  In fact, Adams indicts key participants in the negotiating process, opining that the United States and other governments likely assume that Hen Sen will interfere in the tribunal’s work.  According to Adams, these governments are motivated less by the goal of justice for Cambodians than by the desire to assuage their guilt for failing to stop the killing and for supporting the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese liberation.  Adams pessimistically concludes: “a mixed tribunal under the political control of the Cambodian government has little or no chance of rendering either justice or an accurate historical account of the period.”[27][27] 

 

Certainly, there are valid reasons to fear that Adams’ dire predictions are playing out. Prime Minister Hun Sen appeared to be attempting to interfere in the judicial process when he appointed co-investigating judge You Bun Leng to the Cambodian Court of Appeal.  Relations have been tense between international and Cambodian participants at the ECCC, reaching a nadir last April when the international judges threatened a boycott over proposed exorbitant fees for foreign defense counsel.[28][28]  At the same time, the indictment and arrest of Ieng Sary and Kheiu Samphan provides a glimmer of hope that the ECCC will be permitted to pursue justice without crippling political interference.  Sary received a Royal pardon in 1996 when he defected from the Khmer Rouge and Hun Sen has made numerous statements in the intervening years indicating he would not allow Sary to be prosecuted.[29][29]  Thus, although recent developments do not fully alleviate Adams’ fear that the Cambodia-dominated hybrid formula of the ECCC will simply compound past injustices, there is a glimmer of hope.

 

In a logical segue to Adams’ discussion of the Cambodian justice system, Scott Worden examines the constitutional and procedural framework of the Extraordinary Chambers and analyzes how its various elements may advance or detract from the quest for justice.  Worden’s discussion of the potential negative impact of flaws in the Cambodian judicial system overlaps somewhat with Adams’ discussion of the same subject in the previous chapter.  Also, some of the issues Worden raises have been resolved or are in the process of being resolved.   Since the book was published, judges have been selected, the co-prosecutors have begun to work together, and preliminary indications suggest the prosecutions will focus primarily on Khmer Rouge leaders, rather than the broad interpretation of “those most responsible” that Worden suggests.  By indicting and detaining Ieng Sary, the prosecutors and investigating judges have signaled their agreement with Worden that Sary’s pardon does not protect him from prosecution, at least for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Worden’s fear that the Cambodian posts at the ECCC would fall prey to the system of political patronage has materialized as the UNDP audit demonstrates.  Finally, the ECCC has adopted Internal Rules that respond to some of Worden’s concerns.  For example, the Internal Rules clarify the role of the judicial police in conducting investigations and set forth the procedures for the arrest and detention of accused.[30][30]

 

Worden’s analysis of the Extraordinary Chambers nonetheless remains relevant to ongoing efforts to achieve accountability in Cambodia and informs the broader academic discourse surrounding the value of hybrid efforts at justice.  For instance, Worden’s discussion of the complexities of ascertaining and applying domestic rules of criminal procedure while adhering to international standards remains salient both for the ECCC and for hybrid tribunals generally.  Although the Extraordinary Chambers have adopted Internal Rules, many lacunae remain that will likely be filled by reference to both Cambodian and international standards.  Worden’s chapter is thus a must-read for those studying or participating in hybrid tribunals.

 

Unlike their Nazi predecessors, the Khmer Rouge took great pains to perpetrate atrocities as secretly as possible and succeeded in destroying many of their documents before the Vietnamese invasion.  Nonetheless, the tireless work of Youk Chhang and others at DC-Cam and the associated Tuol Sleng Archives has yielded a wealth of documentary evidence that will be invaluable to the Extraordinary Chambers in the upcoming trials.[31][31]  Chhang, along with John Ciorciari, a legal advisor to DC-Cam, provide a useful outline of the types of documents now at the disposal of the ECCC as well as an analysis of some of the hurdles the prosecutors will face in getting such documents admitted as evidence.  Since the piece was written, the ECCC has adopted very lenient admissibility rules, answering some of the questions the authors raise.[32][32]  For example, as the authors predicted, hearsay will be admissible.  Nonetheless, many of the issues discussed in this chapter remain at the forefront of the work undoubtedly underway in the offices of the co-prosecutors.  For example, the prosecutors are certainly grappling with how to authenticate Khmer Rouge documents that lack official seals, stamps or letterhead.  The article and the expertise of DC-Cam more generally will be important resources for ECCC participants seeking to decipher the Khmer Rouge’s coded names and language.  Finally, the chapter provides a helpful overview of how available documents may be used to establish direct and superior liability and to prove the substantive elements of the crimes.  Unsurprisingly, the indictments the ECCC has issued thus far dodge the difficult and much debated question whether Khmer Rouge atrocities meet the definition of genocide.[33][33]  Ciorciari and Chhang’s piece provides a useful evidentiary roadmap, however, for the charges that have been laid by the tribunal.

 

One of the thornier issues facing the ECCC is what effect, if any, to give to amnesties and pardons the Cambodian government granted to members of the Khmer Rouge who may be defendants at the court.  In 1994, the Cambodian government passed legislation outlawing the Khmer Rouge and providing amnesty for members of the organization who defected to the government within six months of the law’s effective date.[34][34]  The law excluded Khmer Rouge leaders from eligibility for the amnesty.[35][35]  In 1996, King Sihanouk issued a Royal Decree at the request of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his then co-prime minister, pardoning Ieng Sary with respect to his 1979 conviction for “genocide”[36][36] and granting him an amnesty from liability under the 1994 law.[37][37]  The agreement between the United Nations and the government of Cambodia regarding the ECCC, as well as the law establishing the ECCC, leave it to the Extraordinary Chambers to decide the scope of these amnesties and pardons.[38][38]

 

Ronald Slye presents a compelling normative case that these amnesties are illegitimate because they are of the “amnesic” variety: they provide no accountability, no benefits to victims, and no revelations of the crimes of their beneficiaries.  Slye argues the ECCC should temporally limit Sary’s 1996 pardon and review any amnesties granted pursuant to the 1994 law with an eye to enticing subordinate beneficiaries to provide evidence in the trials of the leaders.  The ECCC appears to be side stepping the matter of Sary’s pardon by charging him with crimes other than genocide.[39][39]  Additionally, it has become clear that the ECCC proceedings will be limited to a very small number of leaders.  Nonetheless, Slye’s broader normative analysis of amnesties – who should benefit and how long they should last -- remains pertinent to the global academic and legal discourse surrounding accountability for international crimes.

 

Dinah PoKempner addresses the question whether the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders can contribute to efforts to chip away at the culture of impunity that continues to dominate Cambodian society.  She emphasizes the long history of patronage and political violence that predates the Khmer Rouge era as well as the continuing lack of democratic governance that hinders efforts to build a culture of accountability.  PoKempner examines the different agendas the Cambodian people, the international community and the Cambodian government bring to the table.  Because these agendas diverge in significant respects, PoKempner is skeptical of the ECCC’s ability to make inroads into Cambodia’s culture of impunity.  PoKempner provides an insightful analysis of the dangers of conflicting agendas.  Her assertions about the views of Cambodians, however, are based on approximately twenty-four interviews of socially active Cambodians in the capital and foreigners with long-term research or humanitarian activities in Cambodia.  Like Burke-White’s study, PoKempner’s discussion of Cambodian opinion leaves the reader hoping for a more comprehensive opinion survey.

 

In keeping with a primary theme of the volume – that a Khmer Rouge tribunal must respond to the needs of the Cambodian people – editor Jaya Ramji-Nogales contributes a chapter on the importance of reparations.  Ramji-Nogales criticizes the law establishing the ECCC for failing to provide for any form of reparation for victims and offers an insightful analysis of the types of reparations that might be appropriate in the Cambodian context.  In drafting the tribunal’s Internal Rules, the ECCC heeded Ramji-Nogales’ call and included a provision allowing civil parties to participate in the proceedings and be awarded damages.  The draft Internal Rules, circulated for comments in November 2006, provided that civil parties “may be compensated by awarding [proportionate] damages,” and that the ECCC could also award “collective or symbolic reparations.”[40][40]  The comments submitted in response to this draft questioned the wisdom and feasibility of awarding damages and suggested the rules clarify the meaning of “collective or symbolic reparations.”[41][41]  Commentators also criticized the draft rules’ requirement that the civil party’s injury “continue to subsist at the time of the proceedings.”[42][42]  After receiving these comments, the ECCC revised the civil party rule to allow only “collective and moral reparations” and specified that such awards may take the following forms:

 

a) An order to publish the judgment in any appropriate news or other media at the convicted person’s expense;

b) An order to fund any non-profit activity or service that is intended for the benefit of Victims; or 

c) Other appropriate and comparable forms of reparation.[43][43]

Like many aspects of the ECCC, the rule is not ideal.  It does not include “all five internationally recognized forms of reparation” as Amnesty International advocated.[44][44]  Nor was it based on a comprehensive survey of Cambodian views as Ramji-Nogales suggests in her chapter.  Nonetheless, the rule allows the ECCC to provide some form of reparation to victims.  Furthermore, the ECCC’s responsiveness to comments on the draft Internal Rules demonstrates the tribunal is making an effort to adhere to international standards and speaks to the importance of continued national and international participation in the proceedings.

 

The book’s analysis concludes with Steve Heder’s critique of the “top-down” paradigm that has increasingly come to dominate legal and historical approaches to mass atrocities. Heder points out that while Nuremberg itself was addressed to trying Nazi leadership, over a million people were put on trial in various fora for the horrors of World War II.  In contrast, the personal jurisdiction of the ECCC is limited to “senior leaders of Democratic Kampuchea and those who were most responsible” for the crimes within the ECCC’s jurisdiction.[45][45]  The ECCC’s charging decisions to date indicate the tribunal will adopt a narrow interpretation of this mandate.  Heder draws on Stalinism and Nazism literature to explain why this focus on leaders is unjustified as a matter of historical and political theory.  He also provides an incisive analysis of Khmer Rouge policies that demonstrates the leader paradigm fails to reflect the practical reality of Khmer Rouge crimes.  Lower level Khmer Rouge cadre exercised considerable discretion to identify and eliminate “enemies” of the regime.

 

Having made a compelling case that substantial culpability resides at the lower levels, Heder spends little more than a page discussing the implications of this conclusion for efforts at justice and accountability in Cambodia.  He notes that a “proper legal and historical accounting” would require broadening the judicial lens to include “small fish” but does not engage in the debate surrounding how this accounting might be accomplished in light of the ECCC’s financial and political limitations.  Numerous commentators have suggested that some mechanism in addition to the Extraordinary Chambers is necessary to address the culpability of the thousands of perpetrators who will not be tried before that body and to support Cambodia’s broader quest for reconciliation.[46][46]  Although a group of United Nations experts recommended in 1999 that Cambodians engage in a process of reflection such as a truth commission[47][47], the recommendation has not been implemented for reasons of domestic Cambodian politics.[48][48]  Fortunately, DC-Cam and others are already carrying out the truth seeking and historical record creation functions of such a body.[49][49]  Also, a few domestic trials of Khmer Rouge members have taken place.[50][50]  Although those proceedings were widely criticized, they nonetheless demonstrated that the Cambodian government is willing and able to bring Khmer Rouge to justice under some circumstances.[51][51] 

 

As the Extraordinary Chambers approaches the third year of its three-year mandate, it remains uncertain what contribution the tribunal will make to justice and reconciliation for Cambodians, as well as to the future of democratic governance in Cambodia.  On the one hand, there are worrying indications that many of the concerns raised in this volume are proving justified.  Independent observers have found evidence of widespread corruption, political interference, and lack of capacity and training at the ECCC.[52][52]  At the same time, the generally hopeful note that resonates throughout many of the contributions finds expression in the indictments that have been filed, the arrest of powerful defendants, and the participation of highly regarded international judges and attorneys.  The Cambodian people and the international community now await the verdict on this long-anticipated tribunal: will it help heal Cambodian society and strengthen the rule of law or instead compound the injustices of the past and solidify the culture of impunity?  Ramji-Nogales and Van Schaack’s book provides an excellent primer for those interested in the quest for justice in Cambodia and those engaged in international efforts at accountability for mass atrocities.

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a1 PhD candidate, Irish Center for Human Rights; Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law, Georgetown University; B.S.F.S., Georgetown University School of Foreign Service; M.A.L.D., The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy; J.D., Yale Law School.  The author thanks William A. Schabas and Susana SáCouto for their comments on a draft of this book review.

[1][1] In 1979, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were “tried” by the Vietnamese-run People’s Revolutionary Tribunal, but that trial is widely considered a show trial.  See Gregory H. Stanton, The Cambodian Genocide and International Law, in Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community 141, 142 (Ben Kiernan ed., 1993).  But see John Quigley, Genocide In Cambodia: Documents from the Trial of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary 20-25 (Howard J. De Nike et al. eds., 2000) (objecting to the “show trial” label).

[2][2] Open Society Justice Initiative, Recent Developments at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: September 24, 2007 Update 5, available at http://www.justiceinitiative.org/activities/ij/krt.

[3][3] Id. at 6.

[4][4] Caitlin Price, Cambodia can 'terminate' genocide tribunal if ex-king prosecuted: official, Jurist: Legal News & Research, September 3, 2007, available at http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/09/cambodia-can-terminate-genocide.php.

[5][5] Open Society Justice Initiative, Progress and Challenges at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia 9, June 2007, available at http://www.justiceinitiative.org/activities/ij/krt.

[6][6] United Nations Development Programme, Audit of Human Resources Management at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, available at http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/pdf/ecccaudit.pdf.

[7][7] Id., at 6.

[8][8] Id.

[9][9] After the book was published, Ramji changed her name to Ramji-Nogales.

[10][10] See Aide-memoire on the report of the United Nations Group of Experts for Cambodia of 18 February 1999, issued by the Government of Cambodia, Mar. 12 1999, quoted in Rachel S. Taylor, Better Late Than Never: Cambodia’s Joint Tribunal, in Accountability for Atrocities: National and International Responses 237, 257 (Jane E. Stromseth ed., 2003) (“[T]he culprit is a Cambodian national, the victims are Cambodians; therefore the trial by a Cambodian court is fully in conformity with the [norms of] legal process.”).

[11][11] Law on the Establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea (hereinafter Establishment Law), art. 14 (new), available at http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/default.aspx.

[12][12] Commentators have noted that due to the supermajority voting formula, “the tribunal will only be as strong as its weakest international member.”  Human Rights Watch, Serious Flaws: Why the U.N. General Assembly Should Require Changes to the Draft Khmer Rouge Tribunal Agreement, Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper, April 2003, available at http://hrw.org/backgrounder/asia/cambodia040303-bck.htm.

[13][13] Rithy Panh, Epilogue, in Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice: Prosecuting Mass Violence Before the Cambodian Courts 425, 428 (Jaya Ramji & Beth Van Schaack eds., 2005).

[14][14] Ian Harris, Onslaught on Being: A Theravāda Buddhist Perspective on Accountability for Crimes Committed in the Democratic Kampuchea Period, in Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice, supra note 13, at 88.

[15][15] Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Panelist, The Impending Extraordinary Chambers of Cambodia to Prosecute the Khmer Rouge, 5 Santa Clara J. Int’l L. 326, 332 (2007).

[16][16] William Burke-White, Preferences Matter: Conversations With Cambodians On The Prosecution Of The Khmer Rouge Leadership, in Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice, supra note 13, at 102.

[17][17] See Laura McGrew, Open Society Justice Initiative, Transitional Justice Approaches in Cambodia 139, 142 (April 2006), available at http://www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2/fs/?file_id=16990 (noting that the views of Cambodians were absent during negotiations over the ECCC “except through some incomplete and non-representative surveys done by a handful of individuals and organizations.”).

[18][18] Jaya Ramji, Reclaiming Cambodian History: The Case for A Truth Commission, 24 Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 137, 143-46 (2000).  The differences between Burke-White’s findings and those of Ms. Ramji-Nogales may suggest Cambodian preferences shifted in the intervening five years, particularly as peace gained a more secure foothold in Cambodia.  See Burke-White, in Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice, supra note 13, at 104.

[19][19] Suzannah Linton, Documentation Center of Cambodia, Reconciliation in Cambodia 1 (2004).

[20][20] See id. at 21; see also Taylor, supra note 10, at 251 & n.85 (citing poll of 1,503 people of whom 81.1% supported prosecuting Khmer Rouge leaders).

[21][21] See Linton, supra note ­­19, at 22.

[22][22] See id. at 26.

[23][23] Khmer Institute of Democracy, Survey of the Khmer Rouge Regime and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (2004), available at http://www.bigpond.com.kh/users/kid/KRG-Tribunal.htm.

[24][24] Id. at 7.

[25][25] Burke-White, supra note ­­16, at 120.

[26][26] For example, in 2003, the judge who presided over the trial of Khmer Rouge leader Sam Bith was assassinated.  Saing Soenthrith, Gunmen Kill Municipal Court Judge, The Cambodia Daily, April 24, 2003, available at http://cambodia.ahrchk.net/mainfile.php/news200304/599.

[27][27] Brad Adams, Cambodia’s Judiciary: Up to the Task?, in Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice, supra note 13, at 165.

[28][28] Foreign Judges to Boycott Khmer Rouge Trial Meeting Over Fees, Asian Political News, April 9, 2007, available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WDQ/is_2007_April_9/ai_n18792833.

[29][29] Thomas Hammarberg, How the KR Tribunal was Agreed: Discussions Between the Cambodian Government and the UN: Part V, 22 Searching for the Truth, Magazine of DC-CAM 41, June 2001, available at http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Magazines/Previous%20Englis/Issue22.pdf; David Boyle, Trying Ieng Sary, Phnom Penh Post, October 13-16, 2000, available at http://www.phnompenhpost.com/TXT/letters/L921-4.htm; Cambodia Genocide Program, Chronology, Yale University, September 24, 2000, available at http://www.yale.edu/cgp/chron_v3.html.

[30][30] Internal Rules of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Rules 15, 42-45 (hereinafter “Internal Rules”), available at http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/internal_rules.aspx.

[31][31] In fact, an October 12, 2004 United Nations memorandum quoted on the DC-Cam website states: “It is expected that the Chambers will rely heavily on documentary evidence.  Some 200,000 pages of documentary evidence are expected to be examined.  The bulk of that documentation is held by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an NGO dedicated to research and preservation of documentation on crimes perpetrated during the period of Democratic Kampuchea.” http://www.dccam.org/Abouts/History/Histories.htm.

[32][32] Id., Rule 87.

[33][33] See e.g., William A. Schabas, Problems of International Codification – Were the atrocities in Cambodia and Kosovo genocide?, 35 New Engl. L. Rev. 287 (2001).

[34][34] Law on the Outlawing of the "Democratic Kampuchea" Group (English translation based on text published by the Phnom Penh Post, Vol. 3, no. 14, 15-28 July 1994), available at http://www.cambodia.gov.kh/krt/pdfs/Law%20to%20Outlaw%20DK%20Group%201994.pdf.

[35][35] Id., art. 6.

[36][36] The Vietnamese-run People’s Revolutionary Tribunal that tried Sary employed an idiosyncratic definition of genocide that does not reflect the definition in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.  See Decree Law No. 1: Establishment of People’s Revolutionary Tribunal at Phnom Penh to Try the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary Clique for the Crime of Genocide, art. 1 reprinted in Genocide In Cambodia: Documents from the Trial of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary 45 (Howard J. De Nike et al. eds., 2000).

[37][37] Royal Decree NS/RKT/0996/72 (unofficial translation), available at http://www.cambodia.gov.kh/krt/pdfs/pardon%20for%20ieng%20sary.pdf.

[38][38] See Agreement Between the United Nations and The Royal Government of Cambodia Concerning the Prosecution Under Cambodian Law of Crimes During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea, art. 11, available at http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/default.aspx; Establishment Law supra note 11, art. 40 (new).

[39][39] In the Provisional Detention Order for Ieng Sary, the co-investigating judges opine that Sary’s pardon does not nullify his 1979 genocide conviction, but merely annuls the sentence.  Furthermore, the prior conviction does not bar the ECCC from trying Sary under the principle of ne bis in idem for crimes other than genocide.  Finally, the judges note that Sary’s amnesty relates to domestic crimes, not those within the ECCC’s jurisdiction.  See Criminal Case File 002/14-08-2006, Provisional Detention Order, paras. 7-14, available at http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/cabinet/indictment/11/Provisional_detention_order_IENG_Sary_ENG.pdf.

[40][40] ECCC Draft Internal Rules, November 3, 2006, rule 27 (12)(b), available at http://www.cambodia.gov.kh/krt/internal_rules/ECCC_Draft-Internal-Rules.pdf.

[41][41] International Center for Transitional Justice, Comments on Draft Internal Rules for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia 7 (November 17, 2006), available at http://www.ictj.org/images/content/6/0/601.pdf (“Awards to particular groups of victims as civil parties may be perceived as fragmenting the broader universe of victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, thereby diminishing the aggregate reparatory effect of the awards even if they are made collectively”); Amnesty International, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: Recommendations to address victims and witnesses issues in the internal rules effectively (January 1, 2007), available at http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA230012007?open&of=ENG-2S3 (“[C]learer terminology which (sic) should be used to clarify the extent of reparation which can be awarded by the Extraordinary Chambers.”).

[42][42] International Center for Transitional Justice, Comments on Draft Internal Rules, supra note ­­41, at 8; Amnesty International, Recommendations, supra note 41; Jaya Ramji-Nogales, DC-CAM Comments on the ECCC Draft Internal Rules (November 17, 2006), available at http://www.genocidewatch.org/CambodiaDCCAMCommentsOnTheECCCDraftInternalRules17Nov2006.htm.

[43][43] Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Internal Rules, Rule 23(12) (June 12, 2007), available at http://www.eccc.gov.kh/english/internal_rules.aspx.

[44][44] See Amnesty International, Recommendations, supra note 41.  The five forms are restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.  Id.

[45][45] Establishment Law, supra note 11, art. 1.  Another example of the trend toward restrictive personal jurisdiction can be found in the statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone which limits that court’s jurisdiction to “persons who bear the greatest responsibility” for the serious crimes at issue.  Statute of the

Special Court

for Sierra Leone, art. 1, available at http://www.sc-sl.org/scsl-statute.html.

[46][46] See e.g., Jaya Ramji, Reclaiming Cambodian History, supra note 18 (arguing that trials of Khmer Rouge leaders should be supplemented by a truth commission or other investigative body); Taylor, supra note 10 (discussing a truth commission and reparations); McGrew, supra note 17(discussing various transitional justice mechanisms including a truth commission, reparations and vetting).

[47][47] United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, Identical Letters Dated 15 March 1999

from the Secretary-General to the President of the General Assembly and the President of the

Security Council, United Nations, A/53/850, S/1999/231, March 16, 1999, 2.

[48][48] McGrew, supra note 17, at 143.

[49][49] Suzannah Linton, KR trials are vital, but won't solve everything, Phnom Penh Post, Dec. 20, 2002 - January 2, 2003, available at http://www.phnompenhpost.com/TXT/comments/kr.htm.

[50][50] Dr. John Hall, In the Shadow of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal: The Domestic Trials of Nuon Paet, Chhouk Rin & Sam Bith, and the Search for Judicial Legitimacy in Cambodia, 20 Colum. J. Asian L. 235 (2006).

[51][51] Id. at 295.

[52][52] See, e.g., discussion on website of International Center for Transitional Justice, available at http://www.ictj.org/en/where/region3/642.html.

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Pasted below is a copy of a petition that was sent by our group to the Congress and to President G W Bush to request that the US should look into this reported genocidal policy practiced by the Socialist republic of Vietnam. We received a number of letters from a number senators responding to our request in the petition.

 

Copy of the letter to the US government on the practice of genocide against our Khmer Krom compatriots.

                                                            ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Here's the final letter and the instruction for other people to sent to their senators via their Web Form.

 

Instruction on How to Send the Letter to your senators via the Internet:

 

1. Click here to the US Senator Web:  http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm 

 

2. Find the senator from your state and click on his/her Web Form link.
(example: Senator of Hawaii, Daniel Akaka is http://akaka.senate.gov/email.cfm )

 

3. Fill out the web form (put your name, address, email, etc...). This type of letter to the senators would fall under "Foreign relations", "Trade", or "Human Rights" category depending what is available on each of the senators web form.

 

4. Copy-and-paste the letter below (Letter to US Senators to support HR 3096 rfs.) into the "message" section of your senator's Web Form.

(don't forget to fill in your senator's name and your name in the letter).

 

5. Click "Submit Form".

 

Thank You so much.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Letter to US Senators to support HR 3096.rfs

 

Dear Senator _[your senator's name]_____,

 

On behalf of a pro- open society and democracy group of Cambodian-Americans from different states of America, [we/I,] _[your name or your organization's name]_____ [are/am] asking for your support to push forward the Vietnam Human Rights Act of 2007 (HR 3096 rfs), which is sponsored by Rep. Christopher Smith of New Jersey and supported by the overwhelming majority of members of the United States House of Representatives, regarding the continuing abuses of human rights of the ethnic and religious minorities in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This resolution is extremely important because not only can it promote the development of freedom and democracy in Vietnam, but it can also promote freedom, democracy, peace and stability in the neighboring countries — mainly Laos and Cambodia.

Surprisingly, the findings in Section 2 of this resolution identify only some abuses of the human rights of Vietnamese pro-democracy activists and some ethnic minorities living in Vietnam by its present Communist government. Unfortunately, it did not mention the massive and systematic abuse of the largest ethnic minority group in Vietnam numbering, according some NGOs, between 7 and 11 million indigenous Cambodian ethnics known as Khmer-Krom people. The Vietnamese government’s official statistics mention only about 800 thousand Khmer-Krom people.  

Historically, following its well-known practice of imperialism and colonialism against Cambodia known as ‘Nam Tien’ or the ‘Southern March’ since the 17^th century, Vietnam has succeeded in taking over part of Cambodia called Kampuchea Krom (meaning “Lower Cambodia” or “South Cambodia”), comprising most of the present-day southern part of Vietnam. Millions of Khmer-Krom people have been subjected to all kinds of human rights abuses by the Vietnamese authorities. Nowadays, the Communist government of Vietnam continues to violate human rights of these people in the continuing effort to eradicate all aspects of their identities by suppressing their freedom to practice their own religion, prohibiting them from learning to read and write their native language, forcing them to change their names to Vietnamese names, including the name of their home towns and cities,… etc. For example, the name of Prey Nokor was changed to Saigon and now Ho Chi Minh City. 

Under the excuse of promoting a land-reform act in 1975, the Vietnamese government used that unjust law to enforce removal of lands ownership from the Khmer Krom people. Since nearly all Khmer-Krom people are farmers, this clearly meant a total confiscation of their only means of subsistence. Consequently, some of these people had to buy back their land at a higher price, while others had no other choice but to become tenants on their own land. Worse yet, those who could not afford to buy back their land either became extremely poor and faced starvation or died from hunger. 

Furthermore, those who had no choice but to dare challenge the Vietnamese government by non-violent means have been either imprisoned, tortured, or even killed. These inhuman aggressions against the Khmer-Krom people by the Vietnamese government clearly fit the definition of “genocide” under Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This genocidal policy and cruelty towards the Khmer-Krom people is well documented by an admirable and brave German film-maker and human rights advocate, Rebecca Sommer, in her recent film entitled “Eliminated Without Bleeding”  (http://rebeccasommer.org/documentaries/Khmer-Krom/index.php) and the Khmer Krom Federation website (http://khmerkrom.org/eng/). Prior to the current policy of Vietnam to exterminate the Khmer-Krom people, there were also the Cham people whose kingdom, named Champa (what is now Central Vietnam) was totally wiped off the world map late in  the 16^th century by the then Dai-Viet Empire--the precursor of present-day Vietnam.

What even more dangerous about the current Communist government of Vietnam is the fact that it does not stop at just abusing its own people in its own country. Vietnam still embraces its century-old expansionist ideology with its ultimate goal of building an empire by transforming the former French Indochina into the “Greater Vietnam” which includes Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia--a concept that was advanced by the late Communist leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh.

Using Communism as the pretext to fight against colonialism, and 'US imperialism,' Vietnam invaded Cambodia on Christmas day in 1978 under the false pretenses to save the latter country from the murderous Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot leadership. In reality, Communist Vietnam was the creator and the main sponsor, militarily and ideologically, of the Khmer Rouge movement. Only when the Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot ceased to allow Vietnamese Communists to control him and his party did Vietnam decide to invade Cambodia . After the invasion, Vietnam installed a pro-Vietnamese Communists group under those Cambodians such as Pen Sovann, Chea Sim, Hun Sen and others, who were hand-picked to run Cambodia as a satellite state. Vietnam also made sure that the Khmer Rouge atrocities against the Cambodian people, known as the ”Killing Fields” become a powerful means of propaganda to make them and their Cambodian protégés more acceptable to the international community by demonizing the demons. Through this fabricated, and subservient government of Hun Sen, Vietnam occupied Cambodia and imposed illegal border treaties and allowed massive illegal Vietnamese immigrants to enter and become Cambodian citizens without any required formalities such as waiting period for over ten years--from 1979 to 1989. Only after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and under heavy international pressure did Vietnam decide to unilatterally withdraw its armed forces from Cambodia .

According to Ambassador K.L. Bindra, former Chairman and Secretary General (1964-67) of the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC), a committee established under the 1954 Geneva Agreement on Indochina to verify Cambodia’s territorial integrity thereafter, the Vietnamese army did not really leave Cambodia. They only stripped off their military uniforms and have been operating in Cambodia in civilian clothes since. Hanoi dictates the Hun Sen government in order to serve its purpose of "Vietnamizing" Cambodia by oppressing and eliminating Cambodian people and the refugees from Kampuchea Krom, just like they are doing to those Khmer Krom in Vietnam proper. By this overt and covert unrelenting aggression against Cambodia, a sovereign country, and its Cambodian people, in Cambodia proper or in Kampuchea Krom, practically under the nose of the United Nations Organization, which by its charter is supposed to prevent such aggressions. After 27 years under Vietnamese control from behind the scenes, the Vietnamization of Cambodia is now at its accelerated and final phase. 

A clear example of this Vietnamization process is the recent kidnapping and defrocking of a Cambodian Buddhist monk inside Cambodia to be tried in Vietnam. In July 2007, the Reverend Tim Sakhorn was accused by the Cambodian government of using his temple as a place “to propagate activities that divide the relationship between Cambodia and Vietnam .” This activity—even if it is peaceful in nature—violates the so-called “Treaty of Peace and Friendship” between Cambodia , Laos and Vietnam.

Another example of the Communist Vietnam’s expansion and control of its neighboring countries is the lop-sided deal between Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in the so-called “Development Triangle” economic development plan. This plan is designed to boost the regional economy and promote the so-called “special relations, friendship, cooperation, peace” with neighboring countries. But in fact, it has slowly expanded Communist Vietnam’s control in all aspects of life in Cambodia —not to mention Laos. Below are some examples of the Development Triangle projects:

-- A golf course that straddles Cambodia and Vietnam's border

-- A network of roads and railroads integrating Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam 

--  A network of hydro-electric power plants in the three countries financed and managed by Vietnam

-- A network of corporations whose majority ownership is Vietnam

--  A tourist project that would allow free movement of people and investment between Vietname and Cambodia along the southern part of the two countries.

-- A treaty of Peace and Friendship under which no one from Cambodia and Laos is allowed to protest, even peacefully, against these Vietnamese gross and open infringement against Cambodian and Laotian sovereignty.

In spite of the obvious economic advantages Vietnam has gained from free trade with the free world, the Vietnamese government still holds on to its imperialist ideology—specifically by continuing Ho Chi Minh’s dream of creating an Indochina Federation by using Communism as a tool to systematically and subtly control the neighboring countries. This, of course, means help establishing and supporting corrupt and ruthless dictatorships in neighboring countries, and wholesale violation of human rights to any persons that get in its way. The "Strategic Southward March” to unify Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia into the Indochina Federation under Vietnamese control is in the process of being fulfilled, despite the presence of the United Nations, which is supposed to allow a stronger international security system for sovereign members to better defend themselves against foreign aggressions.

Vietnam (the founder of the Indochinese Communist Part in the early 1930) is one of only five remaining communist countries in the world. The expansion of this aggressive communist state, empowered economically by free trade, constitutes a real danger for the regional and international security. Only when Vietnam becomes a true democratic nation can there be any chance of freedom and democracy for people in neighboring countries. 

We (I) would be most grateful if you would support the passing of resolution HR3096 (rfs), which is now being considered in the Senate to promote freedom and democracy in Vietnam and any other resolutions that address the issue of human rights violation and the genocide of the Khmer-Krom people in Vietnam. We strongly feel that this kind of resolution can also have a trickle-down effect of freedom and democracy in Laos and especially in Cambodia. Last but not least, we urge for your kind consideration of amending HR3096 (rfs) to add a paragraph requesting the current government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to stop implementing its genocide policy of the forgotten Khmer-Krom minority in Vietnam.

 

With deepest gratitude and sincerely yours,

[ your name here]

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