Cambodia: The Tragedies (Part 3)
By
Hann So
April 17, 2013
World
Joyous Sihanouk Returns to Cambodia From Exile
By PHILIP SHENON Published: November 15, 1991
A joyous Prince Norodom Sihanouk returned home to Cambodia today after spending most of the last 20 years in exile -- with the elusive, perhaps impossible, goal of establishing a permanent peace in his shattered nation.
Pressing his hands together in a traditional Cambodian greeting, the 69-year-old Prince emerged slowly this morning from the Chinese jetliner that had carried him on the final leg of what has been a long journey home, and he bowed gratefully to the thousands of Cambodians who gathered at Phnom Penh's international airport to celebrate his arrival.
"I am very happy," the Prince said in his soprano-register voice, after kneeling at the feet of a delegation of aging, saffron-robed Buddhist monks who had been waiting for hours in the airport crowd to see him.
The Prince returned to Phnom Penh as the leader of the Supreme National Council, a coalition group that will take part in running Cambodia until free elections can be held in 1993 under terms of a United Nations peace plan. No Public Speeches
The Prince made no public speeches today and answered no substantive questions from reporters, except to offer an enthusiastic "yes" when asked if peace had finally arrived in Cambodia.
While the flag-waving crowds at the airport and along the motorcade to the newly renovated royal palace in Phnom Penh were large and affectionate, today's reception for the former Cambodian ruler was still decidedly subdued -- a reflection of how often Cambodians have seen their hopes for peace dashed over the last 20 years.
There were broad smiles in the city today, but few spontaneous tears of joy at the return of the Prince, who was Cambodia's head of state from 1941 until a 1970 coup, and who was for a time in the 1970's the titular head of the Khmer Rouge rebel movement and later became its prisoner.
There was also palpable apprehension in the city today over the imminent return to Phnom Penh of leaders of the Khmer Rouge, which is a participant in the new transitional government in Cambodia. Rule of Khmer Rouge
During the four years the Khmer Rouge and its paramount leader, Pol Pot, held power, from 1975 to 1979, more than one million Cambodians were either executed or died from ill treatment, hunger and disease.
Prince Sihanouk, who fled Phnom Penh in 1979 only days ahead of a Vietnamese invasion that ousted the Khmer Rouge from power, is seen by many in the capital as the only Cambodian who can reunify the nation.
It is a view held even by those who believe the Prince's miscalculations made possible the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in the late 1970's and the dozen years of civil war that followed.
The Prince has said that his hope is to bring to peace to his nation before he dies -- and to be permitted to die in Cambodia. Dancers Greet Prince
Waiting at the airport this morning to greet the Prince were some of his oldest friends and some of his oldest adversaries -- a few Cambodians fall into both categories -- as well as a troupe of classical Cambodian dancers whose ornate, jewel-encrusted silk costumes glistened in the autumn sun.
The decision to include classical dancers and a delegation of Buddhist monks and nuns in the welcoming party for the Prince was a poignant symbol for many Cambodians in the airport crowd, since both dancers and religious figures were singled out for extermination in the 1970's by the Khmer Rouge. The group's leaders believed ancient Khmer dance and religious observance to be vestiges of Cambodia's "bourgeois" past.
"We have not known peace for many years," said Cheavan, a 72-year-old white-robed Buddhist nun who lost many friends to the Khmer Rouge and who was at the airport today to catch a glimpse of the Prince.
"The last time we remember peace was when Prince Sihanouk ruled the nation," she said. "We are happy he is home."
As Prince Sihanouk and his party stepped from the Chinese jet, members of the dance troupe dropped to their knees and threw white flower petals at the feet of the Prince and his wife, Princess Monique. Hun Sen, the Vietnamese-installed Prime Minister, was dressed in a spotless white uniform, white hat, and white gloves, and he beamed as he explained how he was "very happy and proud" to be escorting the Prince back to his palace.
As Prince Sihanouk waved and blew kisses to the crowd from the Chevrolet Impala convertible, Cambodians standing along the motorcade route appeared genuinely delighted to see their former ruler, even if for the most part their decision to take part in the welcoming festivities today had not been spontaneous.
Many in the crowds said they had been ordered to attend the welcoming ceremonies by Government employers or by their schools, and that the authorities had provided them with either small blue-and-white paper flags bearing the seal of the Supreme National Council or posters of the Prince. Prisoner of Khmer Rouge
When Prince Sihanouk was last in Phnom Penh, it was as a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, which kept him under house arrest for more than two years and allowed him to flee into exile in China only when it became clear that a Vietnamese occupation was imminent.
Memories of those desperate years have clearly not faded for the Prince, whose moments of purest emotion today seemed to materialize when he inspected the Khem Rim, the main living quarters in the royal palace, and reintroduced himself to the household staff who served him when he was incarcerated.
Cambodian television, shooting in the royal palace this afternoon, showed the servants kneeling before the Prince and kissing his hands, a gesture that the Prince returned with a gentle embrace. Key to the Palace
At another point on television, the Prince is presented by Mr. Hun Sen with a ceremonial key to the front door of the palace.
Prince Sihanouk once angrily referred to Mr. Hun Sen as a "one-eyed lackey" of the Vietnamese Government; Mr. Hun Sen lost an eye years ago.
But during the four years of peace talks that led to the Prince's return to Phnom Penh, the two Cambodians, representing different generations and different ideologies, have become close allies, if not close friends.
As he accepted the palace key today from Mr. Hun Sen, the Prince turned to the Cambodian Prime Minister and told him solemnly: "You are my son now and, as my son, you may come to the palace whenever you wish. You are always welcome, Mr. Hun Sen."
U.N. Aide Calls Cambodia Vote 'Free and Fair' - The New York Times
May 26, 1993 U.N. Aide Calls Cambodia Vote 'Free and Fair'
By PHILIP SHENON
SIEM REAP, Cambodia, May 25— The head of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Cambodia described this week's internationally supervised elections as "free and fair" and said he would not rule out the involvement of the Khmer Rouge rebels in whatever government follows the voting.
Defying intimidation and threats of violence by both the Khmer Rouge and the incumbent Government, more than 85 percent of Cambodia's 4.7 million registered voters had cast ballots by the end of voting Tuesday, with three days of voting to go. The first results are expected this week.
By designating the elections "free and fair," the director of the peacekeeping operation, Yasushi Akashi, took a crucial step toward formal international recognition of the government that is expected to be formed this year.
Under a 1991 peace treaty intended to end the civil war, the United Nations is obliged to make the designation of a "free and fair" election before the establishment of a new constitution and a new government.
"This election has not been held in an ideal situation, but nevertheless, it has met the yardstick for a realistic standard of free and fair elections," Mr. Akashi, a longtime Japanese diplomat, told reporters on a tour of polling stations in northwestern Cambodia.
He said he was "very grateful" to the voters who had turned out by the millions this week despite "acts of political intimidation." He said that in developed nations, "we are blase about elections, about democracy, but for these people, they are exercising their rights for the first time in 20 years."
Despite United Nations predictions of Khmer Rouge violence, including attacks on polling stations, the voting has so far been remarkably peaceful.
The Maoist-inspired rebels -- responsible for the deaths of more than one million Cambodians from starvation, disease and execution when they controlled the central Government in the 1970's -- dropped out of the United Nations peace process last year and had threatened to sabotage the elections with violence.
1/2 U.N. Aide Calls Cambodia Vote 'Free and Fair' - The New York Times But to the relief of United Nations peacekeepers and Cambodians, the rebels' threat appears to have been hollow. While the Khmer Rouge fielded no candidates in the election, hundreds of Khmer Rouge soldiers and their families have reportedly turned up at United Nations polling stations in isolated areas, eager to vote.
Asked today whether the Khmer Rouge might be allowed to take part in a future government, Mr. Akashi, whose mission here appeared earlier to have been doomed by Khmer Rouge intransigence, said, "I think they can become a player in the political process in Cambodia on the basis of their full recognition of what has been achieved in this election."
Asked his guess as to why the Khmer Rouge had not followed through on their threats of violence, Mr. Akashi smiled. "Their minds," he said, "are unfathomable."
Some diplomats in Phnom Penh do fathom a guess, saying the Khmer Rouge appear to have decided in recent days that the royalist opposition party founded by the nation's former monarch, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, had a strong chance of winning the election.
The Khmer Rouge pulled out of the settlement process last year after accusing the United Nations of having rigged the process to favor its nemesis, the Vietnamese-installed Government now led by Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Before and after the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in the 1970's -- but not during it -- Prince Sihanouk was a rebel ally of the Khmer Rouge.
The 70-year-old Prince has suggested in recent months that he would include the Khmer Rouge in a coalition government, despite its genocidal past, if that meant an end to the civil war. The war erupted in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge and their leader, Pol Pot, were overthrown by the invading Vietnamese Army.
After the third day of voting was completed today, the United Nations said more than 4 million of the 4.7 million voters had cast ballots. Despite a large Khmer Rouge presence in this province and the accompanying threat of violence at polling stations, the voter turnout in Siem Reap was put today at more than 80 percent.
2/2 Cambodia's Vote Results Fair, U.N. Peacekeeper Says - Los Angeles Times
Cambodia's Vote Results Fair, U.N. Peacekeeper Says
June 10, 1993 | From Reuters
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The chief U.N. peacekeeper in Cambodia declared the results of the country's elections fair Wednesday and rejected demands by the defeated government party for an independent inquiry into alleged fraud.
"Having . . . already certified the polling as free and fair, I am in a position to certify and declare the results of these elections as fair and acceptable," Yasushi Akashi said in a letter to the government party.
Akashi's verdict on last month's U.N.-run election, aimed at bringing peace after years of fighting, was unequivocal. But doubts persisted about how much power the former Communist government is willing to give up after 13 years in office.
Generals from the government army and police met head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk on Wednesday to press demands for an interim power-sharing deal, even as the leader of the victorious royalist party flew back to Phnom Penh.
But Sihanouk again insisted that he will not revive his abortive proposal for an interim "national government" despite strong support for the idea from U.N. peacekeepers.
Royalist party leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Sihanouk's son, arrived in the capital by U.N. helicopter. He had stayed away since voting began May 23, citing security worries.
Under heavy U.N. escort, Ranariddh traveled straight to the palace to meet his father. In the afternoon, he held talks with Akashi, but no details emerged.
U.N. Radio, giving the latest election results, said the royalists had won 45.2% of the vote, or 58 seats in the new Constituent Assembly, and the government Cambodian People's Party 38.6%, giving it 51 seats. The final result will be announced today.
The government, installed by Vietnamese invaders in early 1979, has yet to accept the result, citing "massive irregularities."
Cambodia’s many-headed monster | The Economist
Cambodia’s many-headed monster
Oct 30th 1997 | PHNOM PENH | From the print edition
AT FIRST glance, Hun Sen, the man in charge of Cambodia, has not had things all his own way since his bloody putsch in early July. Armed resistance still flickers on, and some of his own soldiers have mutinied. The economy has slumped so badly he cannot even pay his civil servants. Abroad, his government has failed to secure a seat at the United Nations or membership of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). The head of state, King Sihanouk, has gone off to China in a sulk, mourning, he says, “a divided, broken, humiliated, desperate nation, whose future is beyond darkness”. Even some colleagues in Mr Hun Sen's own party are questioning his bullying tactics. On closer examination, however, Mr Hun Sen looks almost like a fixture. As his countrymen say, the river flows by, but the banks remain.
This is a pity for Cambodians, because Mr Hun Sen has the habits of a jungle fighter. The UN has “conservatively” documented the slaughter of up to 60 members of the opposition led by the ousted joint prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the king's son. Senior military and intelligence officials of his FUNCINPEC party were systematically tracked down. Instruments of medieval torture such as thumb-screws were used to force some soldiers to confess that they were Khmers Rouges hardliners, and thus to provide a pretext for the Hun Sen coup. Nobody has been punished for the brutality. Prince Ranariddh is still in exile, along with other prominent opposition politicians. Mr Hun Sen insists that, if the prince returns, he must face trial for his dealings with the Khmers Rouges and for smuggling weapons.
Mr Hun Sen has also put foreign governments in a fix after they had spent more than $2 billion arranging elections in 1993 under UN supervision. FUNCINPEC won, but was forced into coalition with Mr Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP) after he threatened a resumption of the long civil war. The UN designed a pretty constitutional edifice of liberal democracy on the foundations of the one-party Leninist state installed by Vietnam in 1979, when it drove out the Khmers Rouges. The edifice has virtually collapsed, but the foundations are solid. The CPP never truly shared power. Now, in most provinces, even the pretence of a coalition has gone: almost all senior officials are CPP men. Cambodia’s many-headed monster | The Economist Another election is due next year. Cambodia says it needs foreigners to provide three-quarters of the estimated $28m-29m cost of holding them. But Mr Hun Sen will probably try to rig them. Even if he does not, the CPP “cannot lose by much”, says one senior party member. “It is an unavoidable element” in the government of Cambodia. An experienced foreign aid worker agrees that it provides the only functioning administrative structure: “Everybody who is part of it hates it. Everybody who is oppressed by it fears it. But it is the only thing that works.”
Should foreigners lend their support to an election that is likely to be rigged? The first decision will have to come from the European Commission, which has said it will pay for the registration of the voters. Then ASEAN too will have to decide. Since it is still committed to admitting Cambodia, it has an interest in a plausible election. That means securing Mr Hun Sen's agreement to the prince's return, and persuading him to improve draft election laws. At present, they would create an election commission beholden to the CPP.
It probably also means delaying the voting beyond the scheduled May 23rd, and cajoling exiled members of the National Assembly into coming back to debate the laws. But Mr Hun Sen says he will brook no delay, and the exiles do not want to be seen to legitimise the coup. It is a mess. But to withhold foreign money would give Mr Hun Sen carte blanche to rig the election any old how, or simply to cancel it.
As in other one-party systems, the best hope of change lies in the machinations of the party's own members. Some leaders are appalled at the prospect of Cambodia's return to isolation. Many National Assembly members would also welcome a delay in the vote, so that they could serve out their full five-year terms (and draw their salaries). Others worry about cuts in foreign aid and the collapse of the economy. Mr Hun Sen is bad for business (see article (/node/104442) ). Such worries may have been voiced behind closed doors at a party congress that finished on October 28th, though Mr Hun Sen felt able to boast that the party was robust and united, and would remain so until 3000. Hopes that the CPP will temper Mr Hun Sen's excesses are usually wishful thinking.
Cambodian political life is still pervaded by a wartime culture of unaccountability and impunity. The nation as a whole, it is often said, is suffering post-traumatic shock from the horrors of the Khmers Rouges. Mr Hun Sen, even now, justifies himself by comparison with that regime, which cost up to 2m Cambodian lives from 1975 to 1979. When its leader, Pol Pot, recently granted his first interview to a foreign journalist for 18 years, he expressed no remorse, and presented himself as a sad and powerless old man. Many Cambodians were outraged and angry. The tortuous procedures for an international tribunal to investigate the Khmers Rouges' crimes are being set in motion. But few expect Pol Pot to be brought to justice.
Until he is, Mr Hun Sen's thugs need have little fear of having to account for their own crimes. Cambodia’s many-headed monster | The Economist Life in Cambodia, it is true, is far better now than it was. Some opposition parties still operate. Even the UN thinks it is now safe for the exiles to return. And despite attacks and intimidation directed at the press, and a CPP stranglehold on radio and television, some fiercely critical opposition papers still print. All for show, says a human-rights worker, citing the sea-serpent motif omnipresent in Khmer iconography: “The naga has many heads; but it's the same snake.” Ousted Cambodian prince returns home
March 30, 1998 Web posted at: 2:06 a.m. EST (0706 GMT)
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Reuters) -- Cambodia's ousted co-premier Prince Norodom Ranariddh returned to Phnom Penh on Monday, almost nine months after he was toppled from power while out of the country and went into exile.
Several hundred officials from the prince's royalist FUNCINPEC party burst into applause as the prince emerged from a plane from Bangkok Prince Ranariddh accompanied by U.N. representatives and senior diplomats.
He was escorted across the tarmac by the U.N. secretary-general's representative in Cambodia, Lakhan Mehrotra.
"I am truly delighted and deeply moved to be back in my beloved Cambodia with our people after an absence of eight months," the prince said in a statement released upon his arrival.
He thanked his father, King Norodom Sihanouk, for pardoning him after he was sentenced in absentia to 35 years in prison for security crimes.
A Japanese-brokered peace plan helped pave the way for the royal pardon and Ranariddh's return to participate in July's national election.
Prince pledges cooperation
Analysts said his return was another step toward the ultimate goal of a free and fair poll on July 26, but they added that more problems and political tensions were inevitable.
"I express my appreciation to the Cambodian authorities who placed the higher interest of the nation above everything else," the prince said in the statement.
"I am indebted to Japan, the United Nations, ASEAN, the European Union and the Friends of Cambodia grouping for their unwavering efforts to peacefully solve the political crisis in Cambodia," he said.
"I hope we can continue to count on their kind assistance as we begin a new process of national reconciliation leading to national elections."
The prince said he would work to build up his royalist party.
"From now on I shall work hard to gather, reunite and reinforce FUNCINPEC, which remains one of Cambodia's major political forces," he said in the statement. "I shall work in cooperation with the established Cambodian institutions, all political parties including the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), in order to achieve national reconciliation of Cambodia."
Political tensions remain
Former first prime minister Ranariddh was overthrown by his coalition government partner, Second Prime Minister Hun Sen, the leader of the CPP, in early July as their unwieldy four-year-old power- sharing government collapsed in violence.
Analysts said the most fundamental difficulty facing Cambodia is the smoldering distrust and dislike between the two men.
There had been concerns about the prince's safety on his return but the government assured his supporters arrangements for his security were ready.
Police were in evidence around the airport on Monday but there was no heavy military presence.
Ranariddh and other officials left the airport in a convoy of about 20 cars and were expected to head straight to a city centre hotel.
The prince was due to stay only for about four days in Phnom Penh.
Several hundred protesters marched through central Phnom Penh earlier in the day in what appeared to be a staged display of opposition to Ranariddh.
Several hundred people also gathered at the Phnom Penh airport, some protesting against the prince's return and some welcoming him back.
"Don't cause damage any more," read one sign in English; "Don't believe Norodom Ranariddh," another read.
One supporter of the prince held a sign saying: "Welcome Prince Norodom Ranariddh. The Cambodian people are delighted."
Khmer Rouge's Pol Pot Is Dead By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, April 17, 1998; Page A01
HONG KONG, April 16—Twenty-three years after his black-pajama- clad guerrillas marched into Cambodia's capital and launched one of this century's most horrific genocides, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died quietly Wednesday on a flowered mattress in a wooden-slatted hut. A television photographer takes a picture of Pol Pot's body, stretched out on a simple bed in a Televised footage from the Khmer Rouge's jungle haven tonight hut in Anlong Veng, Cambodia. showed Pol Pot's lifeless body, arms at the sides, stretched out on a (AP) simple wooden bed, a green blanket partially covering his legs and his plastic sandals at the bedside. The former dictator's body lay where his wife discovered it when she went to arrange his mosquito netting.
American journalist Nate Thayer, a correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, returned to Thailand from the Cambodian jungle tonight and said he had no doubt the body was that of Pol Pot. "He's dead," Thayer said in a telephone interview. "That was Pol Pot. There was no question that was Pol Pot."
Thayer said he spent several hours questioning Pol Pot's wife and daughter, as well as Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge commander who replaced Pol Pot as head of the outlawed guerrilla group, and said he believed the Khmer Rouge reports that Pol Pot, 73, died of natural causes. Thayer also said he inspected the body, poking it several times, and saw no outward evidence of foul play.
"He'd been fleeing for the last 20 days under very difficult circumstances," Thayer said. "It would be very logical that he would succumb, because he was a very sick man to begin with."
In the last known film of him, taken last July, a white-haired Pol Pot appeared frail and sickly, suffering from malaria and unable to walk without assistance.
Thai officials in Bangkok -- who had kept a close watch on Khmer Rouge movements just across the Cambodian border -- had been cautious in assessing reports of the demise of the dictator deemed Pol Pot's wife, Mea Son, and their responsible for the deaths of between 1.5 million and 1.7 million 14-year-old daughter Sith near Cambodians in the late 1970s. "We are still awaiting independent Sahook, Cambodia. (AFP) verification, but everything points to it being true -- that Pol Pot is dead," said Kobsak Chutikul, the Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Officials in Bangkok sent a military team to verify the death reports, and they took a handful of Thai journalists whose television footage has now been broadcast worldwide.
In Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, which was celebrating the end of the lunar new year holiday, officials demanded to see Pol Pot's body before accepting the truth of his death. Local Cambodian radio and television carried no reports about Pol Pot's death, and those Cambodians informed of it by journalists seeking comment were mostly skeptical, saying they had heard such reports too many times before.
Fueling the skepticism was the extraordinary coincidence of Pol Pot's passing, which came as the Clinton administration was gaining international support to put him on trial and as the remaining Khmer Rouge guerrillas seemed ready to turn over their longtime leader.
"I don't want to believe that he's dead, and I don't have time in my life to believe Khmer Rouge propaganda anymore," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has been compiling genocide evidence for use at a tribunal.
"If he's dead, hand over his body to the people, don't just take photographs," said Youk Chhang, interviewed by telephone in Phnom Penh. "I want to see him handcuffed and pushed into a jail, like his cadres did to me 20 years ago."
Youk Chhang expressed the frustration of many people -- Cambodians, scholars and human rights advocates who had hoped for an international war crimes trial -- that Pol Pot's death has robbed the world of the chance to force him to answer for his crimes and, in the process, to try to decipher the roots of his evil.
"Those who survived and suffered through his genocide are never really going to have closure," said American journalist Sidney Schanberg, whose Cambodia memoir served as the basis for the movie "The Killing Fields."
But President Clinton said in a White House statement that Pol Pot's death should not end efforts to bring to justice other Khmer Rouge leaders who share responsibility "for the monstrous human rights abuses committed during this period." And equally, the statement said, "we must renew our determination to prevent such atrocities from occurring in the future."
Thayer, who has spent a decade tracking the elusive Khmer Rouge leader and who last year became the first journalist to interview him in 18 years, said: "A lot of questions died with him. Obviously, justice wasn't served and now . . . can't be."
Youk Chhang said Pol Pot's death "is not the end of the genocide history of Cambodia" because "he alone could not kill 1.6 million Cambodians." Some top-ranking Khmer Rouge leaders who assisted him, such as Ieng Sary, have defected from the movement and are now living freely in Cambodia. The notorious one-legged commander Ta Mok, known as the Butcher, now leads the Khmer Rouge, believed to number just a few hundred guerrillas.
While Pol Pot's death may have cheated his victims of justice, his demise, without an international trial, also avoids the troubling and embarrassing questions a public airing of his crimes would have raised.
Hun Sen, the current Cambodian strongman, was a Khmer Rouge member who defected only after he was targeted for execution. King Norodom Sihanouk, who lost several relatives in Pol Pot's bloody purges, agreed to serve as the nominal leader of the Khmer Rouge-led resistance coalition fighting Vietnamese occupation for more than a decade beginning in 1978.
The United States, through three administrations, provided covert aid to that three-party coalition -- even though Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge was by far its dominant member. And when Pol Pot's guerrillas were isolated and near extinction on the Thai-Cambodian border, China supplied them with massive amounts of money and arms.
But Pol Pot's death changes nothing in Cambodia's current political landscape. Cambodians are preparing for elections in three months that will pit Hun Sen against the royalist rival he ousted last July, a vote Hun Sen hopes will afford him international legitimacy. While the country's dominant political factions were feuding, the aging Pol Pot had ceased to be a major factor; he was denounced by his followers in a show trial and held under house arrest in the remote jungles of Anlong Veng, near the Thai border.
The once unified Khmer Rouge recently had been rocked by defections, starting in August 1996, when Ieng Sary -- Pol Pot's "foreign minister" and known as "Brother Number Two" -- defected to Hun Sen's camp, taking several thousand loyalists with him and being allowed, in return, to remain in control of his longtime base in western Cambodia.
Ieng Sary's switch prompted Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh -- Hun Sen's co-premier and chief political rival, as well as Sihanouk's son -- to begin scrambling for support among other disaffected Khmer Rouge units. Ranariddh's contacts with Pol Pot's forces at Anlong Veng prompted Hun Sen to stage the violent coup last summer that ousted the prince and left Hun Sen in sole power.
Disputes among Khmer Rouge elements over whether to bargain with the government leaders led to a bloody split among the guerrillas, prompting Pol Pot to order the execution of Khmer Rouge defense minister Son Sen and his family -- an act of bloodletting that led Ta Mok to depose and arrest Pol Pot.
Two weeks ago, a mutiny by several thousand Khmer Rouge guerrillas at Anlong Veng reduced the number of Ta Mok's diehards to about 1,000 and sent many fleeing to new strongholds in the jungle. Among them was the captive Pol Pot, whose death was reported on the eve of the April 17, 1975, anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh.
Political killings in Cambodia create atmosphere of fear
AP , PHNOM PENH Sun, Jan 25, 2004 - Page 3
A recent series of assassinations of people linked to Cambodia's political opposition, including this week's slaying of a top union leader, has created an atmosphere of fear and sent a message that killers can run free, human rights advocates said.
"I think that the killings here are sending a message of threat," said Pa Nguon Teang, spokesman for the independent Cambodian Center for Human Rights. If nothing changes, "serious human rights violations will happen more and more," he said Friday.
Chea Vichea, who was president of Cambodia's Free Trade Union of Workers and affiliated with the country's main opposition Sam Rainsy Party, was fatally shot Thursday in Phnom Penh.
In October, a reporter for a radio station run by the opposition FUNCINPEC party was gunned down in front of the station, and a popular singer was shot as she left a relative's home in Phnom Penh. She remains in critical condition at a Bangkok hospital.
No arrests have been made in these cases.
A number of activists with the FUNCINPEC and Sam Rainsy parties were also killed in what the parties allege were politically motivated attacks in the run-up to, and after, last July's inconclusive general elections.
A report by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights on acts of political intimidation from November 2002 to November last year says that 15 members of the Sam Rainsy Party were killed, along with nine FUNCINPEC members and four from the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP).
The opposition parties and the CPP have yet to form a government after months of fruitless negotiations, and the motivations for the attacks remain unclear.
"For some in the ruling party, political killing is the default method for eliminating stubborn but peaceful opponents," Steve Heder, a Cambodian specialist at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, said. Om Yen Tieng, senior adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen, said they haven't made any conclusions about the motivation behind the latest killing since the investigation was not finished.
"We want justice," he said in French yesterday. Some cases take longer than others, but "we haven't forgotten the guilty."
The CPP, led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, took power in 1979 after a Vietnamese invasion ousted the ultra-leftist Khmer Rouge, which is suspected of killing 1.7 million Cambodians during its 1975- 79 rule. Cambodia agrees coalition deal
The two main parties in Cambodia have agreed to form a coalition government, ending 11 months of political deadlock.
The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and Funcinpec have signed a deal which will keep Prime Minister Hun Sen in power.
Cambodia has been without a proper government since last July's elections failed to give any one party the majority needed to govern alone.
At first Funcinpec's Prince Norodom Ranariddh refused to work with Hun Sen, accusing him of being an autocrat.
But after protracted negotiations, the two parties have finally set aside their differences and agreed to form a coalition.
At a televised ceremony in the Cambodian Senate on Wednesday, they signed an agreement to "make sacrifices in order to build Cambodia".
Both leaders were keen to show their support for the new coalition.
"This is a historical solution, which the king and the queen, the Cambodian people and the international community have been waiting for," Hun Sen told reporters.
Prince Ranariddh said both parties had "achieved success for our whole nation".
Under the deal, the number of government posts have been dramatically increased - with over half of them going to the CPP.
The remainder have been earmarked for members of Funcinpec, but some posts may be handed over to another opposition group, the Sam Rainsy Party.
Hun Sen said on Tuesday that he expected the new government to be in place by mid-July.
One of the new assembly's first tasks will be to pass legislation to allow a UN-backed tribunal to try the surviving leaders of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.
The government is also expected to ratify Cambodia's entry into the World Trade Organisation. Cambodia's king favors referendum over backroom deal
AFP , Phnom Penh Mon, Jul 12, 2004 - Page 5
Cambodia's King Norodom Si-hanouk has called for a referendum after refusing to sign a controversial bill to allow a government to be formed after a year-long political impasse.
The king, who lives in self-imposed exile in North Korea, said he would allow the acting head of state to sign, but the revered monarch's refusal to attach his own name is likely to jeopardize the new administration's mandate.
Prime Minister Hun Sen and royalist leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who agreed to form their third coalition after a year of tortuous negotiations, are unlikely to agree to the referendum demand.
They struck the coalition deal on June 30 in a move that angered the 81-year-old king -- traditionally a dealmaker during political wrangling -- as his own attempts at negotiation were snubbed following inconclusive elections last July.
"I cannot respond to this great and serious issue that is fracturing our nation. I will ask Chea Sim, acting head of state, to please sign or not sign the additional constitutional law, in accordance with his opinion," Sihanouk said in a message posted on his website.
"The king reigns but does not rule. Therefore, Parliament, which is the representative of the people, should organize a referendum to allow the people to decide this big issue."
Chea Sim, president of Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party, will be asked to sign the bill today, which will allow the Parliament to sit for its first working session in more than a year.
The bill allows Hun Sen and Ranariddh to be jointly elected as premier and national assembly president by a show of hands.
The king relented Saturday on his threat to abdicate over the feud. He first ascended the throne some 65 years ago. Cambodia shock at abdication By Connie Levett South-East Asia Correspondent Phnom Penh October 8, 2004
A rickshaw passes a picture of King Norodom Sihanouk and Queen Monineath outside the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh yesterday. Photo: AP
Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk yesterday offered to abdicate, reportedly because he was dismayed at political infighting in his impoverished country. Cambodians however were divided over whether their king would follow through with the threat. The announcement that King Sihanouk, who first took the throne in 1941, would retire because of ill health was made by his son and National Assembly president Prince Norodom Ranariddh yesterday and was immediately followed by a wave of pleas for the king to reconsider. "According to a royal message that we have received and read to the National Assembly, the king has abdicated," Prince Ranariddh said. However, a statement on the king's website speaks only of retirement. Western observers in Phnom Penh do not expect the abdication, should it go ahead, to have any immediate effect on Prime Minister Hun Sen's Government. However, tensions may arise in choosing a successor, which is not straightforward. Cambodia's monarch is not selected according to heredity, but the candidate must have a royal bloodline. Several princes fulfil the requirements. The news was "shocking and very regretful", Prince Ranariddh said. The active politician has been considered a candidate for sovereign in the past, but claims he is not interested. "The king said Chea Sim (the Senate president) will be the acting head of state and he has written that from now on, Norodom Sihanouk is retired," he said. The king, 81, had previously threatened to abdicate after being sidelined during the recent year-long political crisis over forming a new government. In July, the king was convinced to stay on by the supreme patriarch monk for the sake of the peace, development and prosperity. "I never dare to breach the will of our supreme patriarch monk and all monks in our country," the king said then. He abdicated the throne in 1955 to enter politics, after which he ran the country until a coup toppled him in 1970. He became king again in 1993. The report of the king's abdication was carried on all televisions channels on Wednesday night, with representatives of the supreme monks and members of parliament pleading for the king to reverse his decision. Local non-government organisations met yesterday to draft a letter asking the king to rethink his decision. In his message, the king asked Cambodians to begin searching for a successor and for the country to form a throne council - a nine-member panel - to consider choosing the next monarch, the statement said. However, Steve Heder, of the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, said there was no legal prov-ision for the king to abdicate or resign. "Legally, basically this is meaningless," Dr Heder said. "He hasn't threatened to abdicate but to retire. In language and in law, if he retires, he can come out of retirement. He doesn't have the power to call on the throne council to meet," the academic and author said in Phnom Penh. "They have to now either amend the constitution or come up with a law to deal with this situation, which they can do because they have a two-thirds majority in parliament." In the letter read on state television, the king asked that he be allowed to "retire" because of his fragile health, saying doctors had found a "new and serious ailment" in his stomach. The letter did not elaborate. He was treated for cancer in the early 1990s. "I ask all compatriots to please allow me to retire," television reported the king's letter as saying. The abdication is not expected to have any impact on the decision this week to go ahead with war crimes tribunals for the Khmer Rouge.
Cambodia tribunal may pave way for judicial reform
By Karen J. Coates, Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor / October 14, 2004 at 12:10 pm EDT
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA
Cambodia has taken a big step toward finally bringing to justice some of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, a regime blamed for the death of one-fifth of the populace in the 1970s.
The Cambodian Parliament ratified an agreement with the United Nations earlier this month to form an international tribunal to try surviving senior leaders. However, no date has been set for the trials, expected to cost more than $50 million - money not yet secured.
Aside from healing the wounds of what the UN has termed a genocide, the internationally-backed process could help professionalize the judiciary in a country that has notoriously corrupt cops and courts. But optimism has been tempered by the six years of negotiations and legislative delays that held up the UN agreement and ratification; many Cambodians lost hope long ago.
The ratification came amid other uncertainties about Cambodia's future. Last Thursday, Cambodia's 81-year-old King Norodom Sihanouk announced his abdication, citing ill health. Within a day, lawmakers approved legislation to establish a Throne Council to choose his successor - evidence the government can move quickly when it so chooses.
Deputy Prime Minister Sok An told the Associated Press that Cambodia could begin the Khmer Rouge trials by the end of next year.
The tribunal can provide a vision "for a better society, for a better country," says Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has spent years gathering evidence against former Khmer Rouge leaders. He says few trained Cambodian jurists survived the Khmer Rouge regime; the country needs a new generation of legal leaders.
To that end, the Cambodian government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) are teaching judges and prosecutors about war crimes, genocide, humanitarian law, and international standards of justice. Such training, according to UNDP, adds to overall legal and judicial reform efforts. As Youk Chhang notes, Cambodians have little access to justice. Aid workers complain regularly of judges and police officers bought with bribes, criminals set free, and victims going uncompensated. Not least among the victims seeking justice are the millions awaiting the tribunal.
Only two former Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody: Ta Mok, a military commander called "The Butcher;" and Kang Kech Ieu, former head of a torture prison. The others who played a role in the 1975 to 1979 regime, during which at least 1.5 million Cambodians were killed or died of disease and starvation, remain free. Pol Pot died in 1998, but around 10 other leaders are expected to be prosecuted.
The court will contain both Cambodian and international judges and prosecutors. The Cambodian Defenders Project, a legal aid group, says the tribunal should adopt its own rules of procedure, rather than rely on Cambodia's existing criminal procedural law, which does not meet international standards. Most important is focusing on victims' rights, a fair trial for the accused, and human rights protections. If the tribunal succeeds in those areas, the process could help improve Cambodia's overall justice system, says the legal group.
However, given Cambodia's poor track record on law and order, critics doubt the Khmer Rouge tribunal will be fair or just.
"As usual, the process and structure is very politicized and it is unlikely that there are any judges capable, willing, and independent enough to be part of the tribunal," says Naly Pilorge of the Cambodian human rights group Licadho.
Many Cambodians doubt that a tribunal will ever happen and doubt it would assuage victims who are still traumatized.
In August, the Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID) conducted unscientific interviews of more than 500 Khmer Rouge survivors about their experiences and expectations of a tribunal. Eighty-nine percent of those questioned said they still think about the past. Many are angry and sad, and more than 40 percent said they still live in fear.
Almost all of those interviewed want a tribunal, but 44 percent said they would prefer no trial at all to a substandard one. "Many Cambodians are well aware that a second-class standard of justice at the ... trial may have serious long-term consequences," says Andrea Behm, KID legal adviser.
Vietnam, Cambodia Sign Border Accord on Hun Sen Visit to Hanoi
By Jason Folkmanis - Oct 10, 2005
Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnam and Cambodia signed a border agreement during a visit to Hanoi today by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, the third regional country that Vietnam has reached a border accord with since 1999.
The treaty supplements a 1985 border accord, according to a document distributed at the signing ceremony. The accord, signed by Hun Sen and Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, was one of seven initialed today by officials from the two nations, including water-resources development in the border area.
Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan told a Cambodian delegation last month the leaders of the two countries place great importance on the signing of a supplementary agreement on the 1985 land border treaty, and that Vietnam's policy is to ``solve definitively the border issue through dialogue with Cambodia,'' the Vietnam News Agency reported on Sept. 26.
Opposition members of Cambodia's parliament are against the signing of an additional border accord with Vietnam, saying it violates Cambodia's constitution, the Voice of America reported from Phnom Penh on Oct. 5. Hun Sen defended the treaty, saying it will allow Cambodians living in the area to use a river for fishing and drawing water, the Voice of America reported Oct. 6.
Vietnam invaded its Southeast Asian neighbor in 1978 to oust the country's Khmer Rouge-led government, leading to an 11-year Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia and a war that killed 23,000 Vietnamese, according to ``Vietnam: Past and Present,'' by D.R. SarDesai, an emeritus professor of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia sparked an incursion by China, an ally of the Khmer Rouge, into Vietnam in 1979 that ruptured Chinese-Vietnamese diplomatic relations until 1991. China and Vietnam signed a land-border demarcation treaty in 1999 and began placing markers along the frontier in 2001.
In June 2003, Vietnam and Indonesia signed an agreement demarcating their maritime borders, resolving a dispute that had taken a quarter of a century to negotiate. Cambodia Is Using Courts to Restrict Free Speech, UN Envoy Says
By Paul Tighe - Dec 27, 2005
Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Cambodia is using its law courts to stifle free speech and political activity, United Nations envoy Yash Ghai said, citing last week's jail sentence imposed on opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who lives in exile.
Criminal prosecutions, such as the defamation case against Sam Rainsy, are being brought under laws introduced in 1992 when the UN was overseeing the peace process in Cambodia, Ghai, the special representative for human rights, said in a statement yesterday, according to the UN's Web site. The laws are out of date and should be repealed, Ghai said.
``Space for political discourse and public debate is being increasingly challenged, including through the courts,'' Ghai said. ``This deeply worrying trend is a serious threat to freedom of expression and political pluralism in Cambodia.''
Sam Rainsy fled to France in February and another opposition lawmaker, Cheam Channy, was sentenced to seven years in jail in August for organized crime and fraud. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused the Cambodian government of trying to silence the opposition, including the Sam Rainsy Party, by last year accusing members of forming an illegal armed force.
Cambodia's government isn't using the courts to dismantle the opposition such as the case against Sam Rainsy, Agence France-Presse cited Khieu Kanharith, a government spokesman, as saying two days ago in the capital, Phnom Penh.
``The issue is that his accusations affect the reputation of others,'' Khieu Kanharith said. ``Politicians should be careful when speaking.''
Human Rights
Cambodia's transitional legislation, known as the UNTAC laws, were introduced before the country adopted its new constitution and signed international human rights treaties, Ghai said.
``The UNTAC law was enacted as a temporary measure and under very particular circumstances, which no longer reflect the situation in today's Cambodia,'' he said. Cambodia's new criminal code, currently being prepared, is an opportunity to make laws compliant with the constitution and human rights obligations, Ghai said.
The U.S. State Department last week condemned the 18-month prison sentence imposed on Sam Rainsy, saying it reflected ``the continuing deterioration of democratic principles such as free speech and expression in Cambodia.''
Sam Rainsy, 56, was sentenced in absentia for defaming Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen and National Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh, AFP reported last week.
The defamation suit involved alleged comments by Sam Rainsy accusing Hun Sen of involvement in a 1997 grenade attack on an anti-government rally that killed at least 19 people and Prince Ranariddh of taking bribes for joining a coalition government led by Hun Sen, AFP said.
Coalition Government
Cambodia was without a government for more than a year after political parties failed to agree on forming a coalition after elections in June 2003.
Hun Sen formed a government in July 2004 with the royalist Funcinpec party led by Prince Ranariddh. Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party won 73 of the 123 National Assembly seats in the 2003 election, short of a two-thirds majority needed to form a government on its own. Funcinpec won 26 seats and the Sam Rainsy Party took 24 seats.
Sam Rainsy won't appeal the jail sentence, AFP reported two days ago, citing his lawyer Som Chandya. Sam Rainsy flew to France and another deputy, Chea Poch, went to the U.S. after their parliamentary immunity was lifted, AFP reported in February.
Cambodia's Hitler dies peacefully in sleep
David Lamb in Phnom Penh July 22, 2006
TA MOK, once called the "Hitler of Cambodia" for his role as a commander of the Khmer Rouge, died yesterday as he awaited prosecution for his role in one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.
A frail, white-haired man, Ta Mok was believed to be 80.
"Ta Mok passed away at 4.45am," his lawyer said, adding that he had slipped into unconsciousness before he died. "We feel very sad for his death but what can we do."
Ta Mok became the communist Khmer Rouge's last leader before the movement disintegrated in 1998. He was arrested a year later.
He maintained to the end that he bore no responsibility for the Cambodian "killing fields" and that other Khmer Rouge commanders were the architects and perpetrators of the genocide.
But for years Ta Mok was a feared name in Unrepentant ... a 1999 picture of Ta Mok Cambodia. As the second in command of the Khmer during an interrogation session. Rouge, he and his followers were linked to the Photo: AFP elimination of entire villages, forced labour camps, mass executions and torture chambers. Cambodians called him "the Butcher". The Prime Minister, Hun Sen, referred to him as the "Hitler of Cambodia".
Ta Mok was taken to a military hospital last month with breathing problems and had reportedly slipped in and out of a coma.
He had been expected to be the first person indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity in a Khmer Rouge tribunal that opened this month, and could have been a vital witness against other former regime leaders.
He made no final statements and said nothing about the Khmer Rouge before he died, his lawyer said.
Cambodian and United Nations-appointed foreign judges have been given the task of trying former leaders of the regime.
Up to 2 million people were executed or died of starvation and overwork between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, forced millions into the countryside.
Pol Pot died in 1998 and surviving members of the regime are in their 70s and 80s, prompting fears that they too could die before facing justice.
Los Angeles Times, Agence France-Presse
Cambodian royalist party throws out absentee leader
AP , PHNOM PENH Thu, Oct 19, 2006 - Page 4
Cambodia's royalist party yesterday voted to remove Prince Norodom Ranariddh as its leader, saying he was unable to lead the fractious party because he is out of the country too often.
The Funcinpec party said in a statement issued at the end of an extraordinary congress that it had chosen Keo Puth Rasmey, Cambodia's ambassador to Germany, to replace Ranariddh, whose current whereabouts were not clear.
"It comes to a point where our former president, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, is not able to perform his duty, having lived abroad so long," Keo Puth Rasmey told reporters.
Ranariddh is the son of Norodom Sihanouk, the country's retired but still-revered king, who founded Funcinpec and whose name helped the party win a UN-organized 1993 election.
But under Ranariddh's leadership, the party's popularity has steadily declined over the past decade. Funcinpec was defeated in the last two general elections by its main rival, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) of Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Ranariddh formed an uneasy coalition partnership with Hun Sen. Then in March, the prince resigned as National Assembly president to protest a change in voting rules engineered by Hun Sen's party that lets the parliament pass legislation with a simple majority instead of two-thirds. This meant the CPP no longer needed the support of Ranariddh's lawmakers.
Over the last six months, Ranariddh has lived in exile, mostly in France, where he has a residence. He briefly returned to Cambodia last month.
Ranariddh's dismissal followed a bitter verbal exchange with Hun Sen, who criticized the prince's weak leadership and called for Funcinpec to dump him.
Ranariddh "has no more good collaboration with our partner, the [CPP], that's why we all come to a conclusion that the prince must be asked to be elevated as historic leader," Keo Puth Rasmey said, referring to a rank that is largely ceremonial.
Time Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007 The End of Cambodia's Family Affair By Kevin Doyle / Phnom Penh
Behind every strong man, as the saying goes, stands an even stronger woman, and in Cambodia's recent tumultuous history few strong women stand out more than the Khieu sisters. Daughters of a judge and among the country's first female intellectuals, Ponnary and Thirith were sent to study in Paris in the 1950s where they met and later married two other Cambodian students — creating a foursome that went on to form the nucleus of one of the world's most brutal regimes. The elder Khieu sister, Ponnary, married Pol Pot, leader of the fanatical Khmer Rouge movement which fought its way to bloody victory in Cambodia in 1975 and then established a regime under which an estimated 1.7 million people died by 1979. Her younger sister, Thirith, wedded Pol Pot's confidant and Khmer Rouge foreign minister, Ieng Sary; she also served as the regime's minister of social action and education.
Monday marked one of the last chapters in this dark family history as Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith were arrested on charges of crimes against humanity, to be brought before a U.N.- backed tribunal set up to try the surviving leaders of Pol Pot's regime. Gendarmes and police special forces sealed off the area around the couple's large villa down a leafy side street in Phnom Penh, where they had lived as macabre local celebrities since striking surrender deals with the Cambodian government in 1996.
The tribunal's co-investigating judges released a statement Tuesday confirming the formal charges against the couple and announcing that the Iengs' lawyers have requested time to prepare their clients' defense ahead of a hearing on the question of pre-trial detention. That hearing will take place Wednesday; in the meantime, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith are being held in custody at the ECCC, the judges said. The Iengs have also said that they cannot afford to pay for attorneys to represent them at the tribunal; the court will cover their legal costs while it assess their claim.
Since defecting to the government in 1996, Ieng Sary has regularly denied any knowledge of the regime's policies of extermination. Ieng Thirith has been even more vocal: several years ago, she made a withering written attack on Youk Chhang, Cambodia's foremost genocide researcher, claiming his years of research into the alleged crimes of Khmer Rouge regime had found not a shred of incriminating evidence and that his work was nothing "but lies and defamation."
Youk Chhang, for his part, says Ieng Sary was considered one of the "untouchable" Khmer Rouge leaders. His arrest and that of his wife have sent powerful messages to the Cambodian people that the tribunal is truly working to find justice for the victims of the regime. "[Ieng Thirith] was minister of social action and education," Youk Chhang says. "She will have a lot to tell us [in court]."
The Iengs' arrests are the third and fourth of five former Khmer Rouge leaders targeted by the co-prosecutors at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) — the official name of the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal established in Phnom Penh. Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the regime's chief jailer and torturer, was the first suspect to be detained in July. Second-in-command Nuon Chea was arrested in September. Khieu Samphan, the regime's onetime head of state, is the last surviving senior leader at large and many believe that his is the fifth name on the prosecutors' list. ECCC officials expect that trials will begin early next year.
Neither Ponnary nor Pol Pot lived long enough to see the tribunal established; Ponnary was bedridden and suffering from insanity when she passed away peacefully in 2003 at the age of 83. She had lived out her final years in the Iengs' villa, with its manicured lawns and small ornamental pond, oblivious of the fact that Pol Pot had remarried many years earlier. Pol Pot himself died in 1998, denounced by his own followers, in a jungle shack near the Thai border.
As court and police officers prepared the Iengs for the drive to the tribunal's detention center on the outskirts of Phnom Penh Monday, neighbors came out to wish them good riddance. "They killed many people and they must be prosecuted," says Pouk Salonn, 57, the owner of a small shop near the Iengs' villa who lost her parents during the regime. But with the passage of some 30 years since the Khmer Rouge regime committed its crimes, the arrest of the elderly pair — Sary is 82 and Thirith is 75 — was little consolation. "Why are you only coming to ask questions now?" she asks, noting that there seemed to be more media attention on Pol Pot's terrifying reign now than there was when he was actually in power. "[The regime] was a long time ago already."
Cambodia's politics
The ruling party appears to have won a general election Jul 29th 2008 | From the print edition
Unofficial results suggest that the ruling Cambodia People's Party (CPP) won Cambodia's general election on July 27th. Official results will not be released for several days, and some election observers have voiced concerns about electoral fraud and voter intimidation. But the chances that the CPP's win will not be confirmed are extremely slim. The CPP's political dominance has become increasingly entrenched over the past few years—along with that of the prime minister, Hun Sen, who has already held the office for 23 years—and the government probably received a last-minute boost from the recent flare-up of a territorial dispute with Thailand.
Single-party government
The CPP claims to have won a landslide victory, increasing its number of seats in the 123-seat parliament from 73 to around 91. Even if the final results do not give the CPP a two-thirds majority, the party will for the first time be able to govern alone. Thanks to recent changes to the constitution, only a simple majority is required to form a government. However, this is unlikely to make much of a difference in practical terms. In theory, the CPP governed in 2003- 07 through a power-sharing arrangement with a junior coalition partner, the Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Co-operative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC). In effect, though, the CPP has asserted full control over the government over the past few years as FUNCINPEC's political influence has disintegrated.
Many opposition leaders have alleged that the CPP's dominance reflects its ability to intimidate or buy off its political opponents. Press freedom in Cambodia remains tenuous, and there were several violent incidents in the run-up to the election, including the murder of a journalist working for a newspaper associated with the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP). But there were few visible signs of fraud and intimidation during the actual voting process. Indeed, partial vote counts released by the national election commission suggest that the SRP, too, performed well. Although the SRP says that large numbers of opposition supporters were missing from voting lists, the SRP may have won around 40 seats, up from 23, solidifying its role as the main opposition party.
Mixed picture
The SRP and other minor parties would almost certainly have done better in a fully free and fair political environment. Nevertheless, the CPP's victory reflects the fact that it is genuinely popular. The economy is performing strongly, having achieved double-digit growth annually since 2004. For many voters, moreover, Hun Sen is associated with the Cambodia's political stabilisation over the past two decades. Although himself a former member of the Khmer Rouge, the Maoist party that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79, Hun Sen's years in power have seen a gradual process of economic and political liberalisation. This transition has been halting and is still very far from complete, but it has already brought vast improvements over the Khmer Rouge's murderous and economically disastrous misrule.
From the perspective of Cambodia's political development, then, the election presents a mixed picture. That the country has successfully held its fourth consecutive democratic election bodes well for overall political stability. Foreign donors and investors are likely cautiously to welcome the results—particularly if the SRP's stronger position allows the opposition to put pressure on the government to tackle endemic corruption and ensure the independence of the judiciary. Nevertheless, plenty of concerns remain. Cambodia will continue to have a frosty relationship with the UN and Western governments, owing to differences on human rights. The country's domestic political scene also remains fragile. Meanwhile, the authoritarian instincts of the Hun Sen government will continue to create problems on the diplomatic front, as well as to prevent the emergence of a fully functioning democracy. Cambodian politician gets prison sentence Published: Sept. 24, 2010 at 6:44 AM
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Sept. 24 (UPI) --
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- A Cambodian opposition leader has been sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for manipulating a map of Cambodia's eastern border with Vietnam.
Sam Rainsy, leader of the Sam Rainsy Party and a former finance minister, was also fined $15,730 for falsifying public documents.
He was accused of posting a "fake" map of the border on his party's Web site. But he said he downloaded the map from Google.
A statement on the Sam Rainsy Party Web site called the sentence a "verdict from a kangaroo court."
Rainsy, 61, lives in self-imposed exile in France and for several years has been an outspoken critic of negotiations between Cambodia and Vietnam, ongoing since 2006, to settle the contentious frontier issue along the 790-mile border.
Markings to delineate the frontier are often poorly made and deteriorating, not very visible or non-existent.
Rainsy, like many Cambodians -- especially those living along the poorly marked border -- are suspicious of the talks and believe Vietnam is quietly encroaching onto Cambodian territory.
He openly has accused the government of giving land away in an effort to reach an agreement with Vietnamese officials. His party has taken up the cause of many farmers, especially in the south eastern Svay Rieng province.
Court officials said Rainsy was trying to discredit the government. "The lawsuit involves forging public documents and publicizing disinformation related to the forgery of a map in order to manipulate the public over the border issue with Vietnam," a government lawyer said.
But his party and rights advocates called the sentence politically motivated to prevent Rainsy from returning to contest a general election 2013.
The 10-year sentence comes after his 2-year sentence in January for a staging protest and demonstration along the border where he helped local villagers uproot border markers.
After the sentence in January, Rainsy challenged the government to continue prosecuting him.
"The court in Cambodia is just a political tool for the ruling party to crack down on the opposition," he said. "I will let this politically subservient court prosecute me in absentia because its verdict is known in advance."
The mercurial Rainsy, born in Phnom Penh, is French-educated and a trained accountant who ran his own firm in Paris. He joined Prince Norodom Ranariddh's royalist Funcinpec Party, becoming one of its European representatives in 1989.
He returned to Cambodia in 1992, won a seat in parliament in 1993 and was made finance minister. But in 1994 he was fired from the job because of poor performance and expelled from the party.
He formed his own party, the Khmer Nation Party, in 1995 which became the Sam Rainsy Party, which won some success at the 2003 elections.
In February 2005, Rainsy fled for France because he feared prosecution on criminal defamation charges after accusing the Cambodian People's Party and Funcinpec of corruption. He also accused Prime Minister Hun Sen of involvement in the January 2004 death of union leader Chea Vichea. Rainsy was tried in absentia later that year and sentenced to 18 months in prison, along with a fine of $14,000.
However, in early 2006 Rainsy received a royal pardon by head of state King Norodom Sihamoni, at Hun Sen's request.
He returned to Cambodia but his later actions over the border demarcation talks landed him with another criminal charge, this time of racial incitement and destruction of property. He was charged in October 2009 and soon after for France, where he now lives.
Choung Choungy, Rainsy's lawyer, wouldn't comment on the new sentence, saying only that he will consult with his client on whether to file an appeal.
© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Khmer Rouge trials Justice of a kind
The second, and possibly last, trial starts amid controversy and acrimony Jun 30th 2011 | PHNOM PENH | From the print edition
THE old and withered man, adorned in what looked like an oversize tea-cosy and sunglasses, seemed an unlikely mass-murderer when he appeared in court for the first time on June 27th. That is often the way with people brought to justice long after their alleged crimes were committed. In this instance, the accused was Nuon Chea, second in seniority only to Pol Pot as a former leader of the Khmer Rouge, the Maoist movement responsible for the deaths of as many as 2m people after it seized power in Cambodia in 1975 and attempted to implement its crazed notions of Utopia. However eccentric Mr Nuon Chea looked in court, age and captivity have not softened his resolve. He remained defiant throughout, refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the court and walking out after only a brief attendance. His attire, as it turned out, was well Nuon Chea wants nothing to do with it chosen—the tuque to stave off the chill from the air-conditioning, the dark glasses to shade him from the glare of the lights.
His day in court saw the beginning of the second trial of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (to give the tribunal prosecuting former members of the Khmer Rouge its full title). The trial will surely be a long and controversial one. One prosecutor working for the UN-backed court calls it the most “complex” since the Nuremberg hearings at the end of the second world war.
The first trial, which closed last year, was comparatively straightforward. The sole accused, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as “Duch”, was contrite and pleaded guilty to charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, committed while he ran Tuol Sleng, a notorious prison at a former school in the middle of Phnom Penh, the capital, to which 17,000 of the regime's victims were taken to be tortured and killed—only seven came out alive.
This time four defendants are on trial. All reject the charges against them and all bar one, Khieu Samphan, refuse to co-operate with the court. All were senior cadres of the Khmer Rouge. Ieng Sary was the regime's foreign minister; his wife, Ieng Thirith, served as social affairs minister; and Mr Khieu Samphan was the former head of state. Mr Nuon Chea says that the Khmer Rouge was only defending Cambodia against foreign forces. An imperialistic United States and an expansionist Vietnam were the main culprits, in his view, and caused most of the bloodshed. Lawyers for Mr Ieng Sary argue simply that he has already received a royal pardon.
Prosecutors face the daunting task of linking them directly to specific killings. This week's proceedings were only the start of the legal skirmishing; substantive hearings are not expected to begin until September. Since all the accused are in their late 70s or early 80s, even if convicted they are unlikely to serve very much of their sentence—that is, assuming they outlive the trial.
Nonetheless, supporters of the court passionately believe that the trial marks a profound moment in modern Cambodian history. Pol Pot himself died in 1998, so these four are the most senior members of the regime left alive. It is therefore the only chance for the leaders to be held accountable for the mass-killings that occurred during nearly four years of Khmer Rouge rule. One human-rights activist, Theary Seng, acknowledged outside the court on June 27th that its work amounted to “only selective and symbolic justice”. There were “extreme limitations” to the process, she said; but the goal should be the highest quality of justice within them.
However, what makes this trial especially charged is the knowledge that there may be no more. Future possible cases have become mired in the politics of the court, and in Cambodian politics more generally. The prime minister, Hun Sen, is clear that he wants this trial to be the last. He argues that more prosecutions could spark civil war or, slightly less spuriously, that they might undermine hard-won efforts at reconciliation.
Critics allege that the government has ulterior motives. Many high-ranking people in government and business had ties to the Khmer Rouge, which might be another reason why the government has tried to limit the scope of the court's investigations. Mr Hun Sen himself was a young Khmer Rouge military commander before defecting in 1977.
Either way, because the court is a hybrid, composed of both foreign and Cambodian lawyers, it cannot escape this domestic political context and exercise real independence. Such politicisation has led to many ruptures during the tribunal's life and, recently, to resignations. In April the bench ruled that the next case, known as 003, should be dropped altogether. But an international prosecutor later complained that the judges had not even questioned the suspects, let alone visited the scenes of the alleged crimes. For now, case 002 proceeds as planned, even if there will never be a successor. Norodom Sihanouk dies at 89; former king of Cambodia Sihanouk, whose fortunes were entwined with U.S. military involvement in Indochina, was a crafty political survivor and one of Southeast Asia's most colorful statesmen.
October 15, 2012 | By David Lamb
Former King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, an unpredictable and crafty political survivor whose fortunes were entwined with U.S. military involvement in Indochina, died Monday of natural causes in Beijing, where he had undergone medical treatment, Chinese state media reported. He was 89.
Sihanouk had various forms of cancer, diabetes and hypertension and had sought medical care in China since 2004, when he abdicated in favor of his son due to old age and health problems. He died two weeks short of his 90th birthday.
"This is a great loss for Cambodia. We feel very sad. The former king was a great king who we all respect and love," Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister Nhik Bun Chhay was quoted as telling the New China News Agency.
The news agency said reigning King Norodom Sihamoni, Sihanouk's son, will fly to Beijing to retrieve the body and return it to Cambodia for a traditional funeral.
Long a symbol of Cambodian nationalism and independence, Sihanouk reigned more than he ruled. But for nearly 60 years, his name was synonymous with the tortured history of his sad land. He was, by any yardstick, one of Southeast Asia's most colorful and legendary statesmen.
The portly Sihanouk, who had four wives and countless mistresses over his long career, was as much a hedonist as a political operative. He was vain, manipulative and whiny, his soprano voice a singsong of French and English as he uttered declarations and cut deals to play foreign powers against each other.
During the Vietnam War, Sihanouk leaned toward the Communists, anticipating their victory. He cut ties to Washington in 1965 to protest the U.S. military buildup in Vietnam but let U.S. and South Vietnamese forces conduct secret incursions into Cambodia to disrupt the supply lines that Sihanouk had allowed the Communists to set up.
Sihanouk was born Oct. 31, 1922, to Norodom Suramarit and Kossamak Nearireath. He was educated in Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, and Paris, and ascended to the throne in 1941 at the age of 18, after the death of his uncle, the king. He was the handpicked choice of colonial France, which believed he would be the most malleable of the royal pretenders.
But 12 years later he went into "voluntary exile" to protest French imperialist control, creating so much international pressure that in 1953 the French government granted Cambodia the independence he sought. In 1955, Sihanouk abdicated in favor of his father to pursue political power free from royal constraints. He set up the Popular Socialist Community party, which within months had captured all the seats in the National Assembly.
Sihanouk loved center stage. He called the Cambodians "my children" and would receive virtually any commoner who wanted to complain about the price of seed or comment on an irrigation project. At night he might entertain dignitaries and diplomats at his palace with a champagne banquet and a moonlight performance of the Royal Ballet.
His guests never knew what to expect. At one banquet he grabbed the microphone, went to his knees and sang the Frank Sinatra standard "My Way." Another time he insisted that Richard H. Solomon, a U.S. assistant secretary of State, sing "Happy Birthday" to him — which an embarrassed Solomon did. Sihanouk also made amateur films of love stories and mysteries, in which he was star, director, writer and narrator. Guests sometimes had to sit for hours watching them.
"It is like Shakespeare, n'est-ce pas?" he asked after one screening.
Sihanouk spent much of the 1960s trying to maintain Cambodia's neutrality, and his desire to keep his country out of the Indochina conflict set him on a collision course with U.S. officials, who often were publicly disdainful of him. One ambassador, Robert McClintock, while opening a U.S.-sponsored maternity clinic, turned to the prince at the ceremony and said, "This should particularly interest you as a great one-man manufacturer of babies."
Sihanouk would regret his 1965 decision to sever diplomatic ties with the United States. Without U.S. aid, the Cambodian economy rapidly deteriorated, sowing seeds of political instability. To compensate and gain leverage with Washington, he turned to Beijing. Chinese Premier Chou En-lai visited Cambodia in 1968 while the Vietnam War raged across the border.
By then, Cambodia had become a major staging area for North Vietnamese troops. In 1969, President Nixon ordered secret B-52 airstrikes against the Communist camps and supply lines. The next year, on April 30, U.S.-led allied forces began overt incursions into Cambodia, drawing the kingdom into the war and fueling antiwar protests in the United States. 1/2 Sihanouk, who ruled as an autocrat, crushing dissent and closing newspapers, was on a trip to Moscow in 1970 when he was overthrown by his U.S.-backed minister of defense, Lon Nol. Sihanouk, who firmly believed that Washington had masterminded the coup, went to Beijing in exile after he was sentenced to death in absentia by Lon Nol's regime. The Chinese treated Sihanouk royally, providing a mansion, nine servants and a $300,000-a-year allowance.
In Beijing, Sihanouk aligned himself with Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, who were fighting to overthrow Lon Nol. Sihanouk was not comfortable with the relationship but wanted to keep his name at the forefront of Cambodian affairs. In a visit to the United Nations with Khmer Rouge officials, Sihanouk tried to pass a message appealing for help to an FBI agent in a New York elevator. The agent, mistakenly thinking he was being tipped, wouldn't take the note.
Sihanouk returned to Phnom Penh in 1975, after the Khmer Rouge's peasant army had taken control of Cambodia. But the prince and his wife, Monique, were placed under house arrest in his palace by Pol Pot. Only personal intervention by Chou, the Chinese premier, saved them from execution, diplomats said.
Between 1975 and 1979, when Pol Pot was overthrown by invading Vietnamese troops, the Khmer Rouge killed more than 1 million people, including 14 members of Sihanouk's family. In 1979, the Chinese evacuated Sihanouk to Vietnam, where he held a six-hour news conference to denounce both the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge.
His country now occupied by the Vietnamese, Cambodia's long-standing enemy, Sihanouk became a worldly wanderer once more. He divided his time between China and North Korea, where he developed a close friendship with late leader Kim Il Sung. Sihanouk returned to Cambodia occasionally in the ensuing years, issuing contradictory and confusing declarations, but a generation of warfare had devastated the Cambodian economy, destroyed its political infrastructure and spiritually crippled its people.
The United Nations spent $2.6 billion and sent 26,000 troops to Cambodia in the early 1990s to prepare for the return of democracy. When the mission, an apparent success, ended in September 1993, Sihanouk startled the world by returning to Phnom Penh and reclaiming the crown he had given up 38 years earlier. It was, Asian scholars said, one of the great political comebacks of the 20th century.
"What I want is not to become king again," Sihanouk said. "In my opinion, the greatest honor, the greatest reward that the nation, that history can offer me is to be the father of the nation, the father of independence, the father of peace, the father of democracy and genuine freedom. I am not at all seeking a reward in being crowned. The crown is very heavy, you know. It hurts your head."
Sihanouk's son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, whom the king always considered weak and indecisive, became prime minister after the 1993 general elections. But Ranariddh was overthrown in July 1997 by a former Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen, who had muscled his way into a position as co-prime minister. More instability, bloodshed and economic ruin followed.
Sihanouk, ailing with prostate cancer, spent most of his last years in Beijing. His people continued to revere him as a god-king in the 1,000- year tradition of the Angkor Empire—the monarchy was, after all, the only institution they were still able to believe in — but Sihanouk seemed increasingly distant and depressed by the belief that every national aspiration he had worked for failed.
"If I was not a Buddhist, I would commit suicide because the end of my life is full of shame, humiliation and desperation of the national order," he said in late 1997.
"In a blossoming Asia . . . we are the only oasis of war, insecurity, self-destruction, poverty, social injustice, arch-corruption, lawlessness, national division, totalitarianism, drug trafficking and AIDS."
Lamb is a former Times staff writer.
Times staff writer Barbara Demick in Beijing contributed to this report.
2/2 Norodom Sihanouk
Norodom Sihanouk, ruler of Cambodia, died on October 15th, aged 89 Oct 20th 2012 | From the print edition
IN THE days before Norodom Sihanouk, then 18, succeeded to the throne, a gust put out the sacred candles lit in the palace to mark the event. Courtiers tried to conceal the bad omen, but Sihanouk heard of it. At his coronation in October 1941, a God-King with a crown as tall as a temple, people thought he looked uneasy.
If so, it was not about that. Sihanouk—as he always called himself, in the third person—was shocked that the French, Cambodia’s colonial rulers, had chosen him as king. He was disturbed, too, that they expected him to be a figurehead like his father, pliant and cuddly, a little lamb. True, he stayed giggly all his life, with a penchant for making films, playing saxophone, fast cars and pretty women. Elvis might have played him, he thought. When excited, betraying his French education, he would cry “Ooh la la!” in his high child’s voice. But underneath he was a tiger.
“National dignity” was his motto. By that, he meant proper independence for “my Cambodia”. It began with independence for himself, breaking out from the stifling, insulating halls of the palace to tour among the peasants. Muddy ricefield salutations to “Papa King” gave him his taste for active politics. In an Indo-China roiled by post-colonial disputes and the shoving of the great powers, he wanted a dignified neutrality, and spent his career struggling to achieve it. On the one hand, he tried to stem the revolutionary communism seeping over the border from Vietnam; on the other he rebuffed attempts by America to make Cambodia its puppet.
An accomplished charmer, he made friends with anybody who looked useful: China’s Zhou Enlai, India’s Nehru, Indonesia’s Sukarno, North Korea’s Kim Il Sung. He made allies even of the Khmers Rouges who destroyed his country. He also played, at his royal whim, whichever role seemed most effective: king, prime minister, or humble Khmer citizen-prince in pyjamas, cap and scarf. As a result, he survived to croon his love songs into elegant old age.
1/3 Throwing off his handlers took time and guile. For his first “royal crusade”, ejecting the French, he travelled secretly to Paris in 1953 to petition for independence. Rebuffed there, he went on to Canada, the United States and Japan, genially lifting Cambodia out of its obscurity. When the French, besieged in the region, eventually gave in, his old cavalry instructor from Saumur remarked: “Sire, you have whipped me.” It was a pleasing moment.
Yet he still seemed cast as a figurehead in his newly freed country—a fate tantamount, he said, to keeping Charles de Gaulle on the sidelines after the general had freed France. So he moved pre-emptively, renouncing the throne in 1955 to run in Cambodia’s first elections. Royal powers came in useful to suppress opposition parties, especially the newly formed Democrats. The peasants rallied round him, and he became prime minister.
His country, he proclaimed to the world, was moderate and modernising: new hospitals, new schools. It was neither communist nor capitalist, but “Buddhist socialist” with a feudal flavour. While neighbouring Vietnam and Laos plunged into civil war, Cambodia remained his green “oasis of peace” in which visiting dignitaries were regaled with fine French wine and musical numbers by the king himself. He was indifferent to the poverty of the countryside, the corruption of his officials and the spread of communist cells; his peasants he saw as disobedient children who needed to be put in their place. After one revolt, the heads of villagers were displayed in the capital on spikes.
Meanwhile, his diplomatic neutrality was cracking too. As Vietcong in their thousands sought sanctuary from American firepower in the jungles of eastern Cambodia, he let them stay—and in 1970 his generals, with American backing, organised a putsch against him. Outraged at this treachery, he threw his support behind Cambodia’s communists (“Khmers Rouges”, in his dismissive phrase), giving them legitimacy at a stroke. In 1975 they seized power. Sihanouk, now immured in his palace under house arrest, became a symbol again: a useful man to make occasional smiling tours of the collective farms while a quarter of the population perished. Five of his own children, out of 14 by several women, were killed, as he waited for the Khmers Rouges to “spit him out like a cherry pit”. They never did.
Croissants in Beijing
When Vietnamese forces toppled the Khmers Rouges in 1979, he fled into exile. His old friends, the Chinese and North Koreans, both sheltered him. In Pyongyang he had the run of a 60-room palace; in Beijing he feasted with Deng Xiaoping on croissants fresh from Paris. After the Vietnamese had left Cambodia and the UN had brokered peace, he returned in 1991 with a squad of North Korean bodyguards, convinced his rapturous people would want him to rule again.
2/3 They did, but as the figurehead he had never wanted to be. “Papa King” was now checked by a strongman, Hun Sen. From the sidelines, he chattered on. Even after his abdication in 2004 he ran a blog to instruct his people, and an online commentary in French on how the country was doing; and on his website the black-and-white slideshow of his reign went on flickering back and forth, until the fade.
3/3 Farewell, Samdech Euv
The 1991 Paris Peace Agreements set the framework for the return to peace and democracy in Cambodia. I was honored to receive the authorization from His Majesty King-Father Samdech Preah Bat Norodom Sihanouk Varman to establish Khmer Institute of Democracy with Ambassador Julio Jeldres as its executive director in 1992. As President of the Supreme National Council, He also gave me the permission to distribute the Khmer Conscience newsletter inside Cambodia. I was so grateful to learn that His Majesty was the champion of democracy.
Since my childhood, I have known His Majesty as Samdech Euv.
The French saw Him as a lamb, but He became a tiger. He led the Royal Crusade to gain full independence for Cambodia from France on November 9,1953.
He put a tiny country on the world stage at the Non-Aligned Movement in Bandung on April 18, 1955. He was equal among the giants Zhou Enlai and Nehru. It was a long lasting friendship with Zhou Enlai until the latter’s death in January 1976. He saw in China as a defender of Cambodia’s independence against Vietnam and Thailand. Since the beginning of 1957, the South Vietnamese intruded and moved the border-marking post deep into Cambodian territory 29 times. On June 27, 1957, He asked the United States to order South Vietnam to withdraw its army from Cambodian territory in vain. On July 27, He established diplomatic relations with China.
He walked a tightrope to keep Cambodia out of the Vietnam War. Diplomatically He looked the other way where the Ho Chi Minh trail strayed into Cambodia, but also He did not interfere with US attempts to go after it. It was not easy to maintain neutrality under the pressure of a big superpower, but He knew that France had failed and did not want to follow the fate of Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam. The United States only served its own interests. More than 800,000 Khmers were killed by Nixon's "secret" bombing of Cambodia.
Under His leadership, Cambodia was known as the “Oasis of Peace” sparing her people the atrocities of war. It was a peaceful joie de vivre during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. Who would not have the nostalgia of the 60s?
He modernized Cambodia, which was known as the “Pearl of Asia.” Lee Kuan Yew wanted to learn from Him to transform Singapore. The realizations of Sangkum Reastr Niyum should not be overlooked and dismissed. Without the two wars, Cambodia would have been ahead of her neighbors. He was a charmer and loyal to His friends. Foreign dignitaries were captivated by His generosity, entertainment and charm. They all had a long lasting friendship with Him. He made Himself available to journalists and corresponded with them regularly such as the French Le Canard Enchaîné while publishing Kambuja and Réalités Cambodgiennes to make the people, especially foreigners, better understand Cambodia.
He was loved, adored and venerated by young and old alike. He visited the countryside, participated in the rural works, and opened the Royal palace for grievances à la King Solomon. He organized the National Congress twice a year to bring the officials accountable to the populace. Although the National Congress is an article in the current Constitution, until today no such an event happened. He named officials Sahachivin (beloved compatriot, comrade-citizen, companion) making them of the same equal status. He Himself was known as Samdech Sahachivin.
His enemies never forgave Him for joining the Khmer Rouge and calling for the people to rise up against the Khmer Republic. He said that He did not want to spend the rest of His life in the French Riviera like the late Emperor Bao Dai. He donated His villa in Grasse to the International Red Cross. Why did they stage a coup on March 18, 1970? They accused Him of siding with the Vietcongs and not the United States. As we saw later on, they were more patriotic for dollars than for Cambodia. He forgave all His enemies who were welcome back home in the second Kingdom of Cambodia. Nobody would have known that the Khmer Rouge would have killed their own people. The intellectuals in Paris were also duped when they returned home to help rebuild Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge sympathizers, mainly the intellectuals (teachers), in Phnom Penh were also sent to the killing fields. During that time in 1975, we could have asked anybody in Phnom Penh and each would have said that he or she would have wanted the war to end and the Khmer Rouge in power. Who had known that genocide would have followed the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia? He was also a victim, “spit out like a cherry pit,” and put under house arrest by the Khmer Rouge.
After FUNCINPEC won the elections in 1993, His detractors accused Him of compromising with the CPP. Look at the situation. UNTAC would have not dared to do anything when the CPP did not accept the results and wanted to fight and secede. The CPP controlled the army and the State apparatus. Would the people have to endure another war after seeing their families died in wars and genocide? People voted for peace and not war. He was for peace and the unity of Cambodia. That’s why He decided to negotiate with the State of Cambodia that resulted in the 1991Paris Peace Agreements. If FUNCINPEC failed, blame it on its leaders. They had the power, but did not know how to hang on to it. He was ready to run for President of Cambodia, but His popularity threatened the CPP’s grip on power. Upon the advice of the late Thai Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan of keeping Him in the gilded Royal Palace, the CPP proposed the restoration of monarchy.
He made His life and correspondence with the Heads of State public and transparent through His Bulleting Mensuel de Documentation and His Internet Website (http://www.norodomsihanouk.info). He took the time to reply to each individual letter addressed to Him no matter how busy He was. He shared His songs and movies with friends and anybody who asked for them.
His detractors said that He was a mediocre filmmaker. He never intended to be a great filmmaker. He only wanted to depict and promote Cambodia and her culture through His meaningful movies. Everybody liked and likes to listen to His music.
He was a giant among the giants. He was a towering figure in Cambodian politics. His passing on October 15, 2012 ended an era of joie de vivre and tragedy for Cambodia.
He will forever be Samdech Euv, Father of Independence and the Nation.
May He rest in peace.
Farewell, Samdech Euv.
Hann So Chevalier de l’Ordre Royal du Cambodge October 20, 2012 Cupertino, CA, US
Cambodia after Sihanouk Dancing off the stage?
Politics and the monarchy after the death of ex-King Norodom Sihanouk Oct 20th 2012 | PHNOM PENH | From the print edition
SINCE his coronation in 2004 Cambodia’s king, Norodom Sihamoni, has enjoyed a quiet life, sticking to his constitutional role as a monarch who reigns but does not rule. He opens festivals and oversees Buddhist ceremonies, serving as a spiritual crutch for his people.
Always in the background, however, was his father, Norodom Sihanouk, who died in Beijing on October 15th at the age of 89 (see article (http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21564807-norodom- sihanouk-ruler-cambodia-died-october-15th-aged-89) ). Sihanouk abdicated to make way for the 13th of his 14 known children from seven marriages. He tapped Sihamoni, once a ballet dancer and teacher, largely out of concern for his wife, Monique. The ageing king was acutely aware that his last wife, 14 years his junior, would outlive him. Her fondness for Sihamoni tipped the balance.
Sihanouk continued to be revered right up to his death. Images of Sihamoni in shops and offices throughout Cambodia invariably portray the king with his parents. In contrast to his unobtrusive son, Sihanouk was an intensely political animal, unafraid to meddle in domestic or regional politics when he thought it was needed—often with tragic consequences. It was an unconventional role, especially compared with other contemporary monarchs. But then as the person who had won Cambodia’s independence from the French in 1953, Sihanouk was confident of his special place in his country’s history.
His relationship with the long-serving prime minister, the authoritarian Hun Sen, was particularly prickly. On the one hand in 1993 Sihanouk bestowed upon Mr Hun Sen the title Samdech, which has royal connotations. Speculation has persisted ever since that Mr Hun Sen sees himself and his family as enjoying a similar destiny to that of the monarchy: idolised by many Cambodians, especially in the countryside, as semi-divine. On the other hand Sihanouk refused to be intimidated by the prime minister, and often complained that the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) had turned his country into a nation of beggars, dependent on foreign donors for handouts. He routinely published his thoughts, usually in French and latterly online, and fancied himself as a political counterweight to a government he regarded as overbearing.
Now that Sihanouk has gone, however, the reluctance of 59-year-old King Sihamoni to enter the political fray might begin to cost the monarchy dear. For the country’s “children”, as Sihanouk used to call his countrymen, are being subjected to an unprecedented social upheaval about which Sihamoni has so far had little to say. Traditional Cambodian patterns of village life are fast disappearing, and often for the worst reasons. The government has forcibly evicted hundreds of thousands from their land in order to sell it off, often to foreign speculators. This “land grab” policy has enriched the well-connected in government and their business friends, but is widely condemned both at home and abroad.
Over the past year environmentalists, journalists and ordinary villagers protesting against the government’s policies have been jailed, shot at and, in some cases, killed amid confrontations with the police and the army. A crackdown on dissent, particularly in the Khmer-language press, has been harsh. The political opposition has been relentlessly hounded and bullied, although its own divisions have also detracted from its effectiveness.
Will King Sihamoni now develop a political voice of his own and speak out for a beleaguered peasantry? If he succeeds at this then he may become a king revered in his own right. As it happens though, he is unmarried and without heir. The possibility remains that the centuries- old Cambodian monarchy may turn into an irrelevance—or even come to an end. Ieng Sary
Ieng Sary, foreign minister and “Brother No. 3” in Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, died on March 14th, aged 87 Apr 6th 2013 | From the print edition
IT WAS, he said, the greatest revolution the world had ever seen. It would be written in golden letters on the pages of history: how the Cambodian people had returned to the countryside to become pure, agrarian communists, relieved of all private property, free of all ties of family, religion and culture, devoted only to Angkar (“the organisation”) and the teachings of Mao and Stalin. When Ieng Sary, then deputy prime minister and foreign minister for the Khmer Rouge regime, sent out such messages in 1975 to thousands of Cambodian students and intellectuals living overseas, they naturally came home—to be condemned as spies, thrown in jail, tortured and killed. Few survived his propaganda.
There were, Ieng Sary admitted—disarming Western listeners with his ready, radiant smile, as he savoured a sip of champagne—a few technical hitches along the revolutionary way. For example, the regime had to remove everyone from Cambodia’s cities, because there was not enough transport to bring in food for them. It made more sense to take the people to the countryside, where the food was. What he did not add was that these “new people”, once in the fields, became slave labour, forced into punishing manual work and so underfed that they tried to survive on grass; and that over the four years of Khmer Rouge rule perhaps 2m Cambodians, or around a quarter of the population, died from overwork, malnutrition and starvation, as well as mass killings.
If you faced Ieng Sary with this, he shrugged his shoulders. What did he know? As the foreign minister, he had to travel all the time. He was just a secondary figure, not privy to the policies and tactics of Pol Pot, the regime’s “sole and supreme architect”, as he called him. For himself, he had killed one man—no more—and done nothing wrong. He was a gentle person, he insisted, as he sniffed delicately at the bottles of French perfume he liked to buy on first-class international flights.
What he did not add, though most people knew it, was that Pol Pot was his chum from the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh and his student buddy at the Sciences Po in Paris, later his brother-in-law when they married girls who were sisters. Deep down, Ieng Sary thought him a simpleton. He would bang on his door at dawn in the Latin Quarter, yelling at him to get to his Marxist studies, long before they both began, in 1963, to stir up revolts in the Cambodian countryside against the American-backed regime. Once they had seized power in 1975 Ieng Sary was “Brother No. 3”, implicated with cosy, family closeness in the torture of thousands in secret prisons and afterwards in their murder.
As foreign minister his role was hypocritical, yet simple. He had to present a disarming face to the world, build up visceral hatred of neighbouring Vietnam and draw in help from China, the regime’s only friend, in the form of money, weapons and advisers. When the Khmer Rouge government itself was toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979, he fled to Thailand; and there found fresh clothes, new sandals and a VIP air ticket to Beijing, all supplied by the Chinese embassy in Bangkok. His skilful contacts with China kept the movement going for two more decades.
Sapphires in his hands
You could say he was a proper revolutionary, in drab jacket, cap and scarf, railing against “economic saboteurs” who wasted food and “traitors”, undoubtedly CIA or KGB agents, who smoked Western cigarettes or had non-Cambodian blood. Yet he had been born in loathed Vietnam (his old Vietnamese name swapped for a Cambodian nom de guerre) to a Chinese mother and a rich father, and had become the very model of a hated French-speaking intellectual. Despite all that, slippery as an eel, he triumphantly survived inside the regime.
He was also increasingly rich. The peasant-poverty enjoined by the Khmers Rouges, and practised by some, never appealed to him. In 1982 (the movement still pretending to govern Cambodia from bases on the Thai border) he gave up the job of foreign minister to become minister of economics and finance, which required China’s largesse of more than $1 billion to flow through his hands. He made deals, too, with Thai sapphire-mining and logging companies. The rough frontier town of Pailin became his bailiwick, containing his large villa and bungalows, each with a tank parked outside, for his supporters. In 1996, sensing change in the wind, he persuaded thousands of Khmer Rouge troops to defect from Pol Pot, leave the jungle and claim an amnesty from the prime minister, Hun Sen, and King Sihanouk—a man to whom he had always bowed, while feeling nothing but contempt for him.
Life was good after the amnesty, as indeed it had always been for him before it. His Toyota Land Cruiser, with its darkened windows, was a common sight outside the capital’s best restaurants. Security guards protected his villa in an elegant part of town. He smoked the best cigars.
There was the nettlesome matter of a UN-backed Cambodia tribunal investigating war crimes, which arrested him in 2007 and put him on trial four years later. But it had convicted only one person, and moved so achingly slowly that it was never going to catch him. He waited to frustrate it with his charming, duplicitous smile. Crimes against humanity? Moi?
April 17 - what might have been?
As the anniversary of April 1975 looms, some older Cambodians speculate how different it might have been. If only the leaders of the doomed Lon Nol regime had managed to talk up a deal with the Khmer Rouge to restore Sihanouk to power, could the ‘holocaust’ have been avoided, they wonder?
Indeed, the last Republican Prime Minister Long Boret and the poor mugs who were left holding their own death warrants when Lon Nol fled the country on April 1, did make a vain attempt to strike a deal before Pol Pot’s inevitable victory.
Safe from harm in Beijing, Sihanouk himself had faint hopes that China’s Premier Zhou Enlai, his great protector and patron, might persuade the Khmer Rouge to accept a meaningful role for the Prince.
But Zhou was in dire health and in no position to moderate Pol Pot’s ambitions for a blood-red revolution even more extreme than anything unleashed by Mao in China.
From late 1974 it was utterly wishful thinking to imagine that the K.R. would agree to any ‘deal’ short of unconditional surrender. Even before his brief visit to the warzones in 1973, it was clear that Sihanouk had no voice whatsoever within the secretive Khmer Rouge hierarchy. He was despised and held in contempt as their puppet who would be ‘spat out like a cherry stone’ when he was no longer useful to them.
As a figurehead – even heading a government of national unity as dreamed by Long Boret et al - Sihanouk would have had no access, no chance to rally personal support from his beloved ‘kaun chau’ as he had in bygone days before the war.
Some commentators including Al Dawson former UPI bureau chief in Phnom Penh, for example, speculated that if Sihanouk had returned to Phnom Penh after the ‘coup’ in 1970 then quite possibly Lon Nol would have been at the airport to greet him in tears begging forgiveness for his part in the coup. But who knows? That is fruitless hypothetical speculation. By 1975 it was far, far too late for Long Boret to imagine that Sihanouk could play any moderating role.
Around dawn on that fateful 17th of April, an intriguing sideshow was the crazy game played by the Marshall's 'evil' brother, Lon Non, who staged a false victory parade in Phnom Penh just before the KR themselves marched in. Trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat was audacious to say the least. Was it heroic bravado, a determination to go out with a bang not a wimper? . . or just plain ego-maniacal madness?
An insight to the absolute naivety of Sisowath Sirik Matak and others in doomed Republican regime emerged from an interview I recorded with Matak’s son. HRH Prince Sisowath Sirirath revealed that in the very last weeks before the K.R. victory his father had urged - in fact pressured - him to fly back to Phnom Penh with his then wife Princess Norodom Arunrasmey.
On the day of the KR victory, Sirik Matak's bitter speech condemning the Americans for abandoning the Khmer Republic and his martyrdom in staying behind in Phnom Penh rather than fleeing, was indeed a noble and princely gesture in the face of tragedy. It was also further evidence of his disconnect with reality. Blaming the Americans might have been understandable but surely most responsibility for defeat was due to the blind corruption and incompetence of Lon Nol’s Republican regime. And for Sirik Matak to order his son and favoured daughter-in-law to fly back at the death knell was utterly selfish, out-of-touch with reality and without doubt would have been suicidal.
So many personal tragedies, April 17 marked the last day of the ill-fated and tragically mismanaged Khmer Republic and the first day of Pol Pot’s even more terrible chapter of Cambodian history.
James Gerrand 8 April, 2013