The Naitonal Interest

Cambodia: Echoes of Fascism

Fri the 7th Waxing Moon of Māgha BE2557, February 7, AD2014 Year of the Snake

Dennis P. Halpin
February 3, 2014

Those who had hoped that Prime Minister Hun Sen's surprise near-loss in the flawed elections last July would lead to a more accommodating stance have been sadly disappointed. The man who has dominated Cambodia and her people for almost three decades still holds an iron grip. The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)’s mandate to conduct “free and fair general elections” in 1993 has proved largely irrelevant over time to the politics on the ground. Cambodian human rights bloggers have even recently raised the specter of a sinister “Third Hand” formed to maintain that iron grip.

Last year’s midsummer night’s dream of a possible political evolution was finally buried for good on January 2–3, when the grounds outside of the Canadia Industrial Park were turned into Cambodia's latest killing field. There, a combination of security forces and plainclothes thugs reportedly harassed and beat demonstrating garment workers before opening fire on the crowd. They left a scene of bloody carnage, with five dead and over thirty injured. In addition, twenty-three labor activists and workers were taken into police custody and have been held since, without access to families, lawyers or adequate medical treatment. A January 31 opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) press release indicated that a delegation of CNRP MPs-elect and family members will be able to visit these detainees at the maximum-security prison where they are being held on February 4. However, the decision by the Hun Sen regime to largely ignore the international
outcry following this bloodshed and to continue its policy of cracking down on the political opposition and on workers still bodes ill for a peaceful conclusion to the present impasse.

An estimated ninety percent of Cambodia's seven hundred thousand garment workers, who help provide trendy clothing for such big brand names as the Gap, Nike, Adidas and Levi Strauss, as well as for discount giant Walmart, are young women from the countryside. They toil long hours making clothing and footwear for a monthly minimum wage of less than one hundred dollars. Some fifty thousand of them had begun striking to raise that wage to $160.

(Representatives of some of these brand name companies signed a letter dated January 17 from the international garment industry to Prime Minister Hun Sen expressing concern over the January 2-3 killings, the rights of the detainees, and the need to uphold trade union law, including ILO Conventions 87 and 98.)
A particularly ominous development in the current battle in the streets for the soul of Cambodia is the appearance of young males without any official designation who reportedly join in using violence to quell dissent. Hun Sen himself, according to Voice of America, was quoted in December as warning of the emergence of this shadowy “Third Hand” if demonstrations continued.

The presence of these “Third Hand” forces has been cited by CNRP official Eng Chhay Eang as the reason for the cancellation of a recent rally in Kandal. The young toughs in civilian clothes were said to be wearing matching red wristbands after being enlisted “to threaten and intimidate opposition supporters.” The Cambodia Daily on January 22 described the young men as “sporting tight-cropped, military-style haircuts.” Some have even put forward the claim that this "Third Hand" could be used in future attempts to assassinate opposition CNRP leaders.

Cambodia: Echoes of Fascism
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Dennis P. Halpin
|
February 3, 2014
The security forces involved in the labor crackdown also have a jaded past. Brad Adams, the Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in the Cambodia Daily on January 9 of the brutal history of Brigade 911 before its reported deployment in the January 2-3 shootings. This Indonesian-trained parachute brigade, commanded by the notorious General Chap Pheakadey, now a member of the Central Committee of Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), was involved in the brutal human-rights abuses connected with Hun Sen’s 1997 coup against Prince Ranariddh’s political party, FUNCINPEC. On that occasion, according to Adams, “dozens of people were being unlawfully detained and tortured at the 911 base west of Phnom Penh International Airport.” Brigade 911’s history of brutality has apparently written another chapter.

Another report of security-force involvement in the January 2-3 shootings was raised on January 17 by the Global Post. That report asserted that the embassies of certain Asian countries that are major investors in Cambodia’s garment industry “played a behind-the-scenes role in the events leading up to the Cambodian military’s crackdown.” Foreign diplomats were reported to have lobbied an official “from an elite agency whose role has nothing to do with labor strikes: the country’s National Counterterrorism Committee (NCTC).” This appeal was reportedly made under the rationale of protection of the properties of foreign investors. Given the subsequent bloodshed, foreign missions in Phnom Penh have rapidly moved to distance themselves from any implied involvement in human rights abuses. The NCTC—“a powerful, well-funded body with a brigade-sized military unit reportedly in the hundreds”—has not been used extensively to address terrorist
threats –which most foreign observers agree are minimal in Cambodia. Rather the NCTC, whose special forces unit, according to Global Post, is commanded by Hun Sen’s son, Lieutenant General Hun Manet, a West Point graduate, has acted as the eyes and ears for the Prime Minister in monitoring and, when necessary, cracking down on his political opponents.

Such a description recalls an organization known as "the Voluntary Militia for National Security," more commonly recalled in twentieth century history as "the Blackshirts." This paramilitary organization was made up largely of disgruntled former soldiers who opposed farmers' and laborers' unions. The Blackshirts made use of violence and intimidation to advance their political goals and support their dictatorial leader. Sound familiar?

In 1922 the Blackshirts conducted "the March on Rome" to install Mussolini as Il Duce, a position he held for over two decades. Fascist admirers of Il Duce in Germany and Spain soon came up with similar paramilitary organizations, based on terror and intimidation, and took control of those countries. In the end, however, things did not turn out so well for Mussolini.
There is an eerie echo of the Blackshirts in the reported organization and tactics of Cambodia's security forces and “Third Hand.” Such a repeat of the violent history of the twentieth century in today's Cambodia would be a great tragedy. The world should speak out before the escalating violence and intimidation in the land where the Khmer Rouge once ruled spirals completely out of control.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Cambodia, Surya Subedi, ended a six-day fact-finding mission to Cambodia in mid-January with a call for an investigation into the January 2-3 incident. “I strongly recommend,” he said, “that an investigation be undertaken on who issued and who carried out the order to shoot; if no such order was given, the individuals who fired their weapons must be brought to justice.” This was followed by a January 28 meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which reviewed Cambodia’s human-rights record. The Council meeting reportedly reviewed “recent attacks on activists, union members and journalists, violations of freedom of assembly and association, and the recent ban on peaceful assemblies.” According to Al Jazeera America, the Council recommended that Cambodia adopt legislative measures to “promote the enjoyment of freedom of expression in order to protect opposition party members, journalists and
human rights defenders from arbitrary arrests and to lift all restrictions to peaceful demonstrations.”

Another key question, however, was raised in a PBS News Hour program broadcast on June 14, 2012 and titled “Are Western Consumers Willing to Pay More for Apparel?” (in order to give young Cambodian workers a living wage). The response by one participant was “I really wonder if American consumers are willing to pay significantly more for their apparel.” Without the commitment of the international community, however, Hun Sen and his “Third Force” will have little to worry about, as it remains business as usual in Cambodia.

Dennis P. Halpin is a former Cambodia analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

The Failed Promise to Cambodia

Dennis P. Halpin
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August 23, 2013
The deeply flawed July 28 general election in Cambodia attracted scant international attention. This is in sharp contrast to 1993, when the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), with a $1.5 billion budget, administered the first election carried out by a UN agency following the 1948 UN-supervised Constitutional Assembly election in South Korea.

UNTAC was established by the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements. It was created as part of the “survivors' guilt” over the failure of the international community to intervene to prevent the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge. The “killing fields” period, in which up to two million Cambodians perished, stood as a stark reminder of the failure of the UN and other international organizations to prevent mass murder even after the Holocaust. UNTAC was established to restore the credibility of the international community by transforming a Cambodia emerging from civil war, genocide and foreign invasion into a model for democracy and human rights—and to allow a graceful UN exit from the country. Two decades later, as witnessed on July 28th, the world appears to little remember or even care about the pledge to restore and revitalize Cambodia.
One of the great historic ironies is that, despite these international efforts, a former Khmer Rouge cadre, Hun Sen, now sits at the center of power in Phnom Penh. A member of the group of henchmen responsible for the greatest genocide in post-World War II history continues to unilaterally call the shots on the political future of Cambodia. This is a country which, with its demographics of an extremely young population and its location at the heart of the dynamic Asian “economic miracle,” could have the potential for fulfilling all the promise of UNTAC's previous efforts.

Instead, a dark shadow again extends over Cambodia. International press reported on August 9 the movement of armored vehicles and troops into the vicinity of the capital of Phnom Penh, due to reports of planned opposition protests over the election results. The domestic crisis deepened on August 17 when the country’s National Election Committee (NEC) rejected the opposition complaints regarding voting irregularities, stating that "many of them didn't warrant further investigation." The results, reporting that Hun Sen’s ruling party, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), had taken 48.79% of the vote in the July 28 poll and had won 68 out of 123 parliamentary seats, enough for a parliamentary majority, still stand. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) claims that, without the irregularities, it would have won at least 63 seats, enough for its own parliamentary majority. In frustration, its representatives walked out of their last
meeting with the NEC.

The final recourse lies with the Constitutional Council, which held a meeting on August 20th to consider nineteen separate allegations of election irregularities. The Council reportedly has seventy-two hours to complete its investigation. Only time will tell whether a last-minute agreement, reached by the ruling and opposition parties in the National Assembly, to jointly investigate allegations of voting irregularities will have any bearing on the Constitutional Council's final ruling on the matter. Win or lose, the strong opposition showing in the elections was a slap in the face to strongman Hun Sen. He is used to having his way during twenty-eight years of continual rule and does not hesitate to use strong-arm tactics when necessary. The ruling party decision to join the opposition in an investigation, therefore, could prove little more than a gambit by the Hun Sen faction to buy time to allow popular furor over the discredited election results to die
down.

The opposition remains ready to take to the streets if the current impasse is not resolved in what is popularly perceived as an equitable manner. The American Embassy in Phnom Penh responded to the ongoing impasse by publicly stating that "we still say that an investigation into irregularities needs to happen. The outcome of these electoral disputes needs to be something that Cambodian people as a whole will be happy with."

Reports of voting irregularities on July 28 include the removal of eligible voters from the voting lists, the inclusion of multiple names on some voting lists, and indications that some pro-Cambodian People's Party (the ruling party) voters were allowed to cast their ballots multiple times. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki had commented on these reports on July 29,noting that "we call for a transparent and full investigation of all credible reports of irregularities. We urge all parties and their supporters to continue to act in an orderly and peaceful manner in the post-election period."

Sam Rainsy, head of the opposition CNRP, has called for a return of a United Nations role to address election issues as UNTAC once did. Rainsy returned to Cambodia just prior to the July elections after receiving a royal pardon from the king for his conviction on previous trumped-up charges. His name did not, however, appear on the voter rolls and he was not eligible for candidacy in the elections. Rainsy, in an August 5 letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, stated that “under the terms of the Paris Peace Agreements ... both the UN and the Kingdom of Cambodia have a legal obligation to ensure that our country’s ‘liberal and pluralist democracy’ be grounded in ‘free and fair elections’...“We believe that numerous irregularities in electoral processes produced an outcome that does not properly reflect the will of the people.”

It should provide the United Nations little comfort that, after all the time and treasure expended on creating “a liberal and pluralist democracy” in Cambodia that the country will likely remain, as cited above, in the hands of an infamous former Khmer Rouge cadre. Hun Sen carries a permanent physical reminder of his Khmer Rouge ties in the form of a glass eye, the result of awound he sustained while participating in the Khmer Rouge's final assault on Phnom Penh in 1975. Hun Sen broke with the Khmer Rouge not out of any moral conviction but because, as Battalion Commander in the country's eastern region, near the Vietnamese border, he was targeted in a 1977 party purge as an underperformer. He fled with his battalion to the rival Vietnamese before he too could become a victim of the killing fields. He returned to Cambodia in 1979 with the invading Vietnamese army. On that occasion, Prince Norodom Sihanouk famously referred to him as “a lackey” of
the Vietnamese.

Hun Sen might have abandoned his Khmer Rouge colleagues, but he did not put aside their murderous tactics. In 1987 Amnesty International called his regime to account for the torture of thousands of political prisoners using "electric shocks, hot irons and near-suffocation with plastic bags.” He defiantly refused to honor the 1993 UNTAC-sponsored election results, refusing to step down from the post of prime minister but instead brokering a deal that left him in place as “second prime minister” to Prince Ranariddh's “first prime minister.” By 1998 he had managed to push Ranariddh aside and resume his position as sole prime minister.

Extra-judicial killing of those who represent an inconvenience to the regime is the modus operandi in Hun Sen's Cambodia. In April 2012 environmental activist Chut Wutty was shot dead by a military-police officer while investigating illegal logging in western Cambodia in the vicinity of a Chinese hydropower construction site. His murder was still the talk of the town when I visited Phnom Penh last summer. More recently, in April of this year, Houn Bunnith, a staffer with the legal-aid NGO International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) was shot in the neck and killed by a military-police officer in Kandal province.

This is all a far cry from the Cambodia envisioned by the United Nations and the international community at the time of the supervised elections two decades ago. The question now is this: what will be the international response to the recent flawed elections and the continued, extensive human-rights abuses in a land that already suffered so much at the bloody hands of the Khmer Rouge?

Dennis P. Halpin was the Cambodia analyst in the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1985 to 1987.

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