COMMENTARY

Don't Forget Cambodia

By PHELIM KYNE
January 27, 2006

It was a rare victory amid the new wave of repression in Cambodia. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Hun Sen told reporters that, in the spirit of "compromise," he was dropping all charges against four Cambodians who'd had the temerity to criticize one of his decisions.

Rarely does the self-proclaimed Cambodian strongman back down. But the wave of international criticism that followed the recent arrest of a journalist, teachers' union leader and two leading human-rights activists evidently made even Mr. Hun Sen realize he'd overreached himself this time.

Hence his announcement that the four would no longer face defamation charges for opposing a border agreement last October, which they said gave too much land to Vietnam. The move to drop charges came exactly a week after the four were released from jail in what Om Yentieng, Mr. Hun Sen's spokesman, bizarrely described as "a gift" for visiting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill on the inauguration of the new U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh.

The danger now is that, with his tactical retreat in this particular case, the issue of human-rights violations in Cambodia -- which already receives far less attention than, for instance, repression in Burma -- will again fade from the headlines. But the now-dropped charges against these four were only part of what Human Rights Watch recently called a "sharp reversal" in the country's already fragile human-rights situation under Mr. Hun Sen's watch.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy has already fled into exile to avoid another defamation law suit. In December, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in absentia, after being accused of defaming Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, president of the National Assembly. At least five other government critics have also fled into exile to avoid arrest, according to Human Rights Watch. Others are censoring their public statements for fear they too might become the target of Mr. Hun Sen's wrath.

Political repression is nothing new to Cambodia. The country's three national elections since 1993 have been invariably bloody affairs characterized by electoral fraud, intimidation and murder of non-CPP activists. The U.N.'s former human rights representative, Peter Leuprecht, described Cambodia as a state of fear defined by the "undiluted-evil" of corruption-upholding violence.

Challenges to the status quo are met with vicious reprisals. Last March, security forces gunned down villagers in northwestern Banteay Meanchey province who'd challenged their illegal eviction by security forces.

Cambodia's nongovernmental organizations play a vital role in stopping such abuses from getting even worse, by exposing and tempering the excesses of a regime that range from rampant land grabs to illegal logging that has devastated vast tracks of once-virgin tropical forest.

That's why the targeting of Kem Sokha, director of the U.S.-funded Cambodian Center for Human Rights, is so worrying. The human-rights activist was the most prominent of the four people against whom defamation charges were dropped this week. But although Mr. Kem Sokha escaped to fight another day on this occasion, as a result of international pressure, Mr. Hun Sen's government clearly has him in his sights -- as it tightens the screws on Cambodia's already battered civil society, the country's sole outlet of democratic expression in the absence of a functioning political opposition.

Cambodia is already in a shocking state. Life is depressingly nasty, brutish and short for many of its citizens, with an average life expectancy of just 56 years according to the latest United Nations Human Development Report, compared with 60 years even in Burma. Despite hundreds of millions of dollars of donor funds pumped into the country's health and education systems, rural clinics are often no more than empty shells and schools are unlit shacks -- the victims of rampant corruption and misappropriation of funds.

Allowing Mr. Hun Sen's government to muzzle the civic society bodies that play such a vital watchdog role would be a tragic waste of the 27-year international effort to try to put Cambodia back on its feet after the 1975-1979 insane hyper-Maoist social experiment of the genocidal Khmer Rouge left the country a social and economic ruin of mass graves and traumatized survivors.

Passive acceptance of Mr. Hun Sen's recent moves also raises serious questions about the viability of the long-delayed tribunal to try those complicit in the Khmer Rouge genocide. The controversial "mixed tribunal" formula brokered by Mr. Hun Sen gives a key role to a politicized Cambodian judiciary that is often viewed as an instrument of the ruling Cambodian People's Party.

But pulling the plug on international support for a tribunal aimed to bring a measure of justice to the victims of the Khmer Rouge isn't the solution either. Mr. Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge soldier, has in the past expressed skepticism about the need for a tribunal and wouldn't mourn having the opportunity to blame foreign donors for its cancellation.

Instead, donor countries like the U.S., which funnel around $500 million annually to the Cambodian government, need to put some bite in their bark against Mr. Hun Sen's recent attack on civil society by serving notice that those funds are at risk until he meets measurable minimal benchmarks of political freedom and judicial reform.

While Mr. Hun Sen's sympathy with the objectives of a Khmer Rouge tribunal is debatable, he has an acute understanding of the importance of donor dollars that grease the wheels of his grassroots patronage networks. A tightening of the donor cash flow taps would provide a helpful reminder to Mr. Hun Sen of the personal costs of his recent anti-democratic indulgences.

Mr. Kyne is the Jakarta bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires and former managing editor of the Phnom Penh Post.