|
FINANCIAL TIMES
Hun Sen’s Cambodia slides into despotism
Western neglect and Chinese
patronage have both played a role In one of the last
editions of the Cambodia Daily newspaper, the headline ran as follows:
“Descent into outright dictatorship”. It ran above a picture of
Cambodia’s main opposition leader being arrested in a midnight raid. The independent
English-language newspaper, which began publishing in 1993, was shut
down this week by Hun Sen, the prime minister, in response to its
reporting on his regime’s assault on Cambodia’s freedoms. With the arrest of Kem
Sokha, Hun Sen has stepped up repression, exposing his insecurity ahead
of a general election scheduled for July next year. He openly frets
about the potential for a central Asian-style “colour revolution” and
worries that an opposition landslide could spell the end of his three
decades in power. He has ordered his
citizens to refer to him as “glorious supreme prime minister and
powerful commander”, vowed to stay in office for “not less than 10 more
years” and openly threatened a return to civil war if his ruling party
does not win the election “at all stages”. Coming from a former
commander in the Khmer Rouge, which instigated a genocide in the 1970s
in which millions died, these are not idle threats.
For decades, Hun Sen’s autocratic tendencies have been constrained by
his country’s reliance on western aid, which is usually tied to good
governance and democracy benchmarks. But billions of dollars in
state-driven investment from China in recent years have allowed him to
indulge his true political inclinations. In charging Kem Sokha
with treason on Tuesday, the Hun Sen regime presented as evidence a
video of the opposition leader from 2013 in which he tells supporters of
his party that he enjoys American support and advice. For that speech,
which has been publicly available for the past four years, Kem Sokha is
accused of “colluding with foreigners” and faces up to 30 years in
prison. Hun Sen’s vow to fight
against “puppets of foreigners” is laughable given his reliance on
Beijing — and Cambodia’s de facto position as a client state of China.
Tellingly, amid the international condemnation that followed this week’s
crackdown, the only country to express support for Hun Sen’s “effort to
uphold national security and stability” was China. Western countries, in
particular the US, must take some of the responsibility for the retreat
of democracy and human rights in Cambodia, which stands out as a failed
example of western democratic nation building. After a flurry of
interest and activity in the early 1990s, the west largely forgot about
Cambodia. The building of democratic institutions in the ravaged country
was too often outsourced to well-meaning but under-resourced western
non-governmental organisations. With its attention
focused overwhelmingly on the Middle East in the aftermath of the
September 11 2001 terror attacks, the US has often neglected its
interests in Asia. As a result, Cambodia is just the most striking
example of a Southeast Asian country tilting away from the sanctimonious
west and moving closer to China. Other examples include the Philippines,
Malaysia and Thailand, all of which have decided they needed to court
Beijing more assiduously and publicly reject Washington. China’s insistence on
supporting corrupt and unsavoury regimes such as Hun Sen’s may work in
the short term. Eventually, it is likely to backfire. Asia’s
longest-serving leader cannot rule forever. The longer he stays, the
greater resentment will build against him as well as his Chinese
patrons. |