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Sam Rainsy
Hun Sen used the dispute with Thailand to divert local people's attention away from his failure to handle a territorial loss to Vietnam, he said.
Sam Rainsy's parliamentary immunity was revoked this week after he was accused of uprooting boundary markers along the country's eastern border with Vietnam.
Hun Sen only paid a lot of attention to the possibility of Cambodia losing territory to Thailand but he neglected to say this danger had already materialised on a large scale on the eastern border with Vietnam, said Rainsy who leads the Sam Rainsy Party.
Thailand had only recently started to unfairly challenge the status of a piece of Cambodian territory surrounding Preah Vihear temple, while Vietnam had grabbed thousands of square kilometres of land in many provinces over the last 30 years, he said.
The opposition leader, who is in Europe now, said in an open letter to the Cambodian people that Hun Sen was using a classic tactic to divert attention from Vietnam by exacerbating tensions and drawing unpre-cedented attention its western neighbour, Thailand.
Cambodia and Thailand have been at loggerheads over Preah Vihear for more than a year. The conflict was fuelled by Hun Sen appointing former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra as his adviser, which prompted retaliatory moves over the past two weeks. Both countries have downgraded diplomatic relations with each other.
Rainsy said Hun Sen opted to do this to secure his power and to save Vietnamese interests in Cambodia. Vietnam ousted the Khmer Rouge from the power in 1979 and installed a regime that Hun Sen was part of, which held power till 1989.
"From a historical and geopolitical perspective Thailand is Vietnam's main rival in mainland Indochina. Therefore, weakening Thailand is in the long term interest of her rival," Rainsy said.
"To weaken Thailand, nothing is more effective than fanning the flames of internal divisions among the Thai people and supporting one fighting group against the other," he said in the letter.
The opposition leader urged Hun Sen's government to remain neutral over internal disputes in other countries.
Any spill over from the current tension or unrest in Thailand could be very detrimental to Cambodia, he said.
Hun Sen's miscalculation was like throwing oil on fire in a neighbouring country and was likely at the least to burn his fingers, and at worse, could set Cambodia ablaze, as past experiences showed when "we unnecessarily and unwisely took sides in our neighbours' internal disputes", he said.
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Sam Rainsy condemns Hun Sen's dangerous game with Thailand
Sam RainsyCambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy accused Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday of playing a dangerous game by drawing their country into a conflict with Thailand.
Sam Rainsy's parliamentary immunity was revoked this week after he was accused of uprooting boundary markers along the country's eastern border with Vietnam.
Hun Sen only paid a lot of attention to the possibility of Cambodia losing territory to Thailand but he neglected to say this danger had already materialised on a large scale on the eastern border with Vietnam, said Rainsy who leads the Sam Rainsy Party.
Thailand had only recently started to unfairly challenge the status of a piece of Cambodian territory surrounding Preah Vihear temple, while Vietnam had grabbed thousands of square kilometres of land in many provinces over the last 30 years, he said.
The opposition leader, who is in Europe now, said in an open letter to the Cambodian people that Hun Sen was using a classic tactic to divert attention from Vietnam by exacerbating tensions and drawing unpre-cedented attention its western neighbour, Thailand.
Cambodia and Thailand have been at loggerheads over Preah Vihear for more than a year. The conflict was fuelled by Hun Sen appointing former Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra as his adviser, which prompted retaliatory moves over the past two weeks. Both countries have downgraded diplomatic relations with each other.
Rainsy said Hun Sen opted to do this to secure his power and to save Vietnamese interests in Cambodia. Vietnam ousted the Khmer Rouge from the power in 1979 and installed a regime that Hun Sen was part of, which held power till 1989.
"From a historical and geopolitical perspective Thailand is Vietnam's main rival in mainland Indochina. Therefore, weakening Thailand is in the long term interest of her rival," Rainsy said.
"To weaken Thailand, nothing is more effective than fanning the flames of internal divisions among the Thai people and supporting one fighting group against the other," he said in the letter.
The opposition leader urged Hun Sen's government to remain neutral over internal disputes in other countries.
Any spill over from the current tension or unrest in Thailand could be very detrimental to Cambodia, he said.
Hun Sen's miscalculation was like throwing oil on fire in a neighbouring country and was likely at the least to burn his fingers, and at worse, could set Cambodia ablaze, as past experiences showed when "we unnecessarily and unwisely took sides in our neighbours' internal disputes", he said.
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Hun Sen Opposes More Khmer Rouge Arrests
PHNOM PENH — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen renewed his criticism of the country's UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal Monday, warning that arresting more suspects could spark civil war.
Hun Sen spoke in response to last week's ruling by the tribunal allowing prosecutors to pursue further arrests. The matter had been in contention because the Cambodian co-prosecutor opposed the idea, while his international counterpart supported it.
The tribunal is seeking justice for the estimated 1.7 million people who died in Cambodia from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition as a result of the communist regime's radical policies while in power between 1975-79.
Critics allege that Hun Sen has sought to limit the tribunal's scope because other potential defendants are now his political allies. Hun Sen served as a Khmer Rouge officer, before changing sides, and many of his major political allies are also former members of the group.
Brad Adams, Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said he believed Hun Sen was seeking to protect members of his own Cambodian People's Party, who could be targets for prosecution. But he said it was unlikely more arrests would be made.
"(Hun Sen) has been saying the same thing for 10 years, since before the court was set up," Adams said. "It's never happened, and it's not going to happen."
He pointed out that the Khmer Rouge have been defunct for a decade, and that its former leaders are more interested in business than war, and even if they sought to fight, they would be unable to recruit anyone to their side.
The tribunal's long-awaited first trial—of the Khmer Rouge's chief jailer, for war crimes and crimes against humanity—opened in March. A joint trial with four other senior officials—the only others currently in detention—is expected in the next year or two.
Hun Sen said that if foreign aid donors stopped funding the tribunal, Cambodia would carry on the proceedings on its own, without the international participation it now has. The tribunal employs joint teams of Cambodian and international court personnel.
"I would like to tell you that if you prosecute (more leaders) without thinking beforehand about national reconciliation and peace, and if war breaks out again and kills 20,000 or 30,000 people, who will responsible?" Hun Sen said. He said he was not trying to use his influence against the court, but only stating the situation.
There was no immediate reaction to Hun Sen's comment by representatives of the tribunal.
The Khmer Rouge came to power after a bitter 1970-75 civil war, and after being ousted from power in 1979, carried out an insurgency from the jungle until 1999.
Hun Sen said that he had devoted several years of his life to persuading Khmer Rouge leaders and their soldiers to end their fighting, so he could not allow anyone to drag the country back into a new civil war.
"I will not allow anyone to destroy what I have achieved," Hun Sen said. "The value of peace here is huge."
Hun Sen has dominated Cambodian politics for more than two decades. He ousted his former co-prime minister in a 1997 coup and has since ruled virtually unchallenged.
Hun Sen spoke in response to last week's ruling by the tribunal allowing prosecutors to pursue further arrests. The matter had been in contention because the Cambodian co-prosecutor opposed the idea, while his international counterpart supported it.
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| Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen gestures at a ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on September 7. (Photo: AP) |
Critics allege that Hun Sen has sought to limit the tribunal's scope because other potential defendants are now his political allies. Hun Sen served as a Khmer Rouge officer, before changing sides, and many of his major political allies are also former members of the group.
Brad Adams, Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said he believed Hun Sen was seeking to protect members of his own Cambodian People's Party, who could be targets for prosecution. But he said it was unlikely more arrests would be made.
"(Hun Sen) has been saying the same thing for 10 years, since before the court was set up," Adams said. "It's never happened, and it's not going to happen."
He pointed out that the Khmer Rouge have been defunct for a decade, and that its former leaders are more interested in business than war, and even if they sought to fight, they would be unable to recruit anyone to their side.
The tribunal's long-awaited first trial—of the Khmer Rouge's chief jailer, for war crimes and crimes against humanity—opened in March. A joint trial with four other senior officials—the only others currently in detention—is expected in the next year or two.
Hun Sen said that if foreign aid donors stopped funding the tribunal, Cambodia would carry on the proceedings on its own, without the international participation it now has. The tribunal employs joint teams of Cambodian and international court personnel.
"I would like to tell you that if you prosecute (more leaders) without thinking beforehand about national reconciliation and peace, and if war breaks out again and kills 20,000 or 30,000 people, who will responsible?" Hun Sen said. He said he was not trying to use his influence against the court, but only stating the situation.
There was no immediate reaction to Hun Sen's comment by representatives of the tribunal.
The Khmer Rouge came to power after a bitter 1970-75 civil war, and after being ousted from power in 1979, carried out an insurgency from the jungle until 1999.
Hun Sen said that he had devoted several years of his life to persuading Khmer Rouge leaders and their soldiers to end their fighting, so he could not allow anyone to drag the country back into a new civil war.
"I will not allow anyone to destroy what I have achieved," Hun Sen said. "The value of peace here is huge."
Hun Sen has dominated Cambodian politics for more than two decades. He ousted his former co-prime minister in a 1997 coup and has since ruled virtually unchallenged.
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Unexplained Mysteries of Cambodia Genocide (Pol Pot) - 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
An attempt by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming society resulted in the deaths of 25 percent of the country's population from starvation, overwork and executions. Pol Pot was born in 1925 (as Saloth Sar) into a farming family in central Cambodia, which was then part of French Indochina. In 1949, at age 20, he traveled to Paris on a scholarship to study radio electronics but became absorbed in Marxism and neglected his studies. He lost his scholarship and returned to Cambodia in 1953 and joined the underground Communist movement. The following year, Cambodia achieved full independence from France and was then ruled by a royal monarchy. .
From 1969 until 1973, the U.S. intermittently bombed North Vietnamese sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, killing up to 150,000 Cambodian peasants. As a result, peasants fled the countryside by the hundreds of thousands and settled in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh. All of these events resulted in economic and military destabilization in Cambodia and a surge of popular support for Pol Pot. By 1975, the U.S. had withdrawn its troops from Vietnam. Cambodia's government, plagued by corruption and incompetence, also lost its American military support. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17 effectively seized control of Cambodia. Once in power, Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, which he had witnessed, first-hand during a visit to Communist China. Mao's "Great Leap Forward" economic program included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies." Pol Pot would now attempt his own "Super Great Leap Forward" in Cambodia, which he renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. He began by declaring, "This is Year Zero," and that society was about to be "purified." Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism.
Millions of Cambodians accustomed to city life were now forced into slave labor in Pol Pot's "killing fields" where they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease, on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every two days. Workdays in the fields began around 4 a.m. and lasted until 10 p.m., with only two rest periods allowed during the 18 hour day, all under the armed supervision of young Khmer Rouge soldiers eager to kill anyone for the slightest infraction. Starving people were forbidden to eat the fruits and rice they were harvesting. After the rice crop was harvested, Khmer Rouge trucks would arrive and confiscate the entire crop. Ten to fifteen families lived together with a chairman at the head of each group. The armed supervisors made all work decisions with no participation from the workers who were told, "Whether you live or die is not of great significance." Every tenth day was a day of rest. There were also three days off during the Khmer New Year festival. Throughout Cambodia, deadly purges were conducted to eliminate remnants of the "old society" - the educated, the wealthy, Buddhist monks, police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and former government officials. Ex-soldiers were killed along with their wives and children. Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. "What is rotten must be removed," a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed. In the villages, unsupervised gatherings of more than two persons were forbidden. Young people were taken from their parents and placed in communals. They were later married in collective ceremonies involving hundreds of often-unwilling couples. Up to 20,000 persons were tortured into giving false confessions at Tuol Sleng, a school in Phnom Penh, which had been converted into a jail. Elsewhere, suspects were often shot on the spot before any questioning. Ethnic groups were attacked including the three largest minorities; the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cham Muslims, along with twenty other smaller groups. Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000 Chinese living in Cambodia in 1975 perished. Khmer Rouge also forced Muslims to eat pork and shot those who refused. On December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed. The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting of Khmer Rouge defectors. Pol Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years. After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, he finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79. |
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