Margo Picken: The Beleaguered Cambodians

"Cambodia is ruled by longtime Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian PeopleтАЩs Party. They govern with absolute power and control all institutions that could challenge their authority. Opposition political parties exist, giving the illusion of multiparty democracy, but elections have not been fair and the opposition no longer poses any threat to Hun Sen. The monarchy has survived but has little influence. The freedoms of expression, association, and assembly are severely curtailed. Human rights organizations are intimidated, and a draft law aims to bring them under the regimeтАЩs authority. The judiciary is controlled by the executive, and the flawed laws that exist are selectively enforced. Hundreds of murders and violent attacks against politicians, journalists, labor leaders, and others critical of Hun Sen and his party remain unsolved.

The UN Development Program and other UN agencies, which together contribute a considerable amount, are supposed to give human rights central attention in their programs; but they have been hesitant to take on human rights violations. The Asian Development Bank and the World Bank have generally steered clear of human rights altogether.

While donor nations have called for measures to strengthen the rule of lawтАФprimarily to improve the environment for foreign investment and private business developmentтАФthe results have been disappointing. The judiciary remains the creature of the executive, and an anticorruption law, under discussion since 1994 and then rushed through parliament in March 2010, is extremely weak. Meanwhile the discovery of potentially significant deposits of oil and natural gas has made concerns about corruption ever more pressing.

For all but a few Cambodians, the supposed тАЬbeneficiariesтАЭ of overseas development aid, the donor world is remote and hard to comprehend, and such organizations as Human Rights Watch and Global Witness urge donors to be far more exacting about the way their funds are used. Despite these concerns, in June, donor nations including Japan, the US, and members of the EU pledged a record $1.1 billion with few questions asked.

In the 1991 peace agreements, the тАЬinternational communityтАЭ assumed special responsibilities to the people of Cambodia that have yet to be properly honored. Cambodia today is a corrupt and cruel semi-dictatorship that should be getting much more scrutiny from the rest of the world. The Cambodian people deserve better. Thirty years after the appalling transgressions of the Khmer Rouge, much of the country still lives in fear."

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... tion=false

http://www.globalwitness.org/campaigns/ ... g/cambodia

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