Cambodia's dictatorship marches on and nary a word

Hun Manet succeeded his father, Hun Sen, as Cambodia’s dictator following fraudulent elections in July, in which the ruling Cambodian People Party’s “won” 96% of parliamentary seats. Since then, the new prime minister has been shoring up international support for the transition.

Prior to the ruling party’s victory, members of the main opposition party, Candlelight, were attacked in broad daylight and the organization was banned from participating in the elections on a bureaucratic technicality.

Barely weeks after the EU and U.S. had condemned his father’s government for stealing the vote — with Japan adopting the milder stance of closely watching the situation “with concern” — Hun Manet was being offered the trappings of international legitimacy.

In the midst of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Indonesia in early September, he met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Later this month, Hun Manet addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New York, claiming the legitimacy of the July election, and later attended a private dinner with major U.S. companies including Pfizer and others who already have investments in Cambodia, such as Coca-Cola and General Electric.

Furthermore, this year, the Cambodian leader is scheduled to visit Japan and Australia, despite his illegal rise to power that tears up the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement, which ended years of conflict in Cambodia. This treaty, in which Japan, Australia and 17 other state parties committed to supporting democracies in Asia, ushered in Cambodia’s short-lived transition to democracy.

Japan even paid a bloody price for upholding freedoms in the country: In the 1990s, two Japanese election volunteers were killed by the Khmer Rouge during U.N. peacekeeping missions.

How times have changed. Recently, U.N. ambassadors refused our request as the Khmer Movement for Democracy, an organization representing the Cambodian diaspora, to oppose Hun Manet’s address at the General Assembly — even though walkouts are commonly carried out to protest other human rights abusers, such as Russia.

We also staged a peaceful protest on Sept. 22, the day Hun Manet made his speech in front of global delegates, aiming to draw attention to the continued dictatorship that has Cambodia in a stranglehold. The protest was livestreamed and received over a million views, demonstrating widespread awareness of the egregious crimes of Hun Manet and his father.

By not heeding our call to walk out during the dictator’s address, member states endorsed his legitimacy. Equally, businesses who met with him in the U.S. should have asked him how he plans to combat systemic corruption and establish the independence of the judiciary (something which, to our knowledge, they did not do).

In addition, social media giant Meta overruled its own oversight board and allowed Hun Sen back on Facebook recently — even after he posted a video earlier this year threatening to beat up his political rivals.

This de facto acceptance of a fraudulent election and the creation of a hereditary dynasty in Cambodia is shameful. Hun Manet is no reformer, nor would it matter if he was as his father will remain the real powerbroker in the land.

The former ruler has become president of King Norodom Sihamoni’s Supreme Privy Council, which will make him the formal head of state in Cambodia when the monarch is out of the country. Also, it was announced that Hun Sen will become president of the Senate following elections in 2024.

Japan and Cambodia recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of their diplomatic relations, and Tokyo has shown great willingness to deepen this relationship by promoting more tourism and economic exchange.

Kishida as well as Western governments are reluctant to condemn Cambodia’s regime for fears that this will push it further into China’s arms. But while Japan has been Cambodia’s biggest donor since 1992 and the West continues appeasing the Hun dynasty, Phnom Penh is drifting further into Beijing’s sphere of control.

Just before heading to New York, Hun Manet received a red-carpet welcome in Beijing, where joint China-Cambodia military exercises were announced. More than 40% of Cambodia’s $10 billion in foreign debt is owed to China, which has funded the construction of roads, airports and other infrastructure all over the country.

Satellite imagery of Cambodia’s Ream naval base from the past few years shows U.S.-funded buildings being torn down and replaced with Chinese-funded buildings and roads. China is also financing land reclamation at the base and in recent months a pier has been expanded to accommodate its warships.

Hun Manet’s rise to power will lead China, labeled an “ironclad friend” of Phnom Penh by Hun Sen himself, to further assert its military presence in Cambodia.

Japan’s strategy of noninterference in Cambodia’s domestic affairs is increasingly untenable as the human rights abuses perpetrated by the anti-democratic government become evermore apparent. Through its policy of balancing against China’s influence, Japan is reneging on the promises made in the Paris Peace Agreement.

I believe Kishida is aware of this, as demonstrated by his unusual expression of Japanese support for Cambodian democracy at the recent meeting with Hun Manet during the ASEAN summit.

We, the Khmer Movement for Democracy, urge Japan and the rest of the international community to introduce visa sanctions on key members of the Hun Manet government and their families, as well as freeze their assets.

We also ask the U.S. government not to renew the trade benefits granted to Cambodia under its Generalized System of Preferences, currently awaiting congressional renewal, and the EU to fulfill its 2021 pledge to fully suspend the Everything But Arms trade program with Cambodia until verifiable democratic reforms have been adopted.

In addition, Hun Manet and his government must immediately release the at least 200 political prisoners currently jailed in Cambodia.

These include civil society workers, human rights defenders and citizens who have expressed support for opposition leaders — some by simply putting a like on a pro-opposition Facebook post. Politicians like former opposition leader Kem Sokha, my ally, who has been sentenced to 27 years of house arrest and Cambodian-American lawyer Theary Seng must be freed.

Opposition parties like Candlelight must be allowed to freely contest the upcoming Senate and provincial elections. We must see an end to a culture of fear of censorship and reprisals and the restoration of free media outlets like Radio Free Asia and Cambodia Daily, which were banned during previous election cycles.

Hundreds of democratic politicians have been forced into exile, cruelly separated from their families and loved ones — some escaping with only the clothes on their back. I'm one of these people, forced to live abroad to avoid life imprisonment on false charges.

For the “new” regime to show real change, those of us who were forced to flee must be able to return and freely contribute to our nation’s politics again.

At the U.N. General Assembly, there was a clear reluctance on the part of the international community to stand up for the oppressed peoples of Cambodia, a small country allied to China. Failing to do so constituted an endorsement of the Hun dynasty and its regime, as well as the crimes of the current leader, his father and their cronies.