POLITICS-CAMBODIA: U.N. Steps on Premier’s Quest for Legitimacy

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 12 2002 (IPS) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sun’s quest for international legitimacy has received a telling blow from the United Nations, which last week announced that it is abandoning support for a war crimes court in the South-east Asian country.

The timing of the United Nations’ assertion on Feb. 8 — that a special criminal court to try former Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of genocide would not meet international standards of justice – is doubly painful for the Cambodian leader.

It came the very week he was savouring twin triumphs at the country’s first-ever democratically held local government elections, on Feb. 3.

These elections, in fact, were essential for Hun Sen’s political agenda, since they offered an opportunity to project himself as other than as an autocrat.

To some extent he succeeded, since the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which Hun Sen heads, came out a clear winner and the polling day proper was deemed “peaceful” by Asian election observers.

Since the poll, Hun Sen has drawn attention to these twin achievements in an attempt to distract others from the criticism levelled against him and his government for being party to the violence during the election campaign.

More than 15 opposition candidates and activists were reported ahead of the poll, and the CPP was accused of harassment of the electorate and putting restrictions on media access.

Still, for a moment, it appeared that Hun Sen had succeeded in gaining another notch in his political agenda. “The elections helped to enhance his legitimacy,” says Lao Mon Ghay, director of the Phnom Penh- based Khmer Institute of Democracy.

But the United Nations’ announcement last week challenged Hun Sen’s quest with telling clarity.

U.N. participation in the trial of former leaders of the Khmer Rouge – the genocidal group that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 – would have enabled Hun Sen to make claims on an important political front: that a tribunal investigating Khmer Rouge crimes was held during his term. It would also have come in handy for the 2003 general elections.

But the letter from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the Cambodian government, stating that the special criminal court Phnom Penh wanted to establish “would not guarantee independence, impartiality and objectivity,” undermined the impression Hun Sen has been trying to create.

“This will affect his claims for legitimacy, which he has been trying very hard to achieve,” says Sunai Phasuk, researcher at the Bangkok-based Asian Network for Free Elections, which monitored the recently concluded polls in Cambodia. “He has been trying to polish his image to win acceptance internationally.”

Critics say he has been known for the use of strong-arm tactics in politics after 1993, when Cambodia had its first election under a U.N. peace plan after decades of civil war. In 1997, Hun Sen carried out a de facto coup against his co-premier Prince Norodom Ranarridh.

Today, Hun Sen has to shoulder much of the responsibility for the United Nations’ pullout from Cambodia’s efforts to set up special courts to try Khmer Rouge figures for genocide.

He has refused to budge from his stance on the creation of this tribunal, meant to prosecute the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge for crimes against humanity, including genocide, that led to the deaths of nearly 1.7 million people.

In September last year, a cross section of human rights activists raised questions and concerns about the Cambodian government’s plans for the special tribunals, including their dominant feature — having a majority of Cambodian judges.

Clearly, Hun Sen was not interested in establishing courts committed to maintaining international legal standards, such as the United Nations and international community-backed tribunals looking into charges of crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda.

Also, he has come under criticism for wanting to limit the trials to some Khmer Rouge leaders – and leaving out those who have switched sides and have since supported his government.

Last year, too, in a display of bravado, Hun Sen declared that Cambodia would conduct a trial with or without U.N. involvement.

Such recalcitrance has come back to haunt him.

On Monday, the global human rights lobby Amnesty International said in a statement that the U.N. decision “came as no surprise,” since the legal process Phnom Penh insists on for a trial “fell far short of required internationally recognised standards for fair trials”.

Youk Chhang, director of the respected Documentation Centre of Cambodia, agrees: “For the truth to prevail, United Nations participation is a must. It is only then that people will feel justice is being served.”

Activist Sok Sam Oeun finds the government wanting, given its continued insistence that local judges can hear cases of crimes against humanity. “Our criminal justice system is a failure,” asserts Sok, a lawyer and coordinator of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee. “The judges can be influenced by the government. There are judges with links to the governing party.”

Nevertheless, the Hun Sen government believes it can find a way to get around the U.N. pullout from the genocide trial process. The prime minister told the media that if the United Nations does not change its stance, individual countries will be invited to participate in the tribunal and Phnom Penh will “send the judges”.

If Hun Sen gets his way — a tribunal functioning under new laws — Khmer Rouge leaders like its former foreign minister Ieng Sary will not face trial, given a deal struck between the two men.

Those who will include leaders under arrest like Ta Mok, the former army chief of staff, and Kang Kek Iue, who ran the Toul Sleng torture and execution centre.

Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge member who later ran a Vietnam-backed regime that kicked the extremist group out in 1978, and senior members of his government, may also be spared facing the tribunal. “Deep down, he doesn’t want the trial because he and some of his colleagues may be implicated,” says Lao of the Khmer Institute of Democracy.