The harshest political crackdown in years is under way in Cambodia in what some analysts are calling the final stage in Prime Minister Hun Sen's drive to consolidate unchallenged power.
During the past year, he has choked off the last effective political opposition while continuing to marginalize the monarchy, manipulate the courts and intimidate labor unions and other civic groups.
In December, the leader of the only significant opposition party, Sam Rainsy, who had already fled the country, was sentenced in absentia to 18 months in prison for criminal defamation.
Now, with a series of arrests and lawsuits on defamation and related charges, Hun Sen is for the first time directly attacking the human rights groups that, by default, serve as a de facto democratic opposition.
"Cambodia right now is at a crossroads: It must decide whether it's going to be a real democracy or whether it's going to move inexorably toward a one-party state," US ambassador Joseph Mussomeli said.
The special UN envoy for human rights in Cambodia, Yash Ghai, said only strong action from the foreign countries that support Cambodia's economy could stop the slide.
"It has all the hallmarks of the beginning of a totalitarian regime," he said.
The human rights groups are the most substantial and lasting legacy of a major international effort by the UN in the early 1990s to implant democracy in Cambodia.
From 1975 to 1979, the communist Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of 1.7 million people, comprising nearly one-fourth of the nation's population.
In the decade that followed, Cambodia was ruled by a Vietnamese-backed communist government in which Hun Sen rose to leadership.
Hun Sen staged a coup in 1997. He then intimidated opponents, manipulated elections and cut constitutional corners, allowing him to move steadily to reclaim the full powers he held before the UN intervention.
The forms of democracy remain. A parliamentary election is to be held in 2008.
Hun Sen also noted that he had not taken action against Sam Rainsy's party, just against Sam Rainsy.
These forms, however, do not compensate for a policy of intimidation, the US ambassador said.
"They have scared the hell out of the opposition, and it becomes more difficult to take these trappings of democracy as the real thing each time another voice is silenced," Mussomeli said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS