Photo Credit: Flickr user 12th St David
In a recent Human Rights Watch press release on Cambodia, Brad Adams, the organization’s Asia Director, commented that “Hun Sen seems intent on reversing the political pluralism that has been created over the past two decades.” Adams’ statement was directly referring to the January 27 conviction of opposition leader Sam Rainsy on charges of fueling racial tensions and destroying demarcation posts on the Cambodia-Vietnam border. Rainsy was tried in absentia and sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of 8 million riels (US$2,000). His case is representative of the situation currently faced by most government-critical activists and politicians in the country, as Prime Minister Hun Sen has increasingly clamped down on dissent and strengthened his hold over the country, plunging Cambodia into a governance downslide.
As Rainsy’s case highlights, the undermining of the rule of law in has become increasingly prevalent in Cambodia. Rainsy’s unfair trial exemplifies the political perversion of the Cambodian justice system, which continues to be manipulated by Cambodia’s high-level officials. Rainsy has been the frequent target of politically motivated charges since the 1990s, with government officials engaging in repeated attempts to jail the opposition leader. Unfortunately, he is not alone. As most judges and prosecutors are members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, Hun Sen and other high-level government figures have been able to use the court system to target opposition leaders, activists, and journalists with defamation suits. The government’s use of the judiciary as a political tool has become even more flagrant of late, with at least ten government critics being sued for criminal defamation in 2009, including two additional opposition parliamentarians, a Sam Rainsy Party youth activist, and four journalists. In addition to lacking independence, the Cambodian judiciary is also plagued by corruption, an issue that gained international awareness when a kickback scheme was uncovered within the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal in 2007.
Another particularly troubling rule of law issue relates to property rights, specifically the escalating issue of forced evictions and land confiscations. According to Human Rights Watch, “Cambodia’s epic of forced evictions of the urban poor and confiscation of farmers’ land in the countryside reached crisis proportions in 2009.” Land grabs have become increasingly common in recent years, a practice that is made possible by a convoluted land-titling system that has favored the wealthy elites, leaving 80 percent of citizens in rural areas without title deeds. The weak legal regime, combined with the ability of powerful officials and businessmen to manipulate the system, has left ordinary Cambodians without an avenue to protect their rights or receive adequate compensation in cases of eviction. High real estate prices and new development projects in both rural and urban areas have been especially to blame for this problem in the past years.Most alarmingly, the security forces charged with carrying out evictions frequently engage in excessive force against civilians, who are rarely informed of evictions in advance. For example, in January 2009, 250 police hired by the company 7NG, which claimed ownership of the land, evicted 152 families from the Dey Kraham community, using tear gas to disperse the crowd. Furthermore, villagers and activists who protest against the unjust confiscation of land are often arrested and even shot, as was the case with four Che Kreng villagers in one March 2009 clash with the police. More than 60 people are imprisoned or awaiting trial for charges related to land conflicts, an indication that ordinary citizens who rebel against the government’s policies have not escaped the crackdown experienced by the formal opposition. Activists working on human rights and land and trade union issues, along with opposition journalists, have been especially subject to harassment, attacks, and even killings, and crimes are often committed by the security forces. In 2008, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association investigated the murders of 40 Cambodians, six of them political activists, by security force members.
In yet another egregious example, a recent Human Rights Watch report chronicles the abuses endured by drug users who are sent to “rehabilitation centers.” According to the report, drug users detained in the center are beaten, raped, subjected to forced labor, and tortured rather than provided with effective treatment for their addictions. Many of the detainees end up in the center after being arbitrarily arrested in mass police round-ups of prostitutes, homeless people, the mentally-ill, and drug-users alike, and are often left in the dark as to the charges against them. In response to allegations regarding these abuses, the government has occasionally recognized these practices, although it normally justifies them as a necessary part of drug rehabilitation.
Cambodia’s governance backsliding is especially distressing due to the generous amount of funding the country receives from international donors. International assistance makes up over half of Cambodia’s annual budget. Most of Cambodia’s major development partners, which include the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations, the European Commission, and the United States, among others, have invested in a variety of projects geared towards advancing judicial reform, addressing past abuses (most notably through the UN-funded Khmer Rouge tribunal), instituting training programs on human rights issues, addressing health issues such as HIV/AIDS, and fostering economic development. However, these donors have had minimal success in ensuring that the government takes its international human rights commitments seriously. This is partly due to the fact that although investors will occasionally issue formal criticisms of the Cambodian government and urge reform, the aid keeps coming. Their limited achievements in this realm, and the recent backsliding on any progress made in the past, are also at least partly the result of China’s high levels of investment in the country, which has largely been funneled towards infrastructure development. As we discussed in a previous post, China’s assistance is not conditioned on the adoption of reforms, and thus increased Chinese assistance has afforded the Cambodian government a greater ability to turn its back on good governance efforts with lesser financial consequences, and to use China’s ever-mounting assistance as a bargaining chip when dealing with other donors.