COLUMNIST: LAO MONG HAY
Rule by Fear
Dr. Lao Mong Hay is currently a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor of political science at the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2003. Earlier, he served as director of the Cambodian Mine Action Center, dedicated to mine clearance and mine education. In 1997 he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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March 18, 2009Hong Kong, China — It took the Cambodian government and the United Nations almost 10 years to agree on a U.N.-assisted tribunal to try leaders of the former Khmer Rouge regime for their crimes. Now in place, it has come under allegations of corruption and government interference.
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February 25, 2009Hong Kong, China — Last week the Khmer Rouge tribunal began the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, head of the notorious S-21 prison of the Khmer Regime where over 12,000 people were tortured and killed. The tribunal's trials will deliver some measure of justice for the victims and help Cambodia address its tragic past.
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February 04, 2009Hong Kong, China — In a recent workshop in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian government has pledged to implement the Optional Protocol to the U.N. Convention against Torture, signed in 2007, in the next two years. This will ensure the inspection of prisons and police stations to prevent torture or ill treatment of detainees.
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January 14, 2009Hong Kong, China — Cambodia is bound by the Paris Peace Agreements of 1991, which obligate the country to adhere to international human rights norms and standards. These include the creation of an independent judiciary, but there is no such thing in Cambodia even now.
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December 04, 2008Hong Kong, China — The Cambodian government in September 2006 announced that it was going to create a National Human Rights Commission for the promotion and protection of human rights. However, it is very doubtful that the government will keep its promise to enact this law in 2009.
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November 19, 2008Hong Kong, China — Cambodia’s national police commissioner, Gen. Hok Lundy, was killed in a helicopter crash on Nov. 9, Cambodia’s National Day. Senior party official Cheam Yeap said, “The CPP and all Cambodians have suffered a huge loss.” But Hok’s death has brought relief to many, considering his record on human rights.
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October 29, 2008Hong Kong, China — As the Cold War drew to a close, 18 countries assembled in Paris in October 1991 to end the protracted war in Cambodia. They laid down a set of principles for the country’s Constitution. But 17 years on, constitutionalism has not taken root in Cambodia, and new developments have taken place to counter it.
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October 01, 2008Hong Kong, China — The office of the prime minister of Cambodia in April issued a letter awarding 72 hectares of land belonging to a fishing village to four individuals. This is a common practice for settling disputes by bypassing legal procedures and court judgments, breeding corruption and centralization of power.
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September 10, 2008Hong Kong, China — The Cambodian government has not been happy with the U.N. human rights mandate, which has led to conflicts with the U.N. high commissioner's field office. The mandate to be reviewed by the Human Rights Council this week is causing anxiety in Cambodia's civil society since they fear that if it ends, then the government would cease to honor its human rights obligations.
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August 20, 2008Hong Kong, China — The ruling Cambodian People's Party won 90 out of 123 seats in the National Assembly in a July 27 election that opposition parties claim was rigged. With the ruling party in control of all major institutions and the judiciary, this means Cambodia will become practically a one-party state.
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July 30, 2008Hong Kong, China — Cambodia held a general election on Sunday, and while the National Election Committee was still counting votes, the ruling party already announced it had won. Four opposition parties joined forces on Monday to denounce the results, charging that they had been “manipulated and rigged” by the ruling party.
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July 09, 2008Hong Kong, China — Renowned Cambodian poet Krom Ngoy noted abuses in the society of his time in the early 20th century and urged his people to abandon them: the rich abusing the poor, the physically strong abusing the weak and officials abusing the people. Yet this habit of abuse remains alive in Cambodian society today.
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June 18, 2008Hong Kong, China — Since 1993 the international community has been assisting Cambodia in establishing parliamentary democracy, rule of law, and the administrative machinery of government. Fifteen years later, the infrastructure is physically present but is so wracked by corruption that it is largely dysfunctional.
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May 28, 2008Hong Kong, China — On May 16, 2006, a petition with over 1 million signatures and thumbprints was presented to the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, calling on the assembly to urgently enact an anti-corruption law that had been in the drafting process for years. Yet still no such law has appeared.
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May 07, 2008Hong Kong, China — Cambodia will hold a general election on July 27, but court cases against the leaders of two opposition parties may mar the electoral process. One is a lawsuit against Sam Rainsy for defaming the deputy prime minister; the other involves Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Neither is likely to get a fair trial.
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April 16, 2008Hong Kong, China — Between 1975 and 1979 the Cambodian people suffered the world's worst torture in recent history under the Khmer Rouge regime. Torture did not end with the end of that murderous regime; it is still perpetrated at police stations, prisons and detention centers.
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March 26, 2008Hong Kong, China — Cambodia is bound by international agreements to adopt democracy, to observe and respect human rights and to be governed by the rule of law. It has abandoned communism, embraced a market economy and become more open; yet communist legacies have stalled full parliamentary democracy and rule of law.
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March 05, 2008Hong Kong, China — Land-grabbing has affected many people and forestry areas across Cambodia; it has been feared that this could spark a "peasant revolution." Last year Prime Minister Hun Sen declared "a war against land-grabbers" whom he identified as officials of the Cambodian People's Party and people in power.
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February 14, 2008Hong Kong, China — The Cambodian government is bound by the Paris Peace Agreements of 1991, which set up a field office of the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. From the beginning there has been friction between this U.N. office and the Cambodian government, however.
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January 23, 2008Hong Kong, China — Fear on the part of ordinary people in relation to their rulers at all levels of public administration, from village chiefs to the head of state, is a norm in Cambodia, where these rulers behave as masters, not servants, of their people.
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December 12, 2007Hong Kong, China — In October 1991, the warring factions in Cambodia and 17 concerned countries gathered in Paris to sign, in the presence of the secretary-general of the United Nations, a set of agreements to end the war in Cambodia.
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November 21, 2007Hong Kong, China — The Khmer Rouge tribunal has now arrested five top Khmer Rouge leaders who are charged with crimes against humanity and/or war crimes. All but one have denied the charges.They are, in the chronological order of their arrests, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch,
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October 31, 2007Hong Kong, China — Cambodia is currently making preparations for the election of members of parliament to be held in July next year, making it the third, after the one organized by the United Nations in 1993. It has now proceeded to update the electoral rolls.
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October 10, 2007Hong Kong, China — Some years ago, at a public forum to debate a future trial of the Khmer Rouge, three "intellectuals" who had been senior Khmer Rouge officials laid the blame for the mass killings and the devastation of Cambodian society squarely on the shoulders of Pol P
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September 19, 2007Hong Kong, China — In August there was a flurry of statements from the Cambodian government and other state institutions to affirm and defend former King Sihanouk's immunity from any court order to appear in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as a defendant or a witness. This tribu
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September 05, 2007Hong Kong, China — Over the last two weeks, the Cambodian government has mounted vitriolic attacks against a request for former King Sihanouk, now 84, to be stripped of his immunity and face trial in the mixed Cambodian-U.N. tribunal set up to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders
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August 22, 2007Hong Kong, China — On July 31, the Cambodian government sent a delegation of officials, ten excavators and over 100 workers under the protection of armed policemen to reclaim a site that once included Lake Kob Srov. Long Chhin (Cambodia) Investment Ltd.
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July 18, 2007Hong Kong, China — At the end of May this year, the London-based environmental organization Global Witness published a report in which it held a "kleptocratic elite" close to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen responsible for illegal logging. A week later, instead of addressi
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June 27, 2007Hong Kong, China — The Cambodian delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council launched an unprecedented and unwarranted attack on U.N. special representative of the secretary-general for human rights in Cambodia, Prof.
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June 06, 2007Hong Kong, China — It is nearly 10 years since the Cambodian government requested U.N. assistance in organizing the trials of Khmer Rouge officials accused of some 1.7 million deaths during their rule from 1975 to 1979.
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May 16, 2007Hong Kong, China — Land-grabbing has been one of the most serious issues facing Cambodia since it abandoned communist collectivization at the end of the 1980s to embrace a market economy based on private property. In recent years, this problem has become worse as land confl
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April 25, 2007Hong Kong, China — In August 2005, two men -- Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun -- were convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of Chea Vichea near a newspaper kiosk in Phnom Penh in January 2004. The two men subsequently appealed against their conviction.
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April 04, 2007Hong Kong, China — Last week the Cambodian government threatened to revoke the visas of staff members of the Open Society Justice Initiative, a New York-based human rights NGO, and expel their organization after OSJI publicized allegations of corruption at the Khmer Rouge T
