Groups urge Hun Sen to consider UN Rights recommendations

Pictures: Hun Sen with wife (below) and Yash Ghai (above).

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer Original report from Phnom Penh

Khmerization's comment: Hun Sen's undiplomatic reactions to the UN envoy is communistic and is characteristics of an uneducated leader. A tyrant and a communist leader never see and admits his own failings. What Yash Ghai said were there for everybody to see. In short he was talking about the truth. Land grabbings, human rights abuses, official corruption and judicial interferences are overtly sanctioned, if not condoned, by the Hun Sen government. These evidences are enough for any educated, fair minded and democratically elected leader to take heed and try to remedy and rectify the problems. Hun Sen has not only refused to right his wrongs but instead has accused the UN envoy of being the wronged person. To me Yash Ghai has never "eaten Hun Sen's rice and smashing his pot" but Yash Ghai has actually brought rice to Hun Sen's pots because his 10 days stay in Cambodia would have brought thousands of dollars to the Cambodian economy.

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Five leading human rights groups appealed to Prime Minister Hun Sen Tuesday to give his support to human rights commitments, including meeting with UN rights representatives.
The appeal follows a trip by the UN special human rights envoy Yash Ghai, whom the government shunned in December and Hun Sen said should be fired.
But Human Rights Watch, the Asian Human Rights Commission, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization against Torture said Tuesday it was time for the government to end its antagonism against the envoy and look to solutions for Cambodia's rights abuses.
"Professor Ghai has drawn attention to critical concerns shared by the wider international human rights community," said Basil Fernando, executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, in a statement. "There's no denying the facts. Expropriation of the land of Cambodia's poor is reaching a disastrous level, the courts are politicized and corrupt, and impunity for human rights violators remains the norm."
Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said Ghai had "looked down" on Hun Sen's senior human rights advisor, Om Yentieng, by not meeting him.
Ghai had insulted his host country by "eating its rice and then smashing the pot on the ground," Khieu Kanharith said.