April 4, 2013,
PHNOM PENH — Cambodian terrorists
materialize in the unlikeliest of places: sparsely populated jungles and
tiny farming villages, human rights NGOs and opposition political
parties.
Two weeks ago the Cambodian National Police triumphantly announced they had unmasked a group of terrorists in a suburb of Bangkok: six men, including three Buddhist monks, from the Khmer Krom ethnic minority
who had fled to Thailand seeking political asylum. They were brought
back to Cambodia under mysterious circumstances and immediately thrown
in jail.
Alleged terrorist plots, each more improbable than the last, emerge every few years in Cambodia.
They belong to the Khmer National Liberation Front,
an obscure, quixotic opposition group founded by a Cambodian refugee in
Denmark that objects to the policies and practices of Prime Minister
Hun Sen. The Cambodian police claim the men were plotting a violent
uprising against the government. Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia
director for Human Rights Watch, says they are a very minor group of
peaceful dissidents.
“I suspect that the Cambodian government may have wanted some
scapegoats to raise national security alarms in advance of the July
elections,” Robertson told me this week from Bangkok.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Alleged terrorist plots, each more
improbable than the last, emerge every few years in Cambodia, often
conveniently involving pamphleteers, minorities and members of the
opposition. It seems that Hun Sen, ever eager to cast himself as the
only viable force for stability in a country that was mired in civil war
for decades, is following the successful autocrat’s basic rule: If your
political opponents don’t seem dangerous enough, conjure up some more
frightening ones.
In 2007 it was the Empire Movement, which the authorities accused of
forming an insurgent army in an isolated part of central Cambodia and
planning to take over parts of Thailand and Vietnam. It turned out that
the movement’s members — several of whom were Muslims belonging to local
opposition parties — fell for a convoluted case of entrapment and
joined the supposed guerrilla group thinking it was an NGO that built toilets and wells.
In 2009 it was the Tiger Head Movement, a half-dozen armed bandits in
the remote northeastern province of Mondulkiri. They were accused of
conspiring to plant small bombs at a monument in Phnom Penh
commemorating Vietnamese-Cambodian friendship. And their alleged ringleader, a member of a formerly powerful opposition party, was sentenced to a total of 46 years in prison.
The human rights activist Pen Bonnar,
who has worked with indigenous communities in the far northeast for
over a decade, was forced to flee to Phnom Penh in 2009 after a local
judge threatened to prosecute him for terrorist activities — for his
work organizing land-rights protests. A member of Parliament from the Sam Rainsy Party,
a leading opposition group, was jailed for a year on charges that he
had formed an armed rebel band because he had tried to create a group to monitor the Defense Ministry. Other low-level officials from the party have also been accused on dubious claims.
The list goes on and on. And when it’s not “terrorism” the government
slaps dissidents with, it’s charges like “forming an illegal armed
force” and “secessionism.”
Meanwhile, despite no evidence that any serious terrorism has taken
root in Cambodia, among Muslims or any other group, the U.S. government
has increased cooperation with Hun Sen on counterterrorism.
Washington has provided high-tech processing technology for Cambodia’s international airports, a $6 million nuclear-radiation detector
for its main port and substantial support for the National
Counter-Terrorism Committee — which is chaired by Hun Sen and recently
moved into a new $1.6 million office in Phnom Penh. The committee’s elite military arm, the National Counter-Terrorism Special Force, is trained by the U.S. Special Forces and headed by Hun Sen’s 35-year-old son, Hun Manet, already a two-star general.
It’s far from clear whether Washington’s resources are being used as
intended. Last year, residents of Broma, a tiny cassava-farming village
in central Cambodia, who were trying to resist eviction
by a Russian agribusiness firm were confronted by military forces, who
accidentally shot dead a 14-year-old girl. To justify its use of force,
the government claimed the villagers were involved in a “secessionist
plot” and then jailed several of the most vocal anti-eviction activists.
Photos subsequently emerged of the Cambodian soldiers during the
crackdown. They were wearing U.S. army-issued gear.
Julia Wallace is managing editor of The Cambodia Daily.
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