More Than Meets the Eye Behind Cambodia’s Growing Unrest

By Tony Cartalucci

Global Research, January 03, 2014

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The Cambodian people undoubtedly face a tyrannical regime, but US-backed opposition will bring nation only deeper into despair and destitution. 

Protests growing in both Thailand and neighboring Cambodia may at first look very similar. Both are against supposedly “elected governments,” but both nations are clearly run by illegitimate dictatorships. Both nations have streets filled with growing numbers of dissatisfied people who are increasingly putting pressure on their respective regimes, lead by one or several opposition parties. And both seek reformed elections. 

However, one is heavily backed by the United States’ faux-democracy promoters and offers only further despair and destitution, while the other is heavily opposed by the US and other Western interests, but if successful will restore order to a nation hindered by political instability for years.

Cambodia’s Dictator-for-Life: Hun Sen 

Image: Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra & Cambodia’s Hun Sen – two despots with deplorable human rights records coddled by the West for their shameless selling-out of their respective nations to the Fortune 500.

The Cambodian people have lived under the tyrannical rule of dictator-for-life Hun Sen for several decades. His “People’s Power Party” has seen uninterrupted rule for over a quarter of a century. In 1997, when last Hun Sen lost an election, he butchered and exiled his opposition in a bloody military coup.

Those who failed to flee, according to Human Rights Watch, were brutally tortured and murdered. Since then, he has presided over a tragically failed state, the victim of the Khmer Rouge, of whom Hun Sen was a participating member, and since then squatted upon by his regime and a large collection of foreign backers.

He is by far one of the most detestable politicians alive on Earth, yet his utility to the West has provided him so far an international media blackhole in which his crimes and atrocities have been hidden for decades.

This can be explained by the literal selling-out of Cambodia from under the feet of its own people, by Hun Sen to foreign corporate-financier interests.

In the Guardian’s 2008 article titled, “Country for sale,” it is reported that:

Almost half of Cambodia has been sold to foreign speculators in the past 18 months – and hundreds of thousands who fled the Khmer Rouge are homeless once more. 

The Guardian further elaborated:

Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have, in effect, put the country up for sale. Crucially, they permit investors to form 100% foreign-owned companies in Cambodia that can buy land and real estate outright – or at least on 99-year plus 99-year leases. No other country in the world countenances such a deal. Even in Thailand and Vietnam, where similar land speculation and profiteering are under way, foreigners can be only minority shareholders.

Today, the Cambodian military is literally being sold off to foreign interests now possessing wide swaths of land as mercenary forces to crush any local opposition.

Surely displacing millions, and selling land out from under people is criminal, and an affront to humanity. But strangely enough, this story goes largely unreported, the UN remains eerily silent, and in fact, the United States, as of 2010 has begun training many of the most notorious land-grabbing military units involved in this ongoing atrocity.Indeed, Operation Angkor Sentinel kicked off in July 2010 as US Army troops trained with the local Cambodian troops. The United States shamelessly defended the exercises claiming that:

 “Our military relationship is about … working toward effective defence reform, toward encouraging the kind of civil-military relationship that is essential to any healthy political system.” 

While the US’ training of Cambodian troops in and of itself does not directly indicate a conspiracy, it positions the US military well for any current or future operations that may be undertaken in support of the US-backed regime in neighboring Thailand. And of course, there is Hun Sen’s stalwart support of the US-backed regime in Thailand, namely the regime of Thaksin Shinawatra. 

Back-to-back failed insurrections by Thaksin in 2009 and 2010, after a military coup that ousted Thaksin from power in 2006, saw many of his political allies flee to neighboring Cambodia.

In addition to harboring members of Thaksin’s political machine, Hun Sen went as far as appointing Thaksin himself as a “government adviser on the economy,” in an attempt to bolster his lack of legitimacy.

Amongst those who fled to Cambodia after the 2009-2010 violence was Jakrapob Penkair, a leader of Thaksin’s so-called “red shirt” mob. In an Asia Times report titled, “Plots seen in Thaksin’s Cambodia gambit,” it was stated that:

Before going into exile, Jakrapob told this correspondent that the UDD had clandestinely moved small arms from Cambodia to Thaksin’s supporters in Thailand’s northeastern region, where the exiled premier’s popularity runs strongest. He told other news agencies that the UDD was willing to launch an “armed struggle” to achieve its goals, which included the toppling of the government and restoration of Thaksin’s power. 

The report went on to describe possible scenarios for an increasingly militarized attempt by Thaksin to eliminate his enemies, a cue assuredly taken from Hun Sen’s bloody exploits.

But now the cozy relationship between Hun Sen and the West appears to be changing. Growing protests on the streets of Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh are starting to poke holes of light into the darkness Hun Sen’s decades’ spanning crime spree enjoyed. The Western media is still granting his regime an undeserved benefit of the doubt, despite the opposition’s overwhelming backing by the West. This may indicate current protests are punitive and not designed to unseat him, quite yet.

Cambodia’s US-Backed Opposition

Like all of America’s proxy “strongmen,” there are occasionally instances where they are “too strong” and independent to be of much utility to the West. Guiding these regimes back into line with Western interests (or if all else fails, overthrowing them) is the job of US-funded “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) posing as human rights organizations, independent media fronts, or pro-democracy advocates. In reality, these “NGOs” are none of these. They are simply echo chambers and funding conduits for Western interests to manifest themselves within a targeted nation.