Cambodia's Hun Manet given wary welcome by West despite rights record

Khmer Circle: 

 

This is an age old pretext Western governments cite to justify their business as usual cosy relations with authoritarian regimes, is it not? 

 

Cambodia is, after all, already firmly entrenched in China's orbit. It's hard to find any other states in the region or the Asia-Pacific Rim that can be described as more of a 'client state' of China. Before bulldozing his way to the top position as PM, Hun Sen had also 'served' as FM where he quickly learned of Western powers' indifference - beside occasional rhetoric and issued diplomatic statements - towards appalling human rights stance and single party dictatorship.  

 

Moreover, it is the same cynicism and business as usual posture that sees these governments endorsing Israel's continued atrocities and war crimes in Palestine. France is one of the world's biggest arms exporters.

 

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Hitting out at repression risks pushing country into 'China's orbit,' analysts say

 

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, winks as he welcomes Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Manet at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Jan. 18.   © AP
JACK BROOK, Contributing writerJanuary 26, 2024 12:21 JST

PHNOM PENH -- Cambodia's government has lauded new Prime Minister Hun Manet's trip to France last week for a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron. The visit came hot off Manet's appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where some media derided him as one of the "bad boys" among leaders gathered at the Swiss ski town.

The Paris trip was seen as a success for Manet, who returned with $235 million in development agreements with France to build energy and drinking water infrastructure and support vocational training in Cambodia and a pledge to work towards a "strategic partnership."

It also highlighted how, to varying degrees, Western countries have viewed Manet's administration, which came to power in August, as a chance to improve relations after nearly four decades of iron-fisted rule by his father, Hun Sen.

"There is a sense that the West has come to the end of the line in its unsuccessful attempts to disrupt Cambodia's authoritarian trajectory, and a nagging realization that these ultimately pushed Cambodia further into China's orbit," said Astrid Noren-Nilsson, who researches Cambodian politics at Sweden's Lund University. "The possibility of starting afresh is therefore a welcome relief."

But human rights advocates and Cambodian opposition leaders have criticized France and other Western countries' engagements with Manet as legitimizing a government elected in polls last July that they dismissed as a sham. The main opposition Candlelight Party was barred from participating in the election, which was preceded by a violent crackdown on dissent.

Monavithya Kem, daughter of incarcerated opposition figure Kem Sokha, decried the French leader's meeting with Manet as "lazy diplomacy." As France pivots toward the Indo-Pacific region, Kem warned that "dancing to the dictatorship tune" would have little success in gaining real influence with the Cambodian government.

A French embassy spokesperson in Phnom Penh told Nikkei Asia that "human rights have always been and still are at the agenda of our political dialogue with [the] Cambodian government."

While France issued a post-election statement that noted Candlelight's absence from the polls and urged for the protection of rights "necessary for the re-establishment of democracy" in Cambodia, the meeting with Manet was likely perceived inside Cambodia as "European endorsement of the new government," Noren-Nilsson said.

The post-election changes in tone were not limited to France.

Washington initially "paused" an $18 million aid package after the elections, which a State Department official described as "neither free nor fair." But the decision to withhold aid was reversed two months later to "encourage the new government to live up to its stated intentions to be more open and democratic," said a U.S. Embassy spokesperson in the Cambodian capital.
Hun Manet at the kickoff of a national election campaign rally in Phnom Penh on July 1, 2023. (Photo by Ken Kobayashi)

At the economic forum in Davos, the head of the United States Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, posted a photo with Manet on social media saying that they discussed the "importance of environmental protection, civil society, and anticorruption."

But Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director at Human Rights Watch, said that Manet's rights record is "not one iota different from his father's."

"If he [Manet] can get positive, uncritical acceptance for free, without pledging any improvements in the abysmal rights situation in Cambodia, why should he listen to anything Samantha Power has to say?" Robertson added.

Since Manet assumed power, critics of his government have been jailed and beaten. Opposition leaders continue to be arrested in the run-up to senate elections next month, while U.S. citizen Seng Theary remains imprisoned on treason charges in violation of international law, according to an expert group of the United Nations.

Cambodian government spokesperson Pen Bona said that Manet's administration is committed to ensuring that "the fundamental rights of citizens and other rights are well protected."

One Western diplomat in Cambodia said Western countries are in a "holding pattern" for the next year as they wait to see whether the new administration makes improvements to strengthen democracy and protect human rights -- or, at a minimum, does not intensify repression.

Western-educated Manet, who has a doctorate in economics, is seen as a genuine improvement over the unpredictable and fiery Hun Sen, the diplomat said. But he remains beholden to the patronage system of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) where the old guard is still entrenched, though in December Manet was elevated to the role of a party vice president, beneath his father.

Cambodia's billion-dollar scam industry highlights the dilemma of Manet's administration even if it has any political will to clean house amid growing international pressure and sanctions. Across the government, officials are profiting heavily off the scam industry, the diplomat noted. High-ranking CPP members have been accused of being scam compound owners, including tycoon Ly Yong Phat, who was recently promoted within the party.

In public and behind the scenes, Manet's administration is doing little to substantively address the scam crisis, multiple regional anti-human trafficking experts told Nikkei.

Cindy Dyer, the U.S. ambassador-at-large to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, told local media outlet Focus-Cambodia that engagement with Manet's administration on this issue "didn't get much response."

While Manet's government has sought more foreign investment, some Western countries have warned him that he first needs to make substantive improvements following the post-election repression.

Western embassies have tried to convince Cambodian officials that such changes go hand in hand with revitalizing the Kingdom's slowing economy and declining tourism, the diplomat said. For now, the hope is that by staying on good terms with Manet, he will eventually nudge closer to supporting democracy and human rights as the CPP's old guard dies off.

"A long play and will it pay off, none of us know," the diplomat said. "But there is a general consensus that we at least need to try -- and that does involve participating in a lot of unpleasant photo moments."