Wednesday, July 25th, 2018

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Posted by: | Posted on: July 25, 2018

Hun Sen has become staunch puppet of both China and Vietnam

This analysis, Mr. Sophan emphasized on drifting authoritarian of staunch puppet to both China and Vietnam of Prime Minister Hun Sen in which has possessed deadly side-effect like what was happening during the leadership of Pol Pot (1975-1979). Watching the full analysis in youtube.

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Nobody’s Puppet

The entrance to Kratie University flanked with Chinese and Cambodian flags in a photo posted on Facebook last week.

The entrance to Kratie University flanked with Chinese and Cambodian flags in a photo posted on Facebook last week.

 Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen addresses the politically divisive issue of his historic links with the Communist Party of Vietnam by saying he has never been a “puppet” of Hanoi but is a patriot who always resisted foreign influence on Cambodia.

“A number of people claim I am a person who was installed by Vietnam; they also said I am a puppet of Vietnam,” Hun Sen said in unreleased video footage of an interview with American filmmaker Robert Lieberman for his documentary “Angkor Awakens.”

Hun Sen denied the allegations in the interview.

About this series

This is the first of a multi-part series, based on a rare video interview with Hun Sen by American filmmaker Robert Lieberman for his 2016 documentary “Angkor Awakens.”

“The reality is that Hun Sen belongs to Cambodia [and] Cambodia needs independence,” the prime minister said. “I also hate those who want to have political influence on Cambodia – we don’t accept it.”

Lieberman conducted the September 24, 2015 interview in a New York hotel. VOA recently obtained the interview from the filmmaker.

For decades, the opposition – the once-formidable royalist party FUNCINPEC, former opposition leader Sam Rainsy, and the now-dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) – have clung to this and other claims in order to undermine Hun Sen’s image and to tap into lingering anti-Vietnamese nationalism in Cambodia.

Many older opposition members come from an alliance of political groups led by then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk that was based on the Thai-Cambodian border. The alliance battled Vietnam during its occupation of Cambodia from 1978, the final days of the Khmer Rougeregime, to 1989.

Campaigning for Cambodia’s July 29 elections started July 7, but with the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) government’s decision to ban its only challenger, the CNRP, last year, the role of anti-Vietnamese politics has become somewhat of a moot point.

Hun Sen has mostly ignored the opposition’s accusations that he is a stooge of Hanoi while never hiding his good relations with Vietnam. These go back to 1977 when he and other Khmer Rouge defectors crossed into Vietnam. They were welcomed and trained to form a new Cambodian government that was installed by Vietnam after it ousted the Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979.

Hun Sen became foreign minister and then prime minister in 1985. He has held onto power since with political maneuvering that has won him democratic elections and by crushing opponents with brazen armed force.

FILE – Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, center right, and his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc, review an honor guard in Hanoi, on Dec. 20, 2016. (Tran Van Minh | AP)

Vietnam backs, not controls, Hun Sen rule

According to a recent publication by Stephen Heder, a respected Cambodia scholar, Hun Sen’s CPP and the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) have long had a “comprehensive relationship” in which they strongly support each other and defend their respective roles from any political challenges.

Hun Sen’s recent banning of the opposition and ongoing crackdown on independent media and civil society would thus have Hanoi’s support, he argues, though that doesn’t mean that Vietnam dominates in Cambodia.

“[K]eeping the CNRP out of power, if necessary by eliminating it from the contest for power, is a strongly shared CPP-CPV common interest that lies at the core of their comprehensive relationship and is most concretely manifest in the relationship between their security forces,” wrote Heder, a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. “However, this and other CPP-CPV common interests do not add up to Vietnamese domination of Cambodia, as is shown, inter alia, by Cambodia’s refusal to toe Vietnam’s line on the South China Sea,” according to Heder.

In recent years, Hun Sen’s ever tightening embrace with China has been a point of growing media and diplomatic attention. Beijing has provided support and massive loans for his government as it abandoned Western-backed multiparty democracy, while Hun Sen in turn gives diplomatic support for China’s quest for dominance in the South China Sea region.

Demonstrators set fire to a monument marking Cambodian-Vietnamese friendship in Phnom Penh August 30, 1998. (Reuters)

Cambodia’s relations with Western countries have suffered since 2017, with cuts in donor support and the U.S. recently slapping sanctions on some Cambodian officials. In 2017 alone, China accounted for 30 percent of all investment in China, according to The Asean Post.

Ear Sophal, an associate professor at Los Angeles’ Occidental College who has researched Cambodia’s aid dependency and China’s global resource demand, said Hun Sen’s claim of resisting foreign influence was dispelled by the fact that Vietnam and, more recently, China gained control of large swathes of Cambodia’s natural resources, infrastructure and economy at the expense of ordinary Cambodians.

“Cambodia is now seen as having been for rent for a long time,” he said. “The renter is currently China. Perhaps we can say Vietnam owns Cambodia, while China rents Cambodia from Vietnam.”

Sophal added, “But [Hun Sen] does need more friends than only Vietnam and China – he needs to have Western friends too.”

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Cambodian people benefit from CPP’s policies

Op-Ed: Vietnam Plus | 20 July 2018
Hanoi (VNA) – Over the past five-tear term of the National Assembly, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) has done a lot for the Cambodian people, helping raise public confidence in the upcoming general election.
The maintenance of  peace, political stability and security has created favourable conditions for Cambodia to continue recording new and greater achievements in socio-economic development and in the improvement of the people’s living standards.
Cambodia has emerged from a low-income country into a low-middle income nation, and is on the path towards the high-middle income status by 2030.

Read More …

Posted by: | Posted on: July 25, 2018

Japan won’t be sending election monitors to Cambodia

Japan won’t be sending election monitors to Cambodia

Op-Ed: Reuters Japan

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan said on Wednesday it will not be sending election monitors to Cambodia for a general election this weekend, although Tokyo – a major donor to the Southeast Asian nation – has sent such observers for numerous elections in the past.

freedom is not free 1Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is on course to extend his 33 years in power after the main opposition party was dissolved last year and following a crackdown on dissent, including civil society and independent media, prompting criticism by some that the election is a sham.

Cambodia announced on Tuesday that as many as 220 observers from 52 countries would monitor Sunday’s general elections.

Japan sent election monitors to Cambodian elections in 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said it would not be doing so this time.

He did not give further details but noted that Japan was providing purely “practical” assistance.

“We’ve taken various opportunities to express our concerns and call on them to improve the situation,” he told an afternoon news conference, when asked about Japan’s stance on Cambodia’s human rights situation.

“In order to ensure the trust of the electoral process, we have sent experts and provided machines and technical assistance. We have supported election reform in this way.”

A Japanese foreign ministry official said Japan had made the decision after they considered the situation surrounding the Cambodian election.

The election has been criticized by the United Nations and Western countries as fundamentally flawed after last year’s dissolution of the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and the imprisonment of its leader, Kem Sokha.

Human rights activists gave Japan’s move mixed reviews.

“It’s heartening that Tokyo finally woke up to the reality that it’s not worth Japan’s time or reputation to formally send election monitors to observe a Cambodian election…in which the major opposition party is barred from participating,” said Kanae Doi, Human Rights Watch Japan Director.

“Had they gone, Japan’s observers likely would have been used as propaganda by the Cambodian government to cynically justify an election which will be neither genuine, nor free and fair.”

But Doi said Japan could still do more.

“Japan should still act now to freeze any ongoing assistance to the biased National Election Commission, and prepare a post-election statement that will take a hard line in pointing out the fundamental flaws in the election,” she added.

Reporting by Mari Saito, Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Jacqueline Wong