The Legacy Of A Prime Minister Who Was Khmer Rouge

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is expected to resign after winning re-election in July, ending his rise from a severely wounded guerrilla in Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the U.S.-Vietnam War to become one of the world's longest-ruling leaders, crushing dissent and embracing China.

When President Biden flew to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh to meet him, and attend an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in November 2022, it boosted Prime Minister Hun Sen's domestic and international standing.

Hun Sen's planned departure from the prime ministry comes amid rivalry between China and the U.S. in Cambodia's military, economic, and diplomatic affairs.

Cambodians are bracing for a generational change when, as expected, Hun Sen wins nationwide parliamentary elections on July 23 and passes his job to his son Hun Manet -- possibly immediately after the polls or later this year.

"Now we have found the young generation that will come to replace us," Hun Sen told villagers on March 14, Associated Press reported.

"We should better hand over to them, and just stay behind them."

Hun Sen enjoys a stranglehold on the Southeast Asian country.

His Cambodia People's Party (CPP) occupies all of parliament's seats.

He now apparently wants to establish his political dynasty by ensuring Hun Manet inherits that monopolistic political machine, so their family remains in a position of strength.

No one expects Hun Manet, 45, to match his 70-year-old father's legacy from the 1970s onward, including surviving U.S. bombs, communist Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, Vietnam's invasion, and post-war clashes.

During the 1970s, Hun Sen and many other Cambodians proudly considered anti-U.S. Khmer Rouge guerrillas as "a national, patriotic movement, and therefore I was also in that movement," Hun Sen said in a 1989 news conference.

"I was only a simple Khmer Rouge," Hun Sen bristled when asked about Pol Pot's frenzied, communist, back-to-the-jungle Khmer Rouge regime during which nearly two million Cambodians perished from executions, torture, starvation, banishment, and other policies.

Hun Sen said he was permanently blinded in one eye during the final hours of fighting when the Khmer Rouge achieved victory in April 1975 at the end of the regional U.S.-Vietnam War.

"For me, I also cannot make my left eye see again," Hun Sen told disabled veterans in 2017.

But Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot governed with such horror that Hun Sen said he felt betrayed and began plotting against him.

Under Pol Pot's regime, Hun Sen was a regimental commander of the Eastern Zone, between Kratie and Kompong Cham, according to historian Nayan Chanda.

To escape bloody internal Khmer Rouge purges, Hun Sen defected in 1977, fleeing east across the border into Vietnam where he was politically groomed.

In January 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, chased Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge fighters into the jungle, and installed Hun Sen as Cambodia's foreign minister.

In 1985, during Vietnam's nearly 11-year occupation, Hanoi promoted him to prime minister.

During the past few decades, Hun Sen weaned Cambodia from an overwhelming dependence on Vietnam, and instead tightened relations with China.

He recently allowed Beijing to fund, develop, and use Ream Naval Base on Cambodia's southern coast along the resource-rich, strategic Gulf of Thailand.

On March 19, the navies of China and Cambodia -- for the first time -- practiced a training drill while organizing a land-based Golden Dragon 2023 military exercise March 23-April 8.

A Chinese navy landing ship, the Jinggansgshan, brought some personnel and equipment for Golden Dragon and also led a two-hour exercise with two Cambodian patrol boats off Cambodia's Sihanoukville port, near Ream, according to Chinese reports.

Cambodia's coastal waters open to the South China Sea where China and the U.S. have become increasingly confrontational over territorial and access rights, including undersea resources.

Hun Sen's welcoming of Chinese money, companies, and projects have transformed the skylines of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh and other cities.

"As a strong pillar of the iron-clad partnership, China-Cambodia military cooperation is in the fundamental interests of our two nations and two people," China's Ambassador to Cambodia, Wang Wentian, said in June 2022 at the beginning of Ream's China-funded upgrade.

Hun Sen is reportedly allowing China to deepen Ream's port so bigger ships, including military vessels, can dock for maintenance, and construct a dry dock which can be drained so a ship's hull can be repaired.

Cambodia and China deny allegations that Hun Sen is allowing Chinese to refurbish Ream so only Beijing can use it for military purposes.

Cambodian Defense Minister Tea Banh said last year the port would be open to all countries.

Tea Banh was so thrilled at the start of Ream's upgrade, he went swimming on a beach near Ream with Chinese Ambassador Mr. Wang, and posted the photos on social media.

"Chinese interest in bases in the region goes back at least to its construction of the airport in Kompong Chhnang during the (1975-79) Khmer Rouge regime," said Rich Garella, a former U.S.-funded International Republican Institute consultant in Cambodia in 2003, and former Cambodia Daily newspaper managing editor.

"The U.S. is desperately trying to maintain appearances, but its influence [in Cambodia] is a shadow of what it was in the mid-90s. It just can't compete with China," Mr. Garella said in an interview.

Hun Sen's manipulation of his eldest son into the prime ministry will result in "another generation, at least, of Cambodians whose dreams of democracy are denied, [and] a lasting humiliation for the Western funders that he played for fools," Mr. Garella said.

"I announce today that I support my son to be prime minister, but it has to go through elections," Hun Sen first declared in 2021.

In December 2022, Hun Sen's powerful Cambodia People's Party (CPP) central committee unanimously endorsed Hun Manet as "the prime minister candidate in the future".

A delighted Hun Manet said, "I accept that in Cambodia, there are many people with ability, and in the CPP there are also many people with ability.

"But the central committee voted collectively to choose one person because they can only choose one person and gave me the opportunity," Hun Manet said in a CPP forum last year.

Hun Sen responded, "If Hun Manet makes a mistake, I will not support my son to be the prime minister, because it affects the party."

Perhaps trying to balance Cambodia's military affairs, his son visited China's nemesis, India, in February.

"This is the maiden visit by any commander of the Royal Cambodian Army, and is a milestone in army-to-army relations between both countries," the Indian government's Press Information Bureau said.

Indian defense officials showed Hun Manet new weaponry built by India's Department of Defense Production, and the Army Design Bureau.

He also met Indian Army Chief Gen. Manoj Pande.

Hun Manet earned a Master's degree in economics from New York University, and a PhD. in economics from Bristol University in England.

That education may do him well in negotiations with China, the biggest investor in Cambodia.

His U.S. and British education, culture, and social connections may sway Hun Manet's international decision-making.

Hun Manet also graduated from New York's West Point Military Academy in 1999 -- the first Cambodian to earn a West Point diploma -- where he mingled with U.S. military officers.

After West Point, Hun Manet became Royal Cambodian Army commander, and armed forces deputy commander-in-chief, plus deputy commander of his father's bodyguards, and head of Cambodia's counterterrorism unit.

He became a four-star general on March 17.

"The commanders of the Australian and New Zealand armies sought meetings with him last October," said Charles Dunst, adjunct fellow with the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

"There is a better potential for partnership with Hun Manet than there has been with Hun Sen for at least the last decade," Mr. Dunst said in a CSIS analysis on February 13.

Hun Manet also met Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith last year.

In 2020, a proud Hun Sen brought his son to Beijing to meet China's President Xi Jinping.

During the past few decades, U.S.-Cambodia relations slowly deteriorated after Washington repeatedly criticized Hun Sen's human rights record and smothering of democracy.

"It will be difficult for Hun Manet to extend an olive branch to Washington and its allies, particularly if human rights violations and Chinese developments at the Ream Naval Base continue," Mr. Dunst said.

If Hun Manet does become prime minister, "Certainly, there will be displeasure in Phnom Penh, where the country’s democratic-minded elite are based," he said.

"But as is often the case, the capital is a mirage. Less than 20 percent of Cambodians live there. Close to 80 percent of Cambodians, on the other hand, are subsistence farmers and likely more concerned with the provision of public goods -- like the schools and pagodas Hun Sen and Hun Manet regularly open in their names -- than the concept of democracy," Mr. Dunst said.

Hun Manet also inherits Hun Sen's political opponents.

"I fled from Cambodia after the unconstitutional dissolution of the CNRP (Cambodia National Rescue Party) in 2017," said Mu Sochua, a CNRP vice president, self-exiled in Providence, Rhode Island.

"Hun Manet is not a good choice to become prime minister. He has no political experience, no charisma, and there is no way that he would be considered for the job but for his father," she said in an interview.

"Hun Manet as prime minister would have to give orders to ruling party veterans who are far senior to him in terms of age and experience. Many of these veterans are disgruntled by their scant reward for decades of loyalty," Mu Sochua said.

"The fragility of Hun Sen’s rule and his succession plan should not be underestimated," she said.

Self-exiled political opposition leader Sam Rainsy -- who often voices elaborate conspiracies critical of Hun Sen -- suffered a political feud last year with CNRP leader Kem Sokha, splintering their supporters.

The U.S.-based CNRP-in-exile said the "Cambodian diaspora" will rally in front of the State Department and Capitol Hill on March 31 "to protest against the brutally unjust decision of the [Cambodian] country's courts to sentence Kem Sokha...to 27 years of detention.

"The sentence was imposed for a fabricated charge of treason, for which there is no evidence," the statement said.

"This is a straightforward weaponization of the judiciary for the political purpose of silencing Kem Sokha, and preventing the CNRP from contesting national elections in July," the CNRP said.

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Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia since 1978. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books, "Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. -- Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York" and "Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers & Freaks" are available at
https://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com

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