Cambodia's Dictator: Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide!

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By Michael Benge
Cambodia's dictator, Hun Sen, may soon find he has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, was arrested in London and is being held on an international warrant for extradition to Spain. Pinochet is accused of presiding over genocide, torture and kidnappings committed by his secret police after he seized power in a military coup, ousting President Salvador Allende. Allende, although democratically elected, was supported by the Soviet KGB and communist Cuba. Hun Sen is guilty of the same litany of crimes, but to a greater degree, which makes him a prime candidate for similar prosecution.
As pointed out in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, "Leaders who trample on the human rights of others can be held to account anywhere in the world. We must take note that this is the way of the modern world. ... If a dictatorship is responsible for crimes against humanity, those responsible are being brought to justice by the international community. An accord was adopted in July that established an international war crimes tribunal for such a purpose. The atrocities the tribunal was to specifically address are primarily those in Bosnia and in African countries. But the approach is appropriate to bring to justice dictatorial regimes like that of Pinochet involving such crimes anywhere..."
Not only has Spain issued an international warrant for Pinochet's arrest, but six other European countries including France and Germany have followed suite, and the United States Department of Justice is contemplating similar action. Also, the Cuban American National Foundation is testing the resolve of Spain to pursue dictators, using Madrid's action against Gen. Pinochet as a basis for bringing criminal charges against Fidel Castro. The plaintiffs include Castro opponents in exile in Spain and Spanish relatives of Cubans executed or imprisoned because of anti-Castro activities. Similar charges can now be brought against Hun Sen by relatives of his victims living in France, Australia, the United States and elsewhere.
Hun Sen's crimes include: participation in the Khmer Rouge genocide during Pol Pot's reign as a military commander in the eastern zone; implementing the genocidal K5 plan as a Vietnamese puppet during their bloody occupation of Cambodia; leading the July 1998 coup in Cambodia that resulted in the extra-judicial murder of over 100 members of the democratically elected opposition; and as the Commander-in-Chief, ordering the recent bloody-repressive crackdown on democratic demonstrators in Phnom-Penh in which at least 34 people were killed and another 53 others simply disappeared. At the same time, Hun Sen's henchmen also tortured and murdered several reverend Buddhist Monks.
Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a r{missing words}tions, H.R. Res. 533, condemning Hun Sen for both his past and current crimes, and his culpability for violations of international law. A similar resolution, Sen. Res. 309, is pending in the U.S. Senate. Appallingly, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Kenneth Quinn tried to assuage Hun Sen's fears by assuring him that neither of these Resolutions were binding by law. What Quinn forgot to tell him is unlike Hun Sen's kangaroo courts, justice systems in the U.S., and in other democracies, can act independent of the political systems.
Although Cambodia's dictator purports to support bringing Khmer Rouge leaders before an international tribunal, he only wants three Pol Pot holdouts, Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Noun Chea--who have yet to submit to Hun Sen's command--brought to trail. However, Hun Sen wants them tried only in the inept and corrupt courts in Cambodia that he controls. Trying Khmer Rouge leaders could lead to his downfall, for invariability, some may "rat" on Hun Sen for they know his real role in the Khmer Rouge's hierarchical during the Cambodian genocide.
Although Hun Sen claims he had no role in the Khmer Rouge genocide, others say differently. According to a an October 30, 1989 article in The Washington Post, one eastern zone witness states, "Hun Sen...and the troops under his command killed indiscriminately anyone in their way." In Kompong Cham Province, they "cut the throats of critically wounded at the city hospital. During the battle to relive the provincial capital...my special forces unit discovered hundreds of bodies of men, women and children, young and old, including Buddhist Monks, who had been first tortured and then killed--some executed by a gunshot to the back of the head, others chopped to death with hoes, still others strangled to death or suffocated by plastic bags tied over their heads."
And Hun Sen, as Secretary General of the Cambodian Communist party during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia from 1984-1989, was responsible for the deaths of "tens of thousands of victims." [This is a far greater number than the 3,000 killed or disappeared during Gen. Pinochet's 17 year rule.] According to witnesses, Hun Sen played a major role in implementing the K5 Plan during the Vietnamese occupation. Described as a "new genocide," Cambodians were formed into forced labor brigades to build an "Asian Wall" along the Thai border, where they died by the "tens of thousands" of starvation, exhaustion, disease, and land mine blasts. With no training and no tools, they were forced into the fields and forests to clear mines, more often than not, blown to pieces when they stepped on mines. If anyone tried to flee, they were shot on the spot.
The "Wall," some eight hundred kilometers, was to serve as a "defense line" for the Vietnamese troops against Polpotist bandits in the forests. This all took place during a little-known period in Cambodian history: the time from 1979-1989, after the Pol Pot regime and during the Vietnamese occupation. "Although overshadowed by the great genocide which took place between 1975 and 1978 under Pol Pot, the subsequent period also brought genocide of the same form, though of a lesser scope. It was perpetrated by Pol Pot's successors and former colleagues, among them Hun Sen." [See Marie Alexandrine Martin's "Cambodia, a new colony for exploitation;" Indochina Report--"The military occupation of Kampuchea;" Philippe Pacquet's "Nouveau Genocide;" and Esmeralda Luciolli's "Le Mur de Bambou-Le Cambodge apres Pol Pot"]
Nevertheless, Hun Sen has his defenders. One of them, Ben Kiernan, heads the U.S. funded Cambodian Genocide Program. He claims he has uncovered no evidence that Hun Sen was involved in the genocide. However, this would have been impossible, for the Khmer Rouge's policy was kill or be killed. One can only wonder what Kiernan's motives are. "Kiernan spent most of the mid-1970s, when the Khmer Rouge was in power, extolling its ideology and trying to discredit reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities." He was quoted as saying, "the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have recently made it out to be."
According to The Wall Street Journal, in 1995, Kiernan came into possession of a huge cache of previously unexamined documents in Phnom Penh. It was thought that some of them related to American POW/MIAs from the Vietnam War. However, Kiernan refused to share them with the Department of Defense, even upon urging from Kiernan's funders, the Department of State. This gave rise to the suspicion that the documents may be incriminating to Hun Sen. He was senior military commander of the eastern zone, where numerous Americans became missing, a number of POWs were known to have been held, and several POWs murdered.
General Pinochet may have one saving grace, that is he is credited as being the father of modern day democracy and for catapulting Chile's economy from a static socialist one to one of the most prosperous in Latin America. He remains quite popular in Chile, and he maintains the status of Senator for Life.
Hun Sen should take this page from Chile's history book, and emulate General Pinochet. If Hun Sen turned his dictatorship into a liberal democracy, and worked with opposition leaders Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy in rebuilding Cambodia's shattered economy; stopped the extra-judicial killings and brought the ones guilty for these crimes to justice; stopped the drug running; halted the illegal logging that is undermining Cambodia's food security; and turned over all of the Khmer Rouge leaders for trial by an international tribunal; he too might be pardoned and voted Senator for life. If not, Hun Sen may soon find he has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Mr. Benge spent 11 years in Southeast Asia, over five years as a Prisoner of War-- 1968-1973. He is a diligent student of regional affairs, and works closely with the Cambodian-American community. For efforts in rescuing several Americans before his capture, he received the State Department's highest award for heroism and a second one for valor.