By Sebastian Strangio

Published by Asia Times Online, August 17, 2010

Motiur Rahman Nizami is among the accused.

DHAKA – A SPECIAL tribunal in Bangladesh has indicted four members of the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, on suspicion of committing mass atrocities during the country’s 1971 Liberation War. Those arrested, including party president Motiur Rahman Nizami and his deputy Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, have been remanded in custody indefinitely and are likely to face charges of genocide, murder, rape and arson. Travel bans have been imposed on a few dozen more suspects.

The indictments, issued late last month, were the opening act of Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, established in March, which is seeking to prosecute those responsible for atrocities during the bloody war that resulted in the country’s birth.

The 1971 conflagration, which erupted when the Pakistani military attempted to prevent the secession of the country’s eastern wing, led to the widespread massacre of unarmed civilians and the systematic execution of leading Bengali intellectuals. Some sources say 3 million people perished during the 10-month conflict, while as many as 200,000 women were raped.

Although attempts at justice began after the defeat of the Pakistani army by Indian and Bangladeshi forces in December 1971, the tribunal process was derailed after the assassination of independence icon Sheik Mujibur Rahman four years later. For the following three decades, a succession of military administrations has swept aside all attempts at justice, fearing it could implicate many within their own ranks.

For Bangladesh, the trials come four decades late, and many of those most responsible are either dead or living in the relative sanctuary of Pakistan. But Mahbub Alam, the general manager of Dhaka’s Liberation War Museum, which commemorates the 1971 atrocities, said that there was a widespread desire to see justice done. “In this country, if you go into each and every village you will find war victims,” said Alam, who lost his father in the Liberation War. “The people who did all these kinds of misdeeds are the beneficiaries of the creation of Bangladesh,” he said. “They are the beneficiaries of the country, of three million martyrs.”

But the government’s focus on razakars — internal collaborators who led, assisted and committed crimes in conjunction with the Pakistani administration then in control of the country – has whipped up controversy in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The Awami League government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was elected in a landslide in 2008 in part on promises of a trial, says it has evidence proving the involvement of senior Jamaat members in the 1971 atrocities. Critics, however, say the tribunal is being used to settle domestic political disputes and runs the risk of unleashing social chaos.

Don Beachler, an associate professor of political science at New York’s Ithaca College, said the government has set up the tribunal in part to tar Jamaat-e-Islami as allies of the Pakistani army and “enemies of the Bangladeshi people”. The fact that Jamaat ruled in coalition with the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party – a key rival of the Awami League – from 2001 to 2006 has only provided an “extra motive” to pursue the Islamist movement, he added.

To be sure, Nizami and other Jamaat leaders clearly have reason to be concerned. Nizami founded and led the Badr militia, which committed numerous acts of violence against civilians in support of the Pakistani army’s campaign to repress Bengali nationalism. “Nizami was active against independence and advocated violence against Hindus who were seen as the source of Bangladeshis’ alleged betrayal of Pakistan and Islam,” he said. “On the merits and the politics Nizami has much to fear.”

Given the politically charged nature of the process, however, the relatively open-and-shut case against Nizami and his deputies could be compromised by procedural inadequacies and a perception of government heavy handedness. Some observers fear the arrests of Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid on June 29 were the first sign that the process was compromised by political manipulation.

The pair, along with top preacher Delwar Hossain Saydee, were detained on the obscure charge of “offending religious sentiment” after they compared their persecution by the Awami League government to the sufferings of the Prophet Mohammed. Only once they were in custody did the government move ahead with questioning on war crimes-related charges.

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Is a war crimes tribunal being used to settle political scores? If so, it may unleash social chaos, reports Sebastian Strangio.

Published in The Diplomat, July 22, 2010

DHAKA – BANGLADESH’S Liberation War Museum sits on a quiet street in central Dhaka, shaded by trees and fronted by an austere barbed wire fence. The small building commemorates the country’s 1971 liberation struggle, a fierce war of independence from Pakistan that cost an estimated 3 million lives. An eternal flame in the museum’s courtyard marks it out as a site of martyrdom—a reminder of the bloody star under which the country was born. Almost fittingly, dozens of small Bangladeshi flags are intertwined on the rusting barbs of the museum’s front fence.

Last week, Bangladesh’s government arrested two leading politicians from the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, on charges of committing mass murder during the liberation struggle. The arrests, which followed the detention of the party’s president, Motiur Rahman Nizami, and other top Jamaat officials in late June, mark the first stage of a tribunal established in March to address war crimes committed during the 1971 conflict.

A nationalist mural in Motijheel, the commercial heart of Dhaka. (Photo: Sebastian Strangio)

But even though the tribunal has no scheduled start date, it has already whipped up controversy in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was elected in a landslide in 2008 in part on promises of a trial, says it has evidence proving the involvement of senior Jamaat members in the 1971 atrocities. Critics, however, say the tribunal is being used to settle domestic political disputes and runs the risk of unleashing social chaos and compromising Dhaka’s relationship with Muslim allies in the Middle East.

The tribunal comes after nearly four decades of inaction in Bangladesh. The 1971 conflagration, which erupted when Pakistan attempted to prevent the secession of its eastern wing, included the systematic execution of leading Bengali intellectuals and the rape of by some estimates 200,000 women. Although the process of putting collaborators on trial began after the defeat of the Pakistani army on December 16, 1971, the tribunal process was derailed after the assassination of independence icon Sheik Mujibur Rahman in August 1975. Ahmed Ziauddin, an advisor to Bangladeshi rights group Odhikar, says that for the following three decades, a succession of military administrations has swept aside all attempts at justice, fearing it could implicate many within their own ranks.

‘The current process is, if you like, unfinished business that started in 1972,’ he says.

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As Cambodia and the United States celebrate six decades of diplomatic ties, the Post looks back at a  relationship that has moved from alliance to alienation and back

By Sebastian Strangio & Neth Pheaktra

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 16, 2010

Prince Norodom Sihanouk and his wife Monique fete Jacqueline Kennedy at Chamkarmon Palace during her visit to Cambodia in November 1967. (Photo: Private collection of Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres)

WHEN the United States and Cambodia celebrate six decades of diplomatic ties next week, they will look back on a relationship that has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Launched at the beginning of the cold war in 1950, the relationship has been fraught with ideological passions, experiencing periods of intimacy, violent disagreement and chilly silence.

It remains young: Less than two decades have passed since diplomatic ties were re-established at the end of the cold war, and barely 10 years since the end of the ensuing civil war. For 20 years out of 60, there was little or no relationship at all. Observers and officials from both countries, however, say the current bond – which they describe as built on solid foundations and enduring mutual interests – anticipates a long-term US presence in Cambodia.

Koy Kuong, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said this week that since the re-establishment of relations in November 1991, the two countries had rebuilt strong political, commercial and military ties. “Our diplomatic relations are developing, and we hope that after the 60th anniversary, Cambodia-USA relations will progress again,” he said.

The administration of US President Barack Obama has identified Southeast Asia as a focal point of a foreign policy that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech last year, described as “neither impulsive nor ideological”. Instead, that policy was geared towards creating “dynamic and productive partnerships that can address both the challenge and the promise of this new century”.

US Ambassador Carol Rodley said last week that since 1950, Phnom Penh and Washington have oscillated between close cooperation and periods in which they “were seriously at odds” with each other. “For some significant amount of time”, she said, “we looked past each other or we saw each other through lenses that confused rather than clarified the picture for both sides.”

Rodley, who first served in Cambodia as US deputy head of mission between 1997 and 2000, said that “dramatic” changes during her first posting, including the end of the decade-long civil war and Cambodia’s entry into ASEAN, had fostered a more lasting relationship. “We’ve come to a more mature relationship and a more mature understanding of each other, which I think is a good thing,” she said.

Past troubles

At the time Ambassador Donald Heath, a career foreign serviceman, presented his credentials to then-King Norodom Sihanouk on July 11, 1950, US policymakers saw Cambodia as both a potential ally and a potential threat. A bastion of Western influence, the country – like the remaining French territories in Indochina – was also seen as a domino teetering on the edge of a red abyss. Sihanouk, who skillfully courted all sides of the growing Indochina conflagration from 1955 until his overthrow 15 years later, was perhaps the prime embodiment of this relationship. In the mid-1960s, he broke off and then restored diplomatic relations with the US as part of his delicate dance between the cold war superpowers.

On March 18, 1970, it became clear, however, that Sihanouk had overplayed his hand. Amid increasing anger over what many viewed as the prince’s tacit approval of Vietcong encroachments into Cambodian territory, he was overthrown by a US-supported general and close adviser, Lon Nol, in a right-wing coup d’etat. For the next five years US-Cambodia relations during the Cold War era reached their high-water mark.

This period of cooperation was premised on a relationship of patronage with the US government, which provided military, economic and political support to the government. But this relationship also came at a steep price. As it poured military and economic aid into the country in a bid to stave off a communist victory, the US also executed a bombing campaign that some historians say aided the Khmer Rouge in their rise from a ragtag jungle insurgency to the country’s iron-fisted rulers.

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By Sebastian Strangio

Published in Asia Times Online, July 7, 2010

Chhun Yasith, pictured at the CFF’s Long Beach headquarters in 2001. (Photo: Jeff Gritchen/Long Beach Press-Telegram)

PHNOM PENH – EARLY on November 24, 2000, about 70 gunmen slipped into the center of Cambodia’s capital city. After drinking and singing traditional songs at a karaoke bar, one unit of men moved towards a series of government buildings armed with AK-47 rifles, grenades and B-40 rocket launchers. After seizing control of the city’s railway station, they sprayed bullets at the Ministry of Defense and Council of Ministers and lobbed a grenade as a nearby gas station. The Cambodian military engaged the attackers in a firefight, scarring many nearby buildings with bullet holes. They quelled the ragtag militia, leaving eight dead and around 14 wounded, after an hour of fighting.

In the wake of the attack, an obscure group calling itself the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF) took credit for the violence. The group’s ethnic Khmer leader, Chhun Yasith, a Long Beach, California-based accountant, at the time made no attempt to hide his intent to overthrow the government of Hun Sen, Cambodia’s long-serving prime minister. Despite the failure of the “coup” attempt, Yasith boasted that he would continue working to topple the “tyrannical” regime by force. “Next time,” he told a journalist in 2004, “we will attack the whole country.”

The 53-year-old Yasith’s threat came to an abrupt legal end last month, when a US district court judge sentenced him to life in prison for his role in the attempted coup. In a hearing at the court on June 22, prosecutors said the CFF was ordered to carry out “popcorn” attacks on soft targets such as karaoke bars and nightclubs before launching the all-out assault to overthrow the government on November 24. The CFF leader was charged with violating the US Neutrality Act, a 200-year-old law banning military operations against nations with which the US is at peace.

A tearful Yasith told the court he felt he had to do something for his native country and that he formed a rebel militia to avenge the murder of his father by the communist Khmer Rouge. “I’ve been punished because I failed, that I’m not good enough to overthrow that government,” the Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying. Chhun Yasith’s attorney, Richard Callahan Jr, said he would appeal the sentence.

Cambodian officials welcomed the sentence, describing the November 2000 coup attempt as a “clear terrorist act”. “We applaud the decision taken by the US government to prosecute Chhun Yasith,” Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters after signing an agreement with Japan for the construction of a new bridge across the Mekong River. “We welcome the elimination of terrorism and not just terrorism in Cambodia and the US, but in all regions where it threatens people’s security.”

The decision comes at a time of warming US-Cambodian relations after years of open antagonism and follows on a similar court action against another California-based group that threatened to overthrow by arms Laos’ communist regime. President Barack Obama has initiated policies to counter-balance China’s rising commercial influence in the region, including last year’s reclassification of Cambodia and Laos as no longer Marxist-Leninist states that opened the legal way for US Ex-Im Bank loans and financing. Later this year, the US is scheduled to hold its first joint military exercises with Cambodia, in an operation to be known as Angkor Sentinel. Earlier, the two sides enhanced security-related cooperation after high-profile terror suspects were found to have traveled freely in Cambodia.

Accountant cum rebel

Some have long questioned whether the CFF had the capacity to carry out the attack on its own. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, the president of the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), charged that Hun Sen orchestrated the “coup” as a pretext to crack down on government critics. He told the Phnom Penh Post in December 2000 that the reaction to the coup had “killed many birds with one stone”. About 200 people were detained in the 12 days following the attacks, many without warrants as required by Cambodian law, US rights lobby Human Rights Watch reported in December. Yasith was tried in absentia in Phnom Penh in June 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Richard Kiri Kim, a fellow US citizen who directed the CFF forces in Phnom Penh, was captured following the attack and remains in prison on a life term.

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By Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 7, 2010

RCAF Soldier Noun Sarun, 21, rests at the top of the stairs to Preah Vihear temple on July 6. (Photo: Heng Chivoan)

THOUSANDS are expected to turn out for a celebration at Preah Vihear temple today marking the two-year anniversary of its listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The July 2008 listing of the 11th-century Angkorian temple, the ownership of which has long been a point of contention between Cambodia and Thailand, sent bilateral relations into a tailspin from which they have barely recovered.

In Thailand, Foreign Minister Nappadon Pattama was forced to resign after the Thai constitutional court ruled he had acted illegally in supporting Cambodia’s bid. The ensuing spat – kept constantly tense by a series of small-scale border clashes – hit a new low in November last year, when Cambodia announced it had appointed Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as a government adviser. Thailand immediately withdrew its ambassador in protest, prompting Cambodia to return the favour.

Relations have remained at a stalemate so far this year. Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said yesterday that any decision to improve diplomatic relations would have to come from Thailand. “It is up to the Thai side. If the Thais want to upgrade [the relationship], they have to declare first that they are sending back their ambassador,” he said. He pledged that if Thailand were to dispatch its envoy, Cambodia would reciprocate within 15 minutes “at most”.

Cambodia’s handover on Monday of two Red Shirt activists suspected of involvement in an attempted bombing in Bangkok has prompted some observers to speculate that ties might be on the mend. On Monday, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva thanked Cambodia for the handover, and said he hoped the move would pave the way for closer collaboration between the two governments.

Springtime for Abhisit

Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said the deportation was the most recent demonstration of a thaw in relations that began at a Mekong River Commission summit in April. The change had been marked, he said, by a moderation in Prime Minister Hun Sen’s provocative stance towards the Abhisit government, as well as a recognition that Abhisit had consolidated his position since antigovernment Red Shirt protests were violently dispersed in May.

“It doesn’t seem that the Bangkok elite in the Democratic Party will give up power easily,” Pavin said. “Hun Sen must have realised that it’s no good for his long-term interests if he does not change his stance on the current government.”

According to one line of thinking, Bangkok took Hun Sen’s pro-Thaksin stance a little too seriously: their political relationship, which led relations to a new low last year, was purely pragmatic – and therefore subject to change. “It was partly a domestic political game, and partly just a way of having fun at Thailand’s expense,” said Duncan McCargo, a Southeast Asia expert based at the University of Leeds. “The history of relations between Thaksin and the CPP elite suggests that this is a very pragmatic relationship, rather than the robust and threatening alliance imagined by the Democrat Party.”

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By Cheang Sokha & Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 6, 2010

CAMBODIA has deported two anti-government Red Shirt activists to Thailand, where they are accused of involvement in an attempted bomb attack in Bangkok last month. Kobchai Boonplod and Varisareeya Boonsom, both 42, were handed over to Thai officials at Phnom Penh International Airport yesterday, a move Long Visalo, secretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said symbolised Cambodia’s commitment to fighting “terrorist” acts.

“In the spirit of combating terrorism everywhere, we arrested the two people because they committed terrorist acts in your country and are handing them over to you now,” he told Suwat Kaewsook, charge d’affairs at the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh. “Our principle is to oppose terrorism, even if there is no request from your embassy.” Suwat said Thailand welcomed the government’s deportation of the two suspects. “On behalf of the Royal Thai Embassy, we would like to express appreciation on your cooperation about this matter,” he said.

Red Shirt activist Varisareeya Boonsom, 42, tearfully awaits her deportation to Thailand at Phnom Penh International Airport on July 5. (Photo: Heng Chivoan)

The suspects were arrested on Saturday in Siem Reap province in connection with the attempted bombing of the Bangkok headquarters of the Bhumjaithai party, part of the Thai government coalition, on June 22. The attack, which apparently failed after a makeshift bomb detonated prematurely, followed two months of Red Shirt protests in Bangkok that sparked outbreaks of violence and left 90 people dead and about 1,900 injured. Long Visalo said the two had confessed to Cambodian police that they were involved in the bombing. “They accepted that they made the bombs in Thailand,” he said.

As he was escorted by police to the plane, however, Kobchai denied allegations that the pair was involved in the plot, and pledged to fight the charges. “We are Red Shirts, and if we are sent back to Thailand the government will kill us,” he told the Post. “We will get a lawyer and fight the government. We didn’t do anything, but the government has killed a lot of people.” A tearful Varisareeya said that sending her back to Thailand meant she was “going to die”.

Cambodia’s cooperation with Thailand could mark a thawing of relations between the two countries, which each withdrew their ambassadors after Phnom Penh appointed fugitive former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra as an economic adviser in October and then refused to extradite him. Following yesterday’s deportation, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announced that he was grateful to Cambodia for returning the two suspects. He also pledged to “seek further cooperation” with Phnom Penh. On Sunday, Chheang Vannarith, executive director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, predicted “positive developments in the bilateral relationship” as a result of the extradition.

But Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said the handover stemmed purely from the Kingdom’s counterterrorism policy. “We don’t take into consideration the improvement of diplomatic ties between Cambodia and Thailand,” he said. “If Thailand wants to improve Cambodian-Thai relations, it is up to the Thai side to make the decision. Cambodia will follow.”

Michael Montesano, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, said Phnom Penh’s decision to give up the suspects was a textbook example of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s “shrewd” handling of Vejjajiva’s government. “Should the Thais be interested in better relations with Cambodia, Hun Sen will have opened the door,” he said. “Should Bangkok again take an anti-Phnom Penh line, Cambodia will be able to say that it had made an important gesture of friendship to Thailand, only to find itself spurned.”

Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn was unavailable for comment yesterday.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP

The Defense Services Technological Academy at Pyin U Lwin, home of Burma’s nascent nuclear program. (Photo: DVB)

The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reports that the Burmese military government is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons technology as a deterrent against Western military actions. The allegations have been substantiated by Sai Thein Win, a former major in the Burmese army who served as a defence engineer and missile expert.  According to DVB, he worked “in special factories, built to house modern European machining tools, to build prototypes for missile and nuclear activities”. After defecting from the government, he granted DVB a treasure-trove of photographs and documentation of what he believes is Naypyidaw’s attempt to acquire a nuclear capability.

In the 30-page analysis of DVB’s research and Sai Thein Win’s documentation (available here), Robert Kelley, a former Los Alamos weapons scientist, concludes that Burma is “mining uranium, converting it to uranium compounds for reactors and bombs, and is trying to build a reactor and or an enrichment plant that could only be useful for a bomb.  There is no chance that these activities are directed at a reactor to produce electricity in Burma”. He notes that the country is far from having the level of technical expertise to actually detonate a nuke, but the prospect of a nuclear-armed junta should give everybody pause — especially US policymakers who have recently promoted a softly-softly policy of limited engagement with the junta. (It was this that pushed US Senator Jim Webb to cancel his planned visit to the country this month).

North Korea’s invisible hand has also been seen behind the recent Burmese developments. Pyongyang has previously been linked to the construction of underground bunkers and tunnel systems for the Burmese military and has reportedly given support to the junta’s ballistic missile programs. But DVB suggests the relationship may extend beyond mere technical support, arguing that the generals in Naypyidaw are looking to Pyongyang as a model for long-term autarky and isolationism. “Like their model, North Korea, the junta hopes to remain safe from foreign interference by being too dangerous to invade,” the report states. “Nuclear weapons contribute to that immunity.” (Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner has more on the North Korea-Burma axis here).

By Sebastian Strangio & Nguon Sovan

Prime Minister Hun Sen, government officials and donors stand for the national anthem during the third Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum in Phnom Penh on June 2. (Photo: AFP)

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, June 4, 2010

INTERNATIONAL donors have pledged a record US$1.1 billion in development assistance for the upcoming 18-month period, following a two-day government-donor forum that wrapped up in the capital Thursday. At the close of the third Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum (CDCF), Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon hailed the outcome of the talks.

“The meetings have been conducted successfully for all of Cambodia’s donors, development partners and development partners from civil society,” he told reporters. “This financing responds to the need for the development of the National Strategic Development Plan for this year.” Keat Chhon said Japan was again the largest donor. He declined, however, to give more details about the $1.1 billion pledges, saying, “We cannot disclose the breakdown of how much each country is providing to Cambodia.” Areas of focus in the government’s development agenda, he said, were “roads, water, human resources and electricity”. During Thursday’s meeting, delegates also discussed anticorruption measures, judicial reform and measures to improve aid effectiveness.

The $1.1 billion pledge – which surpasses the $951.5 million pledged at the last CDCF in December 2008 – comes amid mounting calls for international donors to pressure the government to meet good governance reform benchmarks. On Tuesday, 15 local NGOs said donors should “take responsibility and speak out against the deterioration of rights and democracy in Cambodia”. Doing nothing, they added, could be seen as “tantamount to complicity”. A series of 20 NGO position papers released last week said land rights and resource-revenue transparency should be key areas of focus.

Eleanor Nichol, a campaigner for UK-based watchdog Global Witness, described the CDCF meetings as a “mass exercise in intellectual dishonesty” that resulted in little concrete action on the ground. Despite years of government-donor talks, she said, hundreds of millions of dollars in resource revenues have not appeared in national accounts. “I’m absolutely astounded that in a year that’s been an annus horribilis in terms of corruption, donors have decided to up the amount of support they are giving the government,” she said. “We’re not having anything like the sense of outrage that one would expect to find in a case where there’s been pilfering on a grand scale.”

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By Sebastian Strangio

Published in The Age, April 3, 2010

OFF a dusty track in Trapeang Chranieng village lies a half-finished Buddhist pagoda, its unpainted walls still exposed to the mid-afternoon sun. Like many across Cambodia, the new building – as well as a nearby shrine, built in 2007 – is dedicated to the spirits of those killed in the village while it was under the control of Khmer Rouge insurgents in the 1990s.

Now a small hamlet of thatch houses, there is little to hint at Trapeang Chranieng’s tumultuous past. As a Khmer Rouge camp – part of the armed group’s Phnom Voar (”Vine Mountain”) stronghold – the village was the last home of Melburnian David Wilson, Briton Mark Slater and Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet, three tourists kidnapped when Khmer Rouge troops ambushed a Sihanoukville-bound train on July 26, 1994, killing 13 Cambodians.

Despite heated negotiations with Cambodian government officials to secure their release, the three were killed in early September as Phnom Voar came under fierce attack from government troops. When soldiers finally overran the area the following month, the bludgeoned bodies of the three men were found in a shallow grave at the foot of the hill.

At one hut, a former Khmer Rouge women’s cadre recalled the “handsome” foreign men who arrived at the camp in July 1994. “When they came they were afraid at first, but after they [became at ease with] me, they always spent time with me and we talked a lot, even though I didn’t understand what they said,” said Keo Gnov, who cooked for the hostages during their six-week stay.

Upon their arrival, she said, Wilson, Slater and Braquet did not take well to the rice-based Khmer diet, but were able to survive on potatoes, sugar cane and coconuts that she foraged for them. The 63-year-old, now bent by years of back-breaking rural labour, giggled like a young woman when recalling an incident during their first days at the camp, when the captives scandalised local villagers by showering naked in the open. The three quickly learned to wear a cotton krama.

Although the captives were confined to the camp, they were not mistreated, Keo Gnov said, and they were largely free to walk about as they pleased. But her bright eyes dimmed when she recalled the government’s frequent artillery offensives on the area, when the mood of the hostages fluctuated between relative relaxation and fear for their lives. “When the Cambodian government soldiers opened fire, they put their arms around me and we hid in the trenches together, and at night we slept together in that wooded house,” she said. “I loved them as my sons, and I saw that they loved me as their mother.”

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By Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, April 2, 2010

ONE month after passing its long-awaited Anticorruption Law, Cambodia is entering a make-or-break period in its fight against corruption, a veteran Hong Kong corruption fighter said this week, and the first year after the law comes into effect will be significant in determining the legislation’s ultimate success.

Under the law, set to come into effect in November, two new bodies will be tasked with fighting the Kingdom’s endemic levels of corruption: a National Anticorruption Commission (NAC), which will guide the country’s anti-graft policies, and an Anticorruption Unit (ACU), based at the Council of Ministers, which will carry out day-to-day investigations.

Tony Kwok Man-wai, the former deputy commissioner of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), said that Cambodia lies “at the crossroads” in its fight against graft. “From my experience, it is most important that the ACU can have a good start for the first few months of this operation,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “This is a time when the public will be behind it. The government and the ACU should take advantage of the public support.”

Kwok, who served at the ICAC for 27 years and oversaw Hong Kong’s transition from a place of “womb to tomb” corruption to what he now calls one of the “cleanest societies” in Asia, said the first year of operation will be critical for both bodies. “If they fail to get a good start, it will cause a lot of disappointment and the public will probably become even more cynical than before. It will be very difficult for the government and the ACU to get the proper amount of support they need again,” he said.

The law has already been criticised by some experts, who say it is merely a watered-down version of a draft formulated in 2006. According to a briefing paper on the new law put together by international corruption experts last month, a copy of which was obtained by the Post, changes to the 2006 draft included the removal of key provisions, resulting in an “overall narrowing effect” on the scope of the law. In particular, the briefing paper says an entire chapter – dealing with “large-scale specific actions” aimed at creating a “culture of intolerance” towards corruption – was removed from the 2006 draft.

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