Cambodia’s dirty dozen: Hun Sen rules with army of usual suspects
The Cambodian prime minister appears to be taking a leaf out of the history books, solidifying his power by enmeshing his party with the armed forces
In a return to roots of sorts, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is using the armed forces to solidify his one-party rule while systematically destroying all nascent democratic institutions. In the past year, his son Hun Manet has continued his rapid rise through the military ranks, the highest-ranking generals are slated to run for office, and the premier has threatened to personally order the army to attack his political rivals.
A detailed human rights report this week sheds light on this strategy of further enmeshing the military with Hun Sen’s political party.
This week also marked the 67th anniversary of Hun Sen’s historically militarised ruling party, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which was first founded as a splinter branch of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Opposition figures such as Sam Rainsy maintain the party has Vietnamese roots and links to the murderous, ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge. In a recent Facebook post, Rainsy said the CPP was the descendant of the “Vietnamese communist army”.
David Chandler, the pre-eminent historian on modern Cambodia, confirmed that the first iteration of the CPP was organised by Vietnam following the dissolution of the regional Indo-Chinese Communist Party. “In 1965, after visiting North Vietnam and China, Pol Pot … changed the party’s name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK),” he said. The CPK is the more formal name of the Khmer Rouge.
