Washington levels new threats against Cambodia
By Greg
Butterfield
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell met with Prime Minister Hun Sen,
the leader of the Cambodian People's Party, on March 30. The
Kansas Republican threatened to cut off financial aid to the
war-ravaged country unless the government hands over former
leaders of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement to an
international tribunal dominated by Washington.
Their meeting in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, was the
latest move by the U.S. to intensify pressure on Hun Sen's
government.
Hun Sen has resisted U.S. and European governments' demands
to arrest Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea and other Khmer Rouge
leaders who surrendered along with several hundred supporters
in December. Hun Sen insists the matter is one for the
Cambodian people to decide without outside interference.
Many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers have been integrated into
the national armed forces.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other top
officials have leveled similar threats at Phnom Penh in recent
weeks. Aid to Cambodia has already been cut from $40 million
annually to just $12 million due to Washington's displeasure
with Hun Sen's independent course.
In line with the U.S. pressure campaign, a United Nations
panel recommended in March that Cambodia hand over 20 to 30
Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of "genocide and crimes against
humanity." The proposed international tribunal would be under
the authority of the U.S.-dominated UN Security Council.
The U.S. wants the right to judge the Khmer Rouge without
owning up to the Pentagon's genocidal war against the Cambodian
people during the U.S. war against Vietnam.
Washington had authorized terror bombings of defenseless
towns and villages starting in 1969. That was followed by a
bloody U.S.-backed coup and a U.S.-led invasion in 1970,
allegedly to hunt down Vietnamese troops who were moving
through Cambodian territory.
The Khmer Rouge movement responded to the Pentagon's
carpet-bombing of the Cambodian countryside by fighting and
ousting Washington's puppet regime from Phnom Penh in the
spring of 1975.
Upwards of a million Cambodians were killed in the war years
1969-1975. Millions were maimed and injured. The country's
industry and agriculture were devastated for decades to
come.
The Pentagon-sponsored terror ended only when the Khmer
Rouge, then allied with the Vietnamese National Liberation
Front, seized power.
In 1977, the Khmer Rouge began a border war with their
neighbor, socialist Vietnam. Divisions grew within the
movement. In January 1979 a group of Cambodian communists,
including Hun Sen, appalled at the course taken by the Khmer
Rouge leadership, appealed for support from the Vietnamese
People's Army. Together they expelled the Khmer Rouge
government.
During the civil war that followed, the U.S. supplied arms
and land mines to the Khmer Rouge in an effort to undermine the
new Cambodian socialist government, which had close ties to
Vietnam and the Soviet Union.
Hun Sen's government has proposed the establishment of a
"Truth and Reconciliation Commission" modeled after one in
South Africa that studied the crimes of the apartheid era. The
Cambodia-based commission would investigate the 30-year period
of U.S. intervention and civil war.
The international tribunal pushed by the Clinton
administration would only judge the period of Khmer Rouge rule
from 1975-1979 when, it is charged, between one and two million
people died.
U.S. engineers capture
Ta Mok was the last major Khmer Rouge leader who did not
surrender to the government. He remained in neighboring
Thailand until his arrest March 6.
A Reuters dispatch filed in Bangkok by Sutin Wannabovorn was
titled: "Ta Mok detention result of U.S. pressure."
"A senior Thai military source said he believed the arrest
of notorious Khmer Rouge leader Ta Mok was the result of
cooperation between Thailand and Cambodia under pressure from
the United States," Wannabovorn wrote.
Washington took advantage of Ta Mok's arrest to turn up the
heat on Cambodia.
However, Hun Sen's government has so far refused to
surrender its right to sovereignty in the matter, or to abandon
the course of reconciliation between the different wings of the
former liberation forces.
By early April, Phnom Penh had ruled out the extradition of
Ta Mok. He is likely to be tried in a Cambodian court on
charges stemming from his involvement in continuing the civil
war since 1994.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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