Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday expanded his verbal assault on UN Special Representative for Human Rights in Cambodia Yash Ghai, while rights workers said they supported Ghai’s controversial findings and diplomats declined to comment on them.
Speaking at a Royal University of Phnom Penh graduation ceremony, Hun Sen called Ghai “rude” and accused UN officials of “violating other countries’ sovereignty.”
“I don’t like Ghai…when we were in difficulties you didn’t come to monitor human rights in Cambodia,” he said. “When Pol Pot killed people, where were you?”
Hun Sen recalled that in 1999 he told the UN General Assembly that if the UN wanted to reform, it should start by replacing its officials who are “not virtuous angels and violate other countries’ sovereignty.”
Repeating an anecdote he told in January 2005, Hun Sen said he had to resort to threatening Untac administrator Yasushi Akashi in 1993 in order to have criticism from Untac spokesman Eric Falt silenced.
Hun Sen said he told Akashi that he would allow Khmer Rouge soldiers to attack Untac soldiers in Siem Reap town if Falt did not stop criticizing the State of Cambodia.
“I set the condition that if you didn’t control Untac spokesman Eric, I would allow the Khmer Rouge to attack,” he said. Such an attack on Untac never materialized, Hun Sen said.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Ghai said that despite the welcome release of government critics in January and the return of SRP leader Sam Rainsy in February, fundamental regulations and institutions remain too weak in Cambodia to say that human rights have fundamentally improved. He added that his report in January, saying that the Constitution had been largely ignored, remained valid.
Ghai’s January report and his statements on Tuesday for the most part repeated long-standing criticisms of the government, such as a lack of judicial independence and a lack of basic criminal and civil codes. But at his press conference, he said that concentration of power in one unnamed individual was hampering human rights.
“Everything depends on one individual and as I said earlier that is not really a precondition under which human rights can flourish,” he said.
In his January report, Ghai noted that with six of its nine members affiliated with the CPP, the Constitutional Council’s impartiality is in question. The report criticized Hun Sen for dissolving the secretariat of the Supreme Council of Magistracy last year and using the Council as a “rubber stamp.”
Hun Sen on Wednesday called for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to replace Ghai.
Officials from the Canadian and British embassies and from the European Union said they could not comment on whether Ghai’s assessments were accurate.
But senior NGO officials said they agreed with Ghai. Outgoing Center for Social Development Executive Director Chea Vannath said that rather than firing Ghai, Annan should promote him.
“I think Yash Ghai is doing a good job of letting the prime minster know what is going on,” she said. “Sometimes when you are high up in the government you cannot see what is going on.”
She said the prime minister is right to say that Ghai knows relatively little about Cambodia. But, she added, Ghai’s findings are not his own theories.
“What he is writing is what government officials and civil society told him,” she said. “In my own organization we have audits and sometimes the critics are annoying. But if you are professional you take the criticism to improve yourself.”
Koul Panha, director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, also said Ghai was on target. “The report has reflected the truth. This is a critical report,” he said, adding that Hun Sen should engage Ghai rather than attack him.
Cambodian Defenders Project Director Sok Sam Oeun said Hun Sen might be angry because Ghai did not focus closely on recent improvements in the political situation, such as the release of government critics from prison.
But he agreed that human rights are no more secure now in Cambodia than they were before the men were released. “The situation now is relieved but there is no firm democratic process,” Sok Sam Oeun said.
He said Hun Sen has claimed he will make reforms, including strengthening the independence of the judiciary, which would improve human rights.
But the real reform process has not yet started, he said. “We want a clear process where the executive cannot do whatever it wants,” he said.
