Hun Sen - Hun Sens Cambodia

Copyright 2014 Sebastian Strangio

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:

U.S. Office:

Europe Office:

Typeset in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strangio, Sebastian.

Hun Sens Cambodia/Sebastian Strangio.

pages cm.

ISBN 978-0-300-19072-4 (cl: alk. paper)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. CambodiaPolitics and government1979 2. CambodiaPolitics and government20th century. 3. Hun SaenInfluence. 4. CambodiaHistory20th century. 5. CambodiaSocial conditions21st century. I. Title.

DS554.8.S74 2014

959.6043dc23

2014022300

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-cappd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve

W ILLIAM S HAKESPEARE , The Tempest

There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and mans reason has never learned to separate them.

J. D. B ERNAL , World, the Flesh and the Devil

A mountain never has two tigers.

T RADITIONAL K HMER

1 Brother Number One: Pol Pot, Cambodias Robespierre and the architect of the Khmer Rouge revolution, photographed shortly after taking power in Phnom Penh in April 1975.

2 Women toil on a communal worksite in Democratic Kampuchea.

3 Supporters of the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation celebrate the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea in Chhbar Ampov, Phnom Penh, on January 25, 1979. The sign in the photo reads, Bravo, Cambodia is fully liberated!

4 The new masters of Cambodia: Heng Samrin (center) and Pen Sovan (left) greet a state media delegation from the Mongolian Peoples Republic at Pochentong International Airport on March 15, 1979. Two years later, Pen Sovan would be appointed the first post-Khmer Rouge prime minister of Cambodia, before being purged, arrested, and imprisoned in Vietnam.

5 The worlds youngest foreign minister: Hun Sen, then 26 years old, meets with a Mongolian delegation in Phnom Penh on March 15, 1979.

6 Chea Sim, the PRKs Interior Minister, with Cambodian schoolchildren, c. 1984.

7 Echoes of a nightmare: a classroom-cum-torture chamber at S-21 prison, photographed shortly after the fall of Phnom Penh in January 1979.

8 Cambodian peasants carry international food aid back to their farms via the land-bridge connecting Nong Chan refugee camp on the Thai border to the interior of the country, December 1979.

9 Like father and son: Sihanouk and Hun Sen toast their landmark meeting at Fre-en-Tardenois, near Paris, in December 1987. The meeting between the two men helped pave the way towards a diplomatic settlement of the Cambodian conflict.

10 Hun Sen swimming at Teuk Chhou Resort during a tour of Kampot province in January 1989.

11 A Vietnamese tank rolls past the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh on September 25, 1989, part of state-sponsored celebrations marking the Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia. An estimated 23,000 Vietnamese troops lost their lives during the decade-long occupation.

12 From left to right: Chea Sim, Sihanouk, and Hun Sen celebrate shortly after the princes return to Phnom Penh on November 14, 1991, a month after the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements.

13 Cambodia collides with the new world order: a UN helicopter takes off near a temple complex in Kampong Cham on March 1, 1992. At a total cost of more than $2 billion, the UNTAC mission was the largest peacekeeping mission mounted to that point and was seen as a critical test for the post-Cold War world.

14 With friends like these: First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen attend a Funcinpec congress in Phnom Penh on March 21, 1996. Despite Funcinpecs victory in the UN-organized 1993 election, royalist officials quickly found themselves with little effective powershuffling meaningless documents, attending vacuous meetings, reading newspapers.

15 Former DK foreign minister Ieng Sary in his fiefdom of Pailin in October 1996, during a ceremony finalizing his defection to the governmenta move that spelled the beginning of the end for the Khmer Rouge revolution.