Political unrest in Cambodia: "Everyone here wears Hun Sen t-shirts, but no one voted for him"

NEWSTATESMENT

Anti-government protests in Cambodia have left at least one protester dead, and have prompted talks between prime minister Hun Sen and his rival, Sam Rainsy. The protestors accuse Hun Sen of rigging July’s elections to secure his majority. Hun Sen is one of the world’s longest serving leaders, having been in power for 28 years, and the Human Rights Watch has accused him of unlawfully detaining or killing political opponents and activists.

One of the side-effects of government censorship and the suppression of free speech is that it’s hard, for both government and outsiders, to understand the strength and extent of anti-government feeling. But when I visited Cambodia just a few weeks ago, I was struck by how candid Cambodians were about their political frustrations – particularly if they were speaking in a private place.

“Everyone here wears Hun Sen t-shirts, but no one voted for him,” one charity worker in the small town of Pailin, near the border with Thailand, told me. Pailin’s political landscape is particularly fragmented as the town was the final stronghold of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime. Some of its inhabitants are ex-Khmer Rouge rebel fighters and political leaders, others grew up in refugee camps having fled internal fighting. But the Cambodia People's Party billboards featuring a smiling Hun Sen, which are placed at regular 100m intervals along every road in Pailin, provide no evidence of any diversity of opinion.

On one farm I visited, the farm owner was especially keen to speak to a journalist. “Before the elections, all the election campaigners promised better salaries, but of course after the election nothing happens,” he said. “To become a leader of the country you shouldn’t just think about power, you need to think about the economy and the people.” He was frustrated that farmers' incomes were decreasing year on year, and angered by wealthy government officials who are taking advantage of the lack of formal property rights to seize farmland from local owners and develop large-scale plantations.

I asked him if he was worried about criticising the government in front of a journalist, and he said he didn’t care. “I want to express myself. In Cambodian society, people don’t like to say anything, but staying silent is not the way to do it.”

If political discontent is running as high as my recent visit to Cambodia suggests, Hun Sen may be facing one of the biggest threats to his political power for 28 years.