Cambodia: the unthinkable
The seemingly unthinkable is becoming plausible. Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge is rebuilding a strength that might enable it to once again impose its terror on the Cambodian people — courtesy of the United Nations.
Under the Paris accords, signed in 1991, the Cambodian government of Hun Sen agreed to a cease-fire and to UN-supervised elections.
The Khmer Rouge have ignored all the major elements of the peace agreement, in particular, disarming. They have extended their territory, almost doubling it in the north, since the agreement was signed and now pose a greater risk to the Cambodian people than before the peace process began.
The UN has to date facilitated the military and political advance of the Pol Potists, something they were unable to achieve for themselves. The UN military commander, General John Sanderson, has confirmed that UN forces have prevented the government from building up a counter-offensive.
Unfortunately, passage of time often diminishes events our memories should retain. Let campaigning journalist John Pilger, recently in Phnom Penh, refresh the collective memory:
"In 1979, I walked along the road, from the banks of the Mekong, shortly after the end of the Pol Pot years, when the stench of death was all around. The city was empty except for starving orphaned children and old people. Four years earlier, the population had been marched at gunpoint into the countryside, many of them to their death. A Cambodian friend of mine, who survived, witnessed sick and wounded dragged from their hospital beds; and women in childbirth forced to stagger forward, until they fell, where they were murdered.
"Today, in their air-conditioned offices and quarters that stand at the scene of their crime, the Khmer Rouge are courted."
In response to the deteriorating situation, the Australian Cambodian Support Committee issued a statement on January 22, calling on the Australian government to seek UN action in declaring that the Khmer Rouge has removed itself from the peace process and should have no further part in its implementation.
Further, the statement demands the enforcement of economic sanctions against the Khmer Rouge and calls for the protection of the entire population in the face of their escalating violence.
The elections scheduled for May must go ahead, without the Khmer Rouge. As Prime Minister Hun Sen has pointed out: "If not in 1993, then elections won't happen in Cambodia before the year 2000. If the UN cannot hold elections after committing more than US$2 billion and 20,000 personnel, then it will lose all credibility." The Cambodian Peoples Party government, which has rebuilt Cambodia over 14 difficult years, deserves immediate recognition and the aid that has been denied in order to placate the Khmer Rouge. It is time for the Australian government to abandon the pretense that Cambodians can and should make peace with Pol Pot's mass murderers.