A Gift For Mr. Hill

A Gift For Mr. Hill

By ELLEN BORK
January 23, 2006

Following a visit to Cambodia by the assistant secretary of state for
East Asia last week, three imprisoned critics of the government were
released, though they still face prosecution for defamation. A
spokesman for Cambodia's ruler, Hun Sen, called the releases "a gift
for Mr. Christopher Hill on the inauguration of the new U.S. Embassy"
in Phnom Penh. That revealing statement illustrates perfectly the way
Hun Sen runs his country, cracking down internally while currying favor
with the international community.

The arrests, the State Department had previously said, "call into
question the Cambodian government's commitment to democracy and human
rights." Putting it that way suggests that they are an aberration,
disappointing but not necessarily significant or characteristic. The
releases, then, allow the fiction to be maintained that Cambodia is a
"transitioning democracy." More important, it enables the myth that the
enormous international undertaking of the early 1990s, to end the
prolonged agony of Cambodia's people through genocide, war and foreign
occupation, was a success.

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