Generals propping up Hun Sen?

PHNOM PENH: Twelve Cambodian police and military generals, all high-ranking members of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling party, have been accused in a new report of human rights violations dating from the Khmer Rouge era.

The report by Human Rights Watch alleges the National Police and Royal Cambodian Armed Forces’ (RCAF) commanders are the “backbone of an abusive and authoritarian political regime over which an increasingly dictatorial Hun Sen rules”.

Having been in power for 33 years, Hun Sen’s government has cracked down on political opponents and independent critics in the run-up to the July 29 elections.

“Each (of the accused) is politically and personally close to Hun Sen and helps ensure that the army, gendarmerie, and police perform a political role in guaranteeing his and the (ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s) continued rule,” the report says.

Its release comes after the US issued sanctions against the head of Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit, Hin Bun Hieng, over similar allegations earlier this month.

Bun Hieng and his unit “have been connected to incidents where military force was used to menace gatherings of protesters and the political opposition going back at least to 1997,” the US Treasury said in a June 12 statement.

That year, a grenade attack on an opposition rally in the capital killed at least 16 people and injured more than 100.

The HRW report raises suspicions that RCAF deputy supreme commander Kun Kim, National Police commissioner Neth Savoeun, and a deputy, Mok Chito, were involved in the 1997 incident. – dpa