Hong Kong and Cambodia: a common cause
After relentless protests, the Hong Kong administration was forced to cave in, shelving a contentious extradition bill that would have seen people transferred out of the city to any jurisdiction, including mainland China. The result might be only short-term relief for local people, but the outcome delivered a historic triumph for defenders of democracy and human rights, reverberating beyond Hong Kong itself.
Hong Kong's protests enlivened Cambodians, those still inside the country and the overseas diaspora, as most lament their rights being barred by the country's ruler, Hun Sen.
The relevant question is not whether Cambodians can emulate the Hong Kong protests, but rather why the international community continues to legitimize Hun Sen's regime.
To Cambodians, the Hong Kong protests were a symbolic struggle by a tiny territory once seen only as a self-focused financial hub with few other interests, but now seen to be strong enough to stand up to China. The scene of Hong Kong's protests delivered positive ripple effects, as it was a case of "pour encourager les autres." Cambodia's fearful victims will look to Hong Kong's courage in the fight against their own tyrannical leadership for their rights under the country's constitution.
Hong Kong's protests could not have come at a better time for Cambodia's outlawed opposition party, reportedly intent on returning home from exile later in the year. Hun Sen's unflinching and impudent disregard to resolutions passed by the European Union to reinstate the Cambodia National Rescue Party, and holding a national election in July 2018, defying the joint statement of 45 nations, led by New Zealand, in March 2018, coupled with the killing of protesters in 2014, casts this regime as one that cares little about Cambodian lives or its standing on the international stage.
The international community continues to stand with Hun Sen's charlatan regime, which is on a pernicious path toward destroying the country. As one British Broadcasting Corporation commentator wrote: "The country has had regular and rowdily contested elections ever since, although through a skillful blend of populism and intimidation Hun Sen has managed to remain in power since 1985. Now [Hun Sen] has engineered the dissolution of … the opposition party. The democracy Cambodians were promised in 1991, which has survived a rough and corrupt political culture since then, has been dealt a terminal blow."
Having been victims of repressive regimes, Cambodians across the world share common concerns with Hong Kong and urge its people to defend their rights. Faced with the likelihood of having their rights and values stripped away much as Hun Sen has ripped apart the legacy of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, the people of Hong Kong have a common goal with Cambodians - to rise up against their own totalitarian state.
Facing a murky future after the "one country, two systems" policy ends in 2047, the only things left for Hong Kong people, like Cambodians, are courage and hope.
For Hongkongers, fundamental democratic rights have been the fabric of their thriving lifestyle, values and traditions that have been the envy of many nations, including Cambodia.
However, when Cambodians under the present regime defend their values and human rights, unlike Hongkongers, their efforts are often met with lethal force.
Unlike Hongkongers, when Cambodians protest, their aspirations and bravery have limits, especially when Hun Sen raucously and menacingly warned, "Without me, civil war is unavoidable." Cambodians' democratic rights were "given" to them - either by Vietnam after the invasion of 1979 or in the aftermath of the creation of a sovereign nation through international multilateral peace agreements in 1991. But when the people of Hong Kong safeguard their rights, they do so free of allegiance of patronage to either domestic kingpins or other sovereign nations.
Despite protesters' defiance, and although Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam holds that post with the approval of Beijing, her administration has not sold out its people in the manner in which Hun Sen treats Cambodian protesters.
By 2047, when Hong Kong is officially incorporated as an inalienable sovereign possession of China, Cambodians will still be struggling to come to terms with being citizens of a nation that is caught in a debt trap, one labeled by former Australian former foreign minister Gareth Evans, together with Laos, as "effectively wholly owned subsidiaries of Beijing."