Malcolm Turnbull
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Canberra
ACT
Australia
24th November 2015
Dear Prime Minister
In the not-too-distant future you
will welcome to Australia Cambodia’s long-term dictator, Hun Sen.
You will smile and shake his hand. Photos
will be taken and published.
Captured in this frozen moment, for
eternity, will be you shaking hands with a man who you know stole the 2013
election in Cambodia; a man who is now quite brazenly, in the full light of
day, using intimidation and manipulation of the Cambodian judiciary to steal
the next election.
Why does Australia treat Hun Sen as
though he were the democratically elected Prime Minister of a functioning democracy?
Is it because a Turnbull government,
following in the footsteps of an Abbott government, needs to remain on friendly
terms with a country to which you hope to send more refugees to Australian
shores in the future?
The Cambodian people made it clear in
the 2013 election, almost certainly won by the opposition Cambodian National
Rescue Party (CNRP), despite electoral
fraud, that they have had enough of Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party.
Hun Sen knows that the only way he
can possibly win the next election, if it is conducted in accordance with
Cambodian electoral law, is to destroy the opposition by expelling members from
the National Assembly, as he has in recent months; by having other members
bashed outside the National Assembly whilst the police look on and do nothing;
by jailing CNRP activists on trumped up charges and, a little over a week ago,
by issuing a warrant for the arrest of the leader of the opposition, Sam
Rainsy.
This is Hun Sen’s standard operating
procedure – forcing Sam Rainsy into exile in the hope that a jailed,
intimidated, leaderless and demoralized opposition will be unable to
participate in any meaningful way in the next election. Hun Sen, the Robert Mugabe of South East Asia, is a classic 20th C
dictator trying desperately to cling to power in a new digitally-connected
Facebook world.
The photo of you shaking hands with
him, along with similar photos of him shaking hands with other world leaders, will lend Hun Sen an air of political respectability
that he does not deserve.
You know this, though it may be
difficult to admit in public if you wish to retain Cambodia as a dumping ground
for refugees trying to reach Australian shores.
Hundreds of millions of Australian
tax-payer dollars have, directly and indirectly, been given in aid to Cambodia
over the past 20 years of the Hun Sen regime.
To achieve what result?
To foster the development of
democratic institutions in Cambodia. To
alleviate poverty?
No, Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, and the
patronage system that supports it, has plundered the country’s natural
resources, stolen the land and homes of tens of thousands of Cambodians,
intimidated, killed and imprisoned indigenous people and others who protest at
being dispossessed and left 40% of the population suffering from malnutrition.
As the Hun Sen kleptocracy has pillaged the
country this past 20 years, the international donor community has stood by, wringing
its hands and expressing platitudes of ‘concern’ at regular intervals, as its
members, including Australia, continue
to write large cheques to prop up what is, quite clearly, a dictatorship.
If Hun Sen succeeds in destroying Sam
Rainsy’s CNRP in the next few months, if he steals the next election, there
will be nothing him to stop him doing whatever is necessary to see to it that
one of his sons succeeds him and that Cambodia remains a hereditary
dictatorship. And the international donor community will be financing this
constitutional coup.
History will not treat you kindly Mr
Turnbull if, in 20 years time, Cambodia remains a dictatorship. You and other
world leaders who turned a blind eye to Hun Sen’s breaches of Cambodian law and
human rights abuses will, in your latter years, be held up as an example of
what happens when short term gain (dumping refugees in Cambodia, in Australia’s
case) is placed ahead of moral principle and the rule of law.
Your welcoming Hun Sen to Australia,
your shaking of his hand, will Hun Sen’s corrupt regime with an undeserved
imprimatur of respectability.
You could show real leadership here; demonstrate
that your moral compass is pointed in the right direction by being the first
member of the international donor community to stop funding the Hun Sen
dictatorship to the tune of close to $100 million a year; by requesting of all
those donor countries that pour half a billion dollars of aid into the country
each year, that they turn the money spigot off until Hun Sen stops subverting the will of the Cambodian
people, stops stamping on every new green democratic shoot that seeks to push
its way out of Cambodia’s blood-sodden soil and retracts his politically
motivated arrest warrants.
You should cancel Hun Sen's visit and
instead let him know, in no uncertain
terms, that Australian aid to Cambodia is tied to the development of democracy
in Cambodia; not in propping up dictatorships such as the one he has visited
upon Cambodia this past 20 years.
The photo opportunity of you shaking
hands with Hun Sen is not one you need, Prime Minister.
best wishes
James Ricketson
