This is the fourth in an occasional series of posts on the various
political perspectives of those involved in activism in the Bath/Bristol
area. The views expressed are those of the respective authors, and do
not necessarily reflect those of Standing Stone.
Thoughts on Cambodia
by Dave Stephens
During the summer of 2012, I spent 2 months working for an NGO in
Cambodia. I’ve always believed in the power of aid to help the developing
world, and so it only seemed natural to spend some time working with those at
the receiving end. The experience I had, worthwhile though it was, was not what
I expected. Naively perhaps, I believed when I signed up to do community
development, that I would be out in the field building houses and wells or
visiting communities facing threats from illegal loggers and other rights
violations. Instead, I found myself in an office most of the day, fine-tuning
grant application forms to make sure they contained all the right buzz-words to
get international donors to sign on. Pursuing grants, it turns out, is big
business in Cambodia. The experience as a whole has left me skeptical of the
role aid plays in the developing world.
The good thing about me being in an office most of the time was
that it gave me time to start thinking, and reading, about NGO’s in Cambodia
and the wider political situation in which they operate. In particular, I
thought a lot about how much they can actually achieve in terms of helping
Cambodia to develop. My conclusion is that they can achieve depressingly
little. This is because many of the NGOs are incapable of, and all too often
unwilling to, address the fundamental problems this country faces. Chief of
which is corruption and an ineffective political system which keeps the
population in a bind of powerlessness and poverty. To understand how this situation
came about and why it is persists, it is necessary to understand Cambodia’s
history and in particular, how the legacy of the Khmer Rouge still haunts the
country today.
Fall from grace.
Cambodia today is a complex and often times strained mix of its
ancient history on the one hand and it’s relative newness as a country on the
other. Once a mighty power in the region, the Khmer empire dominated much of Southeast
Asia; including modern day Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. The famous temple of Angkor
Wat is just one of the hundreds of ruins that remain from the once great city
of Angkor, the seat of power in the Khmer Empire. The city was the largest in
pre-industrial history with over a million inhabitants and covering an area
larger than Manhattan.
Angkor and the Khmer empire went in to decline in the 1500’s and
the jungle reclaimed the city. It would remain lost through Cambodia’s dark
ages until its rediscovery by French explorers during the colonial era. From
1887 to 1953, Cambodia formed part of French Indochina along with Laos and
Vietnam. Although this period was relatively prosperous, the nation lacked
sovereignty and real leadership as the French manipulated and installed puppet
kings and altered the borders on several occasions. After a brief spell of
Japanese occupation during the Second World War, Cambodia eventually became an
independent country in 1953, officially as the Kingdom of Cambodia.
For the first time in over 500 years, Cambodia was an independent
nation, not under occupation by far off lands, or under siege from its neighbors.
This period was short lived however, the Vietnamese war spilled over into
Cambodia and tensions in the eastern provinces rose until 1970, when General
Lon Nol lead a military coup which ousted the king. This period also saw the
infamous illegal bombing of and invasion by the USA in their attempts to cut
off the Viet Kong and their Cambodian counterparts, the Khmer Rouge. It is widely
agreed that the US involvement in the Vietnamese war, and the subsequent bombing
of Cambodia which forced 2 million Cambodians to become refugees, gave the
Khmer Rouge great support amongst the rural communities. This support was
turned against Lon Nol’s government and in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge stormed
Phnom Penh.
3 years, 8 months,
20 days.
The genocide that happened during the Khmer Rouge regime, in power
for less than 4 years between 1975 and 1979, was off the scale. The systematic,
indiscriminate and totally wanton destruction of Cambodian society was beyond
brutal. There are few examples in human history where human suffering has been
so total, so unrelenting and so widespread. I of course knew of the Khmer Rouge
and Cambodia’s’ subsequent civil war before I came here, but it’s only when you
are here, when you visit the mass graves and memorials on the killing fields, see
the torture chambers and the prisons and hear firsthand accounts of life during
those years, that you can even begin to understand the implications of that
time, and how it’s after-effects still have an unspoken stranglehold on
Cambodian society today. It wasn’t just that two million people died under the
Khmer Rouge (a quarter of the population at the time), it was that the entire
social system was either destroyed or subjected to radical upheaval. Intellectuals,
nurses, doctors, teachers, lawyers, politicians; anybody who was educated, or
suspected of being educated, was executed. Cambodia was intentionally driven
back to the Stone Age. The nation was cut off from the rest of the world as all
foreigners were expelled (and in some cases killed as well), the economic
system was decimated, the infrastructure left to crumble and the entire
population forced to work in communal labor camps for no money and insufficient
food. The attempts by Pol Pot to build a perfect agrarian society resulted in
starvation and disease that killed millions and left the survivors traumatized.
After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia was a hollow shell of
a society. Almost everyone required to re-build had been killed or had fled.
The situation was made worse by the ensuing civil war, waged between 1979 and
1993 between the new Vietnamese installed government of Cambodia, and the
remnants of the Khmer Rouge (still recognised by
some governments around the world as the legitimate government of Cambodia). Many
Cambodians, who had fled to escape the Khmer Rouge and the civil war, were
trapped in refugee camps along the Thai border, some for as long as 15 years.
All this meant that the Cambodians (what was left of them) were woefully ill-equipped
to rebuild their society, and, given the political instability, few aid
organizations from outside Cambodia were willing to get involved in the
re-construction.
The more things change.
It wasn’t until the Vietnamese occupation ended in 1993 that
Cambodia really started on its project of re-building itself (or perhaps more
accurately, building itself). With the assistance of the UN, the royal family
was re-instated and the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won the first election
in the country’s history. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge (though he left the
party before 1975), was elected prime minister. He has been prime minister ever
since and the CPP have had an overwhelming majority at every level of
government throughout the course of post-war Cambodia.
Hun Sen and the CPP have turned Cambodia, in all but name, in to a
one party state. In a society that is naturally deferential and that even
before the Khmer Rouge came to power, was used to having no say in how it was
run, this wasn’t too difficult to achieve. Driving around the country, it
certainly feels like a one party state, CPP banners can be seen every few
kilometers or so down all the major roads. Every town and village I visited,
even remote ones a long way from the major highways, has had at least 1 CPP
poster hanging from the wall of an official building. The faces of the party
leadership and the royal family depicted smiling and proud, reminiscent of
portraits of Kim Il-Sung. Other political parties exist, and there are members
from other parties in government, but these parties are mostly focused on regional
issues. A level of dissent is tolerated in Cambodia, enough to make it look
like the government is democratic, but not enough to form a serious threat to
the ruling party. Where protests do happen, or parties are formed that have the
potential to threaten the CPP, they are quickly quashed, often with force.
A general rule of thumb to follow when looking at the names of
parties, governments or countries, is that there is an inverse correlation
between uses of words like ‘democratic, republic, people’s’ and how democratic,
republican or people-led they actually are. The CPP is no exception, they are
fantastically corrupt. Much of the CPP’s funding comes from international aid
organizations and, increasingly, foreign investors. In the case of aid, in
order to get the aid from donor representatives, the CPP pledge to reduce
corruption, invest in public services and infrastructure and allow NGO’s to
work in the field to aid social problems without let or hindrance by the
Government. In reality this is subterfuge. The government pockets much of the
money, spending it on lavish houses for itself and its cronies (often inviting
the representatives of the donors to stay in their guest-suites). They also
constantly harass any NGO that is seen to be acting politically, refusing to
bribe the relevant officials or criticizing the government (such as Global
Witness, which was kicked out of Cambodia last year (1). The lack of free
speech is a big problem here. Despite it being protected by the constitution
and its praises being sung in many of Hun Sen’s long and rousing speeches; many
are threatened, arrested and beaten for criticizing the government. This
sometimes even results in death, as was the case for leading illegal-logging
activist, Chut Wutty (2). Whilst in
Phnom Penh I spoke to another volunteer for a human rights NGO who told me
about several incidents of people being locked up without a fair hearing for
criticizing the government. Even though we were in a roof-top bar full of
westerners, as I spoke to him he was checking over his shoulder and leaning in
close to me before saying anything particularly critical.
 |
| Sign at Toul Sleng prison in Phnom Penh |
In the case of foreign investors, the government has been making Economic
Land Concessions (ELC’s) to individuals and corporations left right and centre.
As much as 45% of the land in some provinces l of Cambodia has been bought by
private developers and logging and mining corporations, often despite the land
being in supposedly protected areas given their environmental sensitivity
and/or being the means of subsistence for rural communities (3). The people on
these lands are routinely evicted with little notice and inadequate
compensation. The government is able to do this as many people don’t have title
deeds to their land, such documentation having been destroyed by the Khmer
Rouge. The judicial system of Cambodia is almost as corrupt as the government
and routinely finding in their favor whenever eviction cases are brought before
them (4). However few cases even make it that far, the police and the army have
been brutal in evicting people and several protesters have recently been killed
defending their homes. The Cambodian people are simply threatened and
intimidated off their lands without recourse (5).
The simple fact is however, after all that the Cambodian people
have been through, they have little spirit to fight, to protest against a
corrupt government that has a stranglehold on their country. Furthermore, with
no modern history they can call their own, they struggle to identify
themselves. Tensions still exist with their neighbors, especially the
Vietnamese who they perceive as influencing their government and slowly
occupying their country again. Feeling largely disenfranchised, they don’t know
how to respond, how to define themselves or who they are. For the most part
though, they just want to be allowed to get on with their lives in peace,
something most of us take for granted, but for people here would be a real
luxury.
The problem with the arrangements the Cambodian Government has is
that the cycle of externally funded corruption is self-perpetuating. The
Cambodian Government gets almost all of its money from external sources, be
they aid agencies or corporate investors. There is income tax, but few
Cambodians earn enough to pay any and those that do are well connected enough
to bribe their way out of significant contributions. Thus the governments’
internal revenue is negligible. This means that the government isn’t financially
accountable to its own people and as such has no incentive to protect their
interests. Worst of all, the corruption is so endemic in Cambodian society that
it has become the norm, including for NGO’s. In many cases, NGO’s have become
workshops for getting grants. Modern, western-style buildings with SUV’s parked
on the drive filled with rooms of paid staff (many of them expats of western-level
salaries) filling out application forms and giving training sessions on
proposal writings, fill spaces between the run-down wooden huts of average
Cambodians. Such NGO’s, that obediently follow the governments’ directives
(which include a recent law explicitly stating that NGO’s are required to be
apolitical (6)) are, of course, encouraged. They provide legitimacy to the government’s
claims to helping address the issues faced by the poor, and allow revenue to
flow into the country that is less scrutinized than that flowing straight to
the government.
An open ending.
What’s so distressing about all this is that Cambodia needn’t be a
poor country; its resources are plentiful, more than enough for it to drag
itself out of poverty. The people here are poor, yes, but they aren’t
destitute. Their poverty is not from lack of available resources, it is a
political poverty. It is a poverty caused by a government system that knowingly
ignores its peoples’ needs, that cuts them from their means and drives them
from their homes in order to line its own pockets. It’s a poverty that is
ultimately maintained by the silence of the NGO’s and aid agencies supposedly
there to help alleviate said poverty that know full well what’s going on, and
yet do nothing about it in order to be ‘apolitical’ (as if such a thing were
possible or even desirable) and often time, more cynically, to maintain their
revenue stream.
The hegemonic view of international development for the last 50
years or so, has been that by spreading democracy you will automatically spread
rights and freedoms and prosperity. There’s an element of truth to this, but
the idea of democracy being spread is somewhat backwards. We think of democracy
as having a vote, and of having a vote as being a way to get the leadership you
want. In reality, the vote is only one of the rights of a functioning
democracy, along with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to a
fair trial etc.
Given the political nature of Cambodia’s poverty, how can NGO’s
possibly do any good if they are themselves apolitical? Sure they can aid in
infrastructure construction and invest in farming equipment for rural
communities, but if they are obliged to stand mute as the communities they work
with have their lands acquired and their homes and livelihoods destroyed by an
ELC, then what long term good are they doing? NGO’s are used as a political
tool, they are thus political, and until they abandon their pledge to be
apolitical and stand up to and condemn a government which requires them to be
apolitical, they will continue to be ineffective. And in some ways they may be
making things worse by creating false hope for communities, diverting them from
protesting and making them dependant on the continued support of NGO’s.
As for my skepticism of aid agencies and NGO’s? I still thing aid
overall is a good thing, but it should be scrutinized with the same degree of
healthy skepticism that governments and corporations are (or aren’t as is all
too often the case). NGO’s and aid agencies are institutions which dish out
vast sums of money, the majority of it with the best of intentions. But it’s
inevitable that it’s going to attract corruption, the reputation and privilege
we extend to aid agencies in our culture almost guarantees a low-scrutiny
environment which malevolent people can take advantage of. But it’s not so much
an issue of money for me. Aid agencies and NGO’s need to be financially
accountable, yes, but in my view it is more important, given the nature of the
organisations that they are, that they are morally accountable, that they stand
by their principles and their goals no matter what governments try to push them
in to. They should speak out against those who work against the principles of
their organisations, no matter who they are or how powerful they are. To do
anything less is to fail to help the people these organisations were set up to
help in the first place.
Recommended reading.
