A good piece here from tomorrow's edition of The Age in Melbourne. He's certainly not holding back:
The level of corruption in the country that Australia's Coalition government has made one of its closet allies in Asia – for political gain at home – is staggering.
Hun Sen has amassed mansions and is protected by his own army with a national network of spies and informers intended to frighten and intimidate Cambodians.
Gareth Evans, the former foreign minister and architect of the Paris Peace Accords that ended Cambodia's war in the 1990s, has said there are stories, unverifiable but plausible, that 20 or more of Hun Sen's closest associates have each amassed more than $1 billion through misappropriation of state assets, illegal economic activity and favouritism in state procurement and contracting.
For years, Australia and other nations have supported what were portrayed as democratic elections every five years.
But they were manipulated, sometimes amid violence.
Hun Sen has ruled a sham democracy since 1993 when he lost a UN-administered election but refused to accept the result, instead threatening violence through a fake secession movement and seizing power.
Too often foreign donor-nations like Australia have looked away or persuaded themselves that Hun Sen's ruthlessness wasn't so bad. He was, after all, seen to be leading his nation down the path of democracy.
However, on Tuesday Hun Sen arranged for his government to change laws that critics say will bulldoze what is left of Cambodia's opposition parties and political institutions.
Legislation passed in parliament effectively bans anyone convicted of an offence from running for office, a law aimed at the main opposition party whose leaders have been systematically targeted in Hun Sen controlled courts for criminal prosecutions, mostly in defamation cases for comments made on Facebook.
Full article here: http://www.theage.com.au/world/australi ... uhorj.html
Lindsay Murdoch article on death of Cambodian democracy
- Lucky Lucan
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I just read that and it's all distortions and lies.
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
- khmerhit
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Oh, all lies? Good to know there's no corruption, after all. Phew.
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Other than the part with the girl sitting and smiling that just had her legs blown off who dies on the way to the hospital... I cant find much else in the article that seemed overly distorted or outright lies? What am I missing?Lucky Lucan wrote:I just read that and it's all distortions and lies.
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