Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Wednesday to mark the anniversary that “Cambodia is in the process of reverting to a one-party state”.

Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister, marks 30 years of hardline rule

The Guardian | 14 January 2015

Strongman who rose from ashes of the Khmer Rouge era maintains a repressive and as-yet unshakeable grip on power

Hun Sen and his wife, Bun Rany, at an anniversary celebration. Photograph: Samrang Pring/Reuters

Hun Sen is marking 30 years as Cambodia’s prime minister, a reign that has drawn condemnation over the litany human rights violations the political strongman and former Khmer Rouge cadre is accused of perpetrating to keep his grip on power in the decades following the bloodthirsty communist regime’s demise.

Human Rights Watch marked the anniversary by accusing Hun Sen of extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, summary trials, censorship, bans on assembly and association and keeping a national network of spies and informers intended to frighten and intimidate the public into submission.

Since first taking up the job at age 33, becoming the world’s youngest premier in the process, Hun Sen has consolidated power with violence and intimidation of opponents that continues to draw criticism. But he could also take some credit for bringing modest economic growth and stability in a country devastated by the communist Khmer Rouge’s regime in the 1970s, a movement Hun Sen abandoned as they left some 1.7 million people dead from starvation, disease and executions.

On Wednesday, in a speech inaugurating a 2,200 metre (7,200ft) Mekong river bridge that is the country’s longest, Hun Sen, 62, defended his record, saying that only he had been daring enough to tackle the Khmer Rouge and help bring peace to Cambodia.

“If Hun Sen hadn’t been willing to enter the tigers’ den how could we have caught the tigers?” he said. He acknowledged some shortcomings but pleaded for observers to see the good as well as the bad in his leadership.

Born to a peasant family in east-central Cambodia, Hun Sen initially joined the Khmer Rouge against a pro-American government. He defected to Vietnam in 1977 and accompanied the Vietnamese invasion that toppled his former comrades in 1979.

The timely change of sides led to his being appointed foreign minister, then prime minister of the Vietnamese-supported regime in 1985. Since then he has never left the top post despite being forced to temporarily accept the title of “co-prime minister” after his party came in second behind that of Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a 1993 UN-supervised election. Four years later Hun Sen deposed his coalition partner in a bloody coup.

Co-prime ministers Norodom Ranariddh, left, and Hun Sen after election results forced them into an uneasy and ultimately doomed coalition. Photograph: Doug Niven/EPA

“It is superficially true that relative peace and stability occurred during the reign of Hun Sen’s three decades in power,” said Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American lawyer and human rights activist. “But Hun Sen’s ‘achievements’ are only relative to the blackness of the Khmer Rouge.”

The historian David Chandler, a Cambodia expert at Australia’s Monash University, characterised Hun Sen as “intelligent, combative, tactical, and self-absorbed”.

In 2013 elections it seemed Hun Sen’s grip on power had been shaken when the opposition Cambodia National Rescue party mounted an unexpectedly strong challenge, winning 55 seats in the National Assembly with Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s party reduced to 68.

The opposition alleged the results were rigged and its lawmakers at first boycotted the legislature. But then Hun Sen brokered a deal with opposition leader Sam Rainsy and the parliament resumed work, with the longtime leader again appearing unscathed.

Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Wednesday to mark the anniversary that “Cambodia is in the process of reverting to a one-party state”.

“After 30 years of experience there is no reason to believe that Hun Sen will wake up one day and decide to govern Cambodia in a more open, inclusive, tolerant, and rights-respecting manner,” said the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams, who wrote the report.

“The international community should begin listening to those Cambodians who have increasingly demanded the protection and promotion of their basic human rights.”