Summary

In early 1993, ahead of elections organized by the United Nations, four Cambodian political activists, all recently returned refugees, were abducted by soldiers in Battambang province in northwest Cambodia. The four were taken to a nearby military base. They were never seen again.

Dozens of people witnessed these abductions. Investigations by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), the peacekeeping mission created by the 1991 Paris Agreements, revealed the identity of the men responsible. The case became one of the first in which UNTAC’s special prosecutor, created to address the wave of human rights abuses carried out with impunity by government forces, took action.

Though the State of Cambodia (SOC) -- the official name of the country at the time, led then and now by Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) -- and the other three parties to the Paris Agreements had formally committed to protecting human rights and to cooperating with UNTAC, the SOC administration and its security forces refused to cooperate with UNTAC’s investigation. The SOC not only denied the involvement of its forces in the abductions, it conducted a campaign of threats and intimidation against witnesses for talking to UNTAC.

Faced with state-sponsored killings and state refusal to bring the perpetrators to justice, on March 8, 1993 an UNTAC special prosecutor issued arrest warrants for six soldiers and their commander, Captain Yon Youm, on charges of murder, battery with injury, illegal confinement, and infringement of individual rights. UNTAC attempted to deliver the warrants to the soldiers’ base in Sangke district in Battambang province, but found the base deserted. None of the seven suspects was ever arrested.

Yon Youm and other members of the SOC security forces remained in uniform and went on to conduct a systematic and officially protected campaign of extortion, kidnapping, and murder between late June 1993 and early 1994. Cambodia’s military prosecutor, UNTAC, and the successor UN human rights field office in Cambodia documented these abuses. According to eyewitness accounts, at least 35 people were abducted and temporarily detained in a secret detention facility in Battambang town. They were then taken to Chhoeu Khmao, a remote location in Ek Phnom district, where almost all were summarily executed.

The main unit responsible for carrying out the abductions and executions was a Special Intelligence Battalion, code-named S-91, of the army’s Fifth Military Region. At that time S-91 was under the direct command of Yon Youm. Despite the evidence against him and the UNTAC arrest warrant, Yon Youm had by 1994 been promoted to the rank of colonel. He is now deputy chief of staff of the Fifth Military Region in Battambang. Neither he nor anyone else responsible for the atrocities in Battambang has ever been held accountable for these crimes.

More than twenty years after the signing of the Paris Agreements, Yon Youm is emblematic of the culture of impunity that continues to characterize the Cambodia of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the CPP. The message to Cambodians is that even the most well-known killers are above the law, so long as they have protection from the country’s political and military leaders.

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On October 23, 1991, the Paris Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict were signed by the four warring Cambodian political organizations and 18 states.[1] The Paris Agreements were supposed to bring an end to the post-Khmer Rouge era civil war between the Vietnamese-installed government, led since 1985 by Hun Sen, and the US and Chinese-backed resistance forces, led militarily by the Khmer Rouge and politically by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s ousted monarch. It was also supposed to usher in a new era of human rights. The promise of Paris was that there would be no more atrocities like those committed by S-91 and Yon Youm, but if they did happen the rule of law would hold perpetrators accountable.

Sadly, the case of Yon Youm and Chhoeu Khmao is not exceptional. The involvement of senior government officials and military, police, and intelligence personnel in serious abuses since the Paris Agreements has been repeatedly documented by the United Nations, the US State Department, domestic and international human rights organizations, and the media. Despite the human rights provisions of the Paris Agreements, the human rights protections in Cambodia’s 1993 constitution, and Cambodia’s accession to the main international human rights treaties, almost no progress has been made in tackling impunity over the past two decades. Instead, perpetrators have been protected and promoted.

Killings, torture, illegal land confiscation, and other abuses of power are rife around the country. More than 300 people have been killed in politically motivated attacks since the Paris Agreements. In many cases, as with members of the brutal “A-team” death squads during the UNTAC period and military officers who carried out a campaign of killings after Hun Sen’s 1997 coup, the perpetrators are not only known, but have been promoted. Yet not one senior government or military official has been held to account. Even in cases where there is no apparent political motivation, abuses such as extrajudicial executions, torture, arbitrary arrest, and land grabs almost never result in successful criminal prosecutions and commensurate prison terms if the perpetrator is in the military, police, or is politically connected. It is no exaggeration to say that impunity has been a defining feature of the country since the signing of the Paris Agreements.

To illustrate the problem, this report details some cases of extrajudicial killings and other abuses that have not been genuinely investigated or prosecuted by the authorities [we have focused on some cases, but could have included many others as the examples are vast]. These cases include:

• The killing of dozens of opposition politicians and activists by the State of Cambodia during the UNTAC period in 1992-93.
• The murder of opposition newspaper editor Thun Bun Ly on the streets of Phnom Penh in May 1996.
• The slaughter of at least 16 people in a coordinated grenade attack on opposition leader Sam Rainsy in March 1997 in which the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) implicated Prime Minister Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit.
• The campaign of extrajudicial executions of almost 100 Funcinpec-affiliated officials after Hun Sen’s July 1997 coup, including senior government official Ho Sok, in the Ministry of Interior compound.
• The 1999 acid attack that disfigured 16-year-old Tat Marina by the wife of Svay Sitha, a senior government official.
• The 2003 execution-style killing of Om Radsady, a well-respected opposition member of parliament, in a crowded Phnom Penh restaurant.
• The 2004 killing of popular labor leader Chea Vichea.
• The 2008 killing of muckraking journalist Khim Sambo and his son while the two exercised in a public park.
• The 2012 killing of environmental activist Chut Wutty in Koh Kong.

This report is based on information from various sources, including UNTAC documents, reports of UN special representatives and rapporteurs and the Cambodia Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [previously the UN Centre for Human Rights], reports by Human Rights Watch and other international and local nongovernmental human rights organizations, and media accounts. It is also based on interviews over many years with current and former government officials, members of the armed forces, the police, the judiciary, parliament, and other state institutions, and representatives of political parties, labor unions, the media, and human rights organizations.

The report adopts the definition of impunity put forward in 1997 by Louis Joinet, a former UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers:

The impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing perpetrators of human rights violations to account—whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings—since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims.[2]

International treaties to which Cambodia is a party obligate governments to address impunity and provide redress for violations of human rights. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) requires governments to ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms are violated to have an effective remedy before competent judicial, administrative or legislative authorities, “notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”[3]

Recognizing that impunity can be an important contributing element in the recurrence of abuses, the UN Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that monitors compliance with the ICCPR, has stated that governments that violate basic rights “must ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.” Both the failure to investigate and to bring to perpetrators to justice “could in and of itself” be a violation of the ICCPR. [4]

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In the twenty years since Paris, Cambodia has in many ways changed beyond recognition. The Paris Agreements and UNTAC wedged open space for political parties and civil society organizations. By 1998 the Khmer Rouge had collapsed and armed conflict had finally come to an end. Cambodia’s economy has become more integrated with regional economies. Donors and development agencies have succeeded in improving many human development indicators. The isolation of the Cambodian people from most of the rest of the world has come to an end.

Yet the last two decades have also been a story of missed opportunities. Serious abuses and repression continue. Corruption characterizes the economy, political opposition parties and free media have been slowly but steadily quashed, and NGOs face regular threats and constant pressure. Senior officials are not held accountable under law. None of this is surprising, as one leader, Hun Sen, and one political party, the CPP, have dominated Cambodia throughout. Authoritarian with a propensity for violence, Hun Sen has been prime minister for more than 27 years. A formerly communist party that has turned capitalist yet retained its pervasive security apparatus down to the village level, the CPP has been in power since 1979. Neither Hun Sen nor the CPP have shown any intention of developing a genuine democracy or allowing the kind of political pluralism envisioned by the Paris Agreements. Cambodia is in the process of reverting to a one-party state.

Only with a renewed sense of commitment and purpose from foreign governments, the UN, and donors can the many brave Cambodian human rights defenders and civil society activists succeed in transforming Cambodia into the rights-respecting democracy promised in Paris. An essential place to start is by addressing the culture of impunity that pervades the country and fatally undermines all efforts at reform. As the UN special rapportteur on human rights, Professor Surya Subedi, said on the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Agreements, “ T he Agreements will remain relevant until their vision is a reality for all Cambodians.” [5]