Despite promises made to donors at CG meetings over the last three years, virtually no progress has been made toward ending impunity for serious violations of human rights. Officials linked to murders and "disappearances" remain in office, and Khmer Rouge leaders associated with the 1975-79 massacres of more than one million Cambodians have been granted amnesty or allowed to move freely around the countryside. Among the most serious incidents of political violence and human rights abuses that have occurred since 1993 include:

--Killings of at least two people by government security forces of their agents, and at least eleven known disappearances of others in conjunction with demonstrations in Phnom Penh in September 1998. Another twenty-four killings, mostly violent deaths, were reported in August and September. Dozens more protesters, including monks, women and students, were beaten or injured by gunfire from government security forces.

-- Murders of at least twenty-two people, in which political motivations played a part, in the final two months before the July 1998 National Assembly elections.

--Murders of at least five journalists, the attempted murders of at least three other journalists, and violent attacks on several opposition newspaper offices over the last four years.

--Grenade attacks against gatherings of Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party members in September 1995, which killed two and injured over thirty persons.

-- A grenade attack against a demonstration led by Sam Rainsy at the National Assembly in March 1997 in which at least sixteen people were killed and over one hundred wounded.

Aside from these relatively high profile cases, hundreds of other abuses have taken place in provinces outside Phnom Penh, but investigations have been rarer and prosecutions of the perpetrators still rarer.

The problem of impunity is made worse by the absence of judicial independence, as well as poorly trained and low-paid judicial staff, lack of resources, and fear of judges to prosecute military, police, gendarmerie, or any other armed and powerful offenders. Key institutions, such as the Supreme Council of Magistracy, which oversees the judiciary, and the Constitutional Council are clearly partisan and have little credibility; most of their members are affiliated with the Cambodian People's Party of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Thomas Hammarberg, the UN's Special Representative on Human Rights in Cambodia, also said last November that the lack of justice had created an unhealthy atmosphere of fear in society that must be effectively addressed.