Word: cambodia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...eyed man appears to be talking about chess. "In order to kill your enemies you should know how to move your pawns," says Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia. But his thoughts are really on his kind of politics. There are no political opponents, only enemies to be eliminated; no debate, only plots to survive. "If you lead with your big pieces, you put them in danger." He knows about danger. He followed and abandoned the genocidal dictator Pol Pot, survived the Khmer Rouge's killing fields and civil war to become master of a country haunted by 1.7 million...
...among leaders of the Khmer Rouge." Hun Sen fears that a large-scale trial would disturb the balance he has achieved, one that has rabid guerrillas, royalists and former communists from his own party in check under his stringent authority. "For the first time in 30 years," he says, "Cambodia is at peace." U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright feels otherwise about a trial: "We think it is the only way to bring reconciliation." Hun Sen dismisses such disagreeableness. "If one wants to work with Hun Sen, one should study Hun Sen's resume closely," says the Prime Minister...
...political killings have continued, and although Hun Sen denies Cambodia is "a country of impunity," his promises to investigate and arrest the killers have come to nothing. He may not have personally ordered the killings, but some of his lieutenants are widely feared: victims have been found with eyes gouged out or hands cut off, clearly tortured before they were killed. Says Christophe Peschoux of the U.N. Human Rights office in Phnom Penh: "It is the chronic problem of Cambodia. They cannot manage conflict. Either they use intermediaries, or they reach for the gun. They cannot sit down and discuss...
...fell afoul of Pol Pot were tortured to death in the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. "I lost my first child during Pol Pot's time," Hun Sen says. "One of my in-laws was killed and many of my uncles and nephews." He returned to Cambodia as part of the Vietnamese-backed government after Hanoi's 1979 invasion sent Pol Pot and his forces into the jungle. From those redoubts, they would harry Hun Sen for two decades...
...Khmer Rouge taught Hun Sen fear, and they taught it well. In the end, it is fear that stands between Hun Sen and the trials. "If we just kill these people, will we have peace?" he asks. But if he waits too long, fear will become his epitaph. Cambodia cannot wait forever for justice. "This is the only chance we have to set up a system so people will respect the law," says Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has been compiling records of Khmer Rouge killings. "How can you walk away from 1.7 million lives...