Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Secretary-General, Prince Norodom Sirivudh, was arrested in connection with an alleged
plot to assassinate Hun Sen. The charges against Sirivudh were typically dubious. Speak-
ing with a journalist at a cocktail party, the jovial prince had reportedly “joked” about
attacking Hun Sen's motorcade with a grenade launcher. A few days later Sirivudh awoke
to find his party chatter splashed across the front page of the
New Angkor
newspaper. Hun
Sen went on the warpath; troops were deployed and Sirivudh was arrested at tank-point.
The National Assembly convened for a closed-door session and stripped the prince
of his parliamentary immunity. The vote was a unanimous 105 for and zero against; at
Ranariddh's request, every Funcinpec member present voted to condemn Sirivudh, who
was locked up pending trial. Ranariddh argued later that he denounced his colleague and
powerless Ranariddh had become, how far he now had to bend in order to appease Hun
Sen. In the weeks that followed, King Sihanouk brokered a compromise arrangement
whereby Sirivudh (his half-brother), would be allowed to go into exile in France and
avoid jail.
Joke or not, Hun Sen wasn't taking any chances. For much of the past year he had re-
mained cooped up in his heavily fortified compound at Tuol Krasang, close to the town
of Takhmao, ten kilometers south of Phnom Penh. Hun Sen reportedly worked late into
the night, chain-smoking 555-brand cigarettes, trusting few people outside his family and
a close circle of advisors. In a 1995 cable from the US embassy, Twining described Hun
Sen's “near-obsession” with security. Even before the Sirivudh affair, he traveled about
the country with around 60 armed bodyguards—more than any other government offi-
cial.
38
By 1996 Hun Sen's personal bodyguard unit had grown into a small personal army of
more than 1,000 men backed by tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters. Up
to 800 of these troops were based at Tuol Krasang—dubbed the “Tiger's Lair” by for-
eign journalists—who were supplemented by several hundred more men at a special CPP
complex located behind his villa in the capital. Technically part of RCAF's elite Brigade
70, set up in October 1994 to guard the government leadership, Hun Sen's bodyguards
existed outside the military chain of command. In return they received salaries of around
had built up his forces as insurance against his co-premier, who commanded a formidable
personal security force of his own.
40
Hun Sen's bodyguards also provided him with insurance against challenges from with-
in his own camp. Despite the CPP's outward appearance of unity, its internal balance of
power remained in flux. Though the 1993 election had marked a distinct shift from the
Chea Sim faction of the CPP to a younger group of officials close to Hun Sen, his party
