Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
minister of women's affairs under Funcinpec, the Berkeley-educated Sochua had cam-
paigned tirelessly against human trafficking and child abuse, and fought to secure living
wages for female workers. She also helped draft a law against domestic violence that was
passed in 2005.
In April 2009 during a speech in Kampot, Hun Sen referred to Sochua as
jeung
klang
, or “strong legs”—a term with demeaning connotations when used toward women.
Sochua responded by suing Hun Sen for defamation. What happened next was like
something straight out of Franz Kafka's novel
The Trial
. Hun Sen's lawyers decided that
suing the prime minister for defamation was itself an act of defamation. Sochua's suit
against Hun Sen was thrown out; she was tried, found guilty, and ordered to pay 8.5 mil-
lion riels ($2,125) in fines and 8 million riels ($2,000) in “compensation” to Hun Sen.
She refused to pay, until the National Assembly voted to deduct it from her salary. So-
chua never seriously expected to win the case, but without access to most TV stations
and newspapers, the legal campaign was one of the few ways she had left to challenge
the CPP and advance the rights of women. Hun Sen was reportedly enraged that Sochua
dared to challenge him. “He has a need for total control,” she told me later. “If you look
further into it, it's a lack of self-confidence.”
On the whole, however, the SRP was struggling by 2009, riven by internal disputes and
under siege from the authorities. With most avenues for organized activism closed down
by the government, Rainsy fell back on attacking Hun Sen's main political vulnerability:
his ties to Vietnam. In October that year he trooped down to Svay Rieng with a contingent
of party officials and journalists and joined local villagers in pulling up half a dozen tem-
porary demarcation posts along the Vietnamese border. Later he produced maps alleging
Cambodia had lost land in the various border agreements signed on Hun Sen's watch.
As always, the allegations that the government had sold Cambodia out to the Vietnamese
cut a little too close to the bone. Charges swiftly followed and Rainsy was sentenced to
12 years in jail. Before the verdict came down, he boarded a flight to France, where he
began petitioning foreign governments and filing fruitless legal cases against Hun Sen in
foreign courts. Lacking the means to escape overseas, two rice farmers who took part in
the stunt were arrested and jailed.
As foreign governments had come to accept Hun Sen, Rainsy's pitch to foreign donors
and overseas constituencies was having less and less effect. His friends in the US Con-
gress remained as outspoken as always, but they no longer had much say over an Americ-
an policy now more concerned with the rise of Chinese influence than with evangelizing
for democracy abroad (see Chapter 11). Donor aid continued to flood in, despite Rainsy's
calls for foreign governments to turn off the tap and impose sanctions on Hun Sen.
The inability to capitalize on Funcinpec's collapse in 2008 showed that by tuning its
message to the international zeitgeist, the party had failed to gain much ground in the
