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had been stacked and loaded onto trucks. Tin Leang Eng, 22, a social work student from
Phnom Penh University, took a break from her classes to attend with a handful of friends.
“I think human rights are important, and I want all people to know the values of hu-
man rights,” she told me as the crowd dispersed. The entire occasion might have made
an uplifting item in a UN agency newsletter. It seemed like everything the “international
community” had worked to create in Cambodia. It seemed like the country's democratic
promise fulfilled.
But it, too, was a mirage. On the same morning, just a few blocks away, around a hun-
dred protestors from Boeung Kak lake had attempted an impromptu Human Rights Day
march to Prime Minister Hun Sen's office at the imposing Peace Palace. Tep Vanny was
there, wearing a blue
krama
with a small Cambodian flag pinned in front. As the protest-
ers moved forward, clutching lotus flowers and hand-drawn English signs for the benefit
of the international press, they were met by a phalanx of riot police. The women in the
group were pushed and jostled; they shouted as they pressed their hands against the hard
plastic riot shields, each marked with the word “POLICE.” Several fainted and had to be
carried away.
Officially, the police had the law on their side. According to a Law on Peaceful
Assembly passed in 2009, protests had to be approved in advance by the relevant author-
ities, and had to take place at specially designated “Freedom Parks.” Even then, the right
for NGOs and unions to march could be arbitrarily denied. Permission had previously
been withdrawn for human rights forums, and “illegal” protests, by anti-eviction activists
Cambodia's most ostentatious—and incongruous—public holiday.
Four days before the two demonstrations, the CPP had marked International Human
Rights Day by convening its inaugural “Human Rights Respect and Dignity Promotion”
seminar. The keynote speaker at this misnamed event was Om Yentieng, a prime minis-
terial aide who headed two flimsy government institutions: the Cambodian Human Rights
Commission and the Anti-Corruption Unit. Preaching to a choir of CPP officials, he de-
scribed Cambodia as a “paradise” for NGOs and hailed the freedoms to be enjoyed under
Hun Sen. “The government allows national and international newspapers as well as local
and international organizations to be active,” he said. All this took place “in accordance
with democracy.”
2
What was wrong with Yentieng's statement? At first glance it could be hard to tell.
Cambodian civil society is considerably freer than it is in most Asian nations. The country
has fewer political prisoners than China, Vietnam, or Burma. It jails fewer bloggers than
Thailand or Vietnam, and prosecutes fewer journalists than Singapore. It has signed most
of the UN's human rights conventions, and is the only country in Asia to celebrate Inter-
national Human Rights Day as an official holiday. Yentieng's comments, spoken in com-
