CAMBODIA: "What Cambodians need most urgently in the kind of world they live"

Cambodians are generally worried Cambodia may disappear from world map: Sen is Hanoi's puppet – throughout history Vietnam has usurped neighboring lands, and Ho Chi Minh's grand design of a federation of former French Indochinese states of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos under Hanoi's leadership is documented; King Father Sihanouk, Sen's adopted father who legitimized the Pol Pot regime in the past, is currently Sen's legitimizer. Additionally the world community seems more concerned with a semblance of stability under Sen than with his violations of free expression and human rights.

Cambodians' fear is real.

FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ETC-024-2010
September 15, 2010

An article by Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth published by the Asian Human Rights Commission

September 15, 2010
Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth

The East-West Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union on Dec. 25, 1991: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from his post, which was abolished, and the red Soviet flag over the Kremlin came down for the last time. Foreign policy expert Francis Fukuyama, a proponent of liberal democracy, called it "The triumph of the West, of the Western idea," and "The end of history."

Two months earlier, the international community and the four warring Cambodian factions adopted the Oct. 23, 1991 Final Act of the Paris Peace Accords, to "restore peace" to Cambodia, ravaged by "tragic conflict and continuing bloodshed." The Soviet-backed Vietnamese troops had withdrawn from Cambodia in 1989 after having installed a puppet Cambodian regime that replaced the Chinese-backed Pol Pot regime, defeated militarily in 1979.

International and Cambodian signatories declared to "commit themselves to promote and encourage respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cambodia..."

Today, almost 19 years after the Cold War ended, the world's nation-states -- great powers, middle powers, small powers -- continue their competition for power and influence. Robert Kagan, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote a book on this world, titled, "The Return of History and the End of Dreams."