Cambodia Stirs Tensions With Embrace of Former Thai Leader Thaksin - NYTimes.com

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By SETH MYDANS

BANGKOK — In one of his most provocative moves since being ousted in a coup three years ago, Thailand’s fugitive former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, is visiting neighboring Cambodia this week, stirring tensions between the nations and invigorating his political supporters at home.

Speaking in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, on Thursday, he accused the Thai government of “false patriotism” in long-running frictions that include an armed standoff at a disputed 11th-century temple on the nations’ common border.

But the provocation was not his words so much as his presence and his warm welcome in Cambodia, the closest he has come to his homeland as he has circled the world, from Hong Kong to London to Nicaragua to Montenegro and now to a refuge in Dubai. While he insists he wants to go home, Mr. Thaksin has been on the run as the Thai government seeks his extradition on a conviction for corruption while he was in office.

In Phnom Penh, he will be looking over the shoulders of regional heads of state, including those of Cambodia and Thailand, as they gather Friday in Singapore, just a short flight away, for a regional meeting.

“Thaksin is up to no good,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an expert on Thailand at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “I would say Thaksin is on a new offensive.

“I think both of them, their moves, have been perfectly calculated,” he added. He was referring to Mr. Thaksin and to his host, Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, who appeared to be using the visit to tweak his counterparts across the border.

On Wednesday, Cambodia rejected Thailand’s demand for Mr. Thaksin’s extradition.

Mr. Pavin said that if Mr. Thaksin could show the public that the Thai government “is incapable and unable to solve this crisis, then this will be a slap in the face of the government and will raise questions about the legitimacy of the government.”

Mr. Thaksin’s visit has escalated a confrontation between the nations that began with a dispute in 2008 over sovereignty at the Preah Vihear temple, where the two armies have fought several bloody skirmishes and remain on alert.

The two nations recalled their ambassadors last week after Mr. Hun Sen announced the appointment of Mr. Thaksin as an “economic adviser,” and Thailand said it would scrap an agreement governing negotiations over disputed offshore oil and gas deposits.

In its diplomatic note rejecting the demand for Mr. Thaksin’s extradition on Wednesday, the Cambodian government noted, in capital letters, that he had been forced from office although he had been “OVERWHELMINGLY and DEMOCRATICALLY elected by the Thai people.”

On Thursday both nations expelled an additional diplomat in a tit-for tat escalation of the diplomatic row.

Mr. Hun Sen may be looking to his own long-term interests and placing a bet on Mr. Thaksin as the future leader of Thailand, Mr. Pavin said.

In Thailand, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his Democrat Party remain politically weak, and many analysts believe that supporters of Mr. Thaksin would be likely to win any new election.

Mr. Hun Sen, who greeted Mr. Thaksin on Monday with an embrace and a vow of “eternal friendship,” seemed to taunt Mr. Abhisit, who took office in a parliamentary vote last December, with the backing of the military and without a popular vote. He was an indirect beneficiary of the coup that ousted Mr. Thaksin.

“If Abhisit is so capable, why not dissolve the Parliament and call for a new election?” Mr. Hun Sen asked Wednesday. “What is he afraid of? I am the prime minister of Cambodia who received two-thirds of the vote, and how many votes did Abhisit receive? Or did he steal his seat from other people?”

Mr. Hun Sen, 58, and Mr. Abhisit, 45, come from different worlds, the first of them raised as a barefoot temple boy who took up arms for the Khmer Rouge, the other an Eton and Oxford man, fluent in English and in Western ways.

If Mr. Thaksin’s intention was to discomfit the Thai government and keep himself on the front pages of newspapers at home, he seems to have succeeded.

“Rejected!” read a banner headline, in red type, in The Nation, a daily newspaper, on Thursday, referring to Cambodia’s refusal to extradite Mr. Thaksin.

Filling most of the front page under the headline was a facsimile of Cambodia’s diplomatic note, with its capitalized reference to the “ABSOLUTE REALITIES” of Thai politics and an implication of Mr. Thaksin’s legitimacy as prime minister.

The newspaper also printed Mr. Thaksin’s schedule in Cambodia for the next few days: a visit to the ancient temples at Angkor, a round of golf with Mr. Hun Sen and a possible meeting with supporters bused in from Thailand.

After that, it said, renewing the mystery that Mr. Thaksin has cultivated, the schedule simply noted, “Depart Cambodia for an unknown destination.”

Cambodia Court Cases Mount Against Opposition

By SETH MYDANS

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia’s courts have been busy in recent weeks with cases of defamation, disinformation and incitement brought by the government in what critics say is part of a broad assault on civil liberties.

“If you’re just walking into the situation, it seems like a series of ridiculous lawsuits,” said Sara Colm, a senior researcher for the New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch, who said at least nine lawsuits have recently been filed against critics and political opponents by Prime Minister Hun Sen and his supporters.

But she and other analysts say the targets seem carefully chosen to send a chill through the free press, independent judiciary, political opposition and civic organizations that were introduced by the United Nations in the early 1990s.

The surge in lawsuits amounts to “a serious threat to democratic development, which may undermine the efforts of the past 16 years to rebuild a tolerant and pluralistic environment in Cambodia,” the United Nations human rights office in Cambodia said in a statement in June.

In the most prominent cases, two opposition politicians have been stripped of their parliamentary immunity and sued for libel by Mr. Hun Sen and his associates. Threatened with a lawsuit and disbarment, their lawyer has abandoned the case, apologized to the prime minister and pledged allegiance to the ruling party.

The editor of one of the country’s last opposition newspapers was sent to prison in June for articles he had published, and another, soon afterward, apologized and agreed to shut down his newspaper to avoid court action.

A young political activist was convicted of defamation in June and jailed for spray-painting slogans critical of the government on the walls of his house.

“The court has always been used as a political tool,” said Theary C. Seng, whose leadership of a human rights group, the Center for Social Development, is being challenged in what she says is a politically motivated court case. “But recently, there is a concentration of cases which seem to be very political and which seem to use the court as a political tool to silence opposition voices.”

Mr. Hun Sen dismisses, and even appears to parody, his critics, declaring earlier this month that he was acting in the interests of democracy by stripping the two lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity so that they could face prosecution in the courts.

“From now on we are strengthening democracy and the rule of law,” he said. “This is not an anarchic democracy. Democracy must have the rule of law.”

Together with land seizures that are driving tens of thousands of people from their homes, analysts say these actions demonstrate a sense of impunity in a government that has resisted efforts to strengthen the rule of law in Cambodia.

In the most recent evictions, about 150 poor families were forced from their homes on prime land in Phnom Penh on Thursday and Friday, part of what the World Bank called “a major problem” in Cambodia’s fast-growing cities.

The court cases come at a time when countries in the region are looking increasingly toward China as a political and economic model and questioning the democratic and humanitarian values of the West.

In recent years, China has become a major donor and investor in Cambodia in projects that do not place the kinds of demands on governing and management that generally accompany assistance from Western nations and aid organizations.

“We have been fearing all along that Cambodia’s government is looking eastward toward China and Vietnam as models,” with their strong central governments and intolerance of dissent, said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

“Now there are a lot of activities recently that confirm our fear, and so it’s pretty scary,” he said. “What they are trying to do is to have only one strong party, and ultimately probably only one party.”

The aggressiveness of the government has been matched by what appears to be resigned acquiescence among many of its opponents to the dominance of Mr. Hun Sen and his ruling elite in the Cambodian People’s Party.

Nothing demonstrates this more sharply than the apologies that Mr. Hun Sen apparently requires as the price of leniency.

“I ask permission to demonstrate deep respect and bow down to apologize,” said Dam Sith, editor in chief of Moneaksekar Khmer, a pro-opposition newspaper, as he promised earlier this month to cease publication of his 10-year-old newspaper.

“I have in the past committed inappropriate acts again and again,” he said, adding that his only hope to avoid a defamation conviction is the “compassion and forgiveness” of Mr. Hun Sen — which he duly received.