By
Zsombor Peter - January 17, 2014
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a spending bill
that would suspend some funding to Cambodia until the government
carries out an independent investigation of July’s disputed national
election and reforms its electoral system, or until the opposition ends
its boycott of parliament.
The bill also instructs the World Bank not to “reengage” with
Cambodia until the election dispute is settled and to report to U.S.
lawmakers regularly on what the Bank is doing to help the thousands of
families evicted in recent years from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak
neighborhood.
The bill, if approved by the U.S. Senate in the coming days, would
follow through on threats some U.S. lawmakers had made to cut aid
funding over Cambodia’s flawed election, which returned Prime Minister
Hun Sen to power but tainted the ruling CPP’s win due to evidence of
widespread irregularities.
While the U.S. hasn’t rejected the results of the election, it has conspicuously avoided endorsing them.
The spending bill may carry more force as a symbolic gesture than as a
financial burden, however. The text of the bill does not specify just
how much aid Cambodia could lose out on, and includes exceptions that
would prevent much of it from being withdrawn.
Of the more than $1 billion in aid foreign donors shower on Cambodia
each year, less than $80 million comes from the U.S., and most of that
goes directly to nongovernment groups. The new spending bill targets
only those funds that would go straight into government coffers for
anything other than humanitarian aid. It also protects any funds for
human rights training for the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, units of
which have recently implicated in violently putting down a protest for
higher garment factory wages.
Whatever modest aid is left, the bill would have it suspended until
“a) such government is conducting and implementing, with the concurrence
of the political opposition in Cambodia, an independent and credible
investigation into irregularities associated with the July 28, 2013,
parliamentary elections, and comprehensive reform of the National
Election Committee [NEC] or b) all parties that won parliamentary seats
in such elections have agreed to join the National Assembly, and the
National Assembly is conducting business in accordance with the
Cambodian Constitution.”
The opposition CNRP won nearly half the Assembly’s 123 seats in the
July poll and claims it would have won a majority had the voting been
free and fair. The party has refused to take its seats since the
Assembly convened in September and is calling for an independent
investigation and reforms to the NEC. Prime Minister Hun Sen’s
government is refusing to do either.
Negotiations between the opposition and ruling CPP are still stalled,
while mass protests against Mr. Hun Sen came to an abrupt end early
this month after government thugs raided a camp of opposition supporters
in central Phnom Penh.
CPP lawmaker and party spokesman Cheam Yeap said he was deeply
disappointed by the bill’s passage and accused the U.S. of unfairly
singling out Cambodia.
“I very much regret that America passed the law only on Cambodia; why
doesn’t America implement this on other countries?” he asked. “I study
the law a lot, I know about international law and common law. According
to procedure, the Western countries should not do things like this.”
Mr. Yeap lamented what he felt was an American bias toward the opposition. “America cannot control Cambodia,” he added.
As for Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood, from which the government
has in recent years illegally evicted some 3,000 families to make way
for a CPP senator’s real estate project, the spending bill calls for
more accountability from the World Bank.
In early 2011, an independent investigation concluded that a World
Bank project in Cambodia that was meant to furnish Cambodians with land
titles had actually helped to strip the Boeng Kak families of their land
rights. Later that year, the Bank confirmed that it was suspending all
new lending to Cambodia until the government and families reached an
agreement to compensate the evictees.
The spending bill would have the U.S. treasury secretary direct the
World Bank’s American executive director to report regularly to the
House Appropriations Committee on what the Bank was doing to “provide
appropriate redress” to the Boeng Kak families harmed by the Bank’s land
titling project. The Bank director would also have to tell the
Appropriations Committee what he was doing to “postpone reengagement”
with Cambodia until the election dispute was resolved.
Evictees and human rights groups have accused the World Bank of not doing enough to help the displaced families.
Tep Vanny, a Boeng Kak resident who has protested against the
evictions for years and paid for it with jail time, welcomed the
provision in the new bill by the House of Representatives.
“We are very glad for the solidarity of the American people and we
hope that the World Bank will take notice. It is time to resolve our
case once and for all because our people have suffered long enough,” she
said in a statement circulated by rights groups.
The bill would also suspend any U.S. funds appropriated for the Khmer
Rouge tribunal until the Cambodian government provides or secures
funding for the national side of the hybrid, U.N.-backed court.
The government is obliged to support the chronically under-funded
national side of the court under its agreement with the U.N. but has
largely failed to do so.
The U.S. is the court’s third- largest donor, behind Japan and
Australia. Of the $200 million provided by donors to the court as of
September, the U.S. has given $16.1 million, or about 8 percent.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Sean McIntosh declined to comment on how much aid the bill could actually cost Cambodia.
“In general we do not comment on pending legislation,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Khy Sovuthy)
