Cambodia

Following July’s massive victory in unfree and unfair elections, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose ruling party took every seat in the lower house, appears to be adopting a time-tested strategy he has used repeatedly in the past. Before the election, Hun Sen’s government did virtually everything possible to ensure that the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) dominated the vote. A court banned the main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the two CNRP leaders, Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, were forced into exile and jailed, and the government cracked down on a broad swathe of civil society and independent media outlets. Before the vote, the government further forced a few remaining media outlets to limit their online coverage of the election, and, according to Human Rights Watch, the Cambodian security forces illegally took actions to essentially campaign for the ruling party. The July election appears to have ended Cambodia’s flirtation with some kind of hybrid regime, and the country now is fully a one-party state. The few small opposition parties that contested the election won no seats, and had little following. But, in the wake of the election, Hun Sen appears ready to try to co-opt some leading opposition members, while also offering gestures of goodwill that are probably designed to prevent leading democracies, which are considering imposing new sanctions on Cambodia, from going forward. Shortly after the election, Cambodia’s king, at the behest of Hun Sen, issued a royal pardon for fourteen CNRP members who had been under arrest for “insurrection” after trying to open a site in Phnom Penh for a protest. Two journalists who had worked for Radio Free Asia, and who had been held on espionage charges, also were released after the election, although they still could potentially be arrested again. Now, this week a Cambodian court released Kem Sokha from the remote prison where he had been held for a year, despite suffering from diabetes and reportedly being in worsening health. He has been moved to house arrest. As I have noted, this is a strategy Hun Sen has utilized before. Following 2013 elections, which the CNRP almost won, the CPP appeared conciliatory at first, and Hun Sen supposedly embraced a period of dialogue with the opposition. Such a strategy bought the CPP time, cooled some of the popular anger that led to the CNRP’s rise, and probably looked good to the world. Soon, however, Cambodian courts slapped Sam Rainsy with defamation charges, CNRP members were being arrested or otherwise harassed, and Kem Sokha was arrested for treason. But, in the period between 2013 and 2016, when the harassment of the opposition increased notably, Hun Sen was able to avoid international sanction, remain in power, and work to neutralize the CNRP. Hun Sen appears to be working from the same playbook these days, although his grip on Cambodia now is even firmer than it was after the 2013 elections. Still, he probably hopes to exploit gaps between democracies that might take harsher measures against Cambodia. (David Hutt has noted in Asia Times that the CPP also may not have wanted Kem Sokha to die in jail, which could have made him into a political martyr and rallied popular anger.) While the United States and European Union, among others, criticized the unfree July elections and are considering tougher steps, Japan, Australia, and many Southeast Asian states have been more reticent to criticize Hun Sen. Japan in particular, which sees Cambodia of great strategic importance, given Tokyo’s rivalry with Beijing over mainland Southeast Asia, has been willing to work closely with the CPP despite Hun Sen’s growing authoritarianism. Given this cracks in the international community, Hun Sen’s gambit might well pay off this time too.

The Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), led by Prime Minister Hun Sen, now utterly dominates Cambodia. The party won control of the entire lower house of parliament in elections last month. The full sweep—albeit in an unfree vote—is the culmination of Hun Sen’s increasingly brazen repression. Now, the key question is—with Cambodia having regressed politically, how will all of the country’s key actors, including Hun Sen, the remnants of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and other opposition forces, and key donors and other foreign countries, respond? For more on what the international community, the CNRP, and Hun Sen will do now, see my new World Politics Review article.

In Cambodia’s elections this past weekend, Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) reportedly won all 125 of the seats contested in elections that were slammed by international observers, Cambodia’s now-dissolved main opposition party, and human rights groups as being neither free nor fair. After all, the Cambodian government had dissolved the major opposition party and did not allow it to contest the election, and also had shut down multiple free media outlets in the run-up to the poll. On Election Day, the CPP had said it won one hundred seats, but by the next day, it was claiming it had won all 125. If the CPP indeed does claim all 125 seats, it would mean Cambodia no longer had any opposition party in the legislature at all—a change from the past, when it had stronger and weaker oppositions at times, but almost always had some opposition presence. It would become a one-party government. (Nineteen small parties participated in this election vote but none of them apparently won any seats.) The CPP has now said it will form a government within sixty days. In other words, this election, and the run-up period during which the government neutered civil society and opposition politics, seems to have decisively shifted Cambodia from a state that was some hybrid between democracy and autocracy—always leaning toward autocracy, for sure, but somewhere in between—into a complete autocracy. The country indeed is becoming little different, in its politics, from neighboring autocracies like Vietnam. Mu Sochua, vice president of the now-banned main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), said after last Sunday’s Cambodian election that this vote was the “death of democracy” in Cambodia. It appears Hun Sen fears neither internal nor external pressure and no longer cares to even pretend to oversee a democracy. He also may believe that a full autocracy offers the best chance of eventually handing power to his son, who appears to be groomed to become the country’s next ruler, with the support of the armed forces. But the election did not necessarily show a high degree of popular confidence in Hun Sen and his party. According to the Associated Press and other agencies, there were roughly six hundred thousand invalid ballots in the election. The high number may have materialized because many Cambodians spoiled their ballots, in protest of the lack of choices in the election—despite threats from the government against people who spoiled ballots. As Reuters notes, “As many as 594,843 votes, or 8.4 percent, of the 7.64 million votes cast, were invalid and spoiled, figures from the National Election Committee showed. By comparison, spoiled ballots in the last election, in 2013, comprised just 1.6 percent of the total.” The spoilage suggests that, for at least a sizable percentage of the population, extended CPP rule—especially with no checks on the CPP—is not what they wanted. It may further suggest that if the major opposition party had run, it could have done well. Despite the ballot spoilage, a sign of voter discontent, the opposition is stuck in a very tough place. Its most charismatic leaders are in jail or exiled abroad, and Hun Sen has boosted his already-immense power within the security forces. There seems little chance that prominent CNRP members could return to the country, unless they bend the knee to Hun Sen; the group may have to operate mostly in exile, at least for a period of time. Meanwhile, foreign countries have less leverage now than in the past, and the general democratic regression in Southeast Asia also helps Hun Sen. It is quite possible that now, after the election, Hun Sen will unleash further restrictions on media, civil society, and other activists voices, and clamp down even harder on individual opposition politicians. In a subsequent piece for World Politics Review, I will assess how the international community will respond to the Cambodian election, and the direction of Cambodian politics over the long term.  

In early May, Malaysia was stunned by the victory, in national elections, of the opposition coalition, led by Mahathir Mohamad and essentially (from jail), longtime opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Although some journalists had, in the run-up to the election, noted that the opposition’s support appeared to be cresting, in the wake of years of massive corruption allegations against former Prime Minister Najib tun Razak and his allies, the win still came largely as a shock. Najib had governed increasingly autocratically, including by detaining many prominent opponents, and his coalition—which had ruled Malaysia since independence—also benefitted from control of state media, massive gerrymandering, and the ability to hand out large amounts of cash in the run-up to election day, a strategy it had used repeatedly in the past to ensure victory. Yet despite these obstacles, the Malaysia opposition won—and Najib and his coalition (eventually) conceded, marking the country’s first democratic transfer of power. Yet democrats throughout the rest of Southeast Asia, where many elections are due this year and next, should not take too much heart from Malaysia’s example. For more on why they should not, see my new piece in the Globalist.

In the run-up to Cambodia’s national elections, due in July, Prime Minister Hun Sen has taken no chances of an upset, of a political shocker similar to the opposition win in Malaysia in early May. Just to make sure that the long-ruling prime minister and his party triumph, Hun Sen has overseen a ban of the opposition party, harassed many opposition politicians into exile or tossed them in jail, and torn apart the independent Cambodian media over the past year. The latest casualty of Hun Sen’s crackdown, which dates to early 2017, was the Phnom Penh Post, a groundbreaking and independent news outlet that was sold last month, under apparent pressure from the government. The Post’s editor was quickly fired, many prominent staffers quit, and the new management has shown little commitment to maintaining the Post’s standards as a quality independent news outlet. There is, then, little question that Hun Sen and his party will triumph in a July election that likely will be neither free nor fair. The bigger question, then, is what happens after that likely victory, which could leave younger Cambodians, who tend to support the opposition, seething, and which still offers no clear signs about who come after Hun Sen. For more on the Cambodian election, and the day after, see my new World Politics Review article.

As I noted late last year, 2017 was a disastrous year for democracy in Southeast Asia. Democratic rights and freedoms already have been in decline in Southeast Asia for more than a decade, but 2017 was perhaps the worst year for the region in that decade. Cambodia’s semi-democratic system collapsed last year, the Philippines’ rule of law deteriorated, Myanmar witnessed ethnic cleansing, Thailand remained ruled by a military junta, and Indonesia faced rising populism and Islamism. Freedom House’s latest version of Freedom in the World, released today, in fact chronicles a global collapse in democracy, with global freedoms regressing for the 12th consecutive year, and democracy threatened nearly everywhere in the world. (I worked with Freedom House on some Asia chapters of Freedom in the World.) So far, however, in just the initial weeks of the year, 2018 is looking like it could be even worse for Southeast Asia. Most notably, press freedom is increasingly threatened across Southeast Asia. In some countries, like the Philippines, Cambodia, and Malaysia, even periods of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian rule did not in previous years halt the creation of powerful, independent news outlets. In fact, in Cambodia, independent news outlets and other civil society groups continued to operate, over the past two decades, even at times of severe repression by the Hun Sen government. But in recent months, even some of the most groundbreaking, independent news outlets in Southeast Asia have faced possible mortal peril, as increasingly autocratic rulers try to shut down media groups. Several of these Southeast Asian leaders, like Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, have openly celebrated the U.S. administration’s war on “fake news,” and tried to associate their own crackdowns on the media with the White House’s approach to the press. The number of press outlets and reporters facing severe consequences is growing. In Thailand, the government has detained multiple reporters and increasingly just refuses to deal with the media—Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha last week installed a cardboard facsimile of himself to “answer” media questions of the government. Last year, Hun Sen oversaw the shuttering of the Cambodia Daily and multiple independent radio outlets in Cambodia. The prime minister could well come after more news outlets in Cambodia this year, before national elections. At the end of last year, in a case similar to other cases brought against Myanmar journalists from local publications, the Myanmar authorities arrested two Reuters journalists, under the Official Secrets Act. Reuters noted that “The Ministry of Information has cited the police as saying they were ‘arrested for possessing important and secret government documents related to Rakhine State and security forces.’” The military and the civilian government in Myanmar have indeed become increasingly repressive in trying to crack down on reporting of events in Rakhine State, where a wave of ethnic cleansing has been going on. The two Reuters reporters allegedly had gotten documents showing a site in Rakhine State where a mass grave was located. The military has since admitted that there was a mass grave found in this village, but the two reporters are still under arrest. Now, last week another major blow was struck against Southeast Asian press freedom. Rappler, one of the most prominent independent news outlets in the Philippines—and one that has aggressively investigated the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte and been called “fake news” by the Philippine president—now faces government action that could force its closure. On Monday, Philippine officials confirmed that the Duterte government had revoked Rappler’s license to operate, although Rappler is appealing the decision. Duterte has in fact been at war with the press since he took office in 2016, and he has no love for Rappler. As the Guardian notes: In March [2017], Duterte described top newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer and leading television broadcaster ABS-CBN as ‘sons of whores’ and warned them of karmic repercussions over their criticism of his drug war... Four months later, the Inquirer announced its owners were in talks to sell the publication. A business tycoon who backed Duterte’s 2016 election bid later disclosed he was planning to buy the Inquirer. Duterte in 2017 also threatened to block ABS-CBN’s application to renew its operating franchise, a permit that requires congressional approval. The ongoing war against the press in the Philippines, and the sale of the Daily Inquirer, has made Rappler even more central as an independent voice. But Rappler too may face so much pressure that it might close.

Over the past year, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling party have gone from simply repressing civil society and opposition parties to taking steps that are creating a fully authoritarian, one-party state. These steps have included jailing co-opposition leader Kem Sokha for treason, tossing multiple NGOs out of the country, overseeing the shutdown of multiple independent radio and print outlets, and, ultimately, presiding over the dissolution of the main opposition party. There now appears little chance that Cambodia’s 2018 national elections will be free and fair. In fact, Hun Sen, who in the past had often allowed elections to proceed with some degree of openness and fairness, appears ready to win an election that would be a totally undemocratic farce. In a piece for Project Syndicate last week, I noted that Hun Sen was cracking down not only because he feared that the opposition, which performed well in 2013 national elections, might actually win in 2018, but also simply because Hun Sen can crack down. I argued that he can crack down because, in 2017, there are few outside actors willing to take a tough stance against Hun Sen’s approach. Southeast Asia is, overall, experiencing a democratic regression, so Hun Sen’s repression is somewhat overshadowed by the drug war in the Philippines, the massive crisis in Rakhine State, and the continuing repression by the Thai junta. But most notably, I argued, Hun Sen could crack down because the Trump administration has made human rights a low priority in U.S. foreign policy, instead focusing on sovereignty. Indeed, Hun Sen, like multiple other world leaders, has used the U.S. president’s attacks on the media as an example for his own attacks on journalists. As I noted, when Hun Sen met President Trump in Manila in November, he seemed to praise the U.S. president’s sovereignty-first, noninterventionist style of politics. To be fair, then, earlier this week the administration, pushed by supporters of Cambodian human rights on Capitol Hill and by human rights groups and the opposition in Cambodia, has taken some important steps to demonstrate that it is willing to address Hun Sen’s severe rights violations. The administration on Wednesday announced it was placing visa restrictions on a group of Cambodian officials who have played a role in the ongoing crackdown on democracy in that country. The State Department also issued a tough statement calling on Hun Sen to release jailed co-opposition leader Kem Sokha, to allow the political opposition to function, and to stop repressing civil society. Still, overall, I do not think these steps make up for the broader enabling effect that U.S. policy in 2017 on democracy and rights has had in Southeast Asia, and in Cambodia specifically. That said, the steps taken this week are important signals to Hun Sen, and might help slow him down as he guts the country’s institutions and prepares for an unfree national election next year. In addition, other major actors in Cambodia, such as China, probably do not really want the country to spiral into economic chaos, or for Hun Sen to force Western donors to cut off aid. So, there are still points of leverage in the Cambodian crisis.

Over the last year, Cambodia’s ruling party, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), has dramatically increased its pressure on its political opponents and civil society. Democracy in Cambodia has always been fraught, and elections are not completely free and fair. But the current crackdown is much greater in scope, and far more concerning, in part because it is being enabled by American apathy. To see more about the interplay between U.S. policy and Cambodia’s crackdown, read my new Project Syndicate piece.

For decades, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, the longest-serving nonroyal ruler in Asia, has played a delicate political game. While using a wide range of tactics—co-option of opposition party leaders, the use of state funds to promote the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), laws and lawsuits to reduce the influence of civil society and political opponents, and reportedly sometimes outright election fraud—he also has tried to maintain at least an appearance of some political freedom in Cambodia. As a result, for decades Cambodia existed as a kind of pseudo-authoritarian state, but one in which there were greater freedoms than in neighboring nations like Vietnam, Laos, and even to some extent Thailand. The country held contested elections, even if the electoral process was highly biased against opposition parties, and the CPP used a wide range of threats and other tools to try to divide and harass the opposition. Civil society, which had been rebuilt in the 1990s, continued to flourish despite the CPP’s tough tactics toward environmental groups, some media outlets, campaigners for fairer electoral processes, and other NGOs. Foreign civil society organizations like the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute continued to operate in the country. Reporters faced harassment—and worse—but in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s a young generation of Cambodian journalists emerged, and tough, independent radio, online, and print outlets investigated government activities and posed tough questions to policymakers. In 2013, the main opposition party even nearly won national elections—the true result will never be known, although some opposition figures believe it did actually win, but the election commission did not allow the CPP to lose. In the past year, however, Cambodia’s politics have slid farther backwards than probably any other country in East Asia. (Thailand is a close competitor, but the Thai military took power in 2014, not 2017.) Hun Sen and the CPP this year have launched an all-out attack on political opposition and civil society. The prime minister seems to have decided to take no risks ahead of 2018 national elections—no repeat of the possibility that his party could lose. He also appears emboldened by a new geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia in which the United States government, which historically had been one of the major critics of Hun Sen’s abuses, has chosen to mostly ignore human rights issues. Most recently, last week the Cambodian government filed papers that seek to dissolve the main opposition coalition, which would leave the opposition shattered before national elections in 2018. The proposed dissolution of the opposition is just the capstone on a year of turbulence. One of the main opposition leaders, Sam Rainsy, remains in exile. If he returns to Cambodia, he will have to face defamation charges. The other opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested in September on dubious charges of treason and is reportedly now in prison. The crackdown has extended more widely as well. The Cambodia Daily, one of the most important media outlets, shut down in September. NDI had its program shuttered earlier this year, and top Cambodian government officials are now warning other NGOs that their events could be shut down if they do not get government permission in advance. Hun Sen’s government also has closed a number of independent radio stations, and is reportedly eying an even broader crackdown on politicians and civil society. The Los Angeles Times reports that about half of the opposition’s members of parliament have fled the country. With good reason: As the Los Angeles Times reports, earlier this month Hun Sen warned that “rebels” in Phnom Penh were supposedly plotting to overthrow the government, and suggested action needed to be taken against them. Hun Sen, in fact, has been issuing dire warnings all year of how bad it could get. In June, he delivered a speech in which he warned opposition politicians and other critics to “prepare coffins” if his party happened to lose in 2018. The prime minister is certainly using every tool possible to make sure his party wins.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Robert Kagan suggested that, in this period of uncertain governance by the White House, Congress should take a much more forceful approach to governing, as it did in the 1860s and, to some extent, in the 1920s. He noted that Congress already has defied the president on Russia policy and, to some extent, on health care, and he outlined ways in which Congress could become the central policymaker in Washington. Among others, Kagan suggested that: “on matters where [Republicans and Democrats] both see a threat to the nation’s interests … Congress can wield the power of the purse … [like] a joint national security committee headed by the chairs and ranking members of the foreign relations, armed services, and intelligence committees, for instance.” It seems hard to believe that the current Congress, split among GOP factions, with little experience legislating, and unsure how to approach a president who enjoys high popularity with the GOP base, will take on broad governing powers the way Kagan suggests. What’s more, congresspeople in both parties have, over the past twenty years, gotten used to an increasingly so-called “imperial presidency,” in which so much of the policymaking process is driven by the executive, especially on foreign policy issues. However, on one region of the world—Southeast Asia—the possibility for Congress to take the lead, to be the driving policy actor, actually exists. As I noted in an earlier blog post, over the past two decades Congress has played a central role in determining Southeast Asia policy. In many respects, Congress has dominated Southeast Asia policy more than it has any other region of the world; several top House and Senate leaders including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have significant interests in Southeast Asia policy. For years, the region was largely ignored by multiple U.S. administrations, and Congress was free to craft sanctions policy on Myanmar, to shape policy toward Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and to weigh in significantly on U.S. policy toward Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. Now, not only has the White House paid relatively little attention to growing crises in mainland Southeast Asia but those crises are quickly spiraling out of control. In just the past two months, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen has shut down the National Democratic Institute’s operations in Cambodia, cracked down on top members of the opposition CNRP party, shut a range of press outlets, and seems prepared to potentially close the CNRP for good, in the run-up to next year’s 2018 national elections. Cambodia was never a true democracy, but this intense repression goes far beyond the political situation in Cambodia during the 2000s and early 2010s—it is a dramatic increase in the level of repression, one that puts Cambodia on the verge of becoming a full dictatorship. Hun Sen is only growing bolder; this week, he vowed “to continue leading his impoverished Southeast Asian nation for another 10 years,” according to the Associated Press. The White House has seemed mostly uninterested in the Cambodia crackdown; the State Department has said it is “deeply concerned” over Hun Sen’s actions. With the offices of Senator Mitch McConnell and several other top congressional leaders long interested in Cambodia, the opportunity is there for Congress, rather than the White House, to develop a tough approach to the growing climate of repression in Cambodia. Similarly, in Myanmar the situation in Rakhine State has in recent months spiraled from bad to worse. Some 120,000 people have fled into Bangladesh in recent weeks, after a spate of attacks by Rohingya insurgent groups and a brutal Myanmar army campaign in Rakhine State, which reportedly has included widespread burnings of homes and swaths of land. Official figures state that around 400 people have been killed in the latest spate of fighting in Rakhine State, but it is hard to know if that number is accurate—it could be wildly understated. The military is stepping up its force presence in Rakhine State. The BBC today reported that Myanmar may be mining the border with Bangladesh. Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto head of government, has downplayed the severity of the crisis, earning international condemnation. Yesterday, in a call with Turkey’s president, Suu Kyi reportedly blamed “terrorists,” for what she dubbed “a huge iceberg of misinformation” about the crisis in Rakhine State. She previously has downplayed the scale of the crisis and the army’s role in it, and there is little indication that Suu Kyi will or can restrain the military from a scorched earth policy in Rakhine. Again, the White House has taken a low-key stance toward the crisis, as it has in Cambodia. Politico’s Nahal Toosi reported this week that the “Trump admin – including the State Department has been silent re: killings of Rohingya” but that after significant prodding from Toosi, the State Department issued a comment to Politico that “expresses ‘deep concern’ re: Myanmar violence. But it doesn't name Rohingya.” Congress, again, should take the lead. The letters sent this week to Suu Kyi and her government by Senator John McCain and Congressman Edward Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, were important first steps. But Congress could do more. It can revisit the possibility of extending IMET to Myanmar, and call new hearings on the Rohingya crisis, before the visit of Pope Francis in November, to expose the potential atrocities and help people understand the situation in western Myanmar. And if the situation in Rakhine State gets worse, Congress should consider even sterner measures toward Myanmar—despite the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi in theory now runs the country.

Part Two Read Part One here.  Could the situation for democracy in Southeast Asia, which had seemed on the verge of having multiple consolidated democracies in the 2000s, get worse these days? Well, actually … In recent weeks, authoritarian rulers have demonstrated even more willingness to crack down in Cambodia and Thailand. And, Myanmar is descending into the kind of civil strife that could easily undermine the democratic transition—or even make some army leaders think they need to seize control of the country again. Likely worried about the opposition’s gains in 2013 national elections and in 2017 local elections—and perhaps emboldened by the election of a U.S. government that has demonized reporters and downgraded rights promotion as a component of U.S. foreign policy—long-serving Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen has gone on the attack against his opponents in the past six months. Hun Sen also probably is seizing this chance to defang the opposition before national elections next year. Hun Sen has now taken his crack down to a level not seen in decades. Last week, opposition leader Kem Sokha was arrested on treason charges. He was just one of many people who have been caught up in Hun Sen’s crackdown. In recent weeks the government also has forced the National Democratic Institute to remove its foreign staff from the country and end its programs in Cambodia. The Hun Sen government also has gone after the Cambodia Daily, one of the foundations of Cambodia’s independent press. The Cambodia Daily, which had been an important voice for independent reporting in the country, published its last issue yesterday. Hun Sen also is threatening Voice of America and Radio Free Asia’s Cambodia outlets, among other media outlets and civil society organizations. There are legitimate fears that Hun Sen may try to simply shut down the CNRP opposition party. Democracy in Thailand is not doing much better, although Thailand’s main opposition party, like the opposition CNRP in Cambodia, still probably enjoys significant public support. Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra apparently has fled the country instead of facing her court date on August 25, on charges related to her administration’s rice subsidy scheme. (Her verdict has been postponed until late September.) On the same day two weeks ago that Yingluck did not appear in court, her former commerce minister from the period of Yingluck/Puea Thai rule was given a forty-two year jail sentence in a case related to Yingluck’s charges. Some of these charges on the rice subsidy scheme are controversial, since those accused are standing trial essentially for government incompetence. Other Puea Thai leaders face serious charges. The military may indeed hold an election in 2018—or it might not—but in any case it has already tried to destroy the opposition, and to make sure that the armed forces have control of politics for many years to come. Then there is Myanmar. Since Aung San Suu Kyi’s government took power last year, it has concentrated on the economy and on the peace process with a number of ethnic minority groups. Indeed, Suu Kyi’s spokesperson has made clear that rights and democracy come behind economic issues and the peace process on the NLD’s priority list. So, Suu Kyi has said little as security forces have gone on a scorched earth campaign in Rakhine State since last autumn, and in recent weeks the security forces and an increasingly powerful Rohingya militant group have laid waste to Rakhine again. The Washington Post noted last week that “witnesses said Myanmar soldiers [have] torched villages and sent thousands of Rohingya fleeing across the Naf River to neighboring Bangladesh, which is already home to about 400,000 Rohingya refugees who have fled Burma in recent years,” yet Suu Kyi has not commented on the army’s tactics. The fighting in Myanmar shows no sign of ending. Human Rights Watch has documented massive burning of villages, and the United Nations reported this week that some 120,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar in just the past two weeks, adding to the number of Rohingya as refugees or internally displaced people. Under Suu Kyi, Myanmar reporters also have been increasingly threatened, whether through defamation cases or simply by harassment from the security forces. There seem to be few signs of a better future for Southeast Asian democrats, at least in the near term. Indeed, if the past five years have been terrible for democracy in Southeast Asia, the next five look even more uncertain.

In recent months, the issue of Cambodia’s Indochina War-era debt to the United States, for which the U.S. government still demands repayment, has resurfaced once again. A recent lengthy New York Times article outlines the current situation, which has also been covered by Southeast Asian media. The Cambodian government is asking Washington to forgive a loan made to the Lon Nol government to buy essential items, at a time when U.S. bombing and the growing civil war in Cambodia had driven large numbers of refugees into Phnom Penh. That loan, with interest, now comes to around a half a billion dollars. “We lack the legal authority to write off debts for countries that are able but unwilling to pay,” Jay Raman, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Phnom Penh, said in an email last month, according to the Times article. “These legal authorities do not change from one administration to the next, absent an action from Congress.” The dispute over whether Cambodia should pay has lingered for years. Now, the Cambodian government has, since the inauguration of the new U.S. president, highlighted some of the difficult moral and ethical issues related to asking for the debt repayment. According to Asia Times, Prime Minister Hun Sen has publicly called on the new U.S. president to cancel the debt. Prime Minister Hun Sen has highlighted the fact that unexploded U.S. bombs still are common in the countryside, while Hun Sen has spoken several times in recent months about Cambodia’s unwillingness to pay. He noted, according to Al Jazeera, "I have not sent an official letter to Trump asking him to cancel the debt … They brought bombs and dropped them on Cambodia and [now] demand Cambodian people to pay," said Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen early this month. But one aspect of the debt issue has gone mostly unnoticed, although it has been mentioned by Sophal Ear, an expert on Cambodia at Occidental College. He told the Times that, for Hun Sen, focusing on the issue of the war debt “deflects attention from what’s happening now in Cambodia and puts the limelight on Cambodia the victim.” As I noted, there are a wide range of legal and moral arguments about whether or not Cambodia should repay its debts---the debts were incurred after massive U.S. bombing of the country, making it seem highly morally wrong to some for Washington to ask a poor nation for debt repayment; but, international law still holds that countries should pay their debts. But, as Sophal Ear alludes to, “what’s happening now” in Cambodia is that longtime prime minister Hun Sen’s government has gotten increasingly authoritarian in the past two years, as 2017 and 2018 elections loom. And Hun Sen appears to be potentially using the U.S. debt issue as a way to rally his base and reduce attention on his increasingly authoritarian style. In the past two years, Hun Sen, who long has run a quasi-authoritarian government, has taken some of his most extreme measures against critics. His government removed opposition leader Kem Sokha from his role as minority leader in the parliament, he has launched a wide crackdown on rights activists and civil society leaders, according to numerous human rights groups, and he has said he might seize the property of former opposition leader Sam Rainsy. The prime minister has overseen attempts by parliament to pass new legislation that would essentially make it easier to keep opposition lawmakers from participating in politics. A group of Southeast Asian parliamentarians, noting that growing climate of oppression in Cambodia, released an analysis of the situation last month. According to the Phnom Penh Post:   “A scathing report by a group of ASEAN parliamentarians yesterday called recent changes to the Law on Political Parties and judicial harassment of opposition lawmakers part of a “systematic dismantling of democracy”, creating a “dark shadow” over Cambodian society ahead of June commune elections.   Titled Death Knell for Democracy, the report describes the sustained use of a partisan judiciary and National Assembly by the government in a bid to hobble the opposition in the wake of the “game changer” 2013 election, which saw a unified opposition make unprecedented gains.”   Focusing on the debt issue, as Sophal Ear notes, further helps Hun Sen distract attention from the growing crackdown, and possibly play up a popular issue among Cambodians. With critical elections looming in the next two years, it is unlikely the prime minister will step back from his increasingly hard line approach.

Rachel Brown, Sherry Cho, Lorand Laskai, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. LDP eyes offensive push for Japan. A policy research group in Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is pushing for the adoption of new long-range offensive capabilities. Consisting primarily of former defense ministers, former deputy defense ministers, and former parliamentary vice ministers, the LDP group urged the government to begin considering a change to Japan’s military stance, citing a “new level of threat” from North Korea. The recommendations, focusing on the potential acquisition of new ballistic missile defense assets, exploration of “counter-attack” capabilities, and protection of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), are in line with Abe’s efforts to shift Japan’s security posture away from its historically defense-oriented stance. Since taking office in 2012, he has been instrumental in ending a decades-long ban on weapons exports and facilitating the reinterpretation of Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow for the defense of allies. While proposals for acquiring long-range strike capability, such as cruise missiles, have been made in the past, the recent North Korean launch of four ballistic missiles—three of which fell into Japan’s EEZ—has spurred a new sense of urgency. The LDP, however, will face obstacles in pursuing any official change to Japan’s security stance. The LDP must account for their coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed Komeito party, which favors an exclusively defensive posture, and a challenging fiscal environment in which any increase in defense spending must account for both the conventional military threat of North Korea and countering assertive Chinese actions in the East China Sea. 2. Tencent builds global investment portfolio with Tesla stake. Chinese gaming and messaging giant Tencent invested $1.8 billion in Tesla this week, acquiring a 5 percent stake in the American automaker and energy storage company. The Tesla stake is hardly Tencent’s first major international investment, and rather represents a continuation of the company’s effort to diversify investments and expand beyond China. Tencent is among China’s most highly valued companies, but many of its products, including the messaging platform WeChat, have not yet caught on abroad. Instead, Tencent has invested heavily in gaming and messaging companies with products already popular both inside and outside of China. Such firms include Supercell, which makes Clash of Clans; Riot Games, which makes League of Legends; and Pocket Gems, Activision Blizzard, and Glu Mobile. Tencent is also reportedly considering an investment in the Indian e-commerce company Flipkart. But what Tencent saw in Tesla, a firm outside its core business, remains uncertain. The deal could demonstrate Tencent’s burgeoning interest in the electric car market, where it has made a few other bets including in Tesla rival NextEV. The deal could also help Tesla increase its presence in the Chinese market, where it hasn’t previously thrived. Other potential synergies also exist between the two companies; perhaps someday passengers will recline in the backs of autonomous electric cars while sending WeChat messages and playing League of Legends. 3. North Korean hackers target banks. An attempted hack into Polish banks recently exposed efforts by the North Korean government to target financial institutions around the world. The over one hundred targets identified through the hackers’ digital trails included international institutions, such as the European Central Bank and World Bank, national central banks, and private firms such as Bank of New York Mellon and Deutsche Bank. The information from Poland adds another red flag amidst growing concern over North Korean hacking and global financial systems. U.S. officials are also investigating North Korean involvement in the case of the $81 million stolen in the 2016 Bangladesh Bank heist; in that instance, Chinese intermediaries may also be implicated. Besides these more lucrative targets, North Korean hackers have also ramped up usage of ransomware as well as attacks on defectors and South Korean assets such as transportation and weather facilities. North Korea’s cyber capabilities include a network of an estimated 1,700 hackers who mostly live and work abroad, but remain under constant supervision by government minders. 4. Westinghouse files for bankruptcy protection. Ten years ago, Japanese multinational Toshiba Corp. purchased Westinghouse, the American power company, for $5.4 billion dollars—three times the company’s estimated value. At the time, some analysts predicted that the acquisition would “strain Toshiba’s financial standing.” This week, those analysts’ fears were realized: Westinghouse, a name that once “symbolized America’s supremacy in nuclear power,” filed for bankruptcy protection. The news comes in the long wake of the 2015 Toshiba accounting scandal involving $1.2 billion of overstated operating profits, and reports from earlier this month that Toshiba was considering a $1.8 billion writedown of overstated Westinghouse assets. Just two weeks ago, the company said it would “aggressively” seek strategic options to avoid declaring Westinghouse bankrupt, but evidently found no other way out. Though some argue that Westinghouse’s fate is more symptomatic of incompetent business practices rather than a failing nuclear power industry, the bankruptcy is a serious setback for Japan’s historic prominence in global nuclear energy generation. 5. Didi courts SoftBank. Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-sharing company, is reportedly in talks with Japan’s SoftBank to secure a multibillion dollar investment. Didi became the undisputed leader of ride-sharing in China after buying Uber China last year, ending a multi-year tussle between Uber and domestic competitors over China’s gigantic ride-sharing market. A large investment from SoftBank would put Didi Chuxing roughly on par with Uber in terms of capital funding and help the company invest in next-generation autonomous vehicles. The company, which is widely considered China’s newest “national champion,” has also expressed interest in expanding internationally. While Didi has not formally expanded its service abroad yet, the company is already partnering with Uber’s rivals abroad, including Lyft in the United States. Lofty ambitions for driverless cars and international dominance aside, SoftBank’s investment will also help Didi fend off a host of regulatory challenges at home. Bonus: Cambodia bans breast milk exports. This week, the Cambodian government officially banned the sale and export of breast milk, following the temporary suspension of exports earlier this month. The Health Ministry allegedly singled out one Salt Lake City-based company, Ambrosia Labs, which was the sole exporter of milk collected from Cambodian mothers and sold overseas. Ambrosia, cofounded by a former Mormon missionary to Cambodia, collected milk daily from more than twenty women for around $.50 per ounce in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, and resold it in $20 five-ounce packs to customers in the United States. Many donors, who made as much upwards of $10 a day or even $120 per week, relied on the stable source of income their milk provided. UNICEF, however, criticized the company for exploiting “vulnerable and poor” Cambodian mothers, and suggested that excess breast milk should remain within the country. A government statement endorsed by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said, “even though Cambodia is very poor, she doesn’t sell mothers’ breast milk.”

Rachel Brown, Sherry Cho, Gabriella Meltzer, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. Asia braces for Trump. On Tuesday night, as results from the U.S. general election poured in from polling places across America, Asian markets reeled at the prospect of a Trump presidency. By Thursday, U.S. markets stabilized and Asian markets had bounced back. But what will a Trump in the White House mean for Asia in the coming four years? At this point, even experts’ best guesses are still uncertain. Trump’s foreign policy strategies are a contradictory bunch: an isolationist “America first” doctrine and protectionist trade practices, but an “extremely tough” approach to taking on U.S. enemies. So far, the signals from Trump’s campaign have been just as mixed. On “day one,” according to a former U.S. Treasury official, Trump may label China a currency manipulator, a decision former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers called “ludicrous.” But at the same time, Trump spoke with both South Korea’s President Park and Japan’s Prime Minister Abe in a sign of reassurance from the United States to its allies in Asia. This week, two senior Trump advisors on Asia also published a Foreign Policy piece that put forth a vision of “peace through strength” whose policy prescriptions primarily attacked “bad trade deals” and proposed to increase the size of the U.S. Navy fleet. What will actually come to pass is anyone’s guess. 2. Delhi enveloped in life-threatening smog.  Hindus throughout the city of Delhi celebrated the holiday of Diwali, the festival of lights, on Saturday by lighting candles and lamps and setting off fireworks. Unfortunately, these joyful rituals exacerbated the metropolis’s preexisting pollution problem, sparking a week-long period of dangerous smog. The situation has forced the municipal government to close 1,800 schools, as well as impose a five-day moratorium on construction and a ten-day power plant closure; it is also advising residents to remain indoors. Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday to protest, as current levels of particulates are as dangerous as smoking two packs of cigarettes per day and 10 percent of the city’s workforce has been forced to call in sick. According to the World Health Organization, India currently houses thirteen out of the twenty most polluted cities on earth, with Delhi carrying the title of most polluted. Although changing weather conditions with the arrival of winter will dissipate the smog, poor city-dwellers often turn to the burning of trash, plastic, and rubber to keep warm. In addition, the various sources of pollution, including crop burning, vehicles, construction, and fireworks, all fall under the purview of different government agencies, which are oftentimes at odds with one another. Arvind Kejriwal, New Delhi’s chief minister has compared the city to a “gas chamber,” and has said that the government needs to take “some urgent measures.” 3. President Park asks opposition parliament to nominate new prime minister. The recent announcement was a major political concession for South Korean President Park Geun-hye and fresh confirmation of her waning political authority as the scandal involving her ties to Choi Soon-shil continues to roil the country. Despite Park’s efforts to regain public trust by replacing much of her presidential staff and cabinet, surveys show that Park has a less than 5 percent approval rating. Tens of thousands of protestors continue to call for her resignation in demonstrations throughout South Korea. In a Tuesday meeting with the National Assembly’s speaker, Chung Sye-kyun, Park asked opposition parties to nominate a new prime minister. This occurred six days after Park’s proposed candidate for prime minister, Kim Byung-joon, was summarily rejected by the opposition parties that control a majority of the South Korean parliament. Investigations into Choi Soon-shil, the centerpiece of this political scandal, continue. Park has offered to cooperate with any prosecutorial probes, possibly becoming the first South Korean president to be investigated while in office. Prosecutors reported on Tuesday that they had raided the Seoul offices of Samsung, South Korea’s largest chaebol, a kind of large business conglomerate, investigating allegations that the chaebol provided $3.1 million to a company co-owned by Choi and her daughter. Choi was arrested on November 3 and faces allegations of using her friendship with the president to act as a kind of “shadow president” and solicit donations. 4. Cambodia’s Hun Sen using courts as a weapon against opposition. The deputy leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), Kem Sokha, is the most recent target of a government that rights groups allege is using Cambodian courts as a willful weapon to suppress critics. Kem’s case is one of several facing opposition leaders in what is generally interpreted as an effort to upset the opposition’s organizing efforts for the local elections being held next June. Um Sam Ann, another opposition leader, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for criticizing the government’s handling of the Cambodia-Vietnam border demarcation. CNRP leader Sam Rainsy, currently in self-imposed overseas exile for the third time in a decade, is also facing legal troubles after an old conviction for defamation was reinstated and his parliamentary immunity was stripped by the government’s legislative majority. Although Cambodia is nominally a democracy, Hun has been Cambodia’s de facto leader for three decades. A 2013 general election, however, saw the CNRP mount a strong challenge to Hun’s control, winning fifty-five seats in the National Assembly and leaving Hun’s Cambodian People’s Party with sixty-eight. Many critics allege that Hun has prioritized the dismantlement of the political opposition since then, using complicit courts as a weapon against them. 5. India Bans 500 and 1,000 Rupee Notes.  In a surprise announcement, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned the use of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in an effort to crack down on corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion. These two high denomination bills comprise an estimated 85 percent of the currency currently in use in the country. By requiring individuals to change over their bills, officials hope to bring to light billions of dollars of assets that are not currently reported. But while there may be long-run benefits in improved tax collection and financial transparency, the immediate effect was a stock market drop. The change also led to a two-day ATM shutdown and to chaos at banks where customers attempted to switch their bills for new 500 and 2,000 rupees with added security features. The introduction of a new 1,000 rupee note is also underway. The transition has been particularly felt in cash-dependent rural areas, but will also have implications for everyone from nonresident Indian nationals to foreign visitors. Bonus: Japanese augmented reality will hack your taste buds. At the University of Tokyo’s Cyber Interface Lab, researchers are using augmented reality—a combination of virtual reality and real-world objects—to trick how our brains process eating. Various headsets, detailed in this this video, can digitally manipulate the perceived size of a food item to affect how satiated a wearer feels while eating, or pump scents toward an eater’s nose that can suggest a wide variety of flavors. The effects can potentially reduce calorie intake by making the user believe he or she is eating more, or something different, than in reality. In some experiments, volunteers ate almost 10 percent less when a biscuit appeared 50 percent larger. Some companies, like Samsung, have also begun probing the “culinary virtual reality space” in other ways to offer state-of-the-art—albeit somewhat fictitious—fine dining experiences.