Rights groups say the veteran strongman maintains his iron grip on the country through a mix of violence, politically motivated prosecutions and corruption Manan VATSYAYANA AFP while almost 30 percent of Cambodians live barely above the poverty line,' he said.
'Hun Sen has amassed vast fortunes for his family. Violence and graftĮvans said it was a mistake to agree to Hun Sen's demands for a power-sharing arrangement after the 1993 election. 'We did a great job on bringing peace, but blew it on democracy and human rights,' said former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, one of the architects of the peace deal. The Paris accords paved the way for Cambodia's first democratic election in 1993 and effectively brought the Cold War in Asia to an end.Īid from the West flowed and Cambodia became the poster child for post-conflict transition to democracy.īut the gains were short-lived and Premier Hun Sen, now in his fourth decade in power, has led a sustained crackdown on dissent. The genocidal regime wiped out up to two million Cambodians through murder, starvation and overwork, before a Vietnamese invasion toppled the communist Khmer Rouge but triggered a civil war. The Paris Peace Agreements, signed on October 23, 1991, brought an end to nearly two decades of savage slaughter that began with the Khmer Rouge's ascent to power in 1975.