"The post-Khmer generation holds the keys to Cambodia’s future." Image courtesy of PhotoSynthesis Productions.New York, September 2015. Hundreds of Cambodian-Americans take to the streets in protest as the prime minister of their homeland, Samdech Hun Sen, makes a rare appearance in the city for a UN summit. Appealing world leaders to take “meaningful action against kleptocratic dictators”, they seek a “peaceful transfer of authority” in Cambodia’s 2018 elections, when they hope Hun Sen will be denied a fifth term in office.
Hun Sen never gives interviews. Quietly, clinically and with tenacity, he has maintained his grip on executive power in Cambodia since 1985, making him one of the world’s longest-serving leaders and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) one of the longest-ruling. The authority of both rests superficially on a redemption narrative: Hun Sen played an important part in overthrowing the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979 and his government has since led back to its feet — albeit unsteadily — a nation utterly devastated by famine and genocide. Today he presides over a country pervaded by silence and repressed memories, free to practice censorship and state violence as international powers turn a blind eye.
But on this occasion, in an extraordinary move, Hun Sen has decided to break his silence towards foreign media. He has agreed to be interviewed during his stay in New York by writer, filmmaker and Cornell physicist, Robert H. Lieberman.
