Cambodian authorities arrested more than 20 political and youth activists over the weekend in a bid to forestall planned protests against an economic agreement with Laos and Vietnam, according to local media reports.
CambojaNews reported yesterday that police made 19 arrests on Saturday night, including three officials from the opposition Candlelight Party and 16 “social youths,” followed by four members of an organization called the Khmer Student Intelligent League Association at their office yesterday morning. This came after at least 14 more arrests were reported last week. Posts on social media also suggest that the authorities made a number of arrests outside the Royal Palace yesterday.
All of the arrests relate to a protest that was planned in the capital Phnom Penh yesterday to demand that the government withdraw from the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam (CLV) Triangle Development Area, a free trade agreement that was signed in 1999 and entered into force in 2004.
On August 11, several thousand Cambodians took part in protests against the CLV agreement in South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Australia. According to CambojaNews, a Telegram group called “United for the Nation” was then formed to discuss the issue, and allegedly to organize a protest in front of the Royal Palace at 4 p.m. yesterday. I also received word from a source that there would be “a massive protest” against the government in Cambodia on August 18.
Opponents of the CLV have a range of complaints about the agreement, particularly that it has resulted in a loss of territory to Vietnam. In a statement on August 13, the U.S.-based Khmer Movement for Democracy stated that the agreement would serve “as cover for further illegal deforestation, land evictions, and exploitation of resources for foreign gain.” It also voiced concern about “illegal Vietnamese immigration into the four Cambodian provinces” covered by the agreement – Ratanakkiri, Mondulkiri, Kratie, and Stung Treng – arguing that this would turn them into “Vietnamese-controlled vassals.”
As one would expect, the Cambodian government reacted with its usual zeal and overkill. It deployed a heavy police presence around the country, and set up barricades at provincial borders and around the capital Phnom Penh. CambojaNews quoted Interior Ministry spokesperson Touch Sokhak as saying the series of arrests was to maintain social order. Some groups had “carefully planned the protests to overthrow the government on the pretext of protesting against the CLV-DTA,” he said. Radio Free Asia (RFA) also quoted an August 16 Facebook post by Interior Minister Sar Sokha, who alleged that “there is a small group that wants to destroy the country through fake news to topple the legitimate government.”
This “dreadful but familiar over-reaction,” as exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy described it in a post on X, is entirely unsurprising. Over the past decade, the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) has severely tightened the boundaries of permissible political speech. In so doing, it has interpreted the very acts of political protest and dissent as an incitement to a “color revolution” aimed at toppling the government, usually with the support of shadowy foreign forces.
Exactly why the CLV agreement has become a subject of contestation now is unclear. The agreement, which is designed to foster economic development and crossborder connections between 13 provinces in the three countries, has been in force now for two decades, and has not been a subject of organized protests for many years.
However, the government’s outsized reaction to criticisms of the treaty appears to have done much to put the issue back on the agenda. In July, former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who ruled Cambodia for nearly four decades before handing power to his son last year, publicly ordered the arrest of three activists for incitement after they published an 11-minute video expressing concerns about the CLV treaty, particularly the possible loss of territory and natural resources to Vietnam. When this then became the subject of protests by Cambodians abroad on August 11, Hun Sen again warned people against protesting, claiming that he had spies within the Telegram group.
“We cannot let a few people destroy the peace of 17 million people. Some have seen the events in Bangladesh and compared the events in Cambodia,” he said. “Try it. If you consider yourself a strong person, please try.” According to RFA, Justice Minister Koeut Rith then said those who participated in anti-CLV protests “could face treason charges and potential prison sentences of between 15 and 30 years.”
It is very likely true that the CLV agreement has had negative impacts in northeast Cambodia; the dispossession of the poor to the benefit of a densely networked circle of rich notables is something akin to an iron law of Cambodian political economy. However, the concern about Vietnamese domination touches on a particularly emotive and politically sensitive theme in modern Cambodian politics.
Concerns about Vietnam – particularly about Vietnamese government encroachments into Cambodian territory and the effect of unrestricted Vietnamese immigration into border areas – has been an integral part of Cambodian nationalism since its gestation in the early twentieth century. The issue subsequently been one of the most potent lines of attack for opponents of the CPP, which was installed in power by Vietnam after its overthrow of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979, and has since retained close relations with Hanoi.
However, these relations have cooled somewhat in recent years, as Cambodia’s ties with China have come to challenge Vietnam’s historically prominent position in the country. Recent tensions have focused both on the Chinese role in refurbishing the Ream Naval Base on Cambodia’s coast, and its Phnom Penh’s plans to build the Funan Techo Canal. This project, which broke ground earlier this month, will connect the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand, with potentially deleterious impacts on Vietnam’s agriculturally productive Mekong Delta region. Branding it as a project that will help Cambodia “breathe through our own nose” by reducing its reliance on Vietnamese ports, Hun Manet’s administration has done little to assuage Vietnamese fears about the project, and refused to share information about its impacts. Instead, the government has depicted the completion of the project as a totem of nationalist pride, deploying rhetoric with an unspoken, though unmistakable and historically familiar, anti-Vietnamese valence.
Whether or not this rhetoric has contributed to the revival of concerns about the CLV agreement is unclear. However, the planned protests against the pact reflect the fact that concerns about Vietnam remain a potent appeal of the CPP’s opponents, particularly among overseas Cambodians, who do much to set the tone of opposition politics inside the country. The crackdown on these protests also reflects the severe paranoia of the government about the emergence of a bottom-up political movement – and the particular sensitivity that still attaches to anything involving Vietnam, even as it undertakes its own gradual pivot away from Hanoi.