Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises:

(a) the role of Australia in helping to broker the Paris Peace Accords (PPA); and

(b) that one of the core promises of the PPA was to provide the Cambodian people with free and fair elections;

(2) expresses serious concerns about:

(a) political suppression in Cambodia, including the closure of media outlets such as the Cambodia Daily; and

(b) the arrest and trial of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) leader, Kem Sokha, arising from a speech he delivered in Australia in 2013;

(3) calls for:

(a) the immediate release of Kem Sokha from detention and the removal of restrictions on civil society; and

(b) greater transparency and assurance of due process in proceedings against political prisoners and dissidents;

(4) condemns the move to disband the CNRP and redistribute seats to minor parties without by-elections;

(5) expresses serious concerns about the timing of the actions against the CNRP and Kem Sokha in light of the impending 2018 general election; and

(6) calls upon the Australian Government to impress upon the Cambodian Government the importance of free and fair elections for the Cambodian people.

Cambodia has reached a point of deep political crisis. I'm sorry to say that since this motion was submitted in October the situation in Cambodia has only deteriorated. The 2017 Democracy Index, released on 31 January this year, ranked Cambodia 124th out of 167 countries, sliding 12 places down the index in just 12 months. The report described Cambodia as a de facto one-party state, a development that has been expected by those who've been watching Cambodia's political decline for some time now. The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranked Cambodia 112 out of 113 for 2017, ranked above only Venezuela, pointing to the extreme government overreach, denial of fundamental rights and deep corruption present in the Hun Sen regime. Mr Kem Sokha, the imprisoned opposition leader of the now disbanded Cambodia National Rescue Party, the CNRP, is in jail because of a speech he gave here in Australia several years ago. He was denied bail just last week for so-called security concerns, while his health has deteriorated in detention. The guarantee of Mr Sokha's right to due process is under extreme doubt, given comments from the regime about Mr Sokha's presumed guilt. Kem Sokha must be released immediately.

Hun Sen's regime has also forced the closure of a foreign non-government organisation and has targeted media companies, including radio stations and the main independent English language newspaper, The Cambodia Daily, which has been forced to close after 24 years. Media suppression is reaching extreme levels as Hun Sen moves to silence the voices of his fellow Cambodians and those who speak against his regime, as is his suppression of local NGOs and trade unions. Hun Sen has increased his grip on the nation and its freedoms, rejecting the labelling of Cambodia as authoritarian by the Democracy Index with his stunning statement, 'Nobody can topple Hun Sen except Hun Sen.'

Australia has a solemn duty to the Cambodian people and to our own values of democracy and freedom to oppose the anti-democratic actions in the lead-up to Cambodia's June general elections. Australia, as most Australians know, played an integral role in the Paris peace accords, promising to safeguard the process of transitioning Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge regime and, most especially, guaranteeing free and fair elections. This element of the peace accords remains woefully unfulfilled.

In October last year I met with the CNRP former leader, Mr Sam Rainsy, who emphasised that this situation is not business as usual, despite a long history of concerning actions by the Hun Sen regime. These latest outrages are undeniably an escalation by the regime and must be met with diplomatic resistance at the highest levels. Other nations have already moved against Hun Sen's regime, with the United States recently denying visas to Cambodian officials and 'individuals involved in undermining democracy in Cambodia' since December in a move to push the regime to reinstate the CNRP, to release Mr Kem Sokha and to lift media restrictions in Cambodia. The European Parliament, meanwhile, adopted a resolution calling for a list of individuals responsible for the dissolution of the opposition and other serious human rights violations in Cambodia, with a view to imposing possible visa restrictions and asset freezes on them.

I call on this parliament to acknowledge that Australia has an important role to play in safeguarding and furthering Cambodian democracy. The current actions of the Hun Sen regime seriously threaten that process. Australia must make it clear that we support the Cambodian people and their right to have their voices heard. In the coming weeks Mr Sam Rainsy will be speaking at the Press Club, and I urge members of this parliament to carefully consider his words. Mr Rainsy and other Cambodian leaders of the CNRP have recently founded a Cambodia National Rescue Movement to advocate for Mr Kem Sokha and other political prisoners, including Australian filmmaker James Ricketson, and to agitate for the reinstatement of the CNRP to ensure that the Cambodian people have a genuine choice at the elections in June. The restoration of Cambodia's fledgling democracy is vital to the ongoing freedom, safety and growth of Cambodia and its people. Australia must take a strong position and stand by our convictions put forward in the 1991 peace accords. I commend this motion to the parliament.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a seconder for this motion?

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the chamber may be aware, I'm the chair of Parliamentary Friends of Cambodia. I took on this responsibility because I know how important and longstanding the relationship between our two nations is. Australia and Cambodia have well-established links, with diplomatic ties spanning 66 years. At a personal level, around 60,000 citizens of Cambodian descent call Australia their home, and a growing cohort of self-funded Cambodians are choosing Australia as their study-abroad destination. Since 1994 there have been 700 Cambodians studying in Australia under the federal government's scholarships program.

Diplomatically, Australia played a leading role in the Cambodian peace process during the mid to late 1980s as Cambodia recovered from the Khmer Rouge period. It was the Australian government that developed a plan for the UN to have a role in peacekeeping and electoral monitoring and to take a major role in the administration of Cambodia to ensure a neutral political environment ahead of those elections. In 1992 that plan came together when the UN transitional authority in Cambodia, UNTAC, entered the country to monitor the ceasefire and cessation of external military assistance. UNTAC organised and conducted elections and worked with the various parties to administer Cambodia until the elections were complete. It was Australia's Lieutenant General John Sanderson who led the multinational UNTAC peacekeeping force. Australia also contributed large numbers of troops, civilian police officers, electoral officials and administrators to this effort.

Diplomatic exchanges continue today. Just last year, in March, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific visited Cambodia, while Vice Chief of the Defence Force Admiral Griggs visited in July. The current Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Foreign Affairs also recently visited the country, whilst senior Cambodian ministers, including the Deputy Prime Minister, recently visited Australia. As part of this ongoing relationship, Australia has a steadfast commitment to Cambodia's development as a democracy. The Australian government has shown that it is deeply concerned by Cambodia's political situation, particularly actions to restrict free media, constrain civil society and repress political opposition ahead of the 2018 national election. The government indeed made a strong early statement expressing concern about these political developments in Cambodia. Reflecting this, Foreign Minister Bishop issued a media release on 17 November 2017 in which she stated:

Australia is deeply concerned by the dissolution of Cambodia’s main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), and the banning of CNRP parliamentarians and officials from engaging in politics for five years.

This development has serious implications for democracy in Cambodia. It is the culmination of a series of troubling actions, including reduced access to free media, restrictions on civil society and intimidation of the opposition, specifically the detention of CNRP Leader Kem Sokha.

… … …

As a friend of Cambodia, Australia urges the Cambodian Government to allow all its citizens to exercise their democratic rights, particularly ahead of the 2018 national election.

This came in addition to more than a year of active, ongoing efforts to support the development of Cambodia as a democracy.

The Australian Embassy in Phnom Penh issued a statement on 27 February 2017 specifically expressing the government's concerns about amendments to Cambodia's law on political parties. The government made further direct representations, including at ambassador level, at senior levels of government both before and after the law was passed. Senator Fierravanti-Wells also raised our concerns in her meeting with the Cambodian foreign minister during her visit in 2017. I understand that the Australian government continues to urge the Cambodian government to allow all its citizens to exercise their democratic rights, particularly ahead of the 29 July 2018 national election.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Justice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today, in sadness and in anger, to express my deep concerns about the ongoing human rights abuses that are occurring in Cambodia. I do so because I hold this incredibly great privilege of representing so many thousands of Cambodian Australians in this parliament. MPs will note that this is not the first time I've stood in the parliament and raised these issues. In September 2017 I addressed a public gathering of hundreds of Cambodian Australians at Springvale town hall. Last year I and other members of parliament addressed a similar public gathering here on the lawns of Parliament House. I stood alongside the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, Mu Sochua, here at Parliament House, as she expressed her deepest distress and sadness about what is a growing political crisis in Cambodia.

The reason I am again on my feet on this critically important issue for our region is that nothing is changing. In fact, things are getting worse by the minute. We know that Cambodia has a general election due on 29 June 2018. We are not doing enough as a parliament, we are not doing enough as a country, to make absolutely clear our view to the Cambodian government that there must be a guarantee of free and fair elections in Cambodia in June this year. The current Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen, stated late last year that the 2018 national election result does not require international recognition to be valid. This is the latest sign of his determination to continue to hold power after almost 33 years in office. I spoke last year about what I regard as an absolute outrage against democracy, when the opposition party in Cambodia was disbanded and the seats held by those opposition party leaders were distributed amongst other parties. Over half of Cambodia's opposition MPs fled the country.

Cambodia became a multiparty democracy in 1993. There was a flourishing of democracy. Since then, there have been people who want to hold power in Cambodia, who continue to try to suppress freedom of expression and the political rights of the Cambodian people. Last year, the Cambodian opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was arrested on so-called treason charges. He was charged with treason on the basis of a speech that he made in Melbourne, in my electorate, back in 2013. In July 2013, the last general election was held in Cambodia.

There was a fear that those elections would not be held fairly, and that was founded reasonably, I think, on the unwillingness of the Cambodian government to implement the recommendations on corruption and electoral fraud that had been made by the United Nations in 2012, and the fact that Sam Rainsy, the opposition leader in Cambodia, was not give a free right to stand in that election. What we saw, in that instance, was that the election quickly turned to civil unrest. The worst example of that was a perfectly peaceful protest, regarding an industrial relations issue in Cambodia, where union members were shot at and killed by police who were acting under the instruction of the Cambodian government. After that, 20,000 people marched in protest against these actions, and they were met with some very heavy-handed treatment.

We love democracy in this country, but we don't understand the fight that goes on in countries in our region to have the most basic rights—rights that we take completely for granted in this country. The Cambodian people have had to put up with more than any people around the world should ever have to deal with. The Khmer Rouge ruled that country in the most violent and oppressive way for a long time. Australia was pivotal in trying to establish a free and fair democracy in that country. We did so much to try to make this happen, and one of my predecessors representing the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Gareth Evans, when he was foreign minister, was critical in bringing about democratic rule in Cambodia.

People thought that the Cambodians wouldn't come out to vote because they would be so scared—these were very reasonable fears—of violence. But people who were there on the day of the first free democratic election in Cambodia speak with such emotion about having gone to polling booths and having seen lines of hundreds of people waiting for hours at a time for the opportunity to have their say.

That was a country on the rise. What we are demanding is that Cambodia go back to the path towards democracy—a full and fair democracy. That is what I will continue to pressure the government to ask for and demand from the Cambodians.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak about the deteriorating human rights situation in Cambodia. With the upcoming national elections this year, many groups and individuals have been subjected to extreme intimidation by the government simply for exercising their right to peaceful assembly and political expression on matters relating to government policy. Most recently, Prime Minister Hun Sen has directed the Interior Minister shut down the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights. This all appears to be linked to the politically motivated prosecution of opposition leader Kem Sokha and the dissolution of the main opposition party by the Cambodian Supreme Court. To put this in perspective, I'd quote the analogy used by Elaine Pearson, the Australian Director of Human Rights Watch: 'It would be like Bill Shorten being exiled, Tanya Plibersek put in jail, the High Court dissolving the Labor Party and every Labor MP barred from holding office for a period of five years.'

I've been made aware of these serious and ongoing attacks against freedom and democracy in Cambodia by many concerned Australian-Cambodians living in my electorate. They've shared with me the story of their struggles when they were forced to flee their homeland during the period of the Khmer Rouge in the seventies and eighties. Now, once again, they fear the rise and excesses of an autocratic government. Swathiek, a lawyer and Cambodian community leader, succinctly captures the spirit and concerns of the Cambodian-Australians regarding the re-emergence of a one-party state when he says: 'There are now similarities with the justice system under Pol Pot, where there was no independent judicial processes. The courts merely do the bidding of the dictator—these days, that of Hun Sen.' This is a major setback to democracy and human rights in Cambodia, and clearly designed to reinforce the autocratic rule of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The valued and principled work of the international community in the lead-up to the Paris Peace Accords is systemically being unravelled and Cambodia heads towards, once again, being an autocratic state. Professor Gareth Evans, formerly Australia's foreign affairs minister and one of the principal architects of the Paris Peace Accords, has emphasised the need for action to be taken on an international scale, saying: 'Cambodia is at peace in the sense that a civil war is over, but it is a bit of a wasteland so far as any kind of adherence to democratic and human-rights principles are concerned.'

These recent developments in Cambodia are not happening in a vacuum but are accompanied by a broad-based crackdown by the government against any critical or independent voices. This includes the closure of the fiercely independent newspaper, The Cambodian Daily, and various radio stations that happened to broadcast Radio Free Asia or Voice Of America. In speaking about the scale of Hun Sen's crackdown on freedom and democracy, Brad Adams, the Asian director of Human Rights Watch, said:

The prime minister is showing his fear not only of free elections, but of free expression and association.

In order to address the deteriorating human rights situation in Cambodia and to allow an environment of free and fair elections, Australia needs to take an active role as part of a very concerned international community. I think there's a certain imperative to this, given that Australia is and remains a major aid donor to Cambodia. Given our seat on the UN Human Rights Council, Australia should play a forthright role as we develop closer economic ties with countries in the Asia-Pacific. We should use our influence to enhance human rights and to promote genuine democratic principles, which, in turn, quite frankly, can help open up new economic opportunities for these countries and improve the lives of their people.

I'd like to conclude on the words used by Gareth Evans at the very signing of the Paris Peace Accords when he said:

Peace and freedom are not prizes which, once gained, can never be lost. … Their foundations must be sunk deep into the bedrock of political stability, economic prosperity and above all else, the observance of human rights.

As part of a concerned international community, we do have a role to play in this, and we certainly do need to voice the views of all those Cambodian-Australians who we have the honour to represent.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the member for Fowler has said, we have spoken on this matter in the past in this house, and we had thought that, perhaps, the situation would improve. Far from having improved, the situation in Cambodia has very much gone backwards. We now have the remarkable situation that the leader of the opposition has been arrested and charged with treason by the Cambodian government. It is right and proper that this house say that is completely unacceptable. We have a key interest in this country for a number of reasons: Cambodia is an important part of our region, we have a strong and vibrant Cambodian-Australian population and, importantly, Australia played a key role at the Paris peace accords. It is also that legacy which this house should protect.

On 16 November, the country's supreme court dissolved the opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, eliminating any real challenge to the government and any parliamentary scrutiny. Its seats in parliament were simply allocated to other political parties. Of course, as a part of that, 118 of the party's senior officials will be banned from politics for five years. The party's 489 commune chiefs, elected at the June 2017 local elections, have also lost their positions. As the member for Fowler also said, The Cambodian Daily newspaper has been closed down, issued a very large tax notice and given days to pay in a completely transparent and successful attempt to shut it down. This is no longer a democracy. There can be no suggestion made that this is, in any way, a functioning democracy. Authoritarianism is no longer creeping in Cambodia. It is here, existing, and it cannot be allowed to continue in this way. It's a fact that we need a viable opposition in Cambodia and a viable free press for the people of Cambodia to express their will in parliamentary elections. Any elections held in the current environment will be nothing less than a farce.

Next week, Sam Rainsy, one of the leaders of the opposition, will be in Australia and will address the National Press Club. With the agreement of the chief whip, I hope to attend that address. I'm sure the chief whip would like to attend as well, if we can manage to leave the parliament. Mr Rainsy's counterpart, as leader and co-founder of the opposition, sits in prison. Mr Rainsy, while not in prison, is exiled. This is a very important meeting that Sam Rainsy is undertaking this week. He's also attending a function in our local community on Sunday, which I also will be attending with the local Cambodian community, in order to thank the local Cambodian community for their steadfast support and to spread his thoughts on the best way forward. He has been exiled on trumped-up charges while leader of the CNRP.

An affront to democracy anywhere is an attack on democracy everywhere. The Paris peace accords were one of the great foreign-policy breakthroughs of the late 20th century. They have been a success story. But that success is no longer. The Paris peace accords are no longer in effect. Hun Sen has taken power—not through peaceful means and not through democratic means. He has simply taken power. The people of Cambodia deserve better than that. They may or may not want Hun Sen to continue as Prime Minister—that's a matter for them—but they should be able to express that will at the ballot box. Newspapers and other media should be able to express their concerns. We must continue to place pressure on the Cambodian government to act in accordance with international law and with the Paris peace accords.

The Australian government has a range of options and methods available to it. It's a matter for the government of the day as to how it takes those up. These are always difficult matters. But we do urge the government, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs in particular, to meet with the Cambodian community, to hear their concerns and to listen to their proposals—to not ignore the status of Cambodia. We must be active in the tradition of Australia in the Paris peace negotiations, in the tradition of Australia as a good international citizen and in the tradition of Australia as a country which stands up for democracy wherever it may be, particularly in our region.

We have a role to play. We have an obligation, as Australians, as does the Australian government, to stand up for those good people of Cambodia who are being sent to prison for no crime other than expressing their political will. It cannot be allowed to stand.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.