Ethnic minority Khmer Krom get day in court

Khmer Krom civil party Chau Ny (R) stands outside the grounds of Wat Pratheath in Kiri Vong district, Takeo province, where many Khmer Krom victims were executed by the Khmer Rouge. Photograph supplied

 

 Phnom Penh Post

By Bridget Di Certo

 

They were described as having “Khmer bodies but Vietnamese heads”, plucked – village by village, wife from husband, child from parent – and singled out for extermination by the Khmer Rouge, and today, the first of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom will have their day in court.

This small victory is the bittersweet result of a lengthy battle to have the crimes perpetrated against the “lower Khmer” brought before the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal, which is now trying three surviving leaders of the regime that decimated more than 1.7 million of the population.

“The original indictments [in Case 002] charge the former senior Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide against Cambodia’s Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese, but did not include the Khmer Krom,” Access to Justice Asia co-founder Vinita Ramani told the Post this week.

Despite what civil party lawyers call compelling evidence of both mass killings and forced displacement, Khmer Krom are not recognised as victims of genocide in the criminal charges. Genocide crimes against the Krom were not included in the original Case 002 investigations and later appeals to have the indictment amended have failed on legal technicalities.

Khmer Krom people have their roots in the lower Mekong Delta area, which was ceded to Vietnam during the French protectorate era. Because of this association with Vietnam, they were targeted as spies or CIA agents in the paranoid purges of the Pol Pot regime.

S-21, the ultra-Maoist regime’s notorious detention and interrogation centre, singles out the Khmer Krom in its 10 “commandments”. Krom were destined for execution upon entering the prison.

Among intermarried couples, Khmer Krom spouses were taken away to be executed, as were children who chose to stay with their Khmer Krom parents, Ramani said, describing evidence legal teams have gathered.

While having the first Khmer Krom civil party offer testimony before the tribunal is an important achievement, participation of the ethnic group in Case 002 has been restricted by the judges’ ruling to sever the trial into a series of mini-trials.

“Because this mini trial is so limited, it will be a bit difficult to [hear the extent of atrocities],” said civil party lawyer Mahdev Mohan who, along with professor Kong Phallack, represents the civil party who will take the stand today.

Having worked with the Khmer Krom through NGOs for the past four years, Mohan said the community was determined to have their story heard. “They are quite galvanised. They have already built their own pagodas and are seeking reparations in the form of a victim trust fund and scholarships for their children.”

About eight years ago, the community banded together to build a pagoda and memorial to Khmer Krom victims in Takeo province. A primary school also on the grounds of the Wat hides the dark history of the site – to the rear are Khmer Rouge detention cells where Khmer Krom were imprisoned.

“There is a nationalist love for the Khmer Krom generally. There are a lot of Cambodians who believe Kampuchea Krom is really part of Cambodia, not Vietnam. But there is stigma as well,” Mohan said.

As reported in the Post, Human Rights Watch’s recent report Tell Them That I Want to Kill Them highlights extrajudicial killings of Khmer Krom monks protesting prejudicial treatment of the “lower Khmer” in Vietnam.

International co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley has also submitted extensive evidence of genocide committed against the Khmer Krom as part of the briefs for government-opposed Cases 003 and 004.

In a June 2011 press release, Cayley stated he had filed an additional tranche of evidence focusing on crimes committed against the Khmer Krom population in Takeo and Pursat provinces as part of Case 004.

“I spent time with the Krom. I listened to the accounts of their suffering. They were a group singled out for particularly brutal treatment because of their unique heritage,” Cayley told the Post. “I was often very moved by accounts from adults who were young children at the time of these appalling events.”

The two pending cases, in particular Case 004, focus on armed conflict along the Vietnam border in the late 1970s and accelerated ethnic cleansing and genocide toward the last years of the regime. No civil parties have yet been admitted to either of the cases, nor have any suspects been indicted.

“I gave a [commitment] to the Krom that they would not be forgotten. That they would be part of the legal process of the court,” Cayley said by email. “The witness on Thursday is a partial fulfillment of the promise I gave.”

America in Asia

 Barack Obama courts a region at odds over the South China Sea
 Nov 23, 2012
Source: The Economist

President Barack Obama at 4th ASEAN-U.S in Phnom Penh, Nove 19. Photo: Quoc Viet/RFA

IF ONE word sums up the style of the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), it is “consensus”. So when its meeting in Cambodia in July ended in open disagreement, many assumed it was an aberration. But even at the highlight of ASEAN’s calendar, the series of summits in Phnom Penh between November 18th and 20th, including the 18-member East Asia Summit, the group could not present a united front. A row erupted again over the same issue—how to manage China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea—and between the same ASEAN protagonists, the Philippines and Cambodia. ASEAN seems divided as never before, some think terminally.

The summit attracted leaders from China, India and Russia, as well as America’s re-elected president, Barack Obama. The row erupted when Cambodia, widely seen as China’s closest ASEAN ally, announced a consensus not to “internationalise” the festering dispute—ie, not to involve America. However, the Philippines, an American ally and claimant in the sea, rejected this, saying that it had “the inherent right to defend its national interests” by appealing to whichever international court or country it wants to. Vietnam was equally annoyed with Cambodia.

China claims sovereignty over almost all the sea, thought to hold vast reserves of oil and gas, as well as over the mostly tiny specks of land within it. Of ASEAN members, Vietnam claims all the Chinese-controlled Paracel islands to the north, as well as the contested Spratly chain to the south, where the claims of Brunei, Malaysia, and, especially, the Philippines, overlap with China’s. The bust-up in ASEAN pits its claimant countries against non-claimants close to China, such as Cambodia, Laos and possibly Myanmar. Singapore has been critical of Cambodia over the issue. Indonesia tries to act as the peacemaker.

This time, China probably had the worse of the argument. China insists that negotiations with rival claimants must be bilateral. The Philippines and Vietnam, however, want multilateral negotiations, involving ASEAN, to agree on a long-promised code of conduct in the sea to reduce the risk of conflict. At the summit this view prevailed, although the Chinese, as ever, refused to commit themselves to such negotiations. An added ingredient in all this is America’s continuing pivot to Asia. It now vies for influence with China in a region where maritime security is seen as essential to growth (see Banyan).

America says it is neutral as to the ownership of the disputed islands and shoals. But at the summit it did add its weight to calls by Vietnam and the Philippines for collective negotiations. Similarly, America says it is neutral in the sovereignty dispute between Japan and China over the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. But it has confirmed the islands are covered by its security treaty with Japan.

Indeed, it is anxiety over China’s new assertiveness as much as economic opportunity that is prompting America’s deepening engagement in the region. Mr Obama’s quick visit to Thailand, where he signed new military agreements, reflected this. So did his historic trip to Myanmar—the first by a serving American president—where he hoped to encourage reform and the continuing drift away from China.

That will be a theme for many years to come in South-East Asia. Much was made of how Mr Obama’s first post-election tour reflected America’s renewed commitment to Asia. But Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, turned up in Bangkok just a day after Mr Obama, and also received a warm reception. The region’s cannier countries will make the most of this competition while it lasts.

Hun Sen Sheds a Tear At Close of Asean

By Kuch Naren and Simon Lewis

November 22, 2012 

The Cambodia Daily

Prime Minister Hun Sen ended the final event of Cambodia’s Asean chairmanship on Tuesday in tears, excusing himself from answering journalists’ questions due to exhaustion.

Local and international journalists gathered in Mr. Hun Sen’s Peace Palace building, ready to pitch questions to the outgoing Asean chair on the numerous controversial issues that have arisen during three days of high-level talks in Phnom Penh.

But Mr. Hun Sen, normally a prolific public speaker, delivered a prepared statement and declined to engage with the press. Toward the end of his speech, Mr. Hun Sen began discussing the late King Father Norodom Sihanouk, who died on October 15.

“I would like to take this opportunity to respect the soul of the late King Father, who has the title of Preah Borom Ratanak Kout, to be informed that his children have been doing a good job in fulfilling some of the work that was not fulfilled by His Majesty,” Mr. Hun Sen said.

Mr. Hun Sen said that the world leaders, with whom he had spent the past few days meeting, had expressed their condolences for the late King Father. He then apologized to the media, stating that he could not take any questions, “because I have been exhausted during the last few days.

“And last night, I had a few hours sleep and I hope that my wife prepares to help look after me,” Mr. Hun Sen continued.

“As you all know, I am a very talkative person. I am not afraid to respond to all types of question. I can even say that I can speak for five hours nonstop. But now I am not able to respond to your questions.”

Continuing to apologize for not taking questions, Mr. Hun Sen then began to wipe tears from his eyes.
“I also apologize that I cannot control myself from letting my tears fall because what the King Father wanted was to have a prestigious nation. The nation [now] has prestige at the time when His Majesty has passed away.”

Even the translator serving English-speaking members of the audience appeared to well up in sympathy with Mr. Hun Sen, struggling to interpret the prime minister’s final words.

The emotional ending contrasted with Mr. Hun Sen’s last questions and answers session with journalists covering the Asean meetings. At the close of the Asean Summit in April in Phnom Penh, Mr. Hun Sen baffled reporters by saving his final comments to lash out at opposition leader Sam Rainsy and an independent political analyst who had suggested Cambodia was protecting China’s interests in Asean talks.

On Tuesday, reporters were likely not short of questions for Mr. Hun Sen and the Cambodian delegation, which has this week made statements later contradicted by fellow members of Asean, in particular in relation to a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Cambodia’s insistence that Asean was in “consensus” over the maritime issue was immediately challenged by the Philippines, once again raising the suggestion that Cambodia was under the influence of China—which pledged nearly $53 million to Cambodia on Sunday.

On wrangling over the South China Sea, which has drawn headlines in the international press, Mr. Hun Sen gave only a brief description in a prepared statement closing the meeting.

“On the issues of the South China Sea, the Asean leaders agree to continue to address this issues in the existing Asean-China framework,” he said.

The end of the "ASEAN way"

 Marga Ortigas
Aljazeera

ASEAN's 10 member states are home to about 600 million people across Southeast Asia [Reuters]

 The long-time journalists in this region have joked that it didn’t really matter if they missed out on covering ASEAN summits as nothing ever really happened at them anyway.

The ten-member regional organisation composed of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam was seen as a bit of a toothless mouse … ineffective, irrelevant, and a trifle useless.

All pomp and ceremony at the best of times – with very little substance. It’s been termed a "loose grouping" with nothing legally binding it together.

The one pronouncement from ASEAN with any kind of general recall was its members’ agreement of “non-interference” in each other’s affairs – which meant that for the most part, there were no condemnations of, or sanctions against, or even reactions to alleged human rights violations amongst them from anyone in the group.

It was the “ASEAN way” to be non-confrontational, put on a united front… and pretty much sweep things under the carpet. Which is likely why most thought the group a "lame" body.

Everything hinged on members’ consensus… and for many years, the only underlying consensus appeared to be making sure everyone played nice, and kept the house clean and presentable at all times. There was to be no “rocking the boat”, as it were.

But if one thing is clear after this series of recently concluded summits in Phnom Penh (ASEAN + Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, and the US) it’s that ASEAN is changing.

China’s chagrin
Many analysts have said that if the group is to survive and transform itself into a legitimate player in this increasingly strategic region, it has to. A joke going around this time around was that much of the media was only keen on newly-re-elected US President Obama’s presence now that the US is “pivoting” its attention to the Asia-Pacific…much to China’s chagrin.

Obama’s historic trips to Myanmar and Cambodia – the first of any sitting US leader – were expected to be the highlights of coverage… and the only remaining question on people’s minds was whether he would say anything about China’s regional maritime disputes with US allies Vietnam and the Philippines – a sore subject that host-nation and ASEAN Chair Cambodia had not wanted raised at all.

But it’s precisely because Cambodia, a nation with deep ties to China, tried to “stifle” that issue that things didn’t quite go as it had planned.

The Philippines, one of the countries embroiled in an increasingly tense dispute with China over overlapping maritime claims, spoke out in public contradiction of Cambodia’s statement that ASEAN members had "agreed" to not “internationalise” the territorial disputes.

“There was no consensus,” Philippine President Benigno Aquino said after the Cambodian leader finished his declaration. And that was only the beginning.

Possibly emboldened by the presence of Obama, (and the seven other non-ASEAN leaders), Aquino took the opportunity to basically “internationalise” the matter by speaking about the need for a “multi-lateral” resolution.

One that involves all those with a stake in the disputed areas’ maintaining its freedom of navigation and over-flight, including the US. A position several other countries agreed with.

And just like that, the subject that wasn’t supposed to be discussed hijacked the discussions. Much of this happened behind closed doors, but there was no way it was going to remain there… whether ASEAN liked it or not.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen delivered his usual stage-managed, loquacious statement in an attempt to conclude the summits on a “positive” and “graceful” note… but he refused to answer questions (of which there were many!) ostensibly because he was tired and feeling “emotional” about the passing of Cambodia’s former king last month.

But never mind Hun Sen’s neat summary. The media rush, (referred to by one journalist as similar to a dangerous bar-room brawl), to get to the Chinese and Philippine delegates as they exited and looked to make side-line statements taking pot-shots at each other (without directly pointing fingers of course), said more about the region’s state of affairs than can be tidied up and swept under the carpet.

This time around, ASEAN may have found itself with little other choice than to do something more substantial.

Philippines to host four-way maritime talks

Nov 21, 2012
Source: Channel Newsasia

 Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and Hillary Clinton at ASEAN-US Meeting. Photos: Quoc Viet/RFA

MANILA - The Philippines is to hold four-way talks next month with fellow Southeast Asian nations with rival claims to South China Sea territories, Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said Wednesday.

The deputy foreign ministers of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam are to meet in Manila on December 12 as part of Philippine efforts at pushing for a multilateral solution to their disputes, he told a news conference.

The talks exclude China, which claims most of the sea including waters close to the shores of its neighbours and has insisted its own disputes be solved bilaterally between Beijing and individual claimants.

"This is one of viable options to move the issue forward in terms of (arriving at) a peaceful solution," del Rosario said.

"We need to pay attention to the fact that there are many claimants and it has to be settled in a multilateral approach."

Taiwan, like China, claims most of the sea, which includes some of the world's most important shipping lanes and is believed to be rich in fossil fuels.

Del Rosario said the four-way meeting was first proposed by the Philippines last year, in contrast to China's preferred bilateral approach.

"We respect what (China) is suggesting, but we do not accept this," del Rosario said.

"We view the situation in the South China Sea as a threat to the stability and security in the region."

Rival claimants Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam are all members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Tensions have increased steadily over the past two years, with the Philippines and Vietnam accusing China of increasingly aggressive diplomatic tactics to stake its claims.

Del Rosario's announcement came just a day after he returned home from a regional summit in Cambodia that was overshadowed by the dispute.

Host Cambodia had said ASEAN leaders had agreed not to "internationalise" the disputes and confine the talks to those between the bloc and China.

But Philippine President Benigno Aquino publicly rebuked Cambodian leader Hun Sen, saying no such consensus had been reached and that he would continue to speak out on the issue.

Asked what the Manila meeting hoped to achieve, del Rosario said Wednesday: "If we can discuss limitation solutions to areas where we have disputes with each other, that certainly would be a good result to the initiative."

- AFP/ir

Analysis – China courts friends in region; for others a show of strength

PHNOM PENH/BEIJING (Reuters) – When U.S. President Barack Obama and more than a dozen leaders arrived in Cambodia for a regional summit meeting this week, only one of them was feted with banners strung from the venue gates.

 Prime Minister Hun Sen and Wen Jiabao. Photo: Quoc Viet/RFA

“Welcome Prime Minister Wen Jiabao!” one proclaimed. “Long live the People’s Republic of China!” read another.

As the leaders left, the green-and-white banners were still festooned outside Phnom Penh’s Peace Palace, a fitting reminder of China’s powerful and growing clout as Beijing uses its influence – and money – to win friends and frustrate those uneasy about its sweeping territorial claims and rising military strength.

“Some states are easily swayed by money. If they see cash, they easily throw away their principles,” said one Asian diplomat at the East Asia Summit, which included heads of state from 10 Southeast Asia countries and counterparts from the United States, China, Japan and other Asia-Pacific nations.

“China has been throwing its weight around and buying the loyalties of some Asian states.”

A prime example is Cambodia, whose prime minister, Hun Sen, helped China to notch up a succession of diplomatic victories at the summit. China stalled debate on a resolution of maritime disputes in the South China Sea, rebutted attempts by Southeast Asian nations to start formal talks on the issue and avoided any rebuke from Obama over territorial ambitions. Commentators declared China a clear summit winner.

A closing statement by Hun Sen, this year’s chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), made no mention of the South China Sea, another victory for China’s attempts to prevent multilateral talks on the dispute.

China has poured investments and loans into Cambodia in recent years, becoming its biggest trade partner and bilateral creditor. Cambodia’s debt to China now totals at least $4.7 billion, about a third of its economy.
The price of that largesse has become clear this year, say analysts, as Cambodia has used its powers as ASEAN chair to restrict debate over the vexed issue of China’s maritime claims, dividing the group and infuriating U.S. ally the Philippines.

The 45-year-old ASEAN group has been built on a foundation of unanimity and unity, but that has unravelled as it struggles to cope with its biggest security challenge. In July, a meeting of the region’s foreign ministers broke down in unprecedented acrimony and failed to agree a communique for the first time.

This week’s ASEAN meetings again deteriorated into bad-tempered sniping and came close to a breakdown when Hun Sen adopted a draft statement saying there was a consensus not to “internationalise” the South China Sea dispute beyond ASEAN and China.

The Philippines, which sees its alliance with the United States as a crucial check on China’s claims at a time when Washington is shifting its military focus back to Asia, made a formal protest to Cambodia and succeeded in having that clause removed from the final statement.

 President Barack Obama at ASEAN-US Meeting in Phnom Penh. Photo: Quoc Viet/RFA

 China then poked fun at Manila’s assertion that there had been no consensus. Eight out of 10 leaders had agreed not to internationalise the dispute, meaning there was a consensus, said Qin Gang, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman.

“I suggest that people when attending the EAS (East Asia Summit) meetings have to be very good at mathematics,” he said.

“That’s 10 minus two, so which is bigger?”

NAVAL BUILDUP
Beijing claims a vast U-shaped line around the South China Sea that brushes up against the coasts of the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. The area is thought to hold vast, untapped reserves of oil and natural gas, and naval flashpoints between Chinese vessels and the Philippine and Vietnamese navy have become increasingly common.

Hopes for a diplomatic resolution within the ASEAN-China framework look bleak in the next two years as tiny Brunei and then Myanmar take up the chairmanship of the group.

Cambodia, like fellow “Mekong” countries Laos and Myanmar, has been rapidly pulled into China’s economic orbit through rocketing trade and investment ties.

It has become customary for Chinese officials to arrive in Cambodia bearing “gifts”, such as the $100 million investment that Wen announced on his arrival this week to build the emerging country’s biggest cement plant. China has moved nimbly to set up free trade deals with Southeast Asia nations and has played a dominant role in financing and building big infrastructure projects in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

After the summit, Wen visited Thailand where he signed an understanding to buy rice, which should strongly lift Beijing’s standing with a government that is a close ally of the United States. Bangkok has built up record stockpiles of 14 million tonnes of milled rice after a populist programme to pay farmers more for their crops made exports unprofitable.

If diplomatic efforts stall, China’s options to back its claims with force if needed are steadily growing with a military budget that outstrips the combined spending of Southeast Asia.

As China ushered in a new generation of leaders this month, outgoing President Hu Jintao made a pointed reference to strengthening China’s naval forces, protecting maritime interests, and the need to “win local war.”

“We should make active planning for the use of military forces in peacetime, expand and intensify military preparedness, and enhance the capability to accomplish a wide range of military tasks, the most important of which is to win local war in an information age,” Hu said.

Besides the South China Sea, China is embroiled in a dispute with Japan, also a close U.S. ally, over islands in the East China Sea.

China’s stance is that it is not trying to become an offensive naval power, but wants to secure its energy imports and boost development of maritime natural resources, which are expected to represent 10 percent of its economy by 2015.

But it is also wary of being encircled as the United States refocuses its military clout on Asia in what Obama has called a “pivot” back to the region as wars in the Middle East wind down.

“It is absolutely (a buildup),” said Ruan Zongze, deputy director of the China Institute of International Studies, the think-tank of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

“No matter what kind of narrative you use, the reality is that America in the past three years has been putting greater emphasis or focus on the west Pacific. That raises a lot of questions for China.”

China launched its first aircraft carrier in September, increasing its ability to project forces deeper into “blue-water” maritime territory. Bought from Ukraine ostensibly to use as a floating casino, the Chinese navy spent years refurbishing the carrier, which is undergoing sea trials. It also test-flew two types of stealth fighters this year, the second one last month – a smaller, more maneuverable model believed to be designed to be deployed on an aircraft carrier.

“China has ambitions to become the premier military power among its regional peers, and a serious threat to U.S. maritime primacy in the Asia Pacific,” said Sam Roggeveen, an Asian defence analyst with the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

Roggeveen added that if China were to deploy more than one carrier and equip them with high-performance stealth fighters, “it would become the pre-eminent regional maritime power, with the ability to coerce neighbours in disputes in which the U.S. prefers not to get involved”.

Obama, in Cambodia, Sidesteps Ghosts of American Wartime Past

By PETER BAKER
Published: November 20, 2012 

 PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Four decades after American warplanes carpet-bombed this impoverished country, an American president came to visit for the first time. He came not to defend the past, nor to apologize for it. In fact, he made no public mention of it whatsoever. 

President Obama’s visit to a country deeply scarred by its involvement with the United States did nothing to purge the ghosts or even address them. Mr. Obama made clear he came only because Cambodia happened to be the site for a summit meeting of Asian leaders, but given the current government’s human rights record, he was intent on avoiding much interaction with the host. 

“How are you?” Mr. Obama asked Prime Minister Hun Sen when he showed up, unsmiling, for a meeting made necessary by protocol. “Good to see you.” 

Those, as it turned out, were the only words he uttered publicly to or about Cambodia during his two days here. In private, aides said, Mr. Obama pressed Mr. Hun Sen about repression. While they usually characterize even the most hostile meeting in diplomatic terms, in this case they were eager to call the meeting “tense.” 

 But the president’s public silence disappointed human rights organizations that had called for a more explicit challenge to Mr. Hun Sen’s record of crushing opposition. And it left to another day any public examination of the United States’ role in the events of the 1970s that culminated in the infamous “killing fields” that wiped out a generation of Cambodians. 

Theary Seng, president of the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia, said, “President Obama should have met with the human rights community and activists challenging the Hun Sen regime, and while then and there, offer a public apology to the Cambodian people for the illegal U.S. bombings, which took the lives of half a million Cambodians and created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge genocide.” 

Gary J. Bass, a scholar of war crimes at Princeton, said Mr. Obama passed up a chance to publicly exorcise a painful history. “It’s a missed opportunity for Obama,” he said. “Obama is right to evoke America’s better angels, but that’s more effective when you give the complete story.” 

White House officials were sympathetic, but they said the focus of Mr. Obama’s stop in Phnom Penh was on the summit meeting, organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, not on a visit to Cambodia or the relationship between the two countries. 

“It’s not a lack of appreciation; it’s the circumstances of the visit,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser. “President Obama’s always willing to confront the history we have in the nations we visit and believes it’s important to acknowledge the past so we can move beyond it. The fact is, this particular visit was structured to focus on the summits that the Cambodians were hosting.” 

Some activists said that Mr. Obama’s visit would help Cambodia’s transition. 

“The U.S. president’s visit to Cambodia is an important part of that process,” said Youk Chhang, a survivor of the genocide and executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a private research group. “Cambodians look to the United States more than any other country as a beacon for leadership on human rights and democracy issues as well as what can be achieved by a free and fair market system.” 

Michael Abramowitz, who directs the genocide prevention center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, recently visited Cambodia on a fact-finding mission on the Khmer Rouge trials. 

He saw value in Mr. Obama’s visit. “Even though President Obama would likely not have visited Phnom Penh were it not for the Asean meeting, the presence of the first U.S. president on Cambodian soil has enormous symbolic importance,” he said. 

Left undiscussed during the visit was the grim history between the United States and Cambodia. President Richard M. Nixon, trying to cut off North Vietnamese infiltration into South Vietnam, ordered a secret bombing campaign that dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives on Cambodia from 1970 to 1973. The United States also backed a coup that ousted Norodom Sihanouk as head of state. 

Many Cambodians responded by joining a Communist resistance, which led to the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a bloodthirsty guerrilla group that went on to orchestrate a genocide that resulted in the deaths of 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979, when the group was pushed out of power by Vietnamese forces.  

Even today, Cambodia is struggling with that history. A United Nations-Cambodian war crimes trial is trying the senior surviving leadership of the Khmer Rouge on charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. 

The United States has supported and helped finance the trials, although human rights groups complain that the Cambodian government has been tampering with the court. 

Mr. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, has ruled Cambodia for decades with little tolerance for dissent. Opposition leaders have been jailed and killed, and his allies have been seizing land on a large scale, according to human rights groups. 

That complicated the question of Mr. Obama’s trip. Past presidents have confronted American actions; President Bill Clinton made a trip to Vietnam in 2000 to reconcile years after the war, while George W. Bush, during a trip to Eastern Europe, expressed regret for the Yalta accords, which he viewed as allowing the Soviet Union to control the region for decades after the end of World War II. 

But Mr. Obama was reluctant to engage in a discussion of America’s responsibility in Cambodia while the current government is so repressive. Such a discussion could serve to elevate rather than diminish Mr. Hun Sen, American officials said. 

Mr. Obama refused to make joint statements with Mr. Hun Sen, as he normally does with leaders hosting him, on the assumption that any criticism of the government would be censored, but the pictures of the two leaders side by side would be used to validate the Cambodian leader. 

Instead, Mr. Obama used almost their entire private meeting to press Mr. Hun Sen on human rights, aides said. He emphasized “the need for them to move towards elections that are fair and free, the need for an independent election commission associated with those elections, the need to allow for the release of political prisoners and for opposition parties to be able to operate,” Mr. Rhodes said. 

Even if Mr. Obama did not address the past during this visit, Mr. Rhodes noted that the United States government has been supporting the genocide trials and efforts to dispose of unexploded mines and ordnance. 

“We have done important work to help the Cambodian people move forward with their tragic past,” he said. “We want to continue that support.”