The Strip Mall Democratizer
A novelist would be hard-pressed to top Chhun Yasith's story. Yet, beyond his humble beginnings in a Long Beach strip mall, and with California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in his camp, still Chhun looks like a bit player in a larger campaign. It's just not democratization.
Some observers said the American government's aggressive pursuit of Mr. Chhun stands in marked contrast to the aborted investigation the FBI carried out into a 1997 incident in which grenades were thrown into an election rally, killing 16 people and injuring more than 100 others, including an American who formerly worked for the International Republican Institute. An initial FBI probe was all but abandoned after evidence pointed to bodyguards for Mr. Hun Sen.
"I find it extremely curious," Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch said. "They went after this ragtag bunch that was not in power and did not systematically commit human rights abuses for many years like Hun Sen has and they, for political reasons, dropped the investigation into the grenade attack which many think derailed any chance of a serious multi-party political system there."
Other analysts have described the charges against Mr. Chhun, who promoted a Cambodian rebellion openly from a Long Beach strip mall, as a quid pro quo for Cambodian help in rounding up members of a an Islamic terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiya.
I guess the Bush administration is signaling which project, democratization or GWOT, is more important.
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