Abstract

Letter From Cambodia

The article looks at the murder of Chea Vichea, a Cambodian labor union leader, in 2004. A quarter-century ago the Vietnamese Army rolled into Cambodia and ended the rule of the Khmer Rouge--the movement that had tried to transform Cambodia into a utopian agrarian collective, and turned it instead into a hell salted with landmines and the bones of the approximately 1.7 million who died in the regime's nearly four-year rule. In December 2003, former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan made the first high-level admission that genocide had indeed happened during the regime's rule, though he pleaded ignorance of the details at the time. Vichea's killing was the latest in a series of high-profile attacks that erupted after contested elections in 2003. There is no quick escape from Cambodia's political quagmire: Now the tasks of forming a government and dealing with postelection violence and backlogged legislation lie ahead. One of the bills stymied by the political impasse is the legislation on the Khmer Rouge tribunals. One of the founders of the Sam Rainsy Party, Vichea also established one of the country's most influential unions and helped negotiate a U.S.-Cambodia bilateral trade agreement that linked improved labor standards to garment quotas.