My dear Kacvey,
Two dates in June 2018 had shaken the confidence and serenity by which the autocrat has been behaving himself amid the institutional and political storm that he voluntarily created since September 2017 to protect his personal and despotic ambition and the economic and financial interests of his tribe in view of the legislative elections scheduled for 29 July 2018.
Bu in the following month, more revelations have come from various news organizations that hit the head of the nail harder and harder.
For our records:
- On 12 June 2018, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, in its Press Releases, publicly identified the commander of Cambodia’s Prime Minister Bodyguard Unit (PMBU) for being the leader of an entity involved in serious human rights abuse.
- On 27 June 2018, Human Rights Watch, in a scathing and unsparing 213-page report, publicly and nominally identified 12 generals in the security forces who form the backbone of an abusive and authoritarian political regime who are responsible for serious and systematic human rights violations in Cambodia.
- On 13 July 2018, Al Jazeera aired a YouTube by
@AJ101East and @jolleyma identifying a corrupt official in the tax department. - On 20 July 2018, Global Witness identified four senators “who profits from the death of Cambodia’s democracy.”
- On 23 July 2018, in an article titled “Paradise Papers Tie Cambodian Army Chief’s Wife to Tropical Tax Heaven,” The Irrawaddy identified the wife of one of the Dirty Dozen as reported in the Panama papers.
Keeping track of numbers with new total: The Dirty Seventeen [Dirty 17].
When truth speaks, its voice is louder than the thunder and carries beyond the horizon.
So far, the autocrat has not made any official comments yet, his barking dogs doing the dirty work for him in lieu of his silence. Let him brew his reactions in his own heart and mind, but whatever he feels his autocratic machinery will certainly have no ability to rebut the issues point by point, line by line, or item by item. The revelation is like a sharp arrow piercing the heart of the wolf to bleed in its loneliness.
Kacvey, there must be some children or relatives of the “Dirty Dozen + Others” among your law school students. How would they hold up their face in front of their friends and peers whose parents are law-abiding, honest and accountable? The burden that corrupt fathers impugn on their children’s shoulders is so heavy and the shame that those children have to endure in years to come is so devastating that even history could not save them.
Ask Lon Nol’s or Pol Pot’s children!
