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Human Rights – 1994

After the completion of the UNTAC mandate, the UN continuously monitored the human rights situation in Cambodia through its recently established UN Center for Human Rights. The UN Human Rights Center provided educational services and legal advice, and investigated military abuses and prison conditions. The U.N.’s Special Representative, Justice Michael Kirby, visited three times since the field office’s establishment in late 1993, raising a wide range of human rights concerns with the Cambodian government and publishing comprehensive reports on the human rights situation.¹

The human rights situation remained very poor. According to a UN Report, Cambodian military authorities in the northwest had been abducting people for ransom, executing them and then eating their livers in a gruesome ritual thought to imbue them with power. An investigation by the Ministry of Defense corroborated most details of the U.N. Centre’s reports, but investigators from the Prime Ministers’ office initially denied the findings. Cambodia’s Co-Premiers Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen then ordered a second investigation, but its findings, published on July 22, were inconclusive about the existence of the Cheu Kmau detention center. It did not deny the existence of the secret prison, but said that Khmer Rouge activity in the area made further inquiries too dangerous.²

1. “Cambodia,” Human Rights Watch World Report 1995, accessed July 2, 2010, http://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/WR95/ASIA-02.htm#P133_39951.
2. Ibid.