The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton
President of the United States of America
The White HousePennsylvania Avenue
Washington. D.C.

Dear Mr. President;

We, the undersigned who are Cambodian Americans (names attached) and who believe firmly in the ideals and moral principles of this great country, would like to thank you and applaud your decision, Mr. President, for having the moral fortitude to decisively bring to justice Pol Pot who committed horrendous and massive crimes against humanity by savagely and deliberately slaughtering more than two million Cambodians during his tenure as the leader of the infamous Khmer Rouge during the second half of the 1970's. Unfortunately, the Cambodian people are once more denied justice with reported death of Pol Pot. However, we believe that the death of Pol Pot should not be the end of the United States `efforts in bringing to justice the rest of those Khmer Rouge leaders who are still in Cambodia and are part of Hun Sen' s military and civilian administration such as Ieng Sary and Keo Pong, and those who are outside the Hun Sen entourage, such as Khieu Samphan and Ta Mok.

We respectfully request that you seriously consider taking a personal interest in the Cambodian tragedy as well to stop the ongoing and deliberate intimidations and killings of all opposition party members by Hun Sen's security force and personal guards during the coup and still going on until today. During that coup, Hun Sen and his party, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), deliberately killed practically all military and intelligence officers of the FUNCINPEC party of Prince Ranariddh. These killings have been well documented and described in a report by Mr. Thomas Hammarberg, the Special Representative for the United Nations Secretary General for Human Rights in Cambodia.

We are very deeply grateful that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth took a firm stand and swift action against Hun Sen in the aftermath of the coup. They denied Hun Sen the Cambodian seat at the United Nations, and, with the help of the Congress, stopped the flow of US economic and financial assistance, with the exception  of those funds designated for humanitarian and democratic institution building. We Cambodian Americans strongly believe that the fact that Hun Sen was allowed to continue tightening his power grip in Cambodia by intimidating and killing members of opposition parties, was due to the seriously flawed policy advocated by the US Embassy in Phnom Penh. The reasoning behind this policy essentially says that only Hun Sen is capable of maintaining law and order and thus political stability because (i.) he has all the lethal power at his disposal and the CPP is an efficient organization (ii.) the United States must maintain a line of communication with Hun Sen because the current US Ambassador to Phnom Penh is in good terms with him.

We respectfully beg to disagree with this line of argument. First, is it really political stability when all opposition parties are being destroyed and their leaders are being systematically hunted down like wild animals? Second, does the United States need an Ambassador to maintain a line of communication with dictators like Fidel Castro or Sadam Hussein?. On the contrary, we sincerely feel that it was a very wrong message sent to Hun Sen by not calling the July 5 1997 military takeover by him a coup and not recalling the US Ambassador to Phnom Penh in protest against that coup. This flawed policy decision was expressed in the decision not to call a coup the July 1997 bloody removal from power of Prince Ranariddh, First Prime Minister, by Hun Sen. This continuous support for Hun Sen by the US embassy has resulted in giving him legitimacy as the leader of Cambodia, which, in turn, has allowed him to hunt down anybody he perceived to be his political opponent.  This flawed policy has also had tragic and devastating consequences for the majority of Cambodians still living there. One consequence is the fact that Hun Sen has increased his defense expenditures at the expense of other badly needed expenditures for economic and social developments. Another consequence is the ongoing destruction of the extensive forest resources. So that Hun Sen can maintain a large army against the opposition (because there is no apparent threat from the outside). This act clearly showed that Hun Sen does not care about the well being of the majority of the Cambodian people whose livelihood is dependent on agriculture. The act of allowing his cronies such as Teng Bunma - the alleged drug trafficker and Cambodian financial tycoon - and Hun Sen's security and armed forces to indiscriminately and unlawfully fell timbers will have a pervasive and negative impact on the environmental conditions in Cambodia. Recent reports by both the World Bank and the IMF have indicated that if the current rate of deforestation is allowed to continue, within 5 to 10 years there will no longer be any forest left in Cambodia. The impact of such destruction of a vital natural resources will result in dramatic environmental, social, and economic consequences.  Hun Sen's dismal and cruel human rights record is well documented by numerous NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch for Asia, and Global Witness. The United Nations Human Rights office in Cambodia has just released another report in which more than 50 additional opposition parties members have been documented as having been summarily executed by Hun Sen's security forces. Despite all these well documented reports of these extrajudicial killings, the current Cambodian government headed by Hun Sen has never been brought to justice as the single perpetrator of these heinous crimes.

Unfortunately, the tragedy continues to unfold today as these kinds of killings and intimidations continue unabated. Previous killings and the wounding of more than 100 members of an opposition party, led by Mr. Sam Rainsy, the Khmer Nation Party leader, during a peaceful and authorized march for justice on March 30 of last year, are still unaccounted for. Because Mr. Ron Abney of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a US citizen was wounded during that March 30 1997 hand grenade attack, an FBI team was sent to investigate this bloody and politically motivated incident. We have never heard anything about the results of the findings of that report. Numerous international and local press along with NGOs have reported that the reason why the FBI report was never made public in the US or Cambodia was because the US Embassy in Phnom Penh believed that the FBI report could potentially contain some very damaging information, namely pointing the finger at Hun Sen and his security forces, which could have the potential to destabilize or undermine Hun Sen's political credibility and standing.

For all the reasons discussed earlier, WCC respectfully submits to you Mr. President that the only way to render more transparent the status of this FBI report is for you, Mr. President, to order the early release of the findings of that FBI report on the March 30, 1997 hand grenade attack on the peaceful KNP demonstration.

We also respectfully request that you, Mr. President, kindly use you high authority to completely re-examine the current policy advocated by the US embassy in Cambodia, namely (i.) continuing to treat Hun Sen as the sole legal power and base for political stability in Cambodia and (ii.) allowing him to set the moral, judicial, and legal standard according to his own whimsical and personal interpretations and not according to the international standard of justice and morality.

We respectfully request you, Mr. President, not allow Hun Sen's present day crimes against humanity not be allowed to go unpunished just like Pol Pot's past crimes against humanity and that both Pol Pot and Hun Sen should be brought to face international justice. There will be no free, fair, and credible elections this coming July, as profusely warned by the United Nations, the international and local NGOs, if Hun Sen and his CPP party are allowed to (i.) set their own rules and standards for the forthcoming election, (ii.) continue to deny the opposition parties free and equal access to communication media, and (iii.) continue to intimidate and kill the opposition parties members at will and with impunity. 

Thank you Mr. President, for taking your very precious time to look into the sad and tragic situation in Cambodia. We hope we can count on your generous and well known humanistic policy and approach to international conflicts as you have so often successfully shown in many parts of the world such as in Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Middle East, and, more recently, in Ireland. We respectfully very much hope to hear from you, at your convenience, concerning our views on the current crisis in Cambodia.

Respectfully;

Attachment (List of those Cambodian Americans who are co-sponsoring this letter)