Slaughter on Sunday March 30, 1997
By Jason Barber AND Christian Chameau
At least 15 people were killed and scores wounded when four grenades were lobbed into a Khmer Nation Party demonstration Mar. 30, the worst act in the terrorism in Phnom Penh since the 1993 elections.
The attack - in the park opposite the National Assembly - occurred while a unit of heavily armed troops in full combat uniforms stood nearby. The soldiers made no atteempt to catch the attackers and prevented others from doing so, according to eyewitness reports.
KNP leader Sam Rainsy, who escaped injury, immediately blamed Hun Sen for orchestrating the attack, and the alleged the soldiers were part of the Second Prime Minister's bodyguard force.
A spokesman for Hun Sen later abrubtly refused to discuss the soldiers, saying he did not know who they were ans did not understand why anyone would ask.
Independent military observers said they had no direct evidence of who the troops were, but confirmed that they wore military kit similar to that of Hun Sen's bodyguards.
A high-ranking source said the Khmer Rouge were suspected of being behind the attack. A joint police team has been established to investigate, but human rights workers and some government officials themselves privately predicted that no arrests would be
made.
The explosions ripped through a crowd of some 170 demonstrators led by Rainsy in a lawful protest outside the National Assembly at about 8:30am.
Eyewitnesses say that two grenades were thrown from behind the protesters in the park by two women who esca ped on foot. At least
one was dropped from a motorcycle which sped by the National Assembly, while the origin of the fourth grenade is unclear.
The death toll was uncertain at Post press time but, according to the human rights group Licadho, stood at at least 15. Ten victims have been identified by Licadho, and an 1lth by KNP. A further four or five people are believed to have been killed, but their bodies are either unaccounted for or unidentified, Licadho said. Two 13-year-old children were among the dead, according to the
human rights group. Others included a 17-year-old student, a Rainsy bodyguard rd, a journalist and several women garment factory workers.
The injured are believed to number about 130 -- as high as 80 percent of the crowd. All of the dead and injured were Cambodian, except for American Ron Abney, country director of the International Republican Institute, who suffered moderate injuries, and Chinese journalist Zhu Changdu, who suffered serious abdominal wounds.
Experienced human rights workers said two aspects of the
demonstration and the attack stood out.
The first was the unusually light twice presence at the rally, whose organizers had received permission from the Phnom Penh Municipality and the Ministry of Interior to hold the protest.
A total of about 20 policemen-- considerably less than for preprevious Rainsy protests -- were present in three positions some
distance from the demonstration at the time of the explosion, eyewitnesses say.
Human rights workers speculate, while confirming they had no
direct evidence to prove it, that the police had been expecting an attack. The second, particularly unusual aspect was the presence of
the soldiers in the park some from the demonstration. The soldiers appeared to be a special unit: clad in full-combat uniform, with helmets, spare magazines, and modern automatic weapons.
A bodyguard of Rainsy alleged that the soldiers had prevented him and others from chasing two of the grenade-slinging terrorists.
The bodyguard asked not to be named but is a relative of Srun Von Vannak, in jail for alleged involvement in the murder of Hun Sen's brother-in-law, Kov Sam uth. Human rights workers said the bodyguard's testimony was corroborated by at least three other witnesses The bodygua rd said he saw one man throw a grenade and then run off with a second man. He said that he and a crowd of people pursued
the two men. The soldiers made no effort to stop or pursue the two men, hut trained their guns on the crowd and stopped them from continuing the chase.
The two men, according to several eyewitnesses, were last seen crossing Street 7 in front of Wat Uotum on the west side of the park.
Behind the wat is a CPP residential compound. An armored personnel carrier was later stationed at one entrance to the com, near the wat, while soldiers
-- dressed identically to those earlier seen in the park -- took up positions in surrounding streets.
Om Yentieng, an advisor to Hun Sen, responded indignantly when asked April 1 about the soldiers originally in the park: "I do not understand why you ask me that question. Who told you that? I am not military and 1 cannot understand sucha question ...never saw any Hun Sen men."
"Hun Sen is behind this,"Rainsy declared to journalists at his house soon after the attack. "He is a bloody man. He will be arrested and sentenced one day."
Noting that the KNP demonstration had been to protest the justice system in Cambodia, Rainsy claimed: "We denounce their judiciary, their weak point, so they reacted by using even stronger means."
Hun Sen, in a speech a few hours later, described the violence as a "tremendous tragedy" comparable to the throwing of grenades in Takhmau in 1983 and Phnom Penh in 1990.
Hun Sen, speaking to villagers at his Takhmau home known as "Banteay Sowatepheap" (Safe Barlacks), expressed condolences for the clead and injured and "vehemently condemned " the perpetrators. He then went on to blame Rainsy and the KNP for what had happened.
He said he had asked the Ministry of Interior to consider whether they should "drag the demonstration's mastermind by the neck to court", a clear reference to Rainsy.
He compared the demonstration organizers to the captain of a boat which sank and its passengers were drowned, he said: "I think this bunch must be hand-cuffed according to the law, as [they are] responsible for the deaths because they are the ones who caused it."
A senior CPP official, requesting anonymity, blamed the Khmer Rouge for staging the grenade attack to make the CPP look guilty. The official singled out a Khmer-French man, who is known to have family connections with the Along Veng Khmer Kouge, as a possible suspect. The man, who lives in France, had been in Cambodia several days before the attack.
The official said he did not know who the soldiers in the park at the time of the attack were, but suggested that they were impostors dressed in a manner which would cast suspicion on CPP Rainsy scoffed at the suggestion that the Khmer-French man was involved in the bombings, saying that the man had stayed with him at his house for two nights.
The man was present at the demonstration.
In the evening of the attack, rumors of CPP troops being sent to arrest Rainsy saw the KNP leader flee to the home of First prime Minister Prince Norodom lianariddh. Ranariddh dispatched a letter to Hun Sen asking the Second Prime Minister not to "make any decisions" until a police team had investigated the grenade attack. Hun Sen signed the agreement.
At Post press time, a Ministry of Interior team -- headed by National Police chief Hok Lundy (CPP) and his deputy Yeng Marady (Funcinpec)-- had been established. Funcinpec police are understood to have sent a report to Ranariddh earlier.
Soon after the attack, both Ranariddh and his father, King Norodom Sihanouk, issued strong statements condemning the violence. Ranariddh later visited some of the victims in hospital. In an April 1 interview with Reuters, Ranariddh labeled the grenade attack a "tragedy for democracy" and said he feared more violence in the election run-up.
" tear it is not an isolated incident. I think that it is a real act of political crime, an act of intimidation toward the next elections," he said.
On his relationship with his co-prime Minister, Ranariddh said:
"It is more and more difficult for me to work with [Hun Sen]. The tension is not created by me.
Rainsy, in a press conference the same day, demanded justice and reiterated his allegations against Hun Sen.
"Enough is enough -- we need to know the truth and the culprits must be identified and punished.
"It was a mass killing of innocent people indiscriminately --this is a genocide. I think the time has come to set up a genocide tribunal like in Rwanda to stop the
killing hands of CPP, of Hun Sen.
In the strongest statement of any Cambodian official, Kem Sokha, chairman of the National Assembly's Commission on Human Rights, demanded government resignations or dismissals.
"The government leaders who are responsible for, or who back, or are accomplices, or open opportunities forbad actions, [should] confess their mistakes and submit resignations," Sokha, a BLDP member, said in an Apr 2 statement.
If not, he said, "the current cabinet must be reformed, controlled, and those who are incapable and who created those actions which led to cruel human rights abuses
should be sacked."
Sokha urged the calling of an immediate extraordinary session of the National Assembly to question government officials and create a special commission to investigate the bombings.
"It is not enough to issue statements to condemn the criminals or to ask the government to investigate this case," he said, noting the failure of investigations into past acts of political violence.
Sokha ended by urging the intemational community to be clear on "who has abused human rights and who are the obstacles to democracy" in Cambodia.
"I would like to assure the international community that so-called political stability [in the form] of dictatorship, Cambodian citizens cannot accept."
Meanwhile, crowds of people gathered at the massacre site to light incense and lay wreaths for serveral days after the attack --raising the ire of the Phnom Penh Municipality. "This is not the place for a ceremony. If they want to commerrate, they should go to a pagoc said Phnom Penh vice-goverChea Sophara (CPP).
He complained that politick including Ranariddh cabinet Thuch, had visited the mur site "without asking me".
On Apr 2, as the crematior some the victims was being hat Wat Lanka, the municipal sent a dump truck to remove wreaths laid opposite the Nation Assembly.
Additional reporting by Ci Sotheacheath and Ker Munthi
"This is not the place for a ceremony. If they want to commerrate, they should go to a pagoc said Phnom Penh vice-goverChea Sophara (CPP).