Transcriber: Amanda Priosti Reviewer: Emma G
Have you ever had a dinner you’ll never forget? I have.
When I was a U.S. diplomat in Cambodia in 2005.
My wife and I were hosting the leader of the Democratic opposition and his wife.
They were playing with our two little boys laughing, joking.
But there was also business that had to be done.
The ruling party planned to vote the next day
to strip him of his parliamentary protections.
So I asked, what do you think is going to happen?
And he answered so simply.
He said, they’re going to arrest me and then they’re going to kill me.
Our boys’ jaws dropped.
My wife and I knew what we had to do. We put the boys to bed.
But then we brainstormed.
You see, this was no idle threat.
He had already been the target of a grenade attack
that had killed 16 people around him
and blown the head of his bodyguard right off his shoulders.
We knew the stakes were incredibly high.
But what can and what should American diplomats do
to help protect people overseas who are fighting for their rights.
Especially those who are facing mortal dangers?
In Cambodia, we confronted these questions every single day.
Cambodia had been through hell.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the country had been swept up in the Vietnam War.
It had suffered bombings, a coup,
and finally, the victory of the Cambodian communists,
the Khmer Rouge.
Many Cambodians hoped that peace had come.
Instead, the worst had just begun.
The Khmer Rouge led a three and a half year reign of terror.
They turned the entire country into a giant slave labor camp.
The Khmer Rouge killing fields resulted in the deaths of 20%
of the entire population, 20%.
That’s one in five people.
Cambodia had become the world’s worst human rights disaster.
When the Khmer Rouge fell, ten more years of civil war.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees, desperation, despair.
The international community stepped up.
I was a member of the U.S. delegation to the talks
that would ultimately produce a peace agreement.
After two years of arduous negotiations, the parties,
including all of the Cambodians and even the Khmer Rouge themselves,
committed to protect the fundamental freedoms of the Cambodian people.
It was beautiful. It was a great opportunity.
But the State Department decided that I should participate in implementing this.
There would be a giant peacekeeping operation
by the United Nations, the largest in history.
The Cambodians would decide their future themselves
through free and fair elections.
International assistance would pour in
and we hoped the agreement would usher in peace for Cambodia and the region.
My wife and I were on our way to Cambodia.
We arrived in 1991, In a country time had forgotten.
There were no cars in the streets. Children didn't play or even smile.
Impoverished Cambodians use the swimming pool
at the Olympic Stadium to bathe and wash their clothes.
Most nights we went to bed to the sound of gunfire.
But the work was so exciting.
We were helping Cambodians rebuild their country and build democracy.
With our assistance and the help of many others,
a plethora of human rights organizations grew up.
360,000 refugees returned home safely.
Brand new political parties competed openly for the support
of the Cambodian people.
When the elections came in 1991, despite threats from the Khmer Rouge,
90% of Cambodians went to the polls. 90%, It was beautiful.
They were sending a strong signal.
Given the opportunity, Cambodians were determined to exercise their rights.
But the losers in the elections,
the party in power in the capital, they threatened armed rebellion.
The UN decided not to fight.
And so the result was a tense power sharing arrangement.
At that point, as often happens,
the international community turned its attention to other priorities,
to other crises around the world.
Cambodia was no longer front page news
and at the end of a three year tour,
my wife and I moved on to our next assignment.
In the ensuing years, that fragile coalition failed.
And in 1997, there was a coup and the losers in the election seized power.
The U.N. stepped back in.
There were new elections, but this time with no peacekeepers.
The opposition faced intimidation, coercion and violence.
Anti-Democratic forces actually strengthened their grip on power.
In 2003, my wife and I returned for a second tour.
So much in Cambodia had changed.
The peace agreement, all of that international assistance
had transformed the capital, the once silent city bustled.
Previously, drab markets were now alive
with hawkers selling everything from noodles to impossibly warm ski parkas
that had been manufactured in Cambodia’s brand new
and thriving textile industry.
But the government was hard at work
using legal means to chip away at the rights of the Cambodian people.
They were replacing rule of law with rule by law.
And the opposition leader was one of the prime targets.
They charged him with defamation, a classic authoritarian tactic.
And that brings us back to that dinner in 2005.
He asked, can the embassy do anything to offer some kind of protection?
But we were diplomats.
An embassy can’t be the base
for the Democratic opposition in a sovereign country.
So I told him, after the vote in Parliament, he could come to the embassy.
Collect his thoughts, weigh his options,
but at the end of the day, he was going to have to leave.
And the next day, it became clear.
The ruling party was opening the way for his arrest.
So I drove from Parliament to the embassy.
In the car right behind the opposition leader.
The discussions at the embassy were very difficult and in the end he decided,
If you were arrested or even worse the entire opposition might die.
How we decided our next move? I can’t really say.
But the rear gate to the embassy quietly opened
and apparently unnoticed I drove out with the opposition leader in the back seat.
Our destination? The airport.
And we hoped a flight to freedom.
At the airport, I asked my driver to pull into the VIP parking
and soon the opposition leader’s wife arrived
carrying just two things, his passport and his toothbrush.
His teeth were going to be safe as for the rest of him, I wasn’t so sure.
And as if on cue, two Cambodian police
cradling AK 47 rifles, approached the car, peered in, saw him.
But instead of seizing him,
they bowed deeply in a sign of respect and walked away.
I asked what just happened? And the opposition leader’s wife whispered
“Those police, their ours.”
She went into the terminal and as she came back 20 minutes later with a ticket.
She whispered again, the people at the ticket counter, they’re ours too.
But now what?
How could he board the plane without going through customs
where he’d be seen and could easily be arrested?
So we took a chance. I asked my poor driver
to drive right onto the airport tarmac and directly underneath the plane.
We got out, walked up the stairs and toothbrush in hand, he boarded.
I felt exhilaration, but also sadness.
We protected one person,
but it didn’t feel like a victory for human rights and democracy in Cambodia.
The next day, the government let us know they knew exactly what had happened.
They sent a letter to the embassy addressed to me and inside was a bill.
They wanted me to pay the opposition leaders unpaid airport departure tax.
Who knew authoritarians had a sense of humor?
Months passed, there were more difficult talks.
Eventually he was allowed back into the country,
and over the course of several years,
the opposition contested a series of elections.
Despite all the odds, the opposition inched ever closer
to winning an absolute majority of the vote.
In 2017, the government decided they couldn’t take any more chances
with the will of the Cambodian people.
They slapped another defamation suit on him.
He went into exile again, this time
the Cambodian Supreme Court dissolved the opposition party altogether.
In the 2018 elections, with no credible opposition,
the ruling party won every single seat in Parliament.
I’ve long reflected on those events in Cambodia.
What do they tell us about what American diplomats can do to help
protect people overseas who are fighting for their rights?
And really, what should we do?
Our diplomatic efforts had produced peace,
some small measure of prosperity and even limited human rights.
The Khmer Rouge killing fields are gone and I don’t think they’re coming back.
But Cambodia should teach us all humility.
Our grand aspirations to protect fundamental freedoms
to help build a constitutional democracy that hasn’t really worked.
At least not yet.
And we encouraged people to take risks.
Some of them ended up in exile, in prison and even dead.
Does this mean that our diplomatic efforts to protect rights
in Cambodia achieve nothing? I don’t think so.
We could not deliver the rights themselves, but we planted seeds.
And we provided enough protection
so the Cambodians could fight for their rights another day.
Recently I spoke with the opposition leader and his wife.
And she reminded me of what I said when that door to the airplane closed.
I said, this is a sad day for democracy in Cambodia.
And she asked me if I remembered her response.
She said, it’s a sad day
only if we abandon the fight for democracy and we are not giving up the fight.
Cambodians are still fighting.
Recently, the government charged 56 human rights activists
and opposition members with an array of alleged crimes.
One of them marched to her court hearing
dressed as a traditional Cambodian Apsara dancer decrying
what she called the government’s political theater.
Elsewhere in the world last year,
we all witnessed the desperate exodus from the airport in Kabul.
American diplomats and American military helped evacuate
tens of thousands of Afghans on flights to safety.
In Afghanistan today, despite Taliban intimidation and even violence,
Afghan girls are demanding the right to an education.
Those Afghan girls, Cambodian human rights activists
and now today the people of Ukraine, they still have hope.
They have not abandoned the fight for their own rights.
With all due humility
and with appropriate care, I would submit the United States
and American diplomats should not abandon the fight for rights overseas either.
Thank you. (Applause)