I had a very long day yesterday what with driving from Sydney to the Australian Parliament House at Canberra, ACT for a meeting of members of the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) to meet with Ministers and Politicians in The Australian Federal Parliament building in the evening and then driving back to my home in Sydney.

This was very much UNTAC related and we received a splendid and very on topic address by the originator of the Paris Accords, the then Senator, now Professor, Gareth Evans.

It was also a pleasure to receive a complimentary copy of the University of Melbourne publication, in association with Asialink, Australian Institute of International Affairs and National Archives of Australia - Peace Building in Cambodia : The Role of the Paris Accords.

It was also a privilege to reconnect with now Professor Gareth Evans, who I had last met in his office in the then very new Australian Federal Parliament House circa 30 + years ago.

Although having worked in Cambodia for thirty years now, I had never met Ms Sue Coffee who is the editor of another Melbourne University Press publication - Seeking Justice for Cambodia - Human Rights Defenders Speak Out, who very kindly gifted me a copy of this publication.

The Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms Penny Wong, was due to join us but was called away at the last minute for a meeting with the Australian Prime Minister. However, I see that she is scheduled to visit Cambodia in the next few days.

I shall await the outcome of her meeting with the Prime Minister of Cambodia with considerable interest.

Unfortunately the new Australian Ambassador Designate to Cambodia, Mr Justin Whyatt, vice Dr Pablo Kang, was not able to attend so I did not get to meet him last night.

The Australian Ambassador and I had been awarded medals by Cambodia for our respective work in Cambodia on 6th October 2022 at a public ceremony at the Phnom Penh Hotel in, of course, Phnom Penh.

OML

This may be of interest:

I and many of the Indochinese in Australia were pleased to be present to hear this address in person.

OML

PEACE, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN CAMBODIA: KEEPING THE FLAME ALIVE
Address by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC, Foreign Minister 1988-96, to Australian South East Asian Network Cambodia Legacy Event, Parliament House, Canberra, 28 November 2022
___________________________________________________________________________
I am honoured to have been invited by Sawathey Ek and his colleagues from the Australian South East Asian Network to participate in this event commemorating the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, and recognising the contribution of so many political and other colleagues in keeping alive not only the flame of peace, but of democracy and human rights, that was lit three decades ago.
Australia can remain proud of the role we played in bringing peace to Cambodia. No people in the world then cried out more for peace, or more deserved it, with the country ravaged for years before by massive US bombing during the Vietnam War, by civil war, by the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, and then by civil war again following the invasion and installation of HE’s government by Vietnam. These onslaughts – above all the horrific Khmer Rouge genocide – caused the deaths of some two million Cambodians and effectively destroyed the lives of a great many more.
Every attempt through the 1980s to bring this suffering and misery to an end failed, essentially as a result of the labyrinth of intractable differences which existed between Cambodia’s warring internal parties, their respective regional backers, and the big powers. The US supported ASEAN and the royalists, Russia supported Vietnam (not then a member of ASEAN) and HE, and China supported the communist Khmer Rouge. Nobody would compromise. Nobody could agree on anything.
Australia initiated in 1989 the diplomatic strategy that finally worked - essentially by designing an unprecedentedly hands-on role for the United Nations in the governing of the country through a transitional period, which gave China a face-saving way of withdrawing its support for the Khmer Rouge, without having to directly yield power to HE or the royalists and their respective backers.
- We did the diplomatic hard yards in translating what at the beginning was just an idea into a workable strategy – particularly with the extraordinary odyssey conducted by then DFAT Deputy Secretary Michael Costello, testing the viability of our idea in thirty major meetings with key players in thirteen countries over a period of just twenty-one days.
- We did the hard yards in turning broad concepts into detailed operational plans in the ‘Red Book’, still widely remembered by Cambodians, which we prepared for the crucial Jakarta Informal Meeting of February 1990 chaired by my friend and colleague Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, with whom we worked hand in glove throughout.
- And General John Sanderson’s leadership of the UNTAC military mission during the critical 1991-93 transition period, was crucial to its success.
The UN peace plan did achieve its principal peacemaking aims. External patrons, above all China with the Khmer Rouge, did withdraw material support for the various political groupings, sucking away the oxygen that had sustained civil war for so long. The more than
365, 000 displaced Cambodians were successfully repatriated from the Thai border. The Cambodian conflict was removed as a source of regional tension. It became possible for Vietnam to enter into much more productive relations regionally and internationally. Cambodia’s reconstruction could at last begin, and the path was cleared for it to assume its own rightful place in the community of nations.
But, as I said when representing Australia as our Foreign Minister at the signing of the Paris Peace Accords 1991, ‘Peace and Freedom are not prizes, which, once gained, can never be lost. They must be won again each day. Their foundations must be sunk deep into the bedrock of political stability, economic prosperity and above all, the observance of human rights.’
Sadly, the truth of that observation has been borne out repeatedly over the last three decades. We brought peace to Cambodia, and with it some overdue national economic development. But as to democracy and human rights – the other two core elements of the Paris Agreements – the record has been one of dismal failure.
The rot set in early. The 1993 election was a brilliant success, with 90 per cent turnout. It was an incredibly moving experience to watch those voters in family groups – everyone from grannies to new babies – lined up for hours at polling stations across the country knowing the high risk of bomb attacks, but with so much joyful confidence in the future. But it did not result in the expected win for HE and his governing Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). He refused to accept the result, and the international community – far too meekly, I have to say with the wisdom of hindsight– allowed him to become joint prime minister. It was the last fully free and fair election Cambodia was to hold.
HE has been clever and utterly ruthless. Within a short time he had vanquished his opponents and taken steps to ensure no opposition party could meaningfully contest his leadership. And over the years that have passed, the CPP has become synonymous with corruption, land evictions, control of the judiciary and army, political repression, wide scale arrests and imprisonment, physical threats to those protesting the loss of human rights – and, on occasion, outright murder, including the brazen daylight shooting of Kem Lay in 2016.
Any pretence of commitment to genuine democracy vanished with the arrest and banning of Kem Sokha in 2017, the following puppet-court banning of the main opposition party CNRP and the reassignment of its assembly seats to government supporters, the continued persecution of Sam Rainsy and the imminent likely banning now -- repeating history before the 2023 election – of the Candlelight Party he founded.
If Cambodia is to have the democratic, rights- respecting future it so obviously needs and deserves, I believe the greatest hope lies with its own people, backed up with support and pressure not so much from the UN and other multilateral organisations, which have largely gone missing since the early 1990s, but individual countries with political leaders genuinely committed to human rights and democracy and who are capable of exercising some influence.
Cambodia’s people both at home and abroad, including the diaspora here in Australia, have shown extraordinary courage and resilience in the face of adversity, and – whenever they have had the chance – that they want above all the restoration of decent governance. With a median age of twenty-five, its population the youngest of any South East Asian country, the country has wonderful potential. And younger generation leaders have continued to struggle, against almost impossible odds, to keep the flames of justice alight. The story of Cambodia’s many
brave human rights defenders is superbly told in Sue Coffey’s book, Seeking Justice in Cambodia: it is really important that this story continue to be told, and that its message of hope gets through to the next generation.
Beyond their own resources and commitment, what the Cambodian people really need is external support, not just in the form of sympathetic resolutions from multilateral forums, and not just moral support of the other regional diaspora communities hosting this evening’s event. They need hard practical measures from individual countries that can put real pressure on HE and those around him to modify their behaviour. This means in particular, in the context of the next general election in 2023, pressure to reverse the ban on the CNRP and its leaders, to not touch the Candlelight Party, and to enable the genuine exercise of universal civil and political rights across the whole community.
Targeted individual sanctions against key regime members and their families – basically asset freezes and other financial restrictions, and visa bans – are the most useful forms of such pressure. After dragging its feet for years, Australia with the passage of our own ‘Magnitsky Act’ has made easier the application of such sanctions in human rights cases.
We have been a world-leader in the past in supporting the Cambodian people in their yearning for life and liberty. With their basic rights and freedoms now more imperilled than they have been since the end of the Khmer Rouge genocide, it is time for our voice, along voices from many other countries, to be once again strongly heard. I have great confidence, that with the presence among us of so many political leaders committed to this cause, that voice will be heard and that it will matter.
But at the end of the day it is the voice of the Cambodian people, both at home and abroad, that will matter most. I also have enormous confidence that, with the continuing commitment of so many Cambodians, including those participating in this event, there will prevail that strong majority will for decency and dignity, for genuine democracy and genuine respect for human rights that so obviously exists, and that Cambodia will in fact at last become the country we all wanted it to be when we finally put to rest the ravages of genocide and civil war thirty years ago.

Hello Felgerkarb - very good to see you active on forum again. Very sorry to hear what happened to your awards and medals.

Yes, it came as a complete surprise. It is the MONISARAPHON Medal "Asrithi Class" Not sure yet what "Asrithi" means or how it translates. It's a rather pretty gold-coloured thing when compared to my other military campaign etc medals. The medal ribbon is a rather nice "saffron-yellow".

OML

Thank you for the reception. I am a former blue helmet from the UNTAC mission. I am currently in Cambodia. I have been here for several months for the purpose of business. I will be happy if I can find contacts with companies and people engaged in business. I have concentrated in the export of agro products My reason for answering is that these photos are mine. In this regard, I want to share with you that on 08.04.2023 I will organize a tribute to the victims of the mission in the only memorial to those who died. Which is located in the courtyard of the Bulgarian Embassy(227/229 Blvd ,,NORODOM" PP). I provide my facebook and contact phone. Thank you. Georgi Stefanov(F). Tel.+855 15495546 E-mail:[email protected] Company name: STEKKAR LTD.E-mail: [email protected]

Bulgarian Peacekeepers Who Died in UN Mission in Cambodia 30 Years Ago Commemorated in Phnom Penh
Dimitrina Solakova

Association of Bulgarian Veteran Peacekeepers Photo
Sofia/Phnom Penh,
08.04.2023 15:05
At the St George the Victory-Bearer chapel in Phnom Penh on Saturday, the Association of Bulgarian Veteran Peacekeepers held a commemorative ceremony for the 30th death anniversary of four Bulgarian soldiers. Tsvetomir Petkov, Petar Baychev, Atanas Radev, and Ventsislav Mirchev were killed in April 1993 while participating in the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) peacekeeping mission, the Association said.

UNTAC was the first peacekeeping mission of the Bulgarian Army, which participated with a battalion from May 1992 to November 1993. The tasks included disarming the warring sides, keeping the public order, guarding UN officials conducting civil registration, and ensuring the successful conduct of the 1993 national elections in Cambodia. Eleven Bulgarians died during the mission, four of whom in Khmer Rouge attacks.

Saturday’s commemorative ceremony at the St George the Victory-Bearer chapel, built by the participants in UNTAC and located on the territory of the Bulgarian Embassy in Phnom Penh, was attended by Association of Bulgarian Veteran Peacekeepers representative Georgi Stefanov, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Information Chea Chanboribo, participants in UNTAC from other countries, Bulgarians living in Cambodia, Cambodians with a Bulgarian higher education degree, and other officials.
/DS/
https://www.bta.bg/en/news/bulgaria/438 ... -commemora