7-1-2025 (PHNOM PENH) Cambodia’s formidable elder statesman Hun Sen has called for sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation that would target individuals seeking to destabilise his son’s administration, as the nation commemorated its liberation from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the 46th anniversary of Cambodia’s liberation, Hun Sen, who relinquished his premiership last year, proposed classifying attempts to overthrow the current government as acts of terrorism. The announcement came during solemn celebrations of what Hun Sen dubbed the country’s “second birthday”—the day Vietnamese forces, under his leadership, expelled the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh in 1979.
The proposed legislation would designate as terrorists “any individuals or organisations plotting extremist movements, fostering social instability, provoking international tensions, or attempting to topple the legitimate government,” Hun Sen declared, seated alongside his successor and eldest son, Prime Minister Hun Manet.
The commemoration highlights a deeply polarising chapter in Cambodia’s history. Whilst the ruling party celebrates January 7th as Victory Day, opposition figures regard it as the beginning of Vietnam’s ten-year occupation of their nation.
The Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, which began in 1975 under Pol Pot’s leadership, resulted in the deaths of approximately two million Cambodians through a combination of forced labour, mass executions, torture, and widespread famine. Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge cadre who later defected, played a pivotal role in the regime’s downfall. rights organisations have long criticised Hun Sen’s 38-year tenure for its systematic suppression of political opposition through judicial means. Numerous opposition figures and activists faced imprisonment during his leadership, which ended with the succession of his son in 2023.
The country achieved a measure of historical justice in 2018 when a UN-supported tribunal found two senior Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of genocide. However, the regime’s notorious leader, Pol Pot, known as “Brother Number One”, escaped prosecution, having died in 1998 before the tribunal’s establishment.
