How Cambodian despot Hun Sen maps out control of Australia

Hun Sen has divided Australia into seven zones, each controlled from Phnom Penh. Cambodian-Australians are rewarded for allegiance or singled out for punishment as traitors.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s barely concealed foreign interference in Australia’s affairs is well known to security agencies. Picture: AFP

Cambodian despot Hun Sen has divided Australia into seven zones, each controlled from Phnom Penh by a high-ranking military officer or official in the regime, in which Cambodian-Australians are rewarded for allegiance to the dictator or singled out for punishment as traitors.

The network is used to conduct surveillance and provide reports to the regime on local opponents of Hun Sen, and has directly threatened violence against Cambodian-Australians, including former Victorian MP Hong Lim.

The existence of this barely concealed foreign interference in Australia’s affairs is well known to security agencies, but the local Cambodian community is now pushing the Albanese government to live up to its pre-election rhetoric and ban regime officials who use the threat of violence to enforce obedience by Australian citizens to Hun Sen.

Sydney lawyer Sawathey Ek has written to Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil asking the government to refuse visas to zone commanders and their enforcers, and to invoke Australia’s foreign interference laws.

Both ministers were vocal in their demands for the Morrison government to act against Hun Sen’s excesses but have been muted since taking office.

“Here is the result of years of neglect of your own community that allows Hun Sen’s party to build its influence in Sydney,” wrote Mr Ek, who lived through Pol Pot’s genocidal reign and arrived in Australia as a refugee in 1983.

Hun Sen's son Hun Manet sitting in the Speaker's Chair of the NSW Parliament in 2018. Source: Facebook

“How much time do these people spend on promoting Australian values, as they pay homage to Hun Sen’s leadership on our soil?” he asked.

More than 57,000 people in Australia have Cambodian ancestry, according to the 2021 census, the majority in Victoria (23,498) and NSW (18,821).

The Australian zones – which take in every state and territory except Tasmania – are overseen by senior regime officials who report directly to Hun Sen’s eldest son and likely successor, Hun Manet, commander of the Cambodian military and a frequent visitor to Australia.

Photographs of Hun Manet sitting in the Speaker’s chair of the NSW parliament have been widely used as propaganda by the regime.

The commander of Australia Zone 3 – the Sydney sector – is Hou Hap, a vice admiral in the Royal Cambodian Navy and an Australian citizen who once ran a seafood cafe in Five Dock, in Sydney’s inner west, but returned to Cambodia in 2005 and became a successful businessman. He was appointed a rear admiral in 2015 with no previous naval or military background, and later promoted to vice admiral.

Hap is also a regular visitor to Australia, pictured in one Sydney meeting with charts on the wall reported by one attendee to be the ID photos of pro-democracy Cambodian activists.

A meeting he conducted via Zoom from Cambodia earlier this month was attended by 700 Sydney members of the “Cambodian People’s Party Youth Team ­Region 3”, many dressed in the blue uniform of the CPP with a scarf and cap, which, although of a different colour, reminds many Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge garb. At one point in the proceedings they sang the anthem of Hun Sen’s political party.

A meeting of Zone 3 in Sydney on July 3. Source: Facebook

The president of Australia Zone 2 – the Melbourne sector, and among the most active – is Major General Lau Vann, whose family has substantial business and property holdings in Australia.

In 2015 his wife, Choeung Sokuntheavy, bought a luxury apartment in one of Melbourne’s most exclusive tower blocks, in Southbank, for $4m. Two years ago the pair bought an apartment in Sydney’s Waterloo for $3.6m.

A Senate committee into issues facing diaspora communities, chaired by the late senator Kimberley Kitching, in 2020 noted scores of examples of intimidation, interference and death threats by members of the Cambodian People’s Party, with many Cambodian-Australians “afraid to speak out publicly or freely for fear of possible recrimination for themselves personally or for their relatives in Cambodia”.

Cambodian students under Australian scholarships are vulnerable to recruitment through fear they will not get a job when they return home, though many students come from wealthy families and are already supportive of the regime.

Unlike the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to influence politicians, the Cambodian regime operates at a grassroots level – but no less effectively, says Mr Ek.

Hun Sen himself made threats before a visit to Australia in 2018 that if any protesters tried to burn his effigy, “I will pursue you and beat you in your homes”.

While no one in the Cambodian community took the boast literally, many feared it would incite violence by Hun Sen’s supporters here.

When he arrived, Hun Sen more chillingly made a direct threat against Bou Rachana, the widow of assassinated Cambodian commentator Kem Ley, now given asylum in Australia.

“Kem Ley’s wife is here,” Hun Sen said. “I don’t blame you, because you have been influenced, but you must think it over. As a mother, do you want your children alive or dead?”

Kem Ley was drinking his morning coffee at a petrol station cafe in the capital, Phnom Penh, in July 2016 when a man walked in and opened fire, killing him instantly.

Protests against the Hun Sen regime in Australia are routinely filmed and photographed by CPP members, often under the direction of government officials who travel with delegations to “provide IT support”.

Mr Ek wrote to numerous Morrison government MPs and officials in December last year, demanding to know “Why should Canberra give special privilege to dictators from Cambodia?”.

“We have in the past urged the government to declare ­associations promoting dictatorship on Australian soil to be in violation of foreign interference laws, yet Canberra was silent,” he wrote.

“We expect Labor to show leadership on Cambodia where the Liberal government failed.

“With this evidence of officials building and recruiting locals to serve as ‘foreign missions’ on Australian soil, we recommend revoking their visas.”

Former Victorian MP Hong Lim has endured repeated death threats for his outspoken opposition to Hun Sen, particularly after the death of his friend Kem Ley.

He has been charged with “incitement” by the regime, with his trial still pending.

He has been banned from Cambodia but believes he would face four or five years in jail if he returned.

Mr Lim said he had hoped the Albanese government would act swiftly and decisively on attempts by the Hun Sen regime to interfere in Australia’s democracy.

“They should take a very strident, very strong position because in opposition they came out all guns blazing. I am disappointed because once they’re in government they said they have to be very careful, they have to deal with ASEAN, they have to be able to work with them.

“Every time my party is in power they disappoint me more than the Coalition government. It has just broken my heart, you know, and I am angry with them.”

Home Affairs Minister Ms O’Neil in opposition supported motions to introduce “targeted sanctions such as visa restrictions and asset freezes for members of Hun Sen’s regime and their families, given the reported strong links between the regime’s key officials and Australia”.

Ms O’Neil declined to answer specific questions from The Australian about whether the government would take any action over the activities of Hun Sen’s enforcers, including denying visas to individuals or using Australia’s foreign interference laws.

A spokesperson noted that the department reserved the right to cancel visas “as a result of a non-citizen providing incorrect information in order to enter Australia, presenting a significant risk to the community or engaging in substantial criminal conduct”.

“The Australian government, law enforcement and intelligence agencies work closely together to engage with, and support, communities – including the Cambodian community – concerned or affected by foreign interference,” the spokesperson said.

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