PHNOM PENH, July 26 — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced his resignation today after nearly four decades of hardline rule.
The 70-year-old, who took power in 1985 and is one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, has vowed to hand over power to his son after winning a one-sided election.
Here are key dates in Hun Sen’s life, from his youth as a Khmer Rouge cadre and his early political rise, to the quashing of his political opposition and plans for a dynastic power transfer:
1952-77: Revolution and genocide
Hun Sen is born in 1952 in a small, rural district on the Mekong River.
As a teenager, he joins the Khmer Rouge, also known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, in response to a 1970 coup by defence chief Lon Nol that ousts the government of monarch and independence leader Norodom Sihanouk.
Five years later, the communist guerrillas seize Phnom Penh, empty the capital of its residents and establish a Maoist dystopia that starves, executes and works to death up to a quarter of the population
Hun Sen flees to neighbouring Vietnam in 1977, fearing the worsening internal purges enveloping the regime at the time.
1979-91: Rise to power
In January 1979, Hun Sen is among the Vietnamese-backed forces that drive the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh. He is appointed foreign minister in the new government installed by Hanoi.
After six years, he is appointed prime minister, aged just 32.
War rages in the countryside with insurgencies led by royalists and remnant Khmer Rouge forces, but Vietnam withdraws the troops propping up Hun Sen’s government in 1989 after a decade-long occupation.
The warring factions sign the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991, committing them to resolve their conflict through a peaceful multi-party election sponsored by the United Nations.
1993-97: Setback and triumph
The Cambodian People’s Party loses the 1993 elections to the royalist FUNCINPEC party, though neither have a majority in the new parliament and are forced into an uneasy alliance.
Hun Sen takes the post of Second Prime Minister, ostensibly governing in concert with the king’s son, Norodom Ranariddh.
But in 1997, he leads a bloody coup and ousts Ranariddh from government.
The same year a grenade attack kills at least 16 people at a rally for emerging opposition leader Sam Rainsy.
1998-2012: Reckoning with the past
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot dies in 1998 while under house arrest in one of the movement’s last redoubts near the Thai border.
Remaining soldiers agree to disarm or defect to Hun Sen’s government, finally ending decades of civil war.
In 2003, after lengthy negotiations, Hun Sen’s government agrees to a joint international tribunal with the United Nations to put the main surviving perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge on trial.
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, receives a life term for his role as head jailer in Phnom Penh’s notorious S-21 detention centre. The regime’s former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, who died in 2019, were also given life sentences.
Hun Sen’s government refuses to permit the court to investigate other cases, and it closes down after three convictions and costing more than $300 million.
2013-23: One-party rule
Hun Sen’s CPP claims a narrow victory over Sam Rainsy’s Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in 2013 elections, sparking protests in Phnom Penh.
A police crackdown ends months of opposition rallies the following year.
The party is dissolved by the Supreme Court in 2017 and many of its lawmakers flee the country.
The CPP sweeps all 125 lower house seats in 2018 elections that lack genuine opposition, drawing international condemnation.
Hun Sen announces in 2021 that he will back Hun Manet, his eldest son, to replace him when he retires.
The most senior opposition leader remaining in the country, Kem Sokha of the CNRP, is sentenced to 27 years in prison on treason charges in 2023.
The CPP again wins a landslide in a 2023 election with the only credible challenger disqualified. Three days later, Hun Sen announces he is stepping down to let Hun Manet form a new government. — AFP
