Khmer Times, Opinion, 31 December 2025 (Link)
It is a struggle to reconcile Cambodia’s efforts to promote peace in the region and the strange silence of ASEAN leaders in the face of the loss of regional peace.
Under Cambodia’s ASEAN chairmanship in 2022, I vividly recall how Mr Hun Sen travelled to Naypyidaw in January 2022, braving criticism from some ASEAN member states, even risking his own safety and that of his entourage, when Myanmar was on the brink of civil war, and a curfew had been imposed.
His intentions were to try to prevent peace from breaking and ensure that the Myanmar people would not face the same tragedy as Cambodia did from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s.
Before that, Mr Hun Sen and the other ASEAN leaders had attended the ASEAN Special Summit in Jakarta in April 2021, when the whole region was struggling to contain COVID-19. While abiding by a strict health and security protocol, every ASEAN leader risked their own health to try to uphold peace in Myanmar in flying to Jakarta when travel was restricted and quarantine was enforced.
In May, even after leaving his government post, Mr Hun Sen, now Senate President, travelled to Indonesia to promote peace and share Cambodia’s experience in peacebuilding at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta. He was warmly received by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who rendered him a treatment befitting a head of state.