Riding with the Devils: China’s Role in the Cambodian and Sri Lankan Conflicts

Introduction

In this article, two alleged genocides that happened in different historical periods are compared because they present a similar and repetitive pattern: In both cases, the communist regime in Beijing offered its support to non-aligned, ‘socialist’ regimes that had been disillusioned with the West, and in both cases, Chinese support continued until the end: China halted its support for Pol Pot in 1991 only because it had been put under pressure by the USA to do so, and it halted its official support for Rajapaksa in 2015 only because he had been ousted from office by his rival in presidential elections. A genocide is often a combination of two factors: bystanders who omit to take timely action and perpetrators who commit the acts often in impunity (Shaw, 2013).

History shows that it is difficult to prevent a genocide and almost impossible to stop an ongoing genocide from inside or outside (Meierhenrich, 2014). Hence, it is impossible to know or speculate if the genocides could have been prevented from outside had China (and other key players such as the USA, the European Union (EU), the former Soviet Union, Vietnam or India) acted differently. It is however possible to identify foreign policy patterns that made act Chinese leaders in a certain way, leading to certain outcomes. In which ways did Chinese regime support influence the non-prevention and non-punishment of genocidal violence? Why did China’s policy of non-intervention turn out to be as harmful as the liberal Western approach? The article contends that China believed that sound internationalism can only be built on the free decisions of completely independent, self-reliant nations outside the United Nations (UN) framework of multilateral conflict resolution. Hence, it will be argued that Chinese strict bilateral non-interference policy allowed and encouraged Cambodia and Sri Lanka to nurture their non-aligned national self-image and develop extreme forms of revolutionary and/or ethnic nationalism. This attitude led China to ignore alarm signals, refuse to pay heed to international opinion and stop its moral and military support.

On the Use of the Term ‘Genocide’

Even though ‘genocide’ is a common descriptor for the events in Cambodia, it raises doubts. For legal purposes, genocide will be defined in accordance with the Genocide Convention as the ‘intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, racial, ethnical or religious group as such’. In the case of Cambodia, this applies to ethnic Vietnamese and Muslim Cham. The inclusion of Buddhist monks who were targeted because of their religious affiliation has also been under consideration. As for ethnic Chinese, there has been disagreement on whether they were targeted because of their social class standing or because of their ethnic status. Kiernan (1986) and Midlarsky (2005) have contended that they were targeted because of their urban dweller class enemy status. Others have asserted that race and class were indistinguishable in the Cambodian revolution (Becker, 1998). Charges of genocide against Vietnamese and Cham minorities were brought forward for the first time in 2014 against defendants Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. Whether the Khmer Rouge committed a genocide against the Khmer as ‘national group’ represents legally unchartered territory because perpetrators and victims belonged to the same group (something which had not been foreseen by the Genocide Convention in 1945 when perpetrators and victims had belonged to different groups). Genocide is closely tied to the better-known concept of crimes against humanity: In both cases, government authorities may be indicted or held responsible for perpetrating or tolerating systemic attacks against civilians. One important difference between the two is that the collectivist element in genocide must be directed against a group.

It took more than 30 years to agree on an accountability mechanism in Cambodia. A hybrid international court, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), was established in 2007 to indict and sentence key leaders of the Khmer Rouge. In the first trial, the commander of the infamous torture prison Tuol Sleng, Kaing Guek Eav alias Duch, was sentenced to life imprisonment (Tofan, 2011). Duch was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity (in Duch’s case, torture, murder, extermination, enslavement), but not of the specific crime of genocide. In a strictly legal sense, Duch was convicted of the death of an estimated 12,000 individuals. As Duch was not charged with genocide, the issue did not arise, but in the follow-up trials against defendants Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, genocide charges were included for the killings of up to 500,000 ethnic Cham and an estimated 20,000 ethnic Vietnamese.

In the Sri Lankan case, more than 70,000 Tamil civilians caught in the crossfire in the final days of the Sinhala government offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatists are believed to have been killed, whilst the UN has been accused of inaction in the 2009 ‘white flag incident’, when LTTE cadres were executed after having surrendered under UN auspices (Grant, 2014). Sri Lanka has been in a state of institutionalised impunity for more than 30 years according to Lynch, who has done empirical research on state prosecutions for human rights violations (Lynch, 2012). Yet, despite these institutional failures, Sri Lanka’s sovereign rights have not been questioned. A UN expert panel report stressed in 2011 that Sri Lanka had the right to defend itself. While recognising a state’s right under international law to national security and to defend itself against armed attacks, the panel emphasised though that all actions taken for those legitimate purposes must comply with the requirements of international law (Ratner, 2012). There have been calls by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights himself for a hybrid international war crimes court in Sri Lanka, but the newly elected government under President Sirisena has so far resisted any external judicial probe.

As mentioned, no one has been as of this writing indicted for the alleged genocide in Sri Lanka. There have been efforts by Tamil diaspora groups to frame the Sri Lanka mass atrocities as ‘genocide’ (Walton, 2015). The labelling of the killings as ‘genocide’ is a political rather than legal qualification. Even the term ‘war crimes’ has been controversial. Western states have preferred to call for investigations into war crimes or crimes against humanity rather than genocide, but their insight came late as Kurtz stresses: ‘Only in the final months of the war and during the after-math of the war did Western states dominant engagement shift to issues of accountability and protection of civilians’ (Kurtz, 2016, p. 110). For President Sirisena, even the allegations of war crimes go too far, and he has qualified what happened during the conflict as ‘human rights violations’ (Jazeera, 2016).

Instead of trying to proof genocidal intent, some authors have focused their attention on article II of the Genocide Convention which stipulates that state policies must be akin to ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’. According to them, one should take into consideration the structural economic and social factors that have disadvantaged the Tamil population for decades (Sumita, 2011). The Tamils are a disparate group: The Sri Lankan or Ceylon Tamils, the second major ethnic group in the island after the dominant Sinhalese, have suffered most since Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948 (Argenti-Pillen, 2003; Tambiah, 1986). Muslim Tamils and Indian Tamils are not part because they were not specifically targeted. Muslim Tamils, for example, requested an ethnic minority status in the nineteenth century to set themselves apart as minority from Hindu Tamils or Christian Tamils. They were successful in getting separate cultural institutions and marriage laws and never supported the LTTE fight for a separate Tamil state (Imtiyaz & Hoole, 2011). Many Muslim Tamils became themselves targets of LTTE killings and ethnic cleansing. Indian Tamils were discarded by non-genocidal means: Between 1948 and 1964, 300,000 Indian Tamils who had been brought from India to Sri Lanka to work in plantations were rendered stateless and repatriated to India. The native Sri Lankan Tamils remained indifferent to the fate of Indian Tamils.

To sum up, in the Cambodian case, it is assumed that the term ‘genocide’ (as defined by the Genocide Convention) applies to Muslim Cham and ethnic Vietnamese victims; in the Sri Lankan case, it is more appropriate to use the term ‘mass atrocities’ (or ‘alleged genocide’ keeping in mind that a future criminal tribunal might render such a verdict based on criminal evidence put forward) rather than the politically charged label ‘genocide’.

Analytical Framework: How Non-intervention Supports Nation-building

Much attention has been paid to the question of whether Chinese foreign policy is based on hard strategic calculations or on normative and ideational structures which are believed to play an essential role in shaping China’s foreign policy behaviours. One possible narrative is the narrative of the victimised developing nation and the historically rooted Chinese perception of vulnerability to Western threats (Nathan, 2012). For the present type of normative analysis bilateralism, a strong defence of sovereignty and limited UN participation have been chosen as key points of departure (Liu, 2014). These norms are embedded within the framework of non-intervention also known as ‘Five Principles’.

The ‘Five Principles’ may still be regarded as the foundation of Chinese relations with the rest of the world. Numerous Chinese scholars have noted its ongoing weight and importance. The next question that arises is to consider policy implications and explore, whether non-intervention is beneficial or to put it differently, whether states dealing with China are suffering more negative or positive implications under this principle. One influential study which has looked at foreign policy factors that influcence the local treatment of minorities has found that a state’s nation-building policies towards non-core groups—ranging from accomodation to exclusion—depend upon the international environment and are the result of the interaction between host states and external powers. In the conclusion, the author puts forward a number of foreign policy recommendations. These include the necessity of upholding state sovereignty and minimising involvment by external actors (Mylonas, 2013). This is exactly what China has done in the last decades: The Chinese foreign policy model suggests that there are two important norms that have guided Chinese foreign policy. One is Zhou Enlai’s ‘Five Principles’ articulated at the 1955 Non-Aligned Bandung conference in Indonesia. Non-interference or the respect for sovereignty constitutes the core of the ‘Five Principles’. It means that no government may be coerced to do something or agree to something which is against its will. In other words, there is nothing which can justify foreign interference, and host state consent is required at all times. This includes non-interference into the state’s legitimate and inherent right to self-defence and the prerogative to use internal force (monopoly of violence). Hence, if a state requires military assistance or arms, it is perfectly legitimate to assist or supply those arms, whatever their use or purpose may be. With regard to Cambodia, scholars such as Richardon (2009) have emphasised that China’s foreign policy, grounded in the ‘Five Principles’ of peaceful co-existence, has been consistently applied over the years. Her main claim is that China’s support for Pol Pot was grounded in a principled decision and that China had little to gain from its aid to Cambodia. Both claims merit further scrutiny as China has been accused of being quite flexible about applying those principles. Dittmer has argued that China’s identification with the non-aligned countries ‘was compromised from the beginning by an unresolved tension between joining this group and sponsoring Communist revolution within it’ (Dittmer, 2015, p. 10). Thus, China’s position on non-intervention appears to harbour certain inconsistencies. Instead of presenting non-intervention as an absolute and immutable principle, it is best to look at the evolving context of its application. Two examples might illustrate this point: During the height of the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards tried to export Chinese radicalism to Cambodia. Sihanouk complained in 1967 about the violation of the Five Principles policy to China (Van Ness, 1970). China intervened again in the internal affairs when it tried to put pressure on Sihanouk and Hun Sen to help prevent a war crimes trial against the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s (Metodo, 2002). Another recent example is the 2004 Darfur crisis when China gave up its opposition against the dispatch of UN peacekeeping operation (PKO) troops and intervened with the President of Sudan to convince him to accept the UN decision (Wuthnow, 2013). Richardson acknowledges this flexibility when she says that ‘in extreme circumstances, the principles could be subordinated to security or ideological concerns’ (Richardson, 2009, p. 64).

On the other hand, Mertha (2014) provides in his study on Chinese–Khmer Rouge relations institutionalist arguments to explain why China did not achieve its ends of controlling the relationship as it ‘ended up as a subordinate party’ (p. 4). Mertha shows that China’s aid to Cambodia did not aim at ensuring effective economic development or contribute to reduce poverty among the Cambodian people, but that China provided material and technical support to Kampuchea in order to counterbalance increasing Soviet aid to Vietnam. He then establishes a link between Chinese aid and human rights violations: ‘Beijing propped up the DK [Democratic Kampuchea] regime until the very last days of its existence, extending its reign and indirectly contributing to the vast human rights abuses and mass killings that became the defining feature of DK’ (p. 16). According to Mertha, China provided at least 90 per cent of the foreign aid given to the Khmer Rouge, from food and construction equipment to tanks, planes and artillery. Mertha’s conclusion that ‘China’s provision of vast quantities of cadres, guns, and money had brought precious little’ (p. 9) is however not convincing as the Chinese leaders received from the Khmer Rouge what they wanted: political support and loyalty in the common opposition against Moscow-backed Vietnamese influence in Indochina. To sum up, Mertha’s study does not provide compelling evidence which proves that China was trying to achieve its aims by undermining or circumventing Cambodian sovereignty. In this context, an implicit element of sovereignty which needs further consideration is nationalism. Rather than describing nationalism as a positive foreign policy development (Chen, 2005), preference is given to the definition of Yack which describes the internal (belonging and membership) and external (assertion and pride) elements of nationalist policies: ‘convictions that elevate the nation’s importance and feelings of social friendship that bind its members’(Yack, 2012). Embracing and maintaining a sense of belonging and shared membership are central features of modern nationalism. Internally, nationalism is often directed against minorities, migrants and/or refugees. It is suggested that one group is culturally superior (in terms of language, customs, religion) and that their national identity—whatever that means to them—is being threatened for one reason or another by other groups. Externally, nationalism is directed against other states. In East Asia, states such as China, Japan or Korea argue that their national pride has been violated (in the past) by other states and they portray themselves as victims (victim of colonialism, victim of atomic bombings, victim of aggression, victim of foreign occupation, victim of territorial separation). Hence, I distinguish between two perspectives of nationalism: first, that of inter-state nationalism which is the exercise of unlimited sovereignty (in foreign policy), and second, that of intra-state nationalism which is marked by human rights violations and cultural or ethnic intolerance. The internal role of nationalism as central element of ideology formation and mass mobilisation has been explored by Jackson (1989) and Levene (2005) for Cambodia and by DeVotta (2007) and Deegalle (2012) for Sri Lanka. What has been missing in the literature is the exploration of the influcence of foreign policy on fomenting nationalism and ideologically motivated nation-building policies that have underpinned state violence. In the case of Cambodia, for example, the growing anti-Vietnamese rhetoric in China encouraged the anti-Vietnamese purges undertaken by Pol Pot (Ng, 2012), whereas in the Sri Lankan case, the failure of the Western liberal peace-building model opened the doors for a military solution against Tamil militants which was wholeheartedly embraced by China (Goodhand, 2011). An analysis of how the Norwegian facilitation of talks between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE unravelled and ultimately failed has been provided by Salter (2015). The main argument goes that the responsibility for the failure of the peace talks facilitated by Norway’s Erik Solheim (former Norwegian Development Minister and Special Envoy to Sri Lanka) and Vidar Helgesen (former Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister) lies solely with the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE and not with Norway as the limited mandate given to Norway by both sides was to facilitate discussions between the parties, not to mediate between them. According to one source, for example, the Sri Lankan conflict became a ‘foreign policy tool to ensure that the main world powers would be interested in talking to Norway’ (Salter, 2015, p. 44). Unlike many others, Salter does not blame Norwegian negotiators for failing to understand the complexity of the Sri Lankan situation. His judgement is rather benign. He quotes, for example, a Norway diplomat who tries to reassure readers that in the end, ‘it was not Norway that failed’ but the international community as a whole (Salter, 2015, p. 383). The book leaves no doubt that mistakes towards a durable peace agreement were made by all sides. One of the main lessons learnt according to Solheim is the necessity to ‘engage with everyone and speak to everyone’ (Salter, 2015, p. 426). Sri Lankan key stakeholders express a more critical viewpoint: Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe talks tough when he says: ‘Having a third party and a framework is good, as they did, but [the third party] should not get involved in domestic politics. You have to deal with everyone: you can’t pick your favorites and then decide and then pit them against each other’ (Salter, 2015, p. 403). His internal political rival and contender, former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, accused Norway of having acted more like a mediator than facilitator when it tried to persuade the LTTE to attend the Tokyo donor conference in 2003 (Salter, 2015, p. 464).

As others have argued, Oslo’s peace and development agenda was greatly hampered by its ambiguous approach: If facilitation was the ultimate goal, why did Norway aim at ‘transforming the LTTE, transforming southern politics and reaching an agreement that addressed the interests of both sides?’ (Salter, 2015, p. 402).

Nationalism has been even further strengthened by the adoption of the ‘Three Evils’ norm—which emerged as early as 1998, when five Asian states—the People’s Republic of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—and Russia agreed to collectively combat terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism (Weiqing, 2016). To achieve this goal, they founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in 2001. In this context, it is noteworthy that China invited Sri Lanka to become a dialogue partner of the SCO. Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry issued the following statement to hail its admission in 2009:

In the light of the successful eradication of the menace of terrorism from the island, Sri Lanka’s membership in this forum as a Dialogue Partner would enable it to share its experience in countering terrorism, while upholding human rights and democracy, with the Member States. (Ministry, 2009)

The statement clearly frames the Tamil conflict as terrorist threat which requires counter-terrorism responses. In an additional joint statement after the end of the civil war in May 2013, ‘China and Sri Lanka vowed to jointly crack down on the three forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism, as well as transnational crimes and drug trafficking’ (Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka, 2013). The reframing of the long-standing ethnically dominated internal conflict into a counter-terrorism operation had begun in 2005 with the election of the hardliner Rajapaksa who pledged to suppress separatism and protect the undivided, unitary structure of the state (Kurtz, 2016). One of his first steps in that direction was the reintroduction of the Terrorism Prevention Act in 2006. The next section will focus on the application of the non-intervention principle in Cambodia and Sri Lanka and its policy implications in terms of genocide prevention and punishment. The core thesis that China shielded Pol Pot and Mahinda Rajapaksa from external interference and involvement will be supported by proper evidence.

Patterns of Chinese Non-intervention in Cambodia

Through its non-intervention policy, China shielded the Khmer Rouge from external scrutiny and accountability in three ways: First, it stayed loyal to Pol Pot; second, it remained silent or denied the genocide; and third, it orchestrated international cover-up campaigns to polish the image of Pol Pot.

First, China did everything it could to keep Pol Pot in power and recognise him as the sole leader. In 1979, Vietnam conducted a show trial to prosecute and punish the perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide which the Vietnamese propaganda described as modern Holocaust (De Nike, Quigley, & Robinson, 2000). In this trial, the prosecution and the defence placed primary responsibility on China for orchestrating the crimes under Pol Pot. China had given its unconditional support to Pol Pot until the Vietnamese invasion stopped the ongoing genocide in 1979 and even beyond that. Initially, Pol Pot, who at first had enjoyed widespread support by the Vietnamese, had not been the preferred leader supported by Beijing. Pol Pot arrived in the autumn of 1965 from Hanoi and spent three months in Beijing. His low-profile stay during the Cultural Revolution deeply influenced his Maoist political ideology. He made friendship ties among others with Zhang Chunqiao, leader of the Gang of Four, who was opposed to any negotiated settlement of the Cambodian civil war and the radical communist leader Kang Sheng. Perhaps Kang’s most important influence over Chinese foreign policy came during the Cultural Revolution itself, when he was instrumental in developing Chinese support for the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (Locard, 2013). While the Chinese mainstream supported Prince Norodom Sihanouk as Cambodia’s anti-Western and anti-imperialist leader, Kang argued that Khmer Rouge guerrilla leader Pol Pot was the real revolutionary leader. After the Pol Pot regime came to power, it became the recipient of Chinese aid for years to come. The influence of China on Democratic Kampuchea’s (DK) internal politics was also a crucial, though little understood, factor in Pol Pot’s consolidation of power and purges against his pro-Vietnamese internal rivals. Kiernan has suggested that radicals in the Chinese Communist Party may have backed pro-Vietnamese Internationalist elements in the DK Communist Party in 1976 because they were interested in preserving good relations with Hanoi (Kiernan, 2004). The fall of the radicals in October 1976, a month after Mao Zedong’s death, brought in the pragmatists, led by Deng Xiaoping. As the tensions between Beijing and Hanoi show, Deng viewed Vietnam as an agent of Soviet hegemony. Chinese support of the Pol Pot faction may have been a crucial element in its ability to triumph over the pro-Vietnamese communists in the fall of 1976. Things had completely changed by then. Immediately after making his 27 September 1977 speech revealing the existence of the DK Communist Party, Pol Pot, accompanied by Ieng Sary, visited Beijing where he received a hero’s welcome.

In 1979, after Vietnam invaded Cambodia, Pol Pot sought refuge along the Thai frontier in a mountain hideout, while his deputy Ieng Sary escaped to Beijing. For the next two years, Ieng Sary would keep his post as foreign minister, but at the same time a power reshuffle is supposed to have been orchestrated behind the scenes by China:

By the end of February 1979, Pol Pot had retired from all but his position as chief of the military commission, a step that both Deng and Jiang Zemin [factual error: Jiang Zemin was not a national leader until 1989, PH] would eventually take, and Khieu Samphan had become the President of the DK. (Richardson, 2009, p. 119)

Deng’s public statements on Pol Pot have been ambivalent and contradictory. In 1979 Deng said, ‘If Pol Pot wants to continue his resistance struggle China has the capacity to support him for twenty or thirty years, though his past methods were a mistake’ (Richardson, 2009, p. 119). By 1981, the genocidal activities of the Khmer Rouge became too well publicised for the USA to support Pol Pot openly any longer. Yet, in 1984, Deng still believed that Pol Pot held the key to Cambodia’s future when he remarked: ‘I do not understand why some people want to remove Pol Pot. It is true that he made some mistakes in the past but now he is leading the fight against the Vietnamese aggressors (Khoo, 2011, p. 147). Only three years later, however, Deng’s tides had suddenly turned against Pol Pot. As Radchenko notes, Pol Pot was not anymore the key person in Deng’s concept of a future Cambodian coalition government:

On May 11, 1987, in a conversation with the UN Secretary General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Deng Xiaoping said that any future coalition government should not be based on one faction alone. The Pol Pot forces should be only one part of a future government, headed by Sihanouk. China will not support a government headed by Pol Pot, but rather one led by Sihanouk. (Radchenko, 2014, p. 141)

Still, there have been reports which claim that China continued delivering arms to Khmer Rouge fighters at least until 1991 in violation of Beijing’s pledge to stop all military aid (New York Times, 1991). Pol Pot was sentenced to house arrest in 1997 by an internal committee and died in 1998.

Second, China never acknowledged the genocide. The Chinese have pretended to have known nothing about the genocidal killings in Kampuchea. Doubt has been cast on the veracity of this claim by various sources. When the Pol Pot–Ieng Sary clique was in power, there had been more than 20,000 Chinese military advisers in Kampuchea. The Chinese Embassy and the hospital for Chinese residents were located not far away from the infamous Tuol Sleng prison complex, and there were rumours that the Chinese Embassy had a direct phone line to the Tuol Sleng prison. Allegations have also been made by former prisoners that Chinese-made trucks were used to transport prisoners from and to the Tuol Sleng prison complex. In 2000, it was reported that Chinese advisors had trained prison guards in martial arts training during the DK era (The Phnom Penh Post, 2000). The veracity of these reports is hard to ascertain in absence of evidence. One of the key staff members working in S-21, the former Khmer Rouge photographer Nhem Ein, has denied that Chinese ever visited Tuol Sleng in person: ‘I never saw any Chinese advisors come visit Tuol Sleng, but oftentimes I would go visit them in Phnom Penh, but I never told them about Tuol Sleng’ (In the Dark Room, 2013). According to German journalist Tiziano Terzani, who was staying in Phnom Penh at the time, Chinese advisers and expatriates had complained about the ongoing massacres they had witnessed to Chinese ambassador Sun Hao and even the Vice-Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Wang Tung-hsing but were advised to keep silent because it was an internal matter of Kampuchea (Terzani, 1980). Another source cites a high-ranking Chinese official who suspected the Khmer Rouge of having committed serious crimes: ‘Former Chinese Vice Premier Geng Biao admitted that he suspected the Khmer Rouge was persecuting its opponents and putting them to death’ (Kurlantzick, 2007, p. 115). One testimony presented at the 1979 Vietnamese show trial against Pol Pot described Chinese advisers who had witnessed genocidal killings:

They usually came in and out of the plantation by car, and they even went to the places of the killings. Some of them wore shirts with blue stripes; some wore white ones. They spoke Chinese. They lived in the house of the former plantation owner. It was generally known that there were more than forty Chinese advisers. (De Nike et al., 2000, p. 257)

China has been indifferent towards the fate of ethnic Chinese in Kampuchea, in particular while denouncing the treatment of ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. The primary factors that led to the war with Vietnam were the installation of a Vietnamese-sponsored government in Cambodia, which displaced the Chinese-supported regime, and the discriminatory treatment by the Vietnamese of their ethnic Chinese. It is worth noting that about half of the Chinese in Kampuchea were killed or died, some 200,000 people, with little protest from Beijing. At the beginning of the Khmer Rouge rule in 1975, there were 425,000 ethnic Chinese in Cambodia; by the end in 1979, there were 200,000. Why did China not intervene when the Khmer Rouge killed large numbers of ethnic Chinese? According to Fat, Beijing did not regard overseas Chinese as Chinese citizens entitled to protection: ‘The PRC was aware of the plight of the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia, but ignored them in the context of the official anti-huaqiao (PH: the Chinese diaspora or overseas Chinese) discourse of the Chinese Communist Party’ (Tjon Sie Fat, 2009, p. 363). For the Khmer Rouge, ethnic Chinese were simply class enemies as Midlarsky stresses: ‘The ethnic Chinese, almost all urban, were killed not so much for their ethnicity but for their presumed beliefs and socioeconomic characteristics, assumed to be incompatible with the new Kampuchea’ (Midlarsky, 2005, p. 312).

Third, China did everything to shield Pol Pot from criminal prosecution, and it spared no efforts to polish the international image of Pol Pot. The Japanese proposed already in 1990 the establishment of a special commission to investigate the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. This was rejected at the time. In 1991, Pol Pot was given an assurance by the UN body that he would not be brought to justice. The deal was part of the UN peace plan which was drafted by the Security Council led by the USA. So as to not offend Pol Pot’s principal backers, the Chinese, the plan dropped all mention of genocide, replacing it with the euphemism ‘policies and practices of the recent past’ (Stover, Peskin & Koenig, 2016, p. 242). The Special Representative on Human Rights in Cambodia at the time, Thomas Hammarberg, wrote that ‘the Chinese delegation made clear that it did not want to put the topic on the Security Council agenda’ (Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2001). A former advisor to King Sihanouk reported how Chinese diplomats interfered in the domestic affairs: ‘China spared no effort to induce the Cambodian government not to embark on an international trial of the Khmers Rouges, with the Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia personally leading the lobbying effort and even visiting Cambodian ministers on weekends to get the idea of the international tribunal aborted’ (Metodo, 2002).

Lastly, China has worked at international meetings to prevent scrutiny or criticism of Pol Pot even in the face of significant evidence of gross abuses. Thus, Maguire has described in detail how boldly China backed Pol Pot with propaganda materials:

By 1978, Chinese leaders were having to defend the Khmer Rouge internationally, so they orchestrated a public relations campaign complete with documentary films like ‘Democratic Kampuchea Is Moving Forward’ and accompanying glossy magazines. The Khmer Rouge put their best foot forward in 1978, with Ieng Sary serving as the regime’s public face at the UN in New York. He distributed these magazines to his UN colleagues and even screened the Chinese propaganda film. (Maguire, 2003, p. 55)

Patterns of Chinese Non-intervention in Sri Lanka

In the Sri Lankan case, China followed a similar pattern as in the Cambodian case; its non-intervention policy of moral and military support influenced the internal civil war during and after the alleged genocide in several ways: During the conflict, China adopted the viewpoint of Rajapaksa that the ethnic conflict is a terrorist conflict that must be resolved by military means. After the defeat of the LTTE rebels, China did everything in its power to shield the Rajapaksa regime from international accountability and prosecution at the UN level in Geneva and New York.

Sri Lanka’s population experienced 25 years of civil war, lasting from 1983 to 2009. The civil war has been well documented, and most observers agree that the military conflict between the LTTE and the subsequent Sinhala governments has deep international ramifications involving several leading powers such as the USA, China, India, the UK as well as Norway, the EU and the UN. After both the Indian (1990s) and Norwegian (2000s) initiatives to reach a political settlement between the government and the LTTE had failed, China stepped in to support Rajapaksa, who—as leader of the radical Sinhala forces—was determined from the beginning to defeat the LTTE militarily. Between 2005, when Rajapaksa was elected President, and 2015, when he lost elections, China became the most important military ally and aid provider as Glenn notes: ‘Annual injections of US$1 billion in Chinese funds beginning in 2005 relieved Rajapaksa of both financial concerns and those related to United Nations sanctions thanks to China’s support in the Security Council’ (Glenn, 2015, p. 33). The election of Rajapaksa led to a dramatic bilateral increase in trade in goods and services. The volume of trade between China and Sri Lanka tripled between 2005 and 2012, from US$977 million to US$3.4 billion. Rajapaksa visited China six times during his term in office.

The Chinese stance on the Tamil question has been unequivocal. China has repeatedly stressed that the nationality issue of Sri Lanka is an internal affair of that country and should be properly resolved by Sri Lanka alone. In 2013, the Chinese Embassy in Colombo released a sharply worded statement on Sri Lanka’s human rights record, stressing the importance of foreign non-interference: ‘The international community, instead of taking measures that may complicate the issue, should respect the right of Sri Lankan government and people to choose their own path of promoting human rights’ (Embassy, 2013). Similarly, Rajapaksa and his allies used the terms ‘humanitarian war’ and ‘humanitarian operations’ to describe military operations against the LTTE separatists. In a UN speech from 2010, Rajapaksa said for example: ‘It is in these circumstances that we were compelled to mount a humanitarian operation with the blessings of many international friends, to neutralise acts of terrorism and restore peace and security’ (Rajapaksa, 2010). The narratives of humanitarian war and counter-terrorism gave the impression that, under special circumstances, indiscriminate state violence and disproportionate use of force could be justified (Kurtz, 2016). Next, China believed that arms and human rights were unrelated. From the viewpoint of non-interference and state consent, it seemed perfectly legitimate for China to supply arms whatever their use or purpose. From the perspective of norm appropriateness, they did not. China’s pre-eminence in supplying arms to Sri Lanka increased following a US embargo on the supply of weapons in 2007, as a result of US concerns over human rights abuses. It is difficult to get reliable data on Chinese exports. Such is the secrecy surrounding Chinese arms exports that Beijing rarely confirms sales of weapons and military equipment abroad. According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data, China has exported arms worth US$638 million to Sri Lanka calculated in constant prices of 1990 (Appendix B). China clearly turned out to be the main provider of weapons for Sri Lanka, accounting for over 80 per cent of total. China’s continued support—both diplomatically and in terms of arms sales—played a key role in Sri Lanka’s ability to secure a military victory over Tamil Tigers (Mehta, 2010). While India had called repeatedly for a ceasefire in 2009, China had remained silent on this issue. In addition, China believed that Sri Lanka can be made economically and politically dependent. China has hugely benefitted from Rajapaksa’s ambitious but controversial economic development programme. Chinese projects are not grants or donations (as practiced by India) but commercial loan projects that are awarded to Chinese companies that bring in Chinese labour. Nearly 70 per cent of the infrastructure projects in the country have been funded by China and built by Chinese companies. China’s loans to Sri Lanka over the past four years (2010–2014) total over US$3.4 billion. The loans are repayable over a 14- to 20-year period, at interest rates ranging from 1.53 per cent to 6.5 per cent, much higher than usual rates for infrastructure loans from the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank (Appendix A). From the Sri Lankan perspective, the reason for choosing China as strategic partner was simple: No other country except China was willing to give Rajapaksa what he wanted. In an interview, he defended his policy as follows:

They say I am pro-China. I am not pro-China, or pro-India, or pro-America. I am pro-Sri Lanka. I wanted development for Sri Lanka and China was the only one which had the resources and the inclination to help me. Take, for example, the Hambantota port and airport. I had offered both to India, they were not interested. So who would I go to? Only China could bring in the money I needed. (Chowdhury, 2015)

After the conflict ended, China continued to protect the President against human rights violation investigations. In which ways did Chinese non-intervention influence international criminal investigations? China’s assistance to Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE and its lack of concern over its methods obstructed any moves by the Security Council in New York or the Human Rights Council in Geneva towards sanctions or diplomatic condemnations.

The voting behaviour of China for five key Sri Lanka resolutions adopted in Geneva has been extremely telling in this regard: In May 2009, a coalition of 17 countries wanted the UNHRC to investigate war crimes in Sri Lanka. They put forward a resolution that deplored abuses by both the Sri Lankan government forces and the Tamil Tigers, urged the government to cooperate fully with humanitarian organisations and made an appeal to the Sri Lankan government to respect media freedom. Sri Lanka presented instead a counter-resolution that received support from 29 countries, including China, Russia, India and developing countries. The adopted resolution A/HRC/S-11/L.1/Rev.2 commended the Sri Lankan government for its ‘continued commitment [...] to the promotion and protection of all human rights, praised its humanitarian record and condemned human rights abuses by the LTTE’ (Human Rights Council, 2009).

At the 19th regular session in March 2012, the UNHRC adopted resolution A/HRC/19/L.2 on promoting reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka by a vote of 24 in favour, 15 against and 8 abstentions. The resolution welcomed the constructive recommendations contained in the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), a commission of inquiry appointed by the Sri Lankan government to look back at the civil war, and noted with concern that the report did not adequately address serious allegations of violations of international law. It called upon the government of Sri Lanka to implement constructive recommendations made in the LLRC report and to take all necessary additional steps to fulfil its relevant legal obligations to initiate credible and independent actions to ensure justice, equity, accountability and reconciliation for all Sri Lankans. There was no reference to alleged war crimes or an international investigation, as called for by human rights groups. India supported the resolution, whereas China voted against it.

The failure of the Sri Lankan government to comply with resolution 19/2 led to resolution A/HRC/22/L.1/Rev.1 being passed in March 2013 at the 22nd regular session of the UNHRC. This resolution called on the Sri Lankan government to carry out an independent and credible investigation into alleged violations. However, the resolution failed to establish the independent international investigation that human rights groups had called for: 25 voted in favour, 13 against and 8 abstained. China did not vote as it was not among the UNHRC members at the time, sitting out for a year. India voted for it.

The Sri Lankan government ignored the resolution, and as a consequence in March 2014, the 25th session of the UNHRC passed resolution A/HRC/RES/25/1 authorising an international investigation into alleged war crimes during the 2002–2009 period. It was adopted by a vote (23 in favour, 12 against, 12 abstentions). China opposed the resolution, whereas India abstained.

The most recent September 2015 resolution A_HRC_30_L.29 derives directly from the 2014 resolution which mandated the Office of the High Commissioner’s investigation on Sri Lanka. Compared to 2009, when Sri Lanka countered a proposal by 17 countries, it co-sponsored the critical October resolution with co-sponsors the USA, UK, Macedonia and Montenegro. The resolution endorsed the Sri Lankan government’s plan to set up ‘a Sri Lankan judicial mechanism’ whilst stressing the importance they attach to the participation of ‘Commonwealth and other foreign judges, defence lawyers, and authorized prosecutors and investigators’. The resolution merely calls for an oral report in June 2016 and a written report in March 2017. Sri Lanka opted for a domestic mechanism even though the UN Human Rights Commissioner Seid Raad Al Hussein himself had called for an internationally mediated hybrid court to prosecute human rights abuses. The resolution was adopted without vote. China extended its support on the basis that Sri Lanka had agreed to the resolution which was drafted in consultation.

At the UN Security Council level in New York, China and other states managed successfully to prevent the Security Council from being seized with an opportunity to discuss the grave situation or consider referring Sri Lanka eventually to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Specifically, China (and other states) did not cooperate and refused to work on a resolution on possible sanctions or an ICC referral following the indiscriminate government attacks on civilians in May 2009 (Wuthnow, 2013, p. 41). However, the Council issued a press statement (SC/9659) on the situation in Sri Lanka on 13 May 2009.

China should not be singled out for its role. Japan, for example, has been competing with China for influence in Southeast Asia. It is noteworthy that Japan continued to offer its support to the Rajapaksa regime throughout the war against the LTTE Tamils, when major Western donors decided to make development aid to Sri Lanka conditional on human rights improvements. While some Western countries put pressure on the Sri Lankan government, other countries—among them China, Japan, Russia and Vietnam—impeded the discussion of atrocities in Sri Lanka in the UN Security Council (Becker, 2013). In June 2007, for instance, the Japanese special envoy to Sri Lanka, Yasushi Akashi, said during a visit that he ‘was aware that President Rajapaksa was determined to safeguard human rights’, and pledged Japan’s continued assistance (Human Rights Watch, 2008, p. 123). In 2013, the same envoy promised to support Rajapaksa at the Human Rights Council. According to a press report from the official Sri Lankan news authority:

The special Japanese envoy on rehabilitation and reconciliation in Sri Lanka Mr Yasushi Akashi (…) has assured that Japan will support Sri Lanka at the next Human Rights council session to be held in Geneva in March next year. He said that these steps will be taken to strengthen Sri Lanka—Japan ties further. (NewsLK, 2013)

Outlook: How the Genocide Discourse Impacts and Challenges Future Chinese Policy Choices

The prosecution of genocide crimes poses a number of difficulties as well; the first difficulty has to do with recognition: States have to recognise that genocide constitutes a crime of international concern. China recognises in principle the universality principle (a court in any state may prosecute genocide crimes wherever they have been committed) which applies to violations of humanitarian law and international human rights. This can however turn out to be a double-edged sword as the case of the Spanish prosecution of Chinese leaders for alleged genocide in Tibet has shown. It has ratified most international key human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ratified in 1983 (Zhu, 2011). In a statement at the Security Council meeting on the ‘Prevention and Fight Against Genocide’, China reiterated the importance of ensuring genocide prevention through government action when it declared that ‘Governments bear [the] primary responsibility to protect their civilians’ (Statement from China at the Security Council Meeting, 2014). Likewise, according to China, the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) applies to the four international crimes of genocide, war crime, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The second difficulty refers to the implementation process. A person or persons who are charged with the crime of genocide can be tried and punished as per the rules of the Genocide Convention, that is, international law. It remains to be seen whether China is committed to prosecuting and punishing these crimes and whether acts committed by a government on its own citizens should go unpunished or not. There exist three enforcement methods: domestic courts (with universal jurisdiction), an international penal court (such as the ICC) for individual prosecutions or the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for prosecutions against states. However, the national courts of China and the ICC are both constrained in various ways. As for domestic prosecution, there exists no national genocide law in China and therefore these crimes cannot be prosecuted. As for the international alternative, China harbours a negative stance towards the ICC as such. The reasons set out by the Chinese government for not joining the ICC are diverse according to Findlay:

first, the Rome Statute is not a voluntary acceptance instrument; second, the definition of war crimes goes beyond that accepted under customary international law; third, contrary to the existing norms of customary international law, the definition of crimes against humanity does not require that the state in which they are committed be at war; fourth, the inclusion of aggression weakens the power of the Security Council; and fifth, the power of the prosecutor to initiate action may tend to open up the Court to political action. (Findlay, 2011, p. 197/198)

A last-resort measure to prosecute citizens against the will of states would be to refer the case at the UN level: Even citizens of states who are not party to the ICC (such as Sri Lanka) can be prosecuted if the Security Council agrees to refer the case to the ICC. China has shown that it is willing to adjust its foreign policy up to a certain point to bring it more in line with international requirements. China has for example been keen to use the UN as a key venue to demonstrate its ‘responsible Great Power’ status (Foot, 2014). Likewise, China accepts the international normative human rights frame even though it refuses to accept the implications (Kinzelbach, 2012).

Conclusion

The article described how Chinese non-intervention benefitted Pol Pot and Mahinda Rajapaksa in that it enabled them—through military, economic and diplomatic support—to pursue internal and/or external nationalist policies of exclusion. China did so because it believed that true internationalism can only be built on the free decisions of completely independent and equal nations. Consequently, and in line with this ideational belief, China shielded Pol Pot and Mahinda Rajapaksa from international scrutiny and criticisms. Despite the distinct historical circumstances, Chinese foreign policy patterns have been remarkably similar in both cases.

It can be concluded that, first, Chinese non-intervention notions have had adverse effects as former pro-Chinese Khmer Rouge have been brought to international justice and the pro-Chinese former leader Rajapaksa removed from power. Second, Chinese non-intervention has been as ineffective as Western intervention benefitting only the ruling elites but not the other stakeholders of society such as ethnic minorities, civil society, women, labour unions or opposition parties. The lessons to be learned from the two cases—lessons that can be generalised to other cases—suggest that strict external respect for state sovereignty as advocated by Mylonas and others will not by itself prevent exclusionary, nationalist policies. The two cases have shown that Chinese endorsement of Pol Pot and Mahinda Rajapaksa as undisputed patriotic leaders stirred up the rise of local nationalism and anti-Western sentiment. Chinese support and aid for their entrenched nationalism became central in the larger project of nation-building. The key question, especially in view of China’s claim to be a responsible global power that rejects the use of force, remains: Has China learned from the past and has it moved forward? The interpretations and evidence discussed in the article suggest an ambivalent development: On the one hand, China appears to engage more than in the past with the Security Council as it has been advocating UN authorisation of military force, the adoption of international economic sanctions and the dispatch of international PKO missions and international humanitarian rescue activities. On the other hand, it has continued to oppose internationally sanctioned accountability and prosecution mechanisms because it believes that it is a strictly internal matter. It is by all means too early to optimistically assume—as Foot does—a more progressive, UN embedded and internationally compliant Chinese foreign policy in the near future.