Vorspann
Hat die sozial-liberale Bundesregierung 1979 ihre Menschenrechtspolitik kompromittiert, indem sie in den Vereinten Nationen die Regierung der Roten Khmer als legitim anerkannte und nicht diejenige des von Vietnam installierten Heng Samrin? Für den Vertreter der Bundesrepublik in Phnom Penh von 1969 bis 1975 war das ganz eindeutig der Fall. Tim Szatkowski, wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter der Aktenedition zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik, untersucht, worauf dieser schwere Vorwurf beruhte und wie sich die bundesdeutschen Beziehungen zu Kambodscha in der für das Land so dramatischen Epoche von 1967 bis 1979 im Spannungsfeld von Kaltem Krieg und Neuer Ostpolitik entwickelten.
Abstract
In 1969 the Kiesinger/Brandt cabinet made the decision not to break off, but rather to suspend diplomatic relations with Cambodia. Shortly before, the Southeast Asian country under head-of-state Norodom Sihanouk had recognised the GDR. This German decision became widley known under the negatively connoted term “kambodschieren”. Less well-known is how bilateral relations developed after diplomatic relations had actually been broken off shortly afterwards at Sihanouk´s instigation. To this day research is mostly lacking on how the Social-Liberal coalition reacted to the mass-murderous rule of the Khmer Rouge between April 1975 and January 1979. The present investigation shows that the Schmidt/Genscher government relativised its human rights policy when it saw it as necessary under Realpolitik. Their decision to support the delegation of the former ruler Pol Pot at the United Nations in September 1979 was directed against the rule of Vietnam in Cambodia established in early 1979 and thereby against the USSR who supported the Vietnamese. Even at the time, this behaviour by the Federal Government was seen as highly questionable from a human-rights perspective.
© by Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, München, Germany
