In April, Chut Wutty, Cambodia’s best-known environmental activist, was gunned down while researching illegal timber sales. The government first claimed he died in a shootout, then that he had been killed by a soldier who had subsequently managed to commit suicide by shooting himself twice in the chest. Last week, 13 women protesting their forced eviction from prime real estate in Phnom Penh — sold by the government to a crony company and its Chinese partner — were whisked off to court and summarily sentenced to prison terms.

Widespread corruption is the subject that makes Cambodians most angry. Though Hun Sen has worked only for the Cambodian government since 1979, he appears to be fabulously wealthy. Ten years ago a U.S. State Department official told me the U.S. government estimated his personal wealth at $500 million. When I repeated this figure last year to a different U.S. official, he said, “Is that all?”

Today Hun Sen rules Cambodia with an iron fist, a fact that no Phnom Penh diplomat would dispute, but few confront. He has forced opposition leader Sam Rainsy into exile after orchestrating a prison sentence of 10 years for an act of nonviolent protest. The country goes through the trauma of manipulated elections every five years in which no one imagines that the vote will be free and fair or that an electoral defeat would result in Hun Sen leaving power.

In 1998, after government-manipulated elections, tens of thousands of protesters poured into Phnom Penh’s streets. In a Tahrir Square-style show of defiance, they set up a “Democracy Square” in a park and demanded a recount or new elections. Hun Sen ultimately sent in his shock troops and cleared the park. Western governments muttered their disapproval but did nothing. When Cambodians had their “Khmer Spring,” the world let them down.

At 59, Hun Sen is the youngest member of the 10,000 Club. He has said that he wants to rule until he is 80. After all the pious post-Arab Spring diplomatic talk about confronting dictatorships, Cambodians can be forgiven for asking why no one seems to be paying attention while Hun Sen begins work on his next 10,000 days.

Brad Adams is Asia director at Human Rights Watch and worked as a lawyer with the United Nations in Cambodia.