The Khmer Rouge Trial (KRT) and the Destiny of the Cambodian People.

Table of Contents

1. Officials reject ASEAN concerns

2. The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk

3. Will he rise above himself?

4. Khmer Krom will not received social land concession; officials 

5. Taksin verdict due today

6. Police criticized over KKrom

7. PM says Sam Rainsy will miss 2013 polls

8. Watch what's pulling us down

9. The Downfall of Human rights

10. Father Francois Ponchaud; the Priest the exposed Pol Pot to the world

11. An Open Letter to Sam Rainsy's supporters and critics

12. Chomsky and the Khmer rouge

13. Francois Ponchaud; the priest who exposed Pol Pot to the world

14. Three more VN rubber companies to get land

15. The Committee on the Human rights of Parliamentarians; Case No. CMBD/01 - Sam Rainsy - Cambodia

16. Hun Sen visits Preah Vihear

17. Understanding the fundamentals of "Nam Tien'; a necessary but not sufficient for a successful roadmap to freedom for the Cambodian people 

18. Eight firms given land for farming

19. OHCHR regrets outcome of case against members of Sam Rainsy Party

20. Obama's words ring true for Cambodinas too

21. The necessity of Understanding and Using Strategic Planning in the Defense of Cambodia

22. A thin line between Cambodia and Vietnam

23. Vietnam Colonialism

24. New casino launched inVietnam border SEZ

25. Govt inaction menas K Krom still in limbo

26. To live and to die with Hun Sen

27. Khmer Krom migrants appeal to UN envoy as conditions deteriorate

28. Can King Sihanouk be, at the same time, a defender of Cambodia's borders and a strong supporter of  Hun Sen and his CPP?

29. SRP petition King to drop Rainsy case

30. Govt marks liberation from KR

31. Welcome to lift

32. PM blasts January 7 detractors

33. Rainsy facing uphill battle in wake of arrest warrant

34. Royal letter: Sihanouk praises five star leaders

35. CPP leadrs receive five star promotion

36. Khmer Krom continue lobby of govt for citizenship, aid

Officials reject ASEAN concerns

The Phnom Penh Post; Monday, 08 March 2010 15:05 Cheang Sokha and James O’toole

(Comments:  once more, Hun Sen and his team showed that they is neither civilized nor defenders of Cambodia’s national interests. Why firing missiles at this time, when tension is already very high between Thailand and Cambodia? The answer is that Hun Sen continues to provoke Thailand to start a war between the two neighbouring countries for the sole benefit of Vietnam, which would be more than happy to come and “SAVE” Cambodia again, should war starts.

GOVERNMENT officials on Sunday rejected the notion that military exercises held last week in Kampong Chhnang province were designed to provoke neighbouring Thailand, responding to comments reportedly made by ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan.

On Friday, Malaysia’s Bernama news agency said ASEAN “fears that Cambodia may send a wrong signal to the world” with the exercises, citing an interview with Surin, a former Thai foreign minister.

“We are very concerned with such development,” Surin was quoted as saying while in Bangkok last week. Asked to elaborate on his concerns, Surin said: “I have no details. I have to look into the details first.”

In a letter addressed to Surin and dated Sunday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hor Namhong took aim at the secretary general’s comments, saying that the rocket launch “would in no way send wrong signals that the region is unstable”.

“I strongly believe that in your capacity as secretary general of ASEAN, you should not make any wrong statement which may bring about a bad image to an ASEAN member country,” Hor Namhong wrote. “Moreover, you should not make any statement which can be considered as an interference in the internal affairs of Cambodia.”

On Thursday, Cambodia test-fired 200 rockets from BM-21 rocket launchers in Kampong Chhnang province. The test came after Thailand conducted military exercises in its Surin province, which borders Cambodia, in January and February, though Prime Minister Hun Sen insisted it was unrelated to the countries’ ongoing dispute.

“This is not to flex our military muscle – it is a typical exercise to prepare the military to defend the nation from any incursion,” he said Thursday.

Thai officials, including Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, said last week that Cambodia was well within its rights to test-fire the rockets.

“I don’t believe the test is intended to threaten the Thai military, as I understand that it is a normal military exercise,” the Bangkok Post quoted Abhisit as saying.

Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said Sunday that Bangkok had no response to Surin’s comments.

“That’s the secretary’s comment. We are not going to comment on the secretary’s comments or opinion,” he said.

Hor Namhong said the government had chosen Kampong Chhnang, in central Cambodia, “in order to avoid any wrong understanding and comments” that the exercise was related to the disagreement with Thailand.

“Normally and in principle, an ASEAN secretary general should exercise some self-restraint while making any comment or statement concerning an ASEAN member country,” Hor Namhong wrote in the letter.

Carlyle Thayer, a professor of politics at Australia’s University of New South Wales, said last week that Thursday’s launch was in line with Hun Sen’s aggressive posture towards Thailand over the past few months, which he called “out of step” with diplomatic norms.

“Everyone in ASEAN holds their nose and says, ‘This is a bad odour,’” Thayer said. “I can’t imagine any ASEAN country being sympathetic to him.”

Ministry of Defence spokesman Chhum Socheat said, however, that any discord within ASEAN was attributable to Thailand, not Cambodia.

“I think any instability that exists in the region is not caused by the Cambodian exercise, but by Thailand sending its troops to invade Cambodian territory,” Chhum Socheat said, referring to the countries’ ongoing dispute over territory surrounding the Preah Vihear temple complex.

In his letter to Surin, also sent to his fellow foreign ministers within ASEAN, Hor Namhong said Cambodia had no intention of becoming the aggressor in the disagreement.

“The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces will never undertake any action against any country. Their job is solely to protect Cambodia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Hor Namhong wrote.

Surin clarifies his comments

The phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 10 March 2010 15:05 Irwin Loy

ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan said Tuesday that quotes attributed to him in media reports that have caused anger among Cambodian officials were “taken totally out of context”.

In a statement released Tuesday evening, Surin said he was misquoted in a March 5 media report that suggested he was “very concerned” with recent Cambodian military exercises.

Instead, Surin said he was expressing concern over ongoing border tensions between Cambodia and Thailand.

“The question directed at me was of a general nature, and my responses were with specific reference to the prevailing situation along the Cambodian-Thai border which I have expressed on many occasions before,” Surin said in the statement.

The original media report from Bernama, the Malaysian news agency, used Surin’s comments to suggest ASEAN fears last week’s rocket tests “may send a wrong signal”.

“We are very concerned with such development,” the report quoted Surin as saying, noting that he declined to elaborate on the issue: “I have no details. I have to look into the details first.”

The comments provoked accusations from Cambodian officials that Surin had overstepped his role by commenting on a member country’s internal affairs. Prime Minister Hun Sen suggested Surin had “abused” his role as secretary general and was “not suitable” for the position.

In Tuesday’s statement, Surin said he had no knowledge at the time of the rocket tests. The statement said Surin expressed his “deep regret” the issue had sparked “a very unfortunate and unwarranted effect”.

A government spokesman, however, said the ASEAN secretary general should not even be discussing the border issue with Thailand, let alone last week’s military exercise.

“He’s not supposed to do any statement or communicate with the media to show his position at all,” Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said. “He has to be neutral and professional. That’s what we wanted.”

Phay Siphan suggested Surin knew what he was discussing when he was quoted in the media report last week.

“He’s supposed to be professional and know what kinds of words, what kinds of quotations to use,” he said. “I understand the media. If he did like this, then he takes advantage of the media.”

Though Surin went out of his way to clarify the reported comments, he has generally been part of a trend towards a more vocal ASEAN, said Chris Roberts, a lecturer at the University of Canberra.

“There has been a pattern over the last 10 years of the secretariat being more assertive in commenting on internal matters that are a problem to the region,” he said in an interview before Surin’s statement was released last night.

Roberts suggested ASEAN was in the middle of “an identity crisis”, with states including Cambodia pushing for traditional non-interference and “quiet diplomacy”, and others advocating for more open discussion on regional issues.

“We are seeing a push for change. The problem with those [traditional] values is that ASEAN hasn’t been able to address controversial issues. There will always be one member willing to object,” Roberts said.

(Comments: This movie by  Gilles Cayatte, a French movie maker and journalist, along with a set of excellent reviews, are probably of one of the most illuminating and in depth historical documents of Norodom Sihanouk in his multiple roles in contemporary Cambodia, since 1941 to present day. 

The good and the bad aspects of Sihanouk life are laid down backed by film clips and from Sihanouk own words in numerous interviews that he gave at different places in the world, and throughout the period when he was the god-king in full charge of Cambodia’s destiny. Even today, when Hun Sen under Vietnamese control, Sihanouk is still someone who can still do any good harm to the whole Cambodian society.

His behavior appears to be based on the fact that he believes that only he, can “save” Cambodia from certain death. Based on this belief in his indispensability, the first thing he must do is to survive. This is what this film is all about.  But, he never ask the question that if by allying to the Khmer Rouge or to Vietnamese controlled Hun Sen, can he still claim that he is doing for the good of Cambodia and  the Cambodian people? From historical records this claim by Sihanouk does not add up at all. Please, watch this film carefully and draw your own conclusion.

Please, click on the link posted below the title to watch this unique movie on a major facet of contemporary history of Cambodia. I am sorry to say that the only drawback of this movie is the fact that it is in French. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 8, 2010)

                             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5nmYtFAuVo&feature=related

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Distributed by Icarus Films, 32 Court St., 21st Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201; 800-876-1710; 2008
Produced by Christiane Graziani

Directed by Gilles Cayatte

DVD, color, 48 min.

College - Adult

Asian Studies, International Relations

Reviewed by Michael Coffta, Business Reference Librarian, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

Highly Recommended

Date Entered: 2/5/2010

This engrossing film chronicles the life of Norodom Sihanouk, a man deeply engrained in Cambodia’s history from the time he was appointed King in 1941, to his exile and eventual return as King in 1991. Interviews with his contemporaries cite Sihanouk’s pivotal decisions and leadership during the French Indochina war, the crusade for Cambodian independence, and his stance of “anti-American neutrality” preceding the Viet Nam War. He demonstrated his conviction of need for by abdicating the throne, and thereby extinguishing the country’s monarchy. He sought aid from adversarial countries, such as China, the U.S.S.R., and the U.S.A. He used this aid primarily to improve infrastructure and develop the country’s education system. Feeling that the communists would win, he refused U.S. aid at the onset of the Viet Nam War. Fearing entanglements accompanying aid from China and the U.S.S.R., Sihanouk sought the friendship of France. Sihanouk is clearly portrayed as one who engaged in frequent, and often contradictory, political maneuverings.

Far from a saintly figure, Sihanouk squelched opposition in governing bodies in Cambodia, and initiated covert agreements and operations during the Viet Nam War. Evidence suggests that his open hands for aid led to civil war in Cambodia. He was exiled and eventually aligned himself with the Khmer Rouge.

This fine work offers an excellent array of film clips, sound recordings, and still photographs. Although the film makers are never reluctant to exhibit the maladies of his decisions and alliances, especially the atrocities committed during his association with the Khmer Rouge, they never truly reveal Sihanouk’s deepest and/or consistent motivations. The film does not paint him as either a patriotic zealot, or a power-crazed Caesar. It does, however, clearly exhibit that he had no loyalty to any other country or organization with which he dealt. This is a detailed, balanced, factual exposition of life and decisions of Sihanouk. 

Sunday, April 19, 2009

You cannot be serious

I am open-mouthed at the naivety displayed by Sihanouk in this interview from the archives. Surely he didn't actually believe a word of what he was saying. He could not have been serious. Of course, its essentially all about him. Isn't it always. On the other hand, to undermine the Khmer Rouge may've signed his death warrant, as befell so many of his own children, grandchildren and other close relatives. Read it for yourselves. Published in today's Sunday Times in the UK.

From the archive: Problem prince in uneasy alliance with Pol Pot
12 October 1975: the symbolic head of state tells our correspondent, William Shawcross, of life in 'year zero' of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Prince Sihanouk talked in the presence of a Khmer Rouge companion. He was sitting beneath a picture of himself accepting an AK-47 automatic rifle – the universal symbol of revolution – from the Khmer Rouge. Since returning to Phnom Penh he has lived with his wife Monique in one of their old houses: “Food is brought to us every morning by the food service of the army. I have three little revolutionary cooks working for me and my aunt is teaching them cuisine. I sleep in the bed I once had made for my hero General de Gaulle. As I am very small, I am very comfortable. I just tell you this little detail for lady readers.” Last month the Khmer Rouge agreed to let him back to Phnom Penh only after lengthy negotiations with his Chinese hosts and sponsors. Sihanouk was in Moscow in March 1970 when Marshal Lon Nol took over in a coup and he spent the next five years living in Peking.

He is something of a problem for Cambodia’s new communist rulers. His popularity in the countryside might be unsettling for them and he did once sentence them to death and secretly allow President Nixon to bomb the communist camps. His talk gave some of the first clues about conditions in Phnom Penh since the Khmer Rouge marched into this city of 3m and emptied it of people. “The Khmer Rouge had to move them out because there was no meat, vegetables or rice,” he explains. “They had to be taken to the provinces the Khmer Rouge had liberated, where there was food for them.” The dangers of epidemics and starvation on the forced march into the countryside he does not describe, but he believes Phnom Penh is now adjusting to its new reality.

Sihanouk confesses to an admiration for the speed with which the Khmer Rouge have radicalised the country and their plans for the capital: “Phnom Penh was a Sodom and Gomorrah under Lon Nol. Now it is spartan. No nightclubs, no bars, no taxi girls. Much calmer than before. There are no cars. Everyone walks on foot. We are creating a new society with one class, not one where some people die of overeating and others die of hunger.” Asked if Cambodia, like North Vietnam, would demand US aid as reparations, he shouts: “We will never do so. Our blood is not to be commercialised. The US will have to pay for its crimes in the pages of history.”

“Before 1970 the free world used to call Sihanouk a dictator,” he says. “Now they are quite surprised. They don’t understand my role. Well, I’m like the Queen of England. I inspect schools and will receive ambassadors, etc, etc. That keeps me quite busy, you know. The ministers come and see me to ask my advice and give reports on their work.” He was allowed to make one brief visit to the countryside. Asked about massacres, he says: “I was not there, but I do not think so. Fighting exists only in the minds of some ugly Cambodians in Thailand and Paris. They fight from their nightclubs.” He still speaks, as when he was what he now calls “a playboy prince”, with wit, charm and enthusiasm that is often passion. Through his revolutionary ardour, loyally learnt in five courageous years in exile, the old jazz-playing film buff Sihanouk sometimes glitters a little sadly. Infuriated by a question about the fate of Lon Nol’s former cabinet ministers, he shouts again: “Why do you worry about these scum when so many good Cambodians have died? It’s not as if they were Marilyn Monroe or Rock Hudson.”

The impression Sihanouk conveys of his life in Phnom Penh, as the Khmer Rouge leaders wonder what to do with their old enemy, is a lonely one. A sad-eyed discontinued prince rattling around an empty palace in a scarred and empty capital. But he is extraordinarily resilient and persuasive and hopes his loyal, passionate nationalism alone may in time persuade his hosts that he can be used more effectively. He wants to work for them so long as they need him: “I think they need me now. But I have told them that if the day comes when they no longer do so, I’ll be very happy to be quite free and live in my little house in France. I like the movies, you know. I shall be able to go to the movies.”

Prince Sihanouk was deposed six months after this interview [but remained in Phnom Penh until a day before the Vietnamese forces overran the city]. Pol Pot’s genocidal regime led to the death of more than 20% of Cambodia’s population. Sihanouk, now 86, returned as king in 1993 until his abdication in 2004. Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Labels: Norodom Sihanouk

posted by Andy Brouwer at 12:52 PM 5 Comments

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

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                                               9 lives

                              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5nmYtFAuVo

Norodom Sihanouk posing outside Angkor Wat

A new 52-minute documentary titled The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk and produced and directed by Gilles Cayatte for French television has come in for criticism from the former King of Cambodia's official biographer Julio A Jeldres for its many inaccuracies and bias in painting a negative picture of Sihanouk's actions throughout his long and full life. The controversial film was shown on French tv a few days ago and covers the period of 1941 to 2004, explaining through interviews and rare footage of the King's incredible ability to survive and take on many roles, such as a prince, the king, the president, the non-aligned, the exiled, the prisoner, the man committed, the artist and the king-father, which help in turn to reveal the history of Cambodia itself during that same period. Jeldres also highlights that he spent six hours with the film director giving him detailed explanations of the King's actions at various times during the period under review but none of these made the final edit of the film, whilst chief amongst those whom Jeldres has a gripe against is none other than emminent historian David Chandler.

Labels: Norodom Sihanouk

posted by Andy Brouwer at 12:50 AM 1 Comments

Will He Rise Above Himself?

ALL ABOUT CAMBODIA

Observations, Ruminations, and Commentary from Outside and Inside Cambodia

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

                    http://about-cambodia.blogspot.com/2010/03/will-he-rise-above-himself.html

(Comments: This needs no further comments from me, except to say that this person (as I am not quite sure whether he or she is man or a woman), but he or she paints himself or herself as a long time – over 20 years - resident of Cambodia and a businessperson owning a rubber plantation and other businesses. Fro more information on this person, please, click on to his or her blog, the link of which is pasted above. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 3, 2010)

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In view of Sam Rainsy’s recent self-imposed exile the question arises whether he can ever become the opposition leader in Cambodia again. It appears as though this time his opponents want him gone for good. He may appeal to the world opinion and hold press conferences all he wants, it won’t have much effect on the eventual outcome. Which also leads to the questions well-known government critic and eminent overseas Khmer commentator Dr. Tith raised in an open letter published on his website back in February 2010, and which I am quoting here in an edited version.
Quote
Is he an effective and capable leader?

The answer centers on whether Sam Rainsy can be an effective opposition leader against Hun Sen and his CPP and whether he has all the characteristics of a great leader such as those below-mentioned world leaders who led their people to freedom.

Sam Rainsy does not have the minimum of characteristics required of a national hero such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandel, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, or India’s Mahatma Gandhi to attract respect and support from the most influential, and respectable people and leaders in the world. This is the main question about Sam Rainsy as a leader. Therefore, will he be able to muster the all necessary support that is needed internally and externally, to carry the heavy burden that he assigned to himself?

Can he be compared to other well-known modern heroic leaders such as; Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Ghandi?

The answer is unfortunately, No. Because he lacks the moral and physical courage of those great leaders mentioned earlier. We do not wish him to be jailed by Hun Sen. But, some time, when a leader is engaged in challenging a “leader” like Hun Sen, there is almost a certainty that jailing is a very high possibility. All three great leaders mentioned earlier have spent an enormous amount of their useful years in jail; Mandela had spent 27 of his life in jail and solitary confinement, under the racist South African Aparthei regime; Mahatma Gandhi, more than nine years in British jail, and Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi has been in house arrest for the last ten years. In addition, even great thinkers such as the Chinese philosopher and political moralist, Confucius and the French Playwright, history philosopher, and founder the Enlightenment Movement in Europe, did not hesitate to go to jail in the defense of their belief.

Will he be able to challenge Hun Sen?

The answer deriving from the factors contained in the previous questions, is No. Because, Hun Sen has the full support of Sihanouk; and Sam Rainsy is trapped by Sihanouk due to his family’s past complex – father - relationship with the former king.

Unquote

One may not completely agree with this assessment, but it is hard to dispute considering his fleeing the country whenever he is in hot waters. It appears as if Sam Rainsy does not have the moral and physical courage to face the consequence of his actions. His jail sentence may be a miscarriage of justice, and the new lawsuit against him appears just as preposterous, but so were the lawsuits and ‘legal’ actions against those great leaders Dr. Tith mentions. Sam Rainsy has chosen exile over jail, like most people would, but perhaps going to jail, making him in effect a martyr, would be the one heroic act elevating him to true leadership status. That act, however, takes courage only few people possess.

All the more surprising was an announcement made by an SRP spokesperson that Sam Rainsy would return to Cambodia soon. That statement contradicts the ones Sam Rainsy made not long ago that he would not come back to go to prison; that he will fight from abroad. 

Khmer Krom will not receive social land concession: officials

The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 03 March 2010 15:04 David Boyle and Khouth Sophak Chakrya

(Comments: This article shows how Hun Sen and his CPP is serving the Vietnamese agenda and interests than protecting the Cambodian people and land. Land concession and lease have been granted without any condition to Vietnam but not to Khmer Krom. That Hun Sen is behaving in this manner is no surprise.

What is surprising is the fact that there is not one word from either the old or the new king. Yet, the majority of Cambodians inside or outside Cambodia still have complete trust in the old and new kings.

How on earth can Cambodia get out of the Vietnamese deadly grip if Cambodians still have not changed one iota, especially with regard to the role and the damages that Sihanouk has been doing to Cambodia and its people.  

Sam Rainsy should have focused on this issue to help the Khmer Krom, instead of taking the well-publicized act of removing the border markers between Vietnam and Cambodia, especially when Vietnam has never had the intention of respecting any orders between Cambodia and Vietnam, because Vietnam has the concept of a “movable border.” Therefore, this real issue here is how to organize to defend Cambodia’s borders. Not only Cambodia under Hun Sen with the support of Sihanouk does not defend Cambodia’s borders, but, is doing all it can to allow the Vietnamese to be pouring into Cambodia without check and not to allow the Khmer Krom people to have asylum in Cambodia.

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 3, 2010)

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THE Ministry of Interior has ruled out granting a social land concession to 22 Khmer Krom deportees, following comments made by a Phnom Penh municipal police official on Monday that suggested the group could receive land from the state.

Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said the Khmer Krom were no more entitled to a social land concession than any other group of landless poor Cambodians but ruled out deporting them to Vietnam.

“They are not the only poor people in Cambodia: there are many other poor families in Cambodia, many thousands of Khmer Krom deportees in Thailand and more than 14 million in Vietnam,” he said, adding that he suspected the Khmer Krom were being incited by members of opposition parties.

On Monday, Min Sothet, director of statistics and identification for the Phnom Penh Municipal Police said he “strongly believed” the government would provide land for the group in either Mondulkiri or Preah Vihear province.

However, he backed away from his comments on Tuesday, instead suggesting that local and international NGOs should provide money to purchase property for the Khmer Krom in an urban area. “This is the best way to help them live in Cambodia legally,” he said.

The Khmer Krom cannot secure legal identity documents without a registered fixed address – documents they have been trying to obtain since they were deported from Thailand on December 5 last year.

At present they rent a property in Boeung Tumpun commune, supported by financial assistance from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Should the Khmer Krom deportees acquire a plot of land registered in their name, then it will satisfy the requirements of the identity documents they seek. But they have consistently complained that they are unable to rent or purchase property in their name, precisely because they do not have the required legal identity documents.

Thach Setha, president of the Khmer Krom Association, demanded Tuesday that the government grant the 22 deportees a social land concession.

“The Khmer Krom are Khmer – they need to live in a home and have a job like other Khmer people and the government must respond and provide the social land concession to them,” he said.

Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Mann Chhoeun suggested Tuesday he may be able to help settle the Khmer Krom but refused to commit to anything without the agreement of higher authorities.

“For the 22 Khmer Krom deportees, we can not give a firm decision yet,” he said.

Thaksin verdict due today

The Phnom Penh Post; Friday, 26 February 2010 15:05 James O'Toole

(Comments: As I have already pointed out in previous my comments in this page that Hun Sen had succeeded to raise nationalistic feeling among uninformed Cambodians by making Thailand the enemy number one of Cambodia, resulting from the recent row with Thailand on the Preah Vihear dispute, thereby relegated into the back burner, the real threat to Cambodia, which is the inflow of Vietnamese illegal immigrants, now estimated to be numbered around four to five million. This fact was highlight by the head of a Cambodian NGO as follows:

“In stirring antagonism with Thailand, Hun Sen has “hit on the right spot” for many Cambodians, funnelling nationalist anger towards a traditional enemy, Hang Chhaya said.

“Many people like this kind of aggression, this kind of verbal abuse,” he said.”

While Hun Sen has been allowing the inflow of these illegal Vietnamese immigrants by giving them national identity cards in order to gain more voters for his CPP in the elections, as indicated inn an article titled “Police criticized over K Krom,” he refused to give asylum to those poor Khmer Krom people, who were trying  find refuge in Thailand first, then in Cambodia as they were kicked out of Thailand, claiming that they did not own any land in Cambodia, therefore could not any identity card. How on earth a refugee could own any land?

This is why Cambodia is by some reporters the “Land of the absurd.”

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D.  Washington DC. February 26, 2010)

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FUGITIVE former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra again finds himself in the spotlight this week, occupying a familiar place at the centre of political conflict in his homeland.

In Bangkok today, Thailand’s supreme court is set to rule on whether to seize all or part of the 76.6 billion baht (US$2.3 billion) of Thaksin’s assets that have been frozen based on allegations that the former prime minister exploited his position to boost his wealth. While tensions are high in the run-up to the much-anticipated verdict, observers say the it may carry more symbolic than practical weight for both Thailand and Cambodia.

Although Thaksin was deposed in a 2006 coup and left Thailand indefinitely in 2008 to avoid a jail term for corruption, he has made sure to keep his name in the headlines and on the tongues of his enemies in the current Thai leadership.

He frequently speaks from Dubai to supporters in Thailand via video conference, and drew his home government’s ire in recent months by staging several brazen visits to Cambodia, where officials denied Thai requests for his extradition.

For current Thai prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his allies, the assets case represents “the latest stage in a long, long effort” to eliminate Thaksin and redress the perceived ills of his rule “by any means possible”, said Michael Montesano, a visiting research fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. But despite the high-profile nature of the case, Montesano noted that “in terms of material political circumstances … this may make very little difference”.

How much money is left at the disposal of Thaksin, who amassed a fortune in telecommunications prior to becoming prime minister, is an open question. Whatever the outcome of today’s decision, however, he has given no indication that he will be unable to fund his travels without the aid of the frozen assets.

His allies the Red Shirts, meanwhile, are determined to show that their movement is about more than Thaksin’s patronage and will not be defined by his case, said Puangthong Pawakapan, a political science professor at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

“They are trying to say that their movement is not sponsored by Thaksin, [that] they’re sort of an independent movement that believes in democracy,” Puangthong said. Massive Red Shirt rallies in Bangkok that were originally scheduled for shortly after the verdict have now been pushed back to mid-March, in what is perhaps an effort by the Red Shirts to dispel the notion that Thaksin is their signature issue, Puangthong added.

The Abhisit government and the conservative Yellow Shirts, by contrast, hope to use the focus on Thaksin’s assets to demonstrate that the Red Shirts are an unprincipled movement that is “just about money”, Puangthong said.

Hearkening back to Red Shirt protests that turned violent in April, the government also hopes to use current tensions to paint the Red Shirts “as people who are prone to violence, who are real dangers to Thai society”, Montesano said. At this point, however, the Red Shirts may be looking to the political process rather than to a decisive protest in order to take power.

“It’s all about the election,” Montesano said. “Every passing month that the Abhisit government demonstrates no success in reshaping the political landscape, red strategies become more and more realistic.”

Effects across the border

Hang Chhaya, executive director of the Khmer Institute for Democracy, said he would be unsurprised to see Thaksin return to Cambodia in the weeks to come, despite the fact that the former leader has had little trouble communicating with his supporters no matter where he travels.

As Thaksin has kept himself in the spotlight with his Cambodia trips, the closest he has come to Thailand since going into exile, Prime Minister Hun Sen has used the international media coverage to his advantage, lobbing criticism at the Abhisit administration as he fêtes their bete noire.

In stirring antagonism with Thailand, Hun Sen has “hit on the right spot” for many Cambodians, funnelling nationalist anger towards a traditional enemy, Hang Chhaya said.

“Many people like this kind of aggression, this kind of verbal abuse,” he said.

Rancour between Abhisit and Hun Sen has been exacerbated by the appointment of Thai foreign minister Kasit Piromya, who found himself at the centre of controversy last year when a tape emerged of him apparently referring to Hun Sen as a “gangster”. Hun Sen has repeatedly argued, however, that the dispute between Thailand and Cambodia originates from Thailand’s claims to the area surrounding Preah Vihear temple and its attempts to challenge the site’s UNESCO listing.

A Red Shirt-aligned government in Bangkok is sure to be “at least somewhat more conciliatory” towards Cambodia, Montesano said, though he and others agreed that significant concessions regarding Preah Vihear are unlikely in any circumstance, regardless of Hun Sen’s support for Thaksin over the past few months.

“It just doesn’t really achieve anything,” Hang Chhaya said. “If we can find a much more professional way or constructive way of communicating a process whereby both sides can respect one another ... it’s not such a bad thing.”  

Police criticised over KKrom

The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 24 February 2010 15:04 Camron Wells and Tharum Bun

MUNICIPAL police officials on Tuesday called the representative of a group of 22 Khmer Krom asylum seekers to police headquarters in order to explain the rationale behind the decision to deny them identification cards, a move that has drawn the ire of civil society groups.

The representative, Thach Soong, attended the meeting along with the owner of the home where most members of the group have been staying since being deported from Thailand in December after a failed asylum bid.

On Friday, police informed the Khmer Krom that they could not receive identification cards, which are seen as essential for finding jobs, enrolling in schools, renting accommodation and accessing healthcare, among other things.

After the meeting on Tuesday, Min Sothet, director of statistics and information for the municipal police, reiterated that the Khmer Krom could not receive identification cards because they lacked a permanent address.

“First, the Khmer Krom live in a rented house; there is no permanent address,” he said. “The authorities will provide them family books should they have their own permanent place to live.”

He said he had advised the Khmer Krom to seek assistance from NGOs to purchase a plot of land for themselves.

“As long as the group owns the property, we’ll be able to process the family books for them, and following that they can obtain ID cards,” he said.

He added: “It’s not that we don’t want to provide them with legal documents such as family books and the ID cards. We’re more sympathetic to them ... than native Cambodians.”

Licadho, the rights group that has been assisting the Khmer Krom, has said it cannot continue paying for rent and food beyond the end of the month. Am Sam Ath, a technical supervisor for the group, said Min Sothet’s suggestion that the Khmer Krom buy land was disingenuous.

“How can they [buy land] without having any legal documents that identify themselves as Cambodian citizens?” he said. “The Khmer Krom are poor. They have no money to buy property.”

Meanwhile, Maggie Murphy, programme director at the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organisation, which is based in The Hague, said the decision to deny identification cards was part of a broader pattern of discrimination against the Khmer Krom.

“Khmer Krom from Vietnam should not have to fulfil impossible conditions such as proving they were born in Cambodia, nor being expected to have a permanent address,” she said.

“Cambodia needs to resolve this issue once and for all to guarantee a fair and transparent process administered by the central government to ensure consistency and equality in the treatment of Khmer Krom. Khmer Krom arriving in Cambodia from Vietnam live in legal limbo for significant stretches of time, as they are neither treated as citizens nor as refugees.”

PM says Sam Rainsy will miss 2013 polls

The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 25 February 2010 15:04 Meas Sokchea

(Comments: As Expected, this time, Sam Rainsy will not received any pardon, as Hun Sen, the Cambodian dictator and traitor had just said. I said that before that his time Sam Rainsy will not receive any pardon from the new king, because, Sam Rainsy had violated the sacrosanct 1979 Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation and its 2005 supplements. The main purpose of this treaty, as in other past temporary treaties in the past, is to muzzle all opposition to the Vietnamization process of Cambodia.

This will put Sam Rainsy on a very difficult choice; either he has to face the unpleasant fate of being jailed or the dishonour of being considered as a coward. As many prominent leaders in the present and past, such as; Nelson Mandela (27 years in solitary confinement), Mahatma Gandhi (nine years off and on in British jail), Aung San Suu Kyi (House arrest since early 1990s); being a leader, jail is always around the corner.

Will Sam Rainsy have the courage and the statesmanship to follow those great leaders? Do I wish him to be jailed? Absolutely not! Sam Rainsy is a politician by choice, then he should have known that these risks are always a possibility, as the French would say "C'est le risque du metier" (It's the risk that comes with the job). The future will tell us. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 25, 2010)

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PRIME Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday accused Sam Rainsy of falsifying documents related to the Cambodian-Vietnamese border and warned that the opposition leader will not be able to return for the next National Assembly election in 2013.

“This time, the court sentenced him to jail – no pardon this time. In the next election, there will be opposition parties, but this person will not be there,” Hun Sen said of Sam Rainsy during a graduation ceremony at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. “You must be jailed first, if you are brave enough to come be jailed.”

Sam Rainsy is currently in Europe after being sentenced in absentia to two years in prison by Svay Rieng provincial court last month. He was convicted of destruction of property and racial incitement in connection with an October incident in which he led villagers in Svay Rieng’s Chantrea district in uprooting markers along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border to protest alleged Vietnamese encroachment.

On Monday, chief border negotiator Var Kimhong also threatened Sam Rainsy with charges of falsifying public documents in connection with the border. The opposition leader and his allies in the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) have presented maps in press conferences and on their Web site that they say vindicate the claim that the border markers were placed illegally.

In 2005, Sam Rainsy fled the Kingdom to avoid a jail term for defamation before returning after receiving a Royal pardon in 2006. Hun Sen said there would be no such pardon for Sam Rainsy in this case, however, accusing the SRP president of “national betrayal”.

“Please, foreigners, do not interfere” in Sam Rainsy’s case, Hun Sen said.

In a video press conference on Wednesday, Sam Rainsy defended the SRP’s use of border maps and challenged the government to produce contradictory information.

“What we have done does not depend simply on our own ideas – we rely on geography experts and history experts,” Sam Rainsy said, calling the government’s demarcation of the border with Vietnam a “national betrayal”.

Sam Rainsy added that he welcomed the prospect of an additional government complaint against him, saying that it would give him further opportunity to research evidence of border encroachment.

Watch What’s Pulling Us Down!

February 22, 2010

Dear Neay K'rdth:

First of all, thank you for sending your well-thought out written article on the underlying factors behind the current disintegration process of the Cambodian land and society.

However, I think there is no suggestion as to how Cambodian people or more specifically those who called themselves leaders should proceed from now on. What kind of strategy, should Cambodia adopt to fight the well-conceived, well-organized, well-managed and well implemented strategy to conquer Cambodia, since the 17th century known as "Nam Tien."

How many Cambodians really are interested to know what and why "Nam Tien" is so lethal and unstoppable? I have always reminded those Cambodians, who out of frustration and anger, have been vociferously shouting at the Vietnamese with unimaginable epithets that make all Cambodians look like victimizers than victims. We should not hate even our enemy, but, we should try to understand why they are so successful in conquering our land and killing our people and get away with it, by looking at their strategy and mind-set, and by also looking into our own society and mind-set as to why we are so incapable of counteract against this ongoing Vietnamese lethal threat.

 Here is something that is missing in your present article that I think you soul also address, may be next time. I am pasting below an open letter that I have sent to Mr. Sam Rainsy on that subject. Once again, thank you for taking your time to write this illuminating article. Best regards.

Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D.

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Attached is a copy of the open letter to Sam Rainsy that I mentioned earlier:

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In a message dated 02/22/10 00:31:55 Eastern Standard Time, infos.khmer@gmail.com writes:

FYI

-----Original Message-----
From: Neay K'rudth <nkrudth@gmail.com>
Sent: Sun, Feb 21, 2010 10:39 am
Subject: Encroachment

Dear compatriots:

I am sending my ten-cent worth of opinion for all concerned Khmers to contemplate and comment.

Please feel free to slice, dice, render, translate its content to the collective benefit of our Khmer audience. I do not claim ownership to these ideas. If its receives more critical comments and ideas, I'll be happy to know that many of us are actually doing the thinking, and that means positive steps for our people and country.

The ideas presented may not be anything new, nevertheless my hope is to reinforce the awareness of our people of political strife and persuasion.

Many Thanks

 NKR

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February, 2010

By Neay K’rudth

 Watch What’s Pulling Us Down!

Every day, Khmers are waking up to confront relentless waves of internal and external threat to our individual liberty, cultural traditions, political and territorial sovereignty, economical space, last but not least the already weaken environmental resources.

The enemies are masquerading as members of the media, civil servants, law enforcement, political leaders, diplomats, and the vilest of them all are those disguised as businessmen and investors.  With so many unguarded routes of entry, these “toxic” agents have been targeting and inflicting serious damage to our social system’s vital organs including unity, freedom, peace and security.

The enemies’ persistent assaults appear to meet no discernable resistance from the folks at the wheel.  Often it looks as if no one is “home” to challenge the aggressors, giving these beasts the audacity and the incentive to strike and plunder at will.  The enemies’ typical arsenal ranges from simple bribery to brutal silencing of the media and dissidents, deliberate misapplication of economic, legal rights, political, police and military power. The first objective of the enemies, whether foreign or domestic, is the same ― to induce psychological “regression” which ultimately causes Khmers to abandon the will to resist their acts of predation.

Structural Encroachment:

What we are facing is what social scientists call “structural encroachment”, a process that is difficult to characterize, but is evident primarily in its consequence, i.e. border disputes, corruptions and impending tyranny, human, labor rights abuse, social inequality and injustice,  local land grab, etc. Typically it is associated with the maintenance, development, and institutionalization of systems of “privilege” and the “marginalization” and further “impoverishment” of the under-privilege.

The game of structural encroachment is played by our enemies at two levels:

Amateur level: Local acts of violence and terrorism committed on civil society by paramilitary group, or criminal enterprises sponsored by shady power brokers well-connected to the establishment.

Professional level: Carried out by the business profiteers, the wealthy and the powerful, including the ruling authority, engaging in structural violence through manipulation of social conditions to their own advantage. Still higher, at nation state level, the leverage of concealed or overt economic, political/military power to coerce and subdue a weaker state.

The means and methods employed by our enemies have all the markings of “prisoner of war interrogation” practice using a well-known concept called “conceptual violence”. The author had to use some publicized excerpts from the recently controversial “CIA’s Interrogation Manual” to illustrate the similarity of context related to our condition as a country under seize.

By now most of us who are current with the events on the international scene are probably very familiar with the Iraq War and the terms used by the American media, such as “enemy combatant”, “water-boarding torture”, “Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq”, and the serious disregards for human rights by the U.S. Military operating in Iraq.

The CIA manual instructs their “interrogators” to deliberately create a context to extract intelligence from the “enemy combatant” through:

                ― Isolation

                ― Disorientation

                ― Environment menace

In our situation we recognize our enemies’ attempts, with various level of success, to isolate us by underwriting the corruptions and the abuse of power by the wealthy and powerful elites, to destroy mutual trust and driving a wedge between the privileged few and the under-privileged mass, between government and citizens. The out-of-control migration across the border sends community of migrants to settle in the middle of prime land, water, and food resources, and come in direct competition with existing and struggling native and indigenous communities, stifling their chance of growth beyond mere subsistence. The ultimate consequence is much similar to the living example of the Palestinian West Bank and the Gaza Strip split apart by the State of Israel.

The inequality, injustice, and the lack of equal access to opportunity push the majority of our population into grinding poverty and hopelessness, which cause crimes and lawlessness that will eventually break down the existing social orders. Civil society in desperation will resort to animal instinct and starts preying on one another for survival. When people are assaulted by continuous hunger, pain and suffering, they will lose sight of the social norms and become disoriented, as a result anarchy sets in. This is the exact condition that the “interrogators” or the enemies want to achieve. Living example can be found in many countries in Africa, Central and South America.

Living under watchful eyes of the secret police/military, and under constant threats of unlawful arrest, or worst, assassination and disappearance drives powerless citizens under such duress that they are too afraid to exercise their freedom of expression, and keep to themselves. As a consequence they perceive their surrounding environment, even in the privacy of their own home, as utterly oppressive and hostile ― a menace to anyone’s psyche. A living example can be found in our neck-of the-wood ― Burma.

Our people are seen going about their daily life on the surface, but there is a undercurrent threat that a certain sector of our compatriots are yet to be aware of due to their selective ignorance, blinded by greed, and fool themselves with a false sense of security― relying on so-called “friendly outsiders” to come to their rescue the next time around, and perhaps free of “charge”? The reality is we are no different than an “enemy combatant” being hold down and “water-boarded” by the “interrogators”. Our enemies are very sophisticated and very determined not to lose their grip on our throat.

Like the “interrogators” they surround us and pin us down to enhance feelings of being cut off from anything known and reassuring, i.e. our dignity, independence, self-reliance, solidarity, cultural and national pride, etc.

Like the “interrogators” they use the “threat” of coercion (economic, politic/military leverage), which is usually more effective than coercion itself, to weaken or destroy our resistance.

Like the “interrogators” they torture our psyche to make us vulnerable to our own internal pain. Pain that we feel we are inflicting on ourselves, pain that is likely to sap our resistance. After a while, we are likely to exhaust our internal motivational strength ― regression is the ultimate result our enemies wish to extract when our resilience has finally worn down. Like the “enemy combatant” after being water-boarded a hundred-plus times the mind and the body basically break and give up what the enemies ultimately want ― our autonomy.

The author wish to leave the discussion for conscientious Khmers to contemplate and hopefully to be able to envision and feel the imminent danger, which keeps on sweeping our nation’s freedom and security down under the treacherous water we are crossing at this moment in our sad history.  The intent is to forewarn our compatriots from losing sight of the “important” and to stop squandering precious time by engaging in partisan politics, and begin placing things and events in the proper perspective ― do not ever underestimate the enemies. If and when our will to resist has broken, there will be no politics to speak of, but there will surely be “tyranny”.

The author personal philosophy is humbly unsophisticated ― one centimeter of gain in favor of the Khmer mass and Khmer homeland is definitely RIGHTIOUS, no matter who’s done it, or what reason or rhyme is being used to justify the gain. Anything on the contrary, whether it’s a decree or edict from God, shall have no merit.

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile ― hoping it will eat him last”, Sir Winston Churchill.

Peace

The Downfall of Human Rights

Feb 19, 2010
By Joshua Kurlantzick
NEWSWEEK magazine

(Comments: this article is very critical indeed in regard to the future of Cambodia. Promoters of Human-rights worldwide such as the US and UK appear to have lost economic war, mainly to autocratic Russia and China;thus  allowing dictators such as Hun Sen to care less about Western pressure for imporvement in human rights issues.

On the top of that, the Cambodian people only like to depend on foreigners; except now, they have to chose between the Westerners or the Chinese. They never believe in themselves, and Sihanouk knew that full well. Staying in China, has allowed Sihanouk to fool the Cambodian people that China will be the one to be depending on to save Cambodia.

Have they learned their lesson? Best regards, Kal Man, Beaverton, Oregon, February 21, 2010,)

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Growing aid from China makes it easier for lesser autocracies to dismiss Western pressure on human rights. In December, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for three decades and stands accused of creating a climate of fear for political opponents, praised China for building roads and bridges with "no complicated conditions."

Touring Asia in November, Barack Obama hit all the usual presidential themes, including free trade, investment, and strategic alliances, except for one: human rights. During a scripted press conference in Beijing, Obama barely mentioned it. In Shanghai he offered only mild criticism of China's Internet blocks, saying he was a "big supporter of noncensorship." Obama's nonstatements amount to a clear break from nearly three decades of U.S. policy. From its engagement with the brutal Burmese junta to its decision to avoid the Dalai Lama when he first visited Washington during Obama's tenure to its silence over the initial outbreak of protests in Iran, Obama's administration has taken a much quieter approach to rights advocacy than his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "Conceding to China upfront doesn't buy you better cooperation further down the track," says Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch.

Obama's waffling was hardly unique. Across Europe, Asia, and Latin America, many democracies have abandoned global human-rights advocacy, trotting it out only for occasional speeches or events like International Human Rights Day. With the prominent exception of Canada, the developed world has fallen mum. Earlier this year European nations handed the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, one of the major organizations tasked with promoting human rights in Eurasia, to Kazakhstan, a country accused by human-rights groups of arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture. In Japan, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has promised a new dialogue with North Korea, rather than pressuring Pyongyang to first release alleged Japanese abductees. In contrast to predecessors such as Junichiro Koizumi, Hatoyama prefers a soft approach to China as well, calling for far closer ties while all but ignoring the growing climate of repression under the government of Hu Jintao. The Australian government, once known for stinging critiques of China, Burma, and other autocratic regimes, now collaborates with Indonesia and other neighbors to prevent refugees from Sri Lanka and elsewhere from entering the country, instead detaining the migrants in a Guantánamo-like camp on remote Christmas Island. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has refrained from criticizing China, even for the arrest of an Australian mining executive on what many observers see as a trumped-up spying charge. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has failed to deliver on his campaign promise to champion human rights and end the country's old ties to African dictators. Instead of the "new relationship" with Africa that Sarkozy promised, his government has backed the new ruler of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba, despite widespread claims of fraud in his election, and offered a state welcome to Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the general who launched a coup in Mauritania. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the cofounder of Médecins Sans Frontières, a unique kind of human-rights organization, admitted in an interview, "There is a permanent contradiction between human rights and the foreign policy of a state."

In the developing world, too, young democracies that once seemed ready to stand up for human rights have beat a retreat. After apartheid ended, many activists had high hopes for South Africa's ruling African National Congress, which had benefited from a global pressure movement when it was fighting white rule. Yet the ANC has used its influence at the United Nations to protect not only the brutal regime in Zimbabwe—where South Africa has security and economic interests—but tyrants as far afield as Burma. In December, Thailand, which during the Vietnam War era sheltered tens of thousands of Indochinese refugees, forced some 3,000 Hmong back to Laos, where they could face persecution. Cambodia deported a group of Uighurs back to China, despite the fact that Uighurs previously returned to China have been executed.

The age of global human-rights advocacy has collapsed, giving way to an era of realism unseen since the time of Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. In the West, the failure of George W. Bush's moralizing style of democracy promotion, combined with the pragmatism inspired by the global financial crisis, has made leaders far more reticent to assert a high profile on rights issues. In private, Obama officials say that they deliberately took a humbler tone because of the global rejection of Bush's claim that he was fighting in Iraq to advance the cause of democratic rights. But such a strategy, initially appreciated by countries tired of Bush, can go too far. "The administration wanted to send the message that the U.S. is listening to the world again, that they are the anti-Bush," says one former senior State Department official, who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing his old colleagues too harshly. "Rather than saying, 'OK, we have made some mistakes, but we are correcting them, and that doesn't mean we are going to ignore what's going on in Russia, or China, or Iran,' instead they've just gone silent."

And in hard times, human-rights advocacy starts to look like a luxury, particularly when some of the countries whose cooperation is critical to rebuilding the global economy, such as China and oil-rich Kazakhstan, also rank among the worst human-rights abusers. In the flush early 2000s, Tony Blair could afford to make improving governance in Africa a British government priority, but his successor, Gordon Brown, spends most of his time trying to fix Britain's debt morass. In the U.S., the Obama administration's domestic agenda makes it leery of alienating potential partners abroad. As Hillary Clinton said during her first visit to China as secretary of state, "Our pressing on those issues [human rights] can't interfere with the global economic crisis."

The changing global balance of power may now prevent human rights from ever gaining the international attention it did in the 1990s and early 2000s. At that time, leaders and techno-evangelists argued that new technologies would give human-rights campaigners an edge over repressive governments. President Clinton warned Beijing that controlling the Internet would prove as tough as "trying to nail Jell-O to a wall." Well, consider the Jell-O nailed: even though Twitter, Facebook, and other tools have helped Iranian protesters bring their stories to the world, authoritarian governments have figured out how to monitor and block the Internet and other new tools. China's "Great Firewall" is now so extensive that many Chinese Internet users have no idea how much information they are actually missing out on, and countries such as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam have brought in Chinese Internet specialists to learn how to build their own Great Firewalls. And in a tough business climate, few Western technology companies—or Western governments—seem willing to stand up to this Internet censorship. Google's public condemnation of Beijing's alleged hacking drew headlines, but another story got far less notice: no other Silicon Valley giant publicly supported Google's stance.

Many current world leaders also happen to have strongly realist instincts, low-key demeanors, and little inclination to push the cause. Brown, Hatoyama, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh do not have the idealistic instincts and charisma of a Blair or Koizumi. While Bill Clinton's dynamism helped him make a strong case for human rights in places such as Vietnam and China—the likes of the dour Brown cannot follow that act. In the office of the U.N. secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon is no Kofi Annan. He cuts a retiring pose, meekly leaving Burma last July after the regime refused to allow Ban to meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The one leader who has the popularity and flair to press the case for human rights does not have the inclination. Obama's desire to be a consensus builder, even when dealing with brutal governments, also pushes him toward nonconfrontation. He seems to think he can find common ground with anyone, even Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and North Korea's Kim Jong Il. As the historian Walter Russell Mead notes in a lengthy essay in Foreign Policy magazine, the president falls into the Jeffersonian tradition of American leaders, in that he wants to "reduce America's costs and risks overseas by limiting U.S. commitments." He believes "that the United States can best spread democracy and support peace by becoming an example of democracy at home." In contrast, the heirs of Woodrow Wilson, such as John F. Kennedy, Paul Wolfowitz, and, in many ways, Bill Clinton, believed that promoting democratic values abroad helps global stability.

In most democracies, the public has also become far less interested in global human rights. In 2005 crowds around the world attended the Live 8 concerts designed to increase support for aid to Africa; though aid is not solely a human-rights issue, the concerts were a sign of the rich world's international engagement. Don't expect to see any Live 9. With unemployment skyrocketing, the residents of democracies have turned inward, fighting against immigration, rethinking free trade—and paying far less attention to what happens in Iran or Sudan or North Korea. One poll by the Pew Research Center, released in December, found that 49 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. should "mind its own business" internationally, leaving other nations to work out their problems themselves. That was the highest percentage of Americans expressing isolationist sentiment in four decades.

Today the lack of interest in human rights has been virtually institutionalized in Washington and other capitals. A decade ago, policymakers could move up the ladder within bureaucracies like the U.S. State Department, the British Foreign Office, or Germany's Foreign Ministry by focusing on human rights, but today advocating for global freedom will get you nowhere. In many Western democracies, increasingly partisan politicians apply far greater scrutiny to every detail of diplomats' records, and human-rights work requires aggressive, often controversial statements and actions—just the types of activities that could get a promotion blocked by elected legislators. When Britain's ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, criticized that regime's abuses (and Britain's tolerance of them), he was recalled to London and removed from his post. Britain's relationship with Uzbekistan was deemed critical to the war on terror, and Murray's bosses apparently thought he was freelancing too much with his opinions. As a result, government bureaus that focus on human rights often have become dumping grounds for the weakest diplomats and places "where Foreign Service officers don't want to serve," according to one former staffer in that bureau.

Other structural changes bode poorly for human-rights advocacy. While the major democracies dominated the world stage in the 1990s, today autocracies like Russia and China have found that economic success can co-opt the middle class, normally the main source of support for human rights. In China, the government has boosted salaries for opinion leaders like professors, opened up membership in the Communist Party to entrepreneurs, and taken other steps to ensure that the regime's success enriches the middle class as well. This strategy works: in polls conducted by the Pew research organization, Chinese respondents had a higher level of satisfaction with conditions in their country than almost any other people in the world. Now the autocracies are effectively exporting this model. Growing aid from China makes it easier for lesser autocracies to dismiss Western pressure on human rights. In December, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for three decades and stands accused of creating a climate of fear for political opponents, praised China for building roads and bridges with "no complicated conditions."

China and Russia have started to twist the concept of human rights in ways that gut its meaning. In a paper issued in June, Freedom House notes that Chinese President Hu Jintao's report to the 17th Party Congress in 2007 used the words "democracy" and "democratic" some 60 times, without ever explaining how China qualifies as a democracy. "Russia and China are working to muddy the waters abroad as well," wrote Freedom House. Indeed, the Kremlin backs organizations operating in Central Asia and the Caucasus that mimic Western groups like Amnesty International or America's National Endowment for Democracy, but work to promote Putin-style "managed democracy," essentially authoritarianism with a thin veneer of social freedoms. Similarly, China now runs training programs for as many as 15,000 foreign officials annually, including many legal specialists and local authorities, who learn how China has managed to open its economy without allowing real political liberalization.

It's possible that the old idealism will return, just as Jimmy Carter followed Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. The yearning for freedom remains, and after a slow start, Obama's administration has begun making human-rights advocacy a higher priority, finally meeting with the Dalai Lama, stepping up its criticism of Zimbabwe and Iran, appointing a special envoy for human rights in North Korea, more aggressively condemning Internet censorship in China, and taking China to task for its alleged attacks on Google. But the fact is that the past year has been one of the toughest in decades for prominent dissidents. Freedom House's report "Freedom in the World," released in January, revealed a global decline in political freedoms and civil liberties for the fourth year in a row, the longest drop in the almost 40 years that the survey has been produced. The decline stems from repressive governments cracking down harder, and leading democracies apparently "losing their will" to speak out in response. A recent string of major dissident cases—including China's rounding up signers of the Charter 08 call for rule of law, and sentencing activist Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in jail, as well as crackdowns in Vietnam and Central Asia—has received what Chris Walker of Freedom House considers "astonishingly little attention and support from the democracies."

It's only going to get tougher. The global recession may give way to a long period of slow growth, particularly in the leading democracies. If China can stymie democracy today, how much more influential will it be when its economy is the world's largest? Though Obama may be focusing more on rights now, the president's power is decreasing after his first, honeymoon year in office, and has taken a hit from the recent loss of the Democrats' super-majority in the Senate. New and potential future leaders in other major democracies—Jacob Zuma, David Cameron—haven't demonstrated much interest in international human-rights advocacy. And realism and isolationism, once ingrained, can be hard to shake off. In the past, it has required cataclysmic historic events to spark idealism, like the fall of the Berlin Wall or the 9/11 attacks, to shake Western populations out of their torpor.

Kurlantzick is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Father Francois Ponchaud: The priest who exposed Pol Pot to the world

By Phelim Kyne
TAIPEI TIMES CORRESPONDENT, IN PHNOM PENH
Sunday, Apr 16, 2000, Page 5

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/asia/archives/2000/04/16/32499

(Comments: Perhaps this article is one of the most informative and critical proofs on how the current Khmer Rouge trial is, no more no less, a show trial under the guidance and control of the Vietnamese.

The saddest part of this story is the fact that those former Khmer Rouge leaders who are currently leading the destiny of Cambodia, and who had betrayed their country such as Hun Sen and his CPP have escaped this show trial, thanks to the duplicity of the international community and Sihnaouk, when father Ponchaud frankly observed that:

“Similarly unforeseen was the exploitation of Year Zero as a propaganda tool by the Vietnamese, a circumstance that led Ponchaud to cancel a planned second printing of the book in 1979.

"In 1978 when the Vietnamese were preparing the invasion or `liberation'

[of Cambodia], they translated the book into Vietnamese and read it on Hanoi Radio," Ponchaud said, shaking his head ruefully.

"So you see, I helped with the Vietnamese invasion."

While unequivocal in his condemnation of the outrages of Democratic Kampuchea, Ponchaud is equally adamant in assigning guilt to western leaders who aided and abetted the destruction of Cambodia and the rise and sustenance of the KR. “

The most important contribution of this  article is the fact that it clearly shows that the Vietnamese could not pretend not to have known about the mass murder committed by the Khmer Rouge,  since this book by father Ponchaud came out in 1977, and the Vietnamese had translated it into Vietnamese for their propaganda, to justify their invasion of Cambodia at the end of q978

 Why did the Vietnamese not intervene then to stop that genocide? Because it is in their best interests to allow this mass murder to go on, after all they are the ones who created the Khmer rouge to begin with. A weaker Cambodia is easy prey to the Vietnamese; that what is happening now. But, don’t blame the Vietnamese alone; those Cambodian, so-called leaders including Sihanouk, with their blindness, shortsightedness, and morally corrupt behavior have a lot more to be blamed for. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 17, 2010)

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Nothing had prepared Francois Ponchaud for his first glimpse of the nature of the Khmer Rouge's new order imposed on Phnom Penh in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Cambodian capital on April 17, 1975.

In spite of the horrors borne from a decade of watching Cambodian society descend rapidly into a vicious downward spiral of violent civil conflict, the bizarre events unfolding in the street in front of the Jesuit missionary's residence appeared to defy all belief.

"Around one in the afternoon ... a hallucinatory spectacle began. Thousands of the sick and wounded were abandoning the city. The strongest dragged pitifully along, others were carried by friends, and some were lying on beds pushed by their families, with their plasma and IV bumping alongside. That s how the first evacuees left, about twenty thousand of them."

The depopulating of Phnom Penh, which was to be followed in the days that followed by the forced evacuation of Cambodia's other urban centers, was the first indication that the worst was far from over for Cambodia and its people.

The stark images of Phnom Penh's 2.5 million residents being led out of the city at gunpoint by unsmiling, black-clad Khmer Rouge fighters who killed any and all who dared question their intentions dealt a decisive blow to the hopes shared by Ponchaud and other foreign residents and observers of Cambodia who had anticipated a Khmer Rouge victory as a deliverance from the corrupt brutality of Lon Nol's Khmer Republic.

"The evacuation was a stupidity ... a useless suffering for many, many people," Ponchaud recalled in an interview with the Taipei Times last week. "When the Khmer Rouge forced old people out [of Phnom Penh], I couldn't support it."

The evacuations -- the first step in the Khmer Rouge's attempt to transform Cambodia into a "hyper-Maoist" agrarian utopia that would eventually kill more than 1.5 million people -- came as a shock to Ponchaud, who had assumed that the desperate conditions endured by Cambodians under the Lon Nol regime could only improve under the KR.

"The Lon Nol regime [1970-1975] was very, very corrupt and there was no hope for the people ... the only hope was the coming of the Khmer Rouge," Ponchaud said. "We'd known since 1970 that when the Khmer Rouge [captured] a village, the killed the village chief, redistributed the land and took people to the forest, but we thought it was an effect of the war and when [the Khmer Rouge] had victory [their methods] would change."

Expelled from Cambodia after a harrowing three weeks of confinement to the grounds of Phnom Penh's French Embassy, Ponchaud did not have to wait long before accounts of the murderous reality of Democratic Kampuchea reached him through refugees who'd fled over the border.

"When in France I heard accounts of atrocities [by the Khmer Rouge], at first I didn't believe them," he said. "But later there were so many, and so similar in the details that I had to believe."

Ponchaud was moved to compile the stories of widespread murder and starvation in Democratic Kampuchea in a marathon three month writing session that produced Cambodia Year Zero.

Published in 1977, Year Zero

was the first and most influential exposé of the horror that everyday life in Cambodia had become under the Khmer Rouge.

"The book was written as an expression of solidarity with the Cambodian people who were suffering, but I had no hope that [the book] would change anything," he said. "The stories the refugees told me [in camps along the Thai-Cambodian border] were terrifying, but the testimony I chose was not too horrific because I knew if it was too terrifying, Europeans simply would not believe it."

Ponchaud's Year Zero was influential in helping to reverse the reflexive expressions of support and sympathy the Khmer Rouge takeover evinced from left-leaning western intellectuals.

"Noam Chomsky [at the time] was very favorable to the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese communists, but when he read the book he said `I don't understand the Khmer Rouge," Ponchaud said. "Also in France many [leftist] writers changed their minds about the KR [after reading Year Zero]."

Similarly unforeseen was the exploitation of Year Zero as a propaganda tool by the Vietnamese, a circumstance that led Ponchaud to cancel a planned second printing of the book in 1979.

"In 1978 when the Vietnamese were preparing the invasion or `liberation'

[of Cambodia], they translated the book into Vietnamese and read it on Hanoi Radio," Ponchaud said, shaking his head ruefully.

"So you see, I helped with the Vietnamese invasion."

While unequivocal in his condemnation of the outrages of Democratic Kampuchea, Ponchaud is equally adamant in assigning guilt to western leaders who aided and abetted the destruction of Cambodia and the rise and sustenance of the KR.

When asked in 1983 by the head of Amnesty International to participate in an eventual genocide tribunal of Pol Pot, Ponchaud agreed, but on one condition.

"Before Pol Pot I said we must judge Nixon and Kissinger and Carter ... they are bigger killers than Pol Pot," he insisted. "They destroyed Cambodia with their B52s and [beginning] in Jan 1979 supplied the Khmer Rouge and gave them money to fight the Vietnamese."

Ponchaud is also clearly distressed by the haunting parallels between contemporary Cambodia and the endemic corruption and widespread misery of Cambodians under the old Lon Nol regime.

"In my opinion, the Lon Nol regime was not worse than [modern Cambodia] ... in the Lon Nol period I never saw mothers sell their children the way mothers are forced to do nowadays," he said.

"The [current] government is lucky that the present ideological environment is different [because] if the ideological environment was the same as it was in Cambodia in 1970, there[d be revolution now."

The implications of a possible tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders is also a source of concern for Ponchaud.

"If you want to judge the KR, I agree but you must judge all the KR including the [former] KR in power now, such as Prime Minister Hun Sen and you must also judge the people who killed 17 people on March 30, 1977," he said, in reference to the grenade attack on a Sam Rainsy Party demonstration outside Cambodia's National Assembly widely believed to have been perpetrated by bodyguards of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

"But if you judge the acting leaders, there could be trouble, so maybe it's best to be quiet ... it may be impossible to find justice because there are too many people involved."

This story has been viewed 3835 times.

An Open letter to Sam Rainsy supporters and his critics

“Truth between candid minds can never do harm.”   

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1791

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”    

Voltaire; Philosopher, Playwright, and Founder of the Enlightenment Movement in Europe (1694-1778)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Washington DC. February 15, 2010

Dear Pretty:

Recently, there is a load of email exchanges between you and some disturbing group of Overseas Cambodian on the subject of your leader Sam Rainsy.

As expected, you came out and vigorously defended your leader. The insults that were thrown at you and your leader were beyond any normal behavior expected from any normal people. But, most Cambodians are traumatized and insecure people, by historical and international standards. That is why we are where we are now, in deep hole, from which it is not easy to extricate ourselves.

What I am doing here is to explain the difference between what I call a legitimate and constructive criticism, and plain pouring of irrational frustration and plain hatred kind of criticism. The question centered on Mr. Sam Rainsy, as a person and as a leader.

I know Sam Rainsy in both situations. But, my raising questions about him, has more to do with Sam Rainsy as a political leader, and not as a person, although the two are interrelated.  Whereas those who recently came out against Sam Rainsy in your recent email exchanges with the group that I mentioned earlier has more to do with Sam Rainsy as a person and not as a political leader.

To be able to distinguish the two kinds of criticism, we need to start by asking the following questions:

1. Is Sam Rainsy is as bad as Hun Sen?

2. Is he an effective and capable leader?

3. Can he be compared to other well-known modern heroic leaders such as; Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Ghandi?

4. Will he be able to challenge Hun Sen?

Answers:

1. The answer to the first question is an absolute NO. Sam Rainsy is not a traitor, is not a murder, and is not morally and financially corrupt. In addition, Sam Rainsy is educated and has administrative and business experiences, while Hun Sen is uneducated, amoral, and totally politically, morally and financially corrupt. To sum up the response to the first question is that there is no comparison between Sam Rainsy and Hun Sen on any ground.

2. The answer to the second question centered on the important question whether Sam Rainsy can be an effective opposition leader against Hun Sen and his CPP, and not on question whether Sam Rainsy is a good or a bad person as compared to Hun Sen, but rather on the question whether he has all the characteristics of a great leader such as those mentioned above world leaders who led their people to freedom. Please go to this web page of mine,    (http://cambodiana.org/InSearchofHeroesintheLandoftheAbsurd.aspx) to see what are the main characteristics of these heroic leaders that are needed to successfully challenge Hun Sen. Unfortunately, from my own and other people's observations of his behavior, Sam Rainsy does not have the minimum of characteristics required of a national hero such as; South Africa’s Nelson Mandel, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, or India’s Mahatma Gandhi to attract respect and support from the most influential, and respectable people and leaders in the world.  This is the main question about Sam Rainsy as a leader. Therefore, will he be able to muster the all necessary support that is needed internally and externally, to carry the heavy burden that he assigned to himself? That is why Hun Sen is happy to have Sam Rainsy as an opposition leader, because he can claim that Cambodia is s democratic country with an opposition party or parties.

3. Can he be compared to those great statesmen? The answer is unfortunately, No. Because he lacks the moral and physical courage of those great leaders mentioned earlier. We do not wish him to be jailed by Hun Sen. But, sometime, when a leader is engaged in challenging a corrupt , murderous, and amoral “leader” like Hun Sen, there is almost a certainty that jailing is a very high possibility. All three great leaders mentioned earlier have spent an enormous amount of their useful years in jail; Mandela had spent 27 of his life in jail and solitary confinement, under the racist South African Aparthei regime; Mahatma Gandhi, more than nine years in British jail, and Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi has been in house arrest for the last ten years. In addition, even great thinkers such as the Chinese philosopher and political moralist, Confucius and the French Playwright, history philosopher, and founder the Enlightenment Movement in Europe, did not hesitate to go to jail in the defense of their belief (See article pasted below).

4. Will he be able to challenge Hun Sen. The answer deriving from the factors contained in the previous questions, is  No. Because, Hun Sen has the full support of Sihanouk; and Sam Rainsy is trapped by Sihanouk due to his family past complex –father- relationship with the former king.

I hope this short exposé is of some modest usefulness to clarify the position of our group vis à vis Sam Rainsy. We want him to succeed. But, we doubt that he will, if he does not fundamentally change his behavior or tactics.

No matter what, we will continue to remain engaged in this dialogue, because we believe that there are so many people around Sam Rainsy who are very sincere and dedicate in their desire to get Cambodia and its people out of the grip of Hun Sen under Vietnam’s control, and with the full support of Sihanouk. Finally, I hope that it is clear that we never compare Sam Rainsy to Hun Sen as a person and political leader. What we are trying to do is to challenge him so that he may be able to improve his ability to be a real leader comparable to those great world heroes that were mentioned previously.

Please, read a set of documents on human mind and its complex interpretation.

• Confucius Biography

• Some thoughts before reading Voltaire

• A little bit about Voltaire

Warm regards.

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D,

Please, clcik on this link to read the background documents on Confucius and Voltaire

An Open letter on Sam Rainsy and his critics.docx

CHOMSKY AND THE KHMER ROUGE

By Sophal Ear

The Observer, Sunday, 7 Feburary 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/feb/07/letters-assisted-suicide

(Comments: This article written by Sophal Ear is a good reminder how Cambodia destiny is no longer in the Cambodian hands. The recent Phnom Penh Post article commenting on referring to Sam Rainsy use of the word “Youn,” in his recent speech was apparently speaking in Cambodian, as an epithet is another case how foreigners have the arrogance of pretending to know more about the Cambodian language than the Cambodians, themselves.

Another more important hijacking of the Cambodian destiny by foreigners, especially by those intellectuals in the same category referred to in this article like Norm Chomsky, are those scholars like Ben Kiernan and Michael Vickery, to name only the two obvious ones,  who had supported and defended the Khmer Rouge before they spited with the Vietnamese Communists, and turned against them when the Khmer Rouge have decided to no longer be subservient to the Vietnamese Communists.

This group of intellectuals led by Ben Kiernan of the Yale genocide project, are the ones who are now supporting for the current Khmer Rouge trial, whose main but hidden objective is basically not to render real justice to the Cambodian people, but, “to demonize the demons,” for the sake of making the Vietnamese and their protégés, Hun Sen and his CPP, the "saviors" of the Cambodian people, and therefore, more acceptable, to the international community.

These scholars of the Yale genocide project, are not only satisfied with labeling the Khmer Rouge as mass murderers, but they also want to label them racists as well. In doing so, they infer that all Cambodians are racists, which in turn, would benefit their clients, the Vietnamese and Hun Sen.  I would like to also mention that Sophal Ear had rightly refered to father Francois Ponchaud as the one who had first informed the world of the Khmer Rouge mass killing, but was ignored or downplayed by these same Yale scholars (Please, read a companion article titled "Francois Ponchaud; the Prist who exposed Pol Pot to the World."

It is in this context, that this timely article by Sophal Ear is so important for the purpose of regaining of the rightful destiny for the Cambodian people.

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 12, 2010)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

In his prickly response (Letters, 17 January) to Andrew Anthony's "Lost in Cambodia," (OM, 10 January 2010) Noam Chomsky does precisely what he accuses Anthony of doing: "Vilify the messenger, to ensure that unwanted history is forgotten." That unwanted history is of Chomsky himself casting aspersions on critics of the Khmer Rouge. During Pol Pot's reign, Chomsky disputed the refugees themselves. Since Cambodia, he has expanded his game to North Korea and Bosnia. I must hand it to him – more than three decades after wagging his finger at refugees like myself in "Distortions at fourth hand" (The Nation, 6 June 1977), and later in After the Cataclysm (South End Press, 1979), he continues to quote selectively and to obfuscate. Chomsky's formula is straightforward: (1) quote a critic saying something supportive of one little piece of an argument you wish to make; (2) needle other critics with it; and (3) repeat ad infinitum until you weave an entire tapestry with this flimsy thread. It is a game that only a linguist of Chomsky's calibre can master.

I am merely a former Cambodian refugee, for whom English is my fourth language. Yet it does not take much effort to find precisely what Chomsky wrote in 1979 (After the Cataclysm) and to let it speak for itself: "In the first place, is it proper to attribute deaths from malnutrition and disease to Cambodian authorities?" Since my father died of malnutrition and disease, I am especially outraged by this question. While my family worked and died in rice fields, Chomsky sharpened his theories and amended his arguments while seated in his armchair in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I believe that he would probably have me blame the Americans and their bombs for causing everything around the Khmer Rouge to go wrong.

Incredibly, Chomsky and Ed Herman did precisely that when they claimed: "If a serious study… is someday undertaken, it may well be discovered… that the Khmer Rouge programmes elicited a positive response… because they dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past and exacerbated by the imperial system.… Such a study, however, has yet to be undertaken."

Perhaps that study had already been undertaken but was ignored, as Chomsky and Herman intimate: "The situation in Phnom Penh resulting from the US war is graphically described in a carefully-documented study by Hildebrand and Porter that has been almost totally ignored by the press." This is high praise for a book that contained a propaganda picture of a Khmer Rouge "hospital" operating room.

It just so happens that my father died in a mite-infested Khmer Rouge "hospital". Nam Mon, an illiterate Khmer Rouge "nurse", testified in July 2009 at the Khmer Rouge tribunal now taking place in Phnom Penh that all she did was hand out paracetamol and aspirin, no matter the malady. To be sure, her patients got the special treatment; they were prisoners at S-21, the Khmer Rouge killing machine that produced more than 17,000 deaths.

When it comes to allowing for honest error, Chomsky will have none of it. He refers for example to Father Ponchaud's differing American and British editions of Cambodia: Year Zero as evidence of duplicity. If he had cared to check with the easily accessible French priest, he would have learned that the error was due to his translator, who submitted the wrong edition to the publisher.

Writing about American leaders in At War with Asia (Pantheon, 1970), Chomsky poignantly argued that: "Perhaps someday they will acknowledge their 'honest errors' in their memoirs, speaking of the burdens of world leadership and the tragic irony of history. Their victims, the peasants of Indochina, will write no memoirs and will be forgotten. They will join the countless millions of earlier victims of tyrants and oppressors." Indeed, perhaps someday Chomsky will acknowledge his "honest errors" in his memoirs, speaking of the burdens of academia and the tragic irony of history. His victims, the peasants of Indochina, will write no memoirs and will be forgotten. They will be joined by his North Korean and Bosnian victims.

For decades, Chomsky has vilified his critics as only a world class linguist can. However, for me and the surviving members of my family, questions about life under the Khmer Rouge are not intellectual parlour games. While he is a legend in linguistics, in international affairs Noam Chomsky consistently falls short of Thomas Jefferson's maxim that universities are "based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."

Professor Sophal Ear National Security Affairs
US Naval Postgraduate School
Monterey, California


Prof. Ear's views do not represent those of the US government.

Francois Ponchaud: The priest who exposed Pol Pot to the world

By Phelim Kyne
TAIPEI TIMES CORRESPONDENT, IN PHNOM PENH
Sunday, Apr 16, 2000, Page 5

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/asia/archives/2000/04/16/32499

the Khmer Rouge's new order imposed on Phnom Penh in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Cambodian capital on April 17, 1975.

In spite of the horrors borne from a decade of watching Cambodian society descend rapidly into a vicious downward spiral of violent civil conflict, the bizarre events unfolding in the street in front of the Jesuit missionary's residence appeared to defy all belief.

"Around one in the afternoon ... a hallucinatory spectacle began. Thousands of the sick and wounded were abandoning the city. The strongest dragged pitifully along, others were carried by friends, and some were lying on beds pushed by their families, with their plasma and IV bumping alongside. That s how the first evacuees left, about twenty thousand of them."

The depopulating of Phnom Penh, which was to be followed in the days that followed by the forced evacuation of Cambodia's other urban centers, was the first indication that the worst was far from over for Cambodia and its people.

The stark images of Phnom Penh's 2.5 million residents being led out of the city at gunpoint by unsmiling, black-clad Khmer Rouge fighters who killed any and all who dared question their intentions dealt a decisive blow to the hopes shared by Ponchaud and other foreign residents and observers of Cambodia who had anticipated a Khmer Rouge victory as a deliverance from the corrupt brutality of Lon Nol's Khmer Republic.

"The evacuation was a stupidity ... a useless suffering for many, many people," Ponchaud recalled in an interview with the Taipei Times last week. "When the Khmer Rouge forced old people out [of Phnom Penh], I couldn't support it."

The evacuations -- the first step in the Khmer Rouge's attempt to transform Cambodia into a "hyper-Maoist" agrarian utopia that would eventually kill more than 1.5 million people -- came as a shock to Ponchaud, who had assumed that the desperate conditions endured by Cambodians under the Lon Nol regime could only improve under the KR.

"The Lon Nol regime [1970-1975] was very, very corrupt and there was no hope for the people ... the only hope was the coming of the Khmer Rouge," Ponchaud said. "We'd known since 1970 that when the Khmer Rouge [captured] a village, the killed the village chief, redistributed the land and took people to the forest, but we thought it was an effect of the war and when [the Khmer Rouge] had victory [their methods] would change."

Expelled from Cambodia after a harrowing three weeks of confinement to the grounds of Phnom Penh's French Embassy, Ponchaud did not have to wait long before accounts of the murderous reality of Democratic Kampuchea reached him through refugees who'd fled over the border.

"When in France I heard accounts of atrocities [by the Khmer Rouge], at first I didn't believe them," he said. "But later there were so many, and so similar in the details that I had to believe."

Ponchaud was moved to compile the stories of widespread murder and starvation in Democratic Kampuchea in a marathon three month writing session that produced Cambodia Year Zero.

Published in 1977, Year Zero

was the first and most influential expose of the horror that everyday life in Cambodia had become under the Khmer Rouge.

"The book was written as an expression of solidarity with the Cambodian people who were suffering, but I had no hope that [the book] would change anything," he said. "The stories the refugees told me [in camps along the Thai-Cambodian border] were terrifying, but the testimony I chose was not too horrific because I knew if it was too terrifying, Europeans simply would not believe it."

Ponchaud's Year Zero was influential in helping to reverse the reflexive expressions of support and sympathy the Khmer Rouge takeover evinced from left-leaning western intellectuals.

"Noam Chomsky [at the time] was very favorable to the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese communists, but when he read the book he said `I don't understand the Khmer Rouge," Ponchaud said. "Also in France many [leftist] writers changed their minds about the KR [after reading Year Zero]."

Similarly unforeseen was the exploitation of Year Zero as a propaganda tool by the Vietnamese, a circumstance that led Ponchaud to cancel a planned second printing of the book in 1979.

"In 1978 when the Vietnamese were preparing the invasion or `liberation'

[of Cambodia], they translated the book into Vietnamese and read it on Hanoi Radio," Ponchaud said, shaking his head ruefully.

"So you see, I helped with the Vietnamese invasion."

While unequivocal in his condemnation of the outrages of Democratic Kampuchea, Ponchaud is equally adamant in assigning guilt to western leaders who aided and abetted the destruction of Cambodia and the rise and sustenance of the KR.

When asked in 1983 by the head of Amnesty International to participate in an eventual genocide tribunal of Pol Pot, Ponchaud agreed, but on one condition.

"Before Pol Pot I said we must judge Nixon and Kissinger and Carter ... they are bigger killers than Pol Pot," he insisted. "They destroyed Cambodia with their B52s and [beginning] in Jan 1979 supplied the Khmer Rouge and gave them money to fight the Vietnamese."

Ponchaud is also clearly distressed by the haunting parallels between contemporary Cambodia and the endemic corruption and widespread misery of Cambodians under the old Lon Nol regime.

"In my opinion, the Lon Nol regime was not worse than [modern Cambodia] ... in the Lon Nol period I never saw mothers sell their children the way mothers are forced to do nowadays," he said.

"The [current] government is lucky that the present ideological environment is different [because] if the ideological environment was the same as it was in Cambodia in 1970, there[d be revolution now."

The implications of a possible tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders is also a source of concern for Ponchaud.

"If you want to judge the KR, I agree but you must judge all the KR including the [former] KR in power now, such as Prime Minister Hun Sen and you must also judge the people who killed 17 people on March 30, 1977," he said, in reference to the grenade attack on a Sam Rainsy Party demonstration outside Cambodia's National Assembly widely believed to have been perpetrated by bodyguards of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

"But if you judge the acting leaders, there could be trouble, so maybe it's best to be quiet ... it may be impossible to find justice because there are too many people involved."
This story has been viewed 3835 times.  

Three more VN rubber companies to get land

The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 11 February 2010 15:01 Chun Sophal

(Comments: Again and again, while Hun Sen is provoking Thailand by faking to defend Preah Vihear, he allows the Vietnamese to obtain land in Cambodia under the camouflage of business deal in the form of land concessions for rubber plantations. Does this kind of deals benefit really Cambodia? Does Cambodia have enough land to afford to lease it to Vietnam?  Do these land deals lead to more employment, as proclaimed by a Hun Sen spokesperson, when he said that:

“On Tuesday, Chan Sarun said that developing the crop created job opportunities and brought economic growth.”

Think again; since most of these are contiguous to Vietnam, why would Vietnam employ Cambodians? Is it not logical that A Vietnamese company would prefer to employ Vietnamese workers? Especially when we all know that Vietnam has always used this kind of back door deal to allow the free flow of Vietnamese colonizers to move legally into Cambodia.

As I have been always saying for quite sometime now that we have never heard a word from either the old or the new king in the defence of the Cambodian national interests.  Don’t blame the Vietnamese alone; they always had a well-conceived and executed plan known as “Nam Tien,” and they always know what they are doing; especially, as to how to use the Cambodians to work for them. In this case as in other cases throughout the sad Cambodian history, the Vietnamese need Cambodian traitors, and they manage to always have found them among the so-called Cambodian leaders.

Last but not least, let me remind the Cambodian people that Vietnam is using the spirit of the imposed 1979 Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation and rendered official by its 2005 supplements to silence all those Cambodians who would dare to question this kind of deals with Vietnam's hidden agenda to the detriment of Cambodia's national interests. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 11, 2010)  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VIETNAMESE companies Viet Loa, Dong Phu Snoul and Rubber Kontum are set to receive 21,000 hectares of economic land concessions for rubber plantations, it was announced at an annual industry meeting.

Leng Rithy, president of Vietnamese Rubber Enterprise Federation in Cambodia, said at an annual conference on plantations, held in Phnom Penh Tuesday, that the firms are due to be granted concessions in Kratie province in June.

This follows a memorandum of understanding signed by Chan Sarun, minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, on September 22. The memorandum marked out plans with Cao Duc Phat, Vietnam’s Agriculture and Rural Development Minister, to invest in growing rubber on 100,000 hectares of Cambodian land.

“We hope that the three companies will help develop and enable rubber plantations to cover all the land stated in the agreement which the two countries signed,” Leng Rithy said.

So far, around 78,000 hectares of land concessions has been granted to 11 Vietnamese companies to grow rubber in Kratie, Kampong Thom, Ratanakiri, Stung Treng and Preah Vihear provinces.

On Tuesday, Chan Sarun said that developing the crop created job opportunities and brought economic growth.

Leng Rithy added that Vietnamese Rubber Enterprise Federation, under its US$600 million investment project, managed to grow 10,659 hectares of rubber last year, adding that in 2010 it would grow an additional 20,000 hectares.

“We are trying to grow rubber on 100,000 hectares by 2012 to help turn the country into a big regional exporter in the near future,” he said.

     COMMITTEE ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENTARIANS

CASE No. CMBD/01 - SAM RAINSY - CAMBODIA

Confidential decision adopted by the Committee at its 128th session

(Geneva, 18 - 21 January 2010)

http://www.samrainsyparty.org/archives/achieve_2010/February/D-Rainsy-128-E.pdf

(Comments: Sam Rainsy's case of the stripping of his parliamentarian immunity by the Hun Sen and his CPP,  got the appropriate attention of the Committee On The Human Rights of Parliamentarians.  Hopefully, this attention will lead to the retrun of Sam Rainsy to Cambodia. But, as I said before, Hun Sen and the king have no choice but to continue to persecute Sam Rainsy because he violated the principless and meaning of the the 1979 and its supplements that was signed by the king with the support of his father, in 2005. That so called treaty of Frienship, Peace, and Cooperation, is too important a means temporary means to control those who dare to oppose Vietnam's conitinued colonization of Cambodia.  Let' s hope that I am totally wrong in this case and that Sam Rainsy will able to return to Cambodia to perfrom as the main opposition leader. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. febraury 10, 2010)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The Committee,

Referring to the outline of the case of Mr. Sam Rainsy, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly of Cambodia, as contained in its report, The evidence currently on file is as follows:

- According to the source, Mr. Sam Rainsy had received complaints from villagers in Svay Rieng province that they were losing their rice fields owing to Vietnamese border encroachments; the complaints which the farmers lodged with the local authorities in this respect having remained unavailing, they turned to their elected representative; on 25 October 2009, during a Kathen ceremony, Mr. Sam Rainsy uprooted six temporary wooden posts planted in a rice field which belonged to a farmer, who had inherited the

land from her father; the matter provoked strong criticism by the Vietnamese authorities, and the Prime Minister reportedly invited the Cambodian Government to take “due measures” regarding Sam Rainsy’s “acts of sabotage”;

- According to the Speaker of the National Assembly, the demarcation posts had been agreed upon by the Cambodia-Viet Nam Border Committee and Mr. Sam Rainsy had used inflammatory remarks; he stressed that uprooting border demarcation posts is considered a violation of government affairs and a destruction of State property, which is an offence under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia - UNTAC law;

- According to the Speaker, on 28 October 2009, the Prosecutor of Svay Rieng Provincial Court submitted a request to the Minister of Justice to have Mr. Sam Rainsy’s parliamentary immunity lifted; the Minister forwarded the request the same day to the Speaker of the National Assembly, seeking the lifting of Mr. Sam Rainsy’s immunity in order to prosecute him on charges of uprooting border demarcation posts and for inciting people to commit “unsuccessful crimes” and misdemeanour offences; on 12 November 2009, the Permanent Committee decided to submit the matter to the plenary for “consideration and adoption” of the request for the lifting of his immunity; the same day, 64 parliamentarians requested a closed-door session for this purpose and on 16 November, the Speaker requested the Assembly to adopt the decision on the lifting of immunity by a show of hands; the parliamentarians belonging to the opposition

boycotted the session and the majority parliamentarians all voted in favour (87/87 votes);

- According to the source, at a press conference held on 16 November 2009, the government adviser in charge of border affairs, Mr. Var Kim Hong, reportedly stated that the border posts were temporary border markings and that they were in villagers’ land; according to information provided by the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), the remaining

INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION

CHEMIN DU POMMIER 5

1218 LE GRAND-SACONNEX / GENEVA (SWITZERLAND)

TELEPHONE + 41 22 - 919 41 50 - FAX + 41 22 - 919 41 60 - E-MAIL postbox@mail.ipu.org

- 2 -

temporary demarcation posts were removed by the Vietnamese authorities in late December 2009/early January 2010; - According to Mr. Sam Rainsy, the existing documents regarding the border in the region

clearly show that the wooden poles were posted on Cambodian territory, the border being far away from where the poles were planted; a visit, on 14 December 2009 by an SRP parliamentary delegation and independent observers to the Svay Rieng border reportedly also provided evidence of many Cambodian farmers having lost their rice fields because of border encroachments; Mr. Sam Rainsy is therefore of the view that the villagers in question are legal owners of their rice fields and that the temporary demarcation posts were planted in their lands without their consent;

- Under the UNTAC penal code, damaging property can carry a prison sentence of one to three years, or under a year if the damage is minor; incitement to discrimination carries a prison term of one month to one year, a fine or both;

- Mr. Sam Rainsy’s trial has been set for 27 January 2010; in early January 2010, an arrest warrant was issued for him as he failed to appear for a court summons on 28 December 2009; he is currently abroad; on 5 January 2010, Prime Minister Hun Sen reportedly warned that he would not request a pardon for Mr. Sam Rainsy should he be found guilty; “after the court convicts, let it be”, he was quoted as saying in an article published on 6 January 2010 in the Phnom Penh Post,

Recalling that Mr. Sam Rainsy’s immunity had been lifted in February 2009 to enable prosecution against him for allegedly insulting the Cambodian People’s Party during the 2008 elections; that he paid the fine that had been imposed on him; that however, it took some time before his parliamentary immunity was restored, Bearing in mind that Cambodia, as a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial, is bound to respect those rights and to take into account the interpretation given to those rights by the relevant international human rights bodies,

1. Thanks the Speaker of the National Assembly for the information he provided;

2. Is deeply concerned at the lifting of Mr. Sam Rainsy’s parliamentary immunity for the same reasons as the ones it has expressed in the cases of opposition parliamentarians Ho Vann and Mo Sochua, namely that without proper examination of the request for the lifting of immunity, without an open and public parliamentary debate, during which the parliamentarians concerned can present their arguments without a secret vote, parliamentary immunity is reduced to a mere formality and is thus meaningless;

3. Notes with particular concern that this is the second time that the opposition leader had his immunity lifted in 2009;

4. Expresses further concern at the charges laid against Mr. Sam Rainsy which, in the light of the information before it, appear highly questionable; and wishes to receive a copy of the indictment and to be kept informed of the outcome of the trial hearing of 27 January 2010;

5. Decides to continue examining this case at its next session, to be held during the 122nd IPU Assembly (March-April 2010), when it will decide whether or not it is appropriate to bring this case to the attention of the Governing Council in a public report;

6. Requests the Secretary General to inform the Speaker of the National Assembly accordingly, expressing its wish to meet with the Cambodian delegation to the 122nd Assembly.

CONFIDENTIAL

COMMITTEE ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENTARIANS

CASE N° CMBD/01 - SAM RAINSY - CAMBODIA

Confidential decision adopted by the Committee at its 128th session

(Geneva, 18 - 21 January 2010)

The Committee,

Having before it communications concerning Mr. Sam Rainsy, a member of the National Assembly of Cambodia, 1. Notes that the communication was submitted in due form;

2. Notes that the communication was submitted by the parliamentarian concerned, a source qualified under Section C(a) of the Committee’s Procedure for the treatment by the Inter-Parliamentary Union of communications concerning violations of the human rights of members of parliament;

3. Notes that the communication concerns the arbitrary lifting of parliamentary immunity and criminal proceedings, which may be politically motivated. The communication appears therefore prima facie to be admissible under the terms of the Committee’s procedure.

4. Concludes that all criteria for admissibility have been met; and declares itself competent to examine the complaint.

Hun Sen visits Preah Vihear

The Phnom Penh Post; Monday, 08 February 2010 15:05 Vong Sokheng and James O’toole

(Comments: Hun Sen has increased his provocation to Thailand for an open war by indirectly saying that:

“The border issues with Thailand have to be resolved through negotiation, but we will use force when Thai troops are invading Cambodia. The tanks and weapons are not here for exhibition only – they are here to fight against the enemy and invaders,” Hun Sen said. Thai officials, he added, “still keep it in their mind to invade Cambodia and do not know when they will stop”.

There is no rhyme and reason, for Hun Sen to utter these words against Thailand’s vastly superior force, both in number and arsenal, than Hun Sen’s Army. The question is, why then is Hun Sen so daring and particularly so provocative?

There are too answers to that question. One answer is that Hun Sen being a dictator, an ex-Khmer rouge general, and an ignoramus, would not know anything but the use of force.

The other answer which is more subtle has to do his being an instrument of Vietnam’s centuries- old Vietnamization of Cambodia strategy known as “Nam Tien,”. In this context, by provoking Thailand into an open war, at the order from Hanoi, Hun Sen would give the usual pretext for Vietnam to come and “save” Cambodia once more.  Vietnam would repeat the same process as it has been practicing since the 17^th century, to send its vast army to occupy Cambodia and “Save” Cambodia, as it did in 1979. Once, inside Cambodia, the Vietnamese soldiers just shed their uniform and stay in Cambodia, as they did so many times before, as colonizers.  

The saddest part of this story is the fact that neither the old nor the new kings have anything to say about this Hun Sen’s provocative stance. Silence form them means either they are prisoners of Hun Sen and the Vietnamese or they are a full supporters of Hun Sen and the Vietnamese. In either case, they are responsible for the Vietnamization of Cambodia. Yet, there are so many Cambodians, educated or not still believe that only the kings can save Cambodia. It is tragic indeed!

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 08, 2010)

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PRIME Minister Hun Sen, dressed in full military fatigues, made an official visit to Preah Vihear temple on Saturday, during which he accused neighbouring Thailand of planning to invade Cambodia and called on troops to defend the Kingdom’s borders.

Joined by his wife, Bun Rany – who also donned camouflage gear – Hun Sen briefly toured Preah Vihear temple under heavy security, also inspecting weaponry and troops stationed near the contested border with Thailand.

“The border issues with Thailand have to be resolved through negotiation, but we will use force when Thai troops are invading Cambodia. The tanks and weapons are not here for exhibition only – they are here to fight against the enemy and invaders,” Hun Sen said. Thai officials, he added, “still keep it in their mind to invade Cambodia and do not know when they will stop”.

The border area, where a total of seven soldiers from both sides have been killed since July 2008, remains a potential flash point, with the opposing forces opening fire on one another last month in a series of skirmishes in which no one was hurt. Around the temple and central to the dispute is a 4.6-square-kilometre piece of land that each side claims as its own.

“Where is the 4.6 kilometers squared of land [claimed by Thailand]? It is a claim by Thai invaders,” Hun Sen said.

The premier picked up on similar themes in a speech on Sunday in the Mom Bey area of Preah Vihear province, promising not to back down in his ongoing war of words with Thai leaders.

“If the Thais keep up verbal attacks on Cambodia, then tomorrow I will keep up with verbal attacks on Thailand,” he said.

Despite his harsh remarks, however, Hun Sen received Thai Lieutenant General Veerawit Kajornrith and several colleagues who joined in a Buddhist ceremony on Saturday at the temple to pray for peace in the area.

“We are neighbouring countries, so we cannot be enemies forever,” Hun Sen told Veerawit, urging frequent talks between Thai and Cambodian commanders to avoid further armed confrontations. Veerawit thanked the prime minister for the welcome and assured him that the respective forces “often talk, and have tried to avoid all problems”.

In addition to his trip to the temple, Hun Sen attended the opening of a nearby school and distributed gifts and supplies to local villagers. He also visited the site near the temple of a market that was destroyed by Thai rocket fire last April. There he said it was up to Thailand to decide whether to pay compensation for the incident.

Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said Sunday that Bangkok was unconcerned by Hun Sen’s trip, though he asserted his country’s claim to both the land surrounding Preah Vihear temple and to Oddar Meanchey province’s Tamone Thom temple, which Hun Sen reportedly plans to visit today.

“We have a normal procedure to receive the official visitors within our own area … so that should be the same as any other visit,” Panitan said.
Panitan declined to comment on Hun Sen’s invasion accusations, but said that should the Cambodian premier choose to visit Tamone Thom, a Thai delegation would be there to welcome him.

“I think when authorities are talking to a domestic audience, we will not comment on that, but our position is clear: Tamone Thom temple is on Thai territory,” he said.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Koy Kuong said there was “no need for the Thai side to send anybody to welcome [Hun Sen] and his delegation”, and that Tamone Thom has long belonged to Cambodia.

“If [Thai officials] come as guests, the cabinet delegation led by Prime Minister Hun Sen may welcome them,” Koy Kuong said.

In a statement released on Friday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected Thai claims to both Tamone Thom and the land surrounding Preah Vihear.

“It is very surprising and beyond comprehension that Thailand would consider sending a high-level official to welcome Samdech Techo Hun Sen, who is on a tour in the territory of Cambodia,” the statement read.

Also on Friday, Svay Sitha, chairman of the Press and Quick Reaction Unit at the Council of Ministers, wrote to Internet search engine Google to protest against maps appearing on the company’s mapping Web site that show Preah Vihear temple partially inside Thai territory.

Svay Sitha called the maps “devoid of truth and reality, and professionally irresponsible, if not pretentious”. He asked the company to take down the maps in question and replace them with an “internationally recognised map” that places Preah Vihear exclusively in Cambodia.

Last month, attempting to prove the legality of opposition leader Sam Rainsy’s uprooting of border posts in Svay Rieng province on the Vietnamese frontier in October, the Sam Rainsy Party released information based in part on Google-hosted maps of the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. These maps, the party argued, prove conclusively that the posts uprooted by Sam Rainsy had been placed on Cambodian territory.

Sam Rainsy, currently abroad, was sentenced in absentia to two years in jail in connection with the incident.

Google, in the terms of service for its mapping programme, says it “[makes] no representations or warranties regarding the accuracy or completeness of any content or the products”.

Understanding the fundamentals (Raison d’être, ideology, organization, strategy and tactics) of “Nam Tien;”) a  necessary but not sufficient for a successful roadmap to freedom for the Cambodian people

By Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D.

Introduction:

I am writing this essay in supplement to a page in my web site titled “A Suggested Roadmap to freedom for the Cambodian people,” using the theory of Strategic Planning, model One, and the five articles

(http://cambodiana.org/ARuggestedRoadmaptofreedomforCambodia.aspx)

 pasted below, as the analytical framework and as background information, respectively, in order to analyze the main features of “Nam Tien,” I am attempting to decompose the main components of the main strategy Vietnam on which has been relying for their “Nam Tien” or “Southward march” to successfully conquer the land of the Chams and that of the Khmers.

I strongly believe that only by fully understanding the main features of “Nam Tien,” can Cambodia have any chance to gain the freedom for its people and society. The main questions that we should ask are:

1. The Origin and raison d’être  of “Nam Tien” (From Model One; (1) Identify your purpose or mission statement)

2. Why “Nam Tien” is so successful for Vietnam to conquer its weaker neighbors, namely, Champa and Cambodia by looking at “Nam Tien” philosophy, organization, strategy and tactics (From Model One; (2) select the goals of your organization must reach if it is to accomplish your mission; (3) also Identify specific approaches or strategies that must be implemented to reach each goal; and (4) Identify specific action plans to implement each strategy; (5) monitor and update plan)

3. And why the neighboring countries have not been able to resist this deadly strategy used by Vietnam, by looking at the main organizational, philosophical, and strategic weaknesses of these two weaker neighboring countries? (From Model One; A parallel analysis for Champa and Cambodia (1 ) – (5))

Using the framework of different “Strategic Planning”  models as an analytical tool, and using the three  articles pasted below,  titled “the External Expansion of Dai Viet” and “ Viet Nam Imperial March and Imperialism,”  and “Nam Tien from Vietnamese texts,” as background reading, I am now attempting to give answers to the set of questions that I mentioned earlier.

Below is a sketch of my presentation:

I.                  Raison d’être for “Nam Tien”

It is very important to understand the factors leading to the formulation of “Nam Tien”:

Main factors underlying “Nam Tien”

1. Crowdedness in the River Delta due to high growth of the population

2. To escape the immediate  Chinese threat due to proximity to the Chinese power, and to create a vital space (Like the German Nazi known as Lebensraum” for Vietnamese  people

3. Perception by Vietnamese leaders regarding weaker administrative and military organization and leadership in neighbors’ Indianized countries; namely; Champa and Khmer Empire 
4. The most damaging for Cambodia was the fact that Vietnam never recognized any borders between itself and Cambodia. This, in turn, begs the question of how could Cambodia defend its borders against Vietnam movable border concept and practice. 
5. The way Cambodian patriots have currently come up with to defend the borders of their nation is to complain against Vietnamese repeated border violations, and to ask Sihanouk to intervene on their behalf with Vietnam, or to ask foreign countries or international organizations to do the job of defending Cambodia. This will not work. Cambodian patriots will have to do it themselves. Only with good leadership can this be done.

6. The next question is how can Cambodian patriots do to defend what is still remaining of Cambodia. First, Cambodians should know that there are two ways to set a strong and winnable strategy to survive.  

7. One way is by way of guerilla warfare, and the other by civil disobedience or by non-violent means. Both require dedicated, smart, and brave leadership, which is sorely lacking at the moment.  
8.  Those scholars specialized on Southeast Asian affairs, have much written on how Vietnam is totally and successfully committed to take over Cambodia by its centuries-old strategy known as “Nam Tien.” This strategy has been working for Vietnam since the 14^th century, and there is no rhyme and reason why Vietnam should stop using “Nam Tien,” to colonize Cambodia, so as long as there is no viable way for Cambodian patriots to counteract this deadly, efficient, but hidden form of genocide.  
9. Here are some of the stark testimonies on how Vietnam is totally in control of the process of erasing Cambodia from the map of the world and under the watchful eyes of The United Nations.

Here is how these factors are captured by scholars specializing in Southeast Asian affairs:

“The transformation of Dai Viet was, in part, the result of its population becoming a specialist in wet-rice cultivation, which fostered “the trade, population growth, and resource concentration that promote state power and societal expansion.”

“During this period, Vietnamese rulers did not pay much attention to the specific matter of expansion into Champa, until the arrival of the Nguyen lords who eventually sought a southern autonomous state, separate from the northern state under the Trinh lords.

Source: Vietnam’s Expansion & Colonial Diaspora (1471-1859); Bauer College; University of Houston, Texas; Filed Under 2008

http://blogs.bauer.uh.edu/vietDiaspora/2008/vietnam%e2%80%99s-external-expansion-and-colonial-diasporas-1471-1859/

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From Nugyen The Anh, a Vietnamese historian based on Vietnamese texts,  on  the modification by Vietnam from the more benign Sino-centric tributary to Vietnam's deadly "Nam Tien."

 “In the south of the delta of the Red River, new regional territories had been gradually added, through the ages, to the kingdom of Dai-Viet. Beyond the gate of Annam, the border had been moving in direction of the south with the territorial expansion of Vietnam at the expense of the old indianized kingdoms of Campa and Chenla. But one must speak less of border, and more of a border movement, materializing by a slow gliding towards the south, to such a degree that this phenomenon of “Nam-Tien” (progression towards the south), which had been held over several centuries, was regarded as one of the constants of the history of Vietnam.

The extension had taken this clear direction, because in north and western are full of natural and political obstacles and they are almost impassible, whereas in the south which is sparsely populated and accessible land were available for rice growers. The conditions being revealed favorable to the encroachment, the Vietnamese Monarchy had ended up by giving up its policy of “Confucian persuasion” based only on the prestige of the royal “virtue” (duc), in favor of an action resolutely imperialist, by imposing its administrative and cultural practice on the recently controlled areas, in order to better integrate them into the Vietnamese space. “

 Source: NGUYEN THE ANH;  Nam Tien from the Vietnamese texts; Pierre Bernard Lafont (éditeur); Les Frontiéres du Vietnam, (Edition L’ Harmattan, Paris, France, 1989) pp.121-27)

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II. Conceptualization of “Nam Tien” strategy and tactic, as well as the organization of civilian and military administraitons for the conquest of Champa and Khmer Empire

“Importantly, the state began to adapt the Ming Chinese model.  

For example, it took on the Chinese ideals of bringing ‘civilization’ to the ‘uncivilized,’ which were applied to its relations with Champa and the Khmers.  It also adapted Chinese meritocratic civil service examinations as the method of recruiting educated talent to service the government. ^[7] Moreover, Dai Viet had acquired gunpowder technology from China, although Vietnamese also had contributed to Chinese gunpowder technology by locally producing better techniques such as the wooden wad and possibly a new ignition, which was then exported to China. ^[8]  Arming itself with new gunpowder technology, Dai Viet’s large and well-organized military force was able to achieve its military ends more easily than before. ^[9]

Indeed, under the Le dynasty, the Vietnamese state began to transcend its displacement and, according to one opinion, gradually developed into “a bigger hegemonist,” conceiving themselves as superior to all other peoples in Southeast Asia. ^[10]

But probably more accurate is that the transformation of Dai Viet changed the balance of power in mainland Southeast Asia.  Yet, that balance was tenuous and was hampered by the eventual rise of two separate entities with two different representations of “what was a good Vietnamese.”

Notwithstanding, as a result of the above transformation, Dai Viet, on the one hand, were able for the first time, since independence, to stabilize its southern and western frontiers.  But Dai Viet also took advantage of its new capabilities to end its conflicts with Champa over areas (that of Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thua Thien) where the two mingled since the fifth century. “

Between 1361 and 1390, Champa, under Che Bong Nga’s rule, conducted an interrupted series of victories against Vietnam, including the sacking of Vietnam’s capital of Thang Long several times and were able to retrieve Champa’s old northern provinces that it lost earlier in 1301 through a marriage alliance that did not endure.  But after Che Bong Nga’s assassination in 1390, Champa had to hand back the provinces to Vietnam, yet these areas were still contested until the fifteenth century. However, in 1471, the Dai Viet’s military force appeared to have overwhelmed the Chams. One thousand Dai Viet warships and 70,000 troops captured Champa’s capital of Vijaya.  According to Vietnamese source, more than 30,000 Chams were captured and over 40,000 were killed.  In part, the fall of Champa in 1471 was due to the fact that it did not have access to firearms. ^[11] Thus, the year 1471 marked the rise of Dai Viet.

Vietnamese had by then conquered the northern part of Cham country, as far as the southern border of today’s Binh Dinh province.  However, Cham kings continued to rule from this region, although less autonomous then earlier Cham kings.  In addition, however, there were southern Champ polities, including a fourth Cham region (Kauthara) located near present day Nha Trang, which had been a part of Cham country since the beginning of Cham history. 

On Vietnam’s western borders, Tai peoples were actively crossing Vietnam’s western borders, causing a series of conflicts between the two.  But by the late 1470s, Dai Viet was able to claim Tai hill territories, bringing the Tai ethnic groups in modern Vietnam. ^[12] Taking advantage of its military technology, Dai Viet also pursued aggressive actions against Thai and Laos principalities.  Its armies marched as far as the Irawaddy River in modern Burma. ^[13] As a result, by the early 1480s, kingdoms of northwestern mainland Southeast Asia, such as the Laotian kingdom of Lan Ch’ang and Thai principality of Ai Lao sent tributes to the Vietnamese capital.

In sum, the purpose and scope of Dai Viet’s external expansion was initially to stabilize its southern and western frontiers, of which had been militarily contested throughout the centuries without a clear winner, at least until 1471.  Its external expansion was dynastic in nature, which was clearly reflected by the reign of Le Thang Tong (1460-1497) who sought to stabilize his state by securing its borders to prevent any repeat of foreign invasions, such as the Ming invasion of 1407-1427.   The degree of success in stabilizing its borders, as well as going beyond its borders, was, in large part, due to the unilateral-monopolistic timing, as put forward by Frank Darling. ^[14] That is, Dai Viet’s external expansion occurred because of a “power vacuum” in which Dai Viet with the new gunpowder technology and under a more bureaucratic state were able to exert power in the region, limited by the available resources and the stability of the Le court.

Vietnam, however, did not develop a permanent colonial phase or colonial diaspora until the beginning of the sixteenth century.  Even though Vietnam was active in acquisitioning Cham lands, it occurred at long intervals.  In occupying Cham lands, the Le emperors would appoint frontier military governors with the rank of viceroy (kinh-luoc), but would also retained Cham officials in the administration in some regions.  The purpose and scope of Vietnamese military and penal colonies were to consolidate their gains, to provide support for expeditions, and to relieve population pressures. ^[15] “

Source: Vietnam’s Expansion & Colonial Diaspora (1471-1859); Bauer College; University of Houston, Texas; Filed Under 2008

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III.             This section seeks to crucial answer the question; why the neighboring countries; namely Champa and Cambodia, have not been able to resist this deadly strategy used by Vietnam, by looking at the main organizational, philosophical, and strategic weaknesses of these two weaker neighboring countries? (From Model One; A parallel analysis for Champa and Cambodia (1 ) – (5))

Internal weakness in the Institutions of both Cambodian and Champa based on the Indianized models, especially in Cambodia where the cult of the God-King was so overpowering that there is not room left for any contribution to the society and especially to its defense. There is no “Mandate of Heaven,’ as in the Sino-centric civilizations, which would  allow a popular uprising  to topple the reigning emperor or king by another person not necessarily from the royal family,  if they had abused their power by raising too much taxes or massive use of labor for public works such as; building canals, road, or temples.  

Here are some testimonies from scholars specializing in Southeast Asian affairs, on this issue: 

The Nguyen’s Colonial Diaspora

Vietnamese southern expansion or colonial diaspora under the Nguyen family can be described as a frontier movement, originating because of political and military unrest and conflicts at home; and expanding through military conquests, treaties, and “most difficult to document, colonization by transfrontiersmen.” ^[16]

In 1524, when the Le emperors were usurped by the Mac family, the Trinh family and Nguyen  family both professed their loyalty to and attempted to restore the Le emperors.  However, after the restoration of Le in 1592, the Trinh family gradually acquired all the important posts at the Le court so that the Le emperors were reduced to being “nominal” rulers. ^[17] Meanwhile, the Nguyen family saw the Trinh as usurpers and decided to officially break with the Trinh in 1600 and return to Thuan Hoa (modern Hue), where years earlier they were emplaced by the Trinh to establish control over the southernmost frontiers. Between 1627 and 1672, the Nguyen lords were able to defend Trinh’s expeditions, as well as defending Cham’s reacquisition of its former territories.  By 1672, Trinh lords, whose militarily failures to defeat the Nguyen left them weakened, agreed to a division of the two states at the boundary of the Linh River.  This resulted in a relatively stable coexistence of “two Dai Viets” for a little more than one hundred years. 

The Nguyen, despite having a smaller population with a smaller number of trained officials, accordingly adjusted their organizational structure and localized themselves to their new geographical terrains and frontier influences, including redeveloping trading centers, absorbing local populations, and interacting with foreign merchants. 

For example, in the former Cham territories, one of the key characteristics of the Nguyen administration was the use of Chams and of lower-class Vietnamese.  It also redeveloped the commercially oriented society center in Hoi An, which had been pioneered by the local Cham population who still constituted a key component in the labor and basic patterns of the region’s trading center after the Vietnamese takeover. ^[18] Unlike the traditional northern economy, the Nguyen’s economy had a “fundamental basis in foreign trade.” ^[19]  This attracted Vietnamese immigrants, as well as Chinese refugees who fled from the Manchu dynasty, arriving at various times in present day areas of Hue after 1636, further transforming the Hoi An region “into its now recognizably Vietnamese form.” ^[20]  Moreover, from its contacts with foreign merchants, the Nguyen state was able to arm itself with modern weapons provided by Portuguese merchants, which assisted them to defend the Trinh expeditions as well as to continue the expansion of its control farther south.

As noted by recent works in Vietnamese historiography, in the Nguyen, we see a new version of being Vietnamese.  Although these works tend to describe the Nguyen as breaking or escaping from the past and from the ancestors in order to create ways of being Vietnamese, ^[21] it is probably more accurate to say that the Nguyen was not rigid in conforming with the traditional culture in the north, which led to a more open, multiethnic society with emphasis on foreign trade. 

This was true for both the central areas and the Mekong Delta areas.  In the latter, Vietnamese had moved into southern plains by the early 1620s, due the political and military vacuum left by the declining Khmer kings.  By this time, the Khmer court based in Phnom Penh was faction ridden and was subservient to Siamese (Tai) influence.  This allowed the Nguyen to exert its influence in the Khmer court, including the marriage of a Vietnamese princess to a Khmer king in 1620.  Three years later, the Khmer king granted permission for Vietnamese immigrants and traders to move into the areas, culminating in 1689 the establishment of a viceroyalty over the provinces around Saigon (Cotter254). ^[22]

Compared to the central areas, the Nguyen saw the Mekong Delta as more extensive and fertile for growing rice.  It also used this area to utilize captured Trinh soldiers and lower class immigrants from the north to settle and develop this area. Chinese immigrants also had important role in redeveloping this region’s trading center.  As a result, this region was ethnically pluralistic.  From one perspective, these individuals and groups found southern Vietnam as a land of promise, where they could make a fresh start. ^[23] For instance, captured soldiers were expected to clear the land in which they were given farm implements and food to eat.  So in several years “they could produce enough for their own needs,” and after twenty years after “their children can be soldiers of the country.” ^[24]

To be sure, however, the Nguyen’s colonial did displace the local populations of the Chams and the Khmers, whose “displacement but not replacement” is still today not assured.

A common perception is that the institutional weakness of Cham society, “a weakly institutionalized state system that depended upon personal alliance networks to integrate a fragmented population,” had sealed its fate. ^[25] Yet, the Chams were never easily conquered. In fact, it may be the same decentralized system that allowed the Chams for centuries to contest and stir rebellion against the Vietnamese.  Despite the Nguyen’s presence in the Cham territories since the 1550s, it was until 1611 that Cham territory of Kauthara (modern Nha Trang) disintegrated and not until 1771 that Panduranga-Champa (modern Phan Rang) fell.   However, over the centuries Cham society could not withstand the Vietnamese advancement, sometimes in “massive convulsions or in fits and starts.” ^[26]

It is thought that the majority of Chams were killed, driven off, or assimilated by the Vietnamese. ^[27]  Chams still exist today as an ethnic minority in Vietnam – though its number is relatively small (about 40,000) in comparison to the 30,000 Cham families in the eleventh century.  To some degree, because the Nguyen’s purpose and scope of its colonial diaspora were of political and economic domination “with less concern about Cham social and religious life,” Chams were able to retain some of their culture, including their language, religious beliefs, matrilineal kinship patterns, and the practice of non-intensive rice growing. ^[28] And often overlooked or discredited is the contribution of Chams in the Hoi An region as international trade center.  It is very likely that “Vietnamese immigrants encountered the well-established patterns of behavior of the peoples who preceded them and very likely continued to live alongside them.” ^[29] For instance, Vietnamese had been shaped by the Cham maritime logic in rebuilding Hoi An, learned to grow rice in terraced land, adopted local Cham deities such as Po Nagar, took up a form of Siva worship, lived in Malayic-style stilt houses, traveled in Cham-style boats, tilled with Cham plows, buried their dead in Cham-style graves, and practiced piracy and barter in slaves. ^[30] 

Similarly, since the early 1620s Khmers were gradually displaced and were pushed out of their villages into Cambodia or into marginal lands near the sea; ^[31] and by 1780, the Vietnamese controlled most of the southern territories that comprise present Vietnam.  During the 18th century, military colonies were used to expand in this region, which settled disputes between Khmers and encroaching Vietnamese, although in the favor of Vietnamese settlers. ^[32]  In the 1978 border war with Cambodia, the new socialist government of Vietnam used the Khmers as an advance column in their invasion into Cambodia.  Like the Chams, the Khmers were also “discredited” of their role in developing the commercial areas near Saigon.  Their contribution to the Vietnamese vocabulary and phrases is often overlooked.  This is also true regarding their religious practices, which the Vietnamese have adopted, including elements of Theravada Buddhism.  Other cultural borrowing from the Khmers includes agricultural implements and foods, medicines, and different areas of arts. ^[33]

Source: Vietnam’s Expansion & Colonial Diaspora (1471-1859); Bauer College; University of Houston, Texas; Filed Under 2008 

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On the Vietnamization of Champa, American historian, Bernard Fall wrote:

“Slowly, Vietnamese rice farmers peacefully occupied the unfilled northern plains of the Champa kingdom, very often with the consent of the Chams, who felt that this process would serve their own enrichment. But as the settlements of the Vietnamese grew so grew the willingness and ability of the neighboring Vietnamese state to protect its own citizens. Slice by slice, delta by delta, the process was repeated. There were a few temporary setbacks in the process but by the end of the eleventh century, all the coastal provinces north of Hue had been conquered. The next important slice, including Hue later Viet-Nam's imperial capital, became Vietnamese in the course of the mid-fifteenth century, thanks to a marriage between the sister of the Vietnamese king and the king of Champa. But in 147l, after renewed bitter warfare, in the course of which the Vietnamese conquered the Chams' second capital, Vijaya-Indrapura having been lost earlier-the once-flourishing Champa kingdom was near collapse. It lost more than 300 miles of shore line and in fact became little more than a beachhead stretching precariously over the small deltas of Khanh-Hoa, Phan-Rang, and Phan-Thiet

 One and a half centuries later, the Champa kingdom had simply disappeared. Today, all that is left of it is a series of watchtower ruins at the landward edge of the Central Vietnamese coastal plains and a small group of perhaps 30,000 handsome Indian-featured people eking out livings as fishermen and artisans around the Vietnamese cities of Phan-Rang and Phan-Ri.”

On the Vietnamization of Cambodia’

Bernard fall observed:

“The next step in colonial conquest was also typical. A Chinese merchant, Mac-Cuu, had established himself in southwestern Cambodia and, like the well-known European trading companies of the time, had taken physical possession of several provinces stretching from Kampot to Camau. When the Cambodians and their Siamese allies threatened Mac-Cuu's "state within a state," he appealed for help to the neighboring Vietnamese, who were only too happy to oblige. By 1757, Viet-Nam had occupied the rest of the Mekong Delta and the swamp-infested Camau Peninsula. Vietnamese settlers began to pour into the empty provinces, which became a vast "Far West" for the Vietnamese state. To this day, the areas on the western side of the Mekong are known to the Vietnamese as "Mien-Tay" ("the New West"). By the end of the eighteenth century, Viet-Nam had expanded to the full extent of its present shore line.

 Vietnamese intervention in Cambodian affairs had begun in 1623 when Chey Chettha II, a king of Cambodia who had married a Vietnamese princess, attempted to shake Siam's overlordship with the help of the Nguyen. In exchange for that help, the Hue government requested Cambodia's authorization to send settlers to Prey Kor, and a Vietnamese general was sent with a security detachment to protect the new settlers. In 1658, a Vietnamese expeditionary force again had to intervene in the endless internecine struggles of the various pretenders to the Cambodian throne, and in 1660, Cambodia began to pay a regular tribute to the Vietnamese court.'

But the Vietnamese yoke on Cambodia was to take a shape far more direct than the highly theoretical suzerainty China still exercised over Viet-Nam. The declining Khmer state was split into three Vietnamese "residences" under the control of a Vietnamese Chief Resident at the Cambodian court at Oudong. The Vietnamese began an acculturation process that, as in the neighboring provinces and in the case of the Chams, amounted to veritable genocide: destruction of the Buddhist temples and shrines, compulsory wearing of Vietnamese clothing and hairdress, Vietnamization of city and provincial names, and, finally, abolition of the royal title of the Cambodian sovereigns. By the early nineteenth century, the queen, Ang Mey (1834-41), held a virtual prisoner in her palace, was officially referred to as merely "chief of the territory of My-Lam."3

 From 1841, Cambodia was purely and simply incorporated into Viet-Nam, but after a Cambodian rebellion encouraged by Siam and a brief war in which Siam and Viet-Nam fought each other to a standoff, both countries agreed in 1845 to a condominium that ended only when France's protectorate was established, in June, 1863. A similar condominium policy in northern Laos also had brought the important Tran-Ninh Plateau—now better known as the Plaine des Jarres—under intermittent Vietnamese control beginning in the sixteenth century.

Source: The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis”, Chapter 2: A Glimpse of the Past By Bernard B. Fall   (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1971),

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion:

There is no way Cambodia, with a weak organization and dysfunctional society, can fight against a much better organized and better-led country like Vietnam.  Please, see the two models one applied to Vietnam, (Sino-Centric _ Triangular organization) and the other (Indianized model – concentric organization) applied to Cambodia and Champa.

Finally, Vietnam has been able to carry out its colonization or “Nam Tien,”only with the help and support of Cambodian traitors, such as; Chhey Chettha II, Pol Pot, Hun Sen and his CPP, with the full support of Sihanouk and now his son Sihamoni.

The main features of Nam Tien include:

1. Using sex or marriage of convenience or temporary treaty (As the 1979 treaty of Peace, Friendship and cooperation) as tactics to  buy more time for Vietnamese colonizers to move into the newly conquered land.

2. Providing incentives (Land, protection and income) to Vietnamese settlers comprising captured prisoners and former soldiers, with new land, by piecemeal strategy known as “Leopard Skin”

3. Gradually, pushing those Chams and Khmer famers out of the productive land thus denying them a way of subsistence (a genocide by definition).

4. Organizing the new settlements into self-sustained Vietnamese civilian and military units run from the central bureaucracy under the leadership of the emperor.

5. Final phase is to totally eliminate (Culturally, religiously, and physically -  a genocide by definition)  the local people (Cham and Khmer) and backed up by an impeccable administrative civilian and military organization based on scholarship and Confucian examination. In contrast, the Cambodian administrative civilian and military organization was and is based on a blind loyalty to the god-king.

6. Finally, the underlying condition for the success in “Nam Tien” is based on the ability of the Vietnamese leaders to adjust and adapt their strategy to changing conditions in international relations, from the Sino-centric tributary system to the current United Nations Organization system, without changing anything in the fundamental features of “Nam Tien.” As an illustration of that adaptability of “Nam Tien,” the Vietnamese no longer use the word “barbarians” to designate those inferior people that they have conquered, but, they now call them “little brothers,  (Em in Vietnamese) and no longer using the word “Vassal” to designate those conquered countries, but the word “Member of the Federation” such as the “Federation of Indochina,” of course under big brother or (Anh in Vietnamese) Vietnam’s control. Finally, they don’t use any more the politically incorrect word “Conquer” but the politically correct word “Save,” to intervene in other countries internal affairs. On the contrary, Cambodians are so emotional about their fear and being victims of the Vietnamese that the language they have been using is usually politically incorrect, which made them sound more like a "victimizer' rather than a"victim," which they atruly are.
7. The most astoninshing aspect of "Nam Tien," is the fact that this conering strategy was carried out without interruption, desptie the fact that Vietnam was divided and ravaged by civil war for more than a century, during the period which Champa was obliterated and Kampuchea Krom was being colonized. Unlike Cambodia, the Vietnamese leaders always put the national interests above the personal ones; whereas the Cambodian kings (or commoners) always for personal power and gain and not for national interests of Cambodia. In addition, unlike  the Vietnamese who never allowed  foreigners to take control of their situation; the Vietnamese utilized the foreigners to help them find new technology, (Gun Powder or new weapons - artillery) to help them win the wars against their enemies.   Cambodian kings  always  seeked assistance from foreigners, (Vietnamese and Thai) to settle account among royal family members infighting, at the high cost of  losing Cambodia's land, or sovreignty, or both.

This spirit of dependency was well observed by David Chandler as follows:

             Source: A History of Cambodia (2nd Ed.) by David Chandler (also in Khmer produced by Center for Khmer Studies), Chapter 7 “The Crisis of the 19th Century” has 3 sections including (i) “The Imposition of Vietnamese Control”, (ii) “The Vietnamization of Cambodia, 1835-1840”. Please read or re-read this important basic history book on Cambodia to put into context the following excerpts:

“Invaded and occupied again and again by Thai and Vietnamese forces, the kingdom also endured dynastic crises and demographic dislocations… [t]he first half of the 19th century bears some resemblance to the 1970s in terms of foreign intervention, chaos, and the sufferings of the Cambodian people.” (p. 117)

“…pursued a dangerous policy apparently aimed at preserving independence (or merely staying alive) by playing the Thai and the Vietnamese off against each other.” (p. 117)

“Each of these events marked a stage in the process of Cambodia’s diminishing ability to control its own affairs.” (p. 118)

“…in the words of the Vietnamese emperor, ‘an independent country that is the slave of two’” (p. 119).

“…as a result of Vietnamese support for an anti-Thai rebellion that erupted…” (p. 122).

Under Vietnamization of Cambodia: according to Truong Minh Giang “…After studying the situation, we have decided that Cambodian officials only know how to bribe and be bribed. Offices are sold; nobody carries out orders; everyone works for his own account.” (p. 124)

“This program was matched to the south and east by an intensive program of Vietnamization, which affected many aspects of Cambodian life.” (p. 124) 
 

Yet, Cambodians remained absolutely unchanged in almost all aspect its behavior , mindset, organization, and strategy since the Angkorian period. In this contex, themost devastating effect on the current tragic situation in cambodia is the lack of original and independent thinkers which woud contribute to new thoughts and ideas, to allow Cambodia to get out of the current deadly situation that it is now.

For instance, China, Vietnam, Thailand have always had thinkers, philosophers, inventors, scientists, military strategists who had written books on thier respective subjects for the benefit of their society and beyond. One can think of Confucius the Chinese  philosopher, Sun  Tzu the Chinese General and strategist who wrote a book that used used by Vietnamese Nguyen Vo Giap to defeat the French army in DienBien Phu and the American forces in South Vietnam in 1975. There is no such persons in Cambodia. because anybody who are thinkers are considered as a competitor to the God-King of Cambodia.

By the way, this does not mean that the Cambodian people do not have intelligence or talent; they are as talent and intelligence as other people. But, this lack of contribution in the different fields of endeavor was due to social and political conditioning in which only the god-kings can possess all the talent and intelligence, and noone else in the country.     

"Nam Tien or the Southward March"  strategy has been used by vietnam since it started to move out of the Red river Delta in the 13th centruy, to colonize Champa and Kampuchea Krom, and now in Cambodia proper, with great and deadly success. Unless there is a total change in its administrative, military, legal, judicial, economic, political, and social organizations (See the different style of institutional organization of the Sino-centric civilization (Vietnam) and that of the Indianized civilization), Cambodia is bound to disappear sooner rather than later.  

Efforts to remove Hun Sen from power by peaceful means. Without removing Hun Sen from power, the Vietnamese will continue to send their illegal immigrants under the so-called protection of the imposed 1979 Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Cooperation, that became official in 2005, when the new king Sihamoni with the support of his father Sihanouk had signed that supplements to the unequal Treaty. The 1979 and its supplements is the master piece device for the Vietnamese to keep a firm control of those who dare to oppose their colonization of Cambodia.

This treaty is an indirect and temporary means to silence all opposition who would dare to question the Vietnamese plan to colonize Cambodia.  An illustration of that was when the reverend Tim Sakhorn in 2008, who was kidnapped and sent to Vietnam by Hun Sen, to be jailed for violating the content of the 1979 treaty and its 2005 supplements.

Considering that the majority of the Cambodian population are traumatized by to the Khmer Rouge mass killing, it remains only one way for Cambodians to carry out this strategy , which is to rely on the philosophy of Ahimsa or non-violence.

More specifically, opposition parties should concentrate more on Hun Sen weak side, which includes a range of internal problems such as; systemic corruption, violation of human rights, and absence of an independent legal and judicial system. More specifically, opposition parties should raise the issues of illegal Vietnamese immigrants through the request for the publication of the results of the recent census of population, and the request of the Hun Sen regime to allow all Khmer Krom who want to come and live in Cambodia, especially those who had now taken refuge in Thailand to enter Cambodia and live as Cambodian citizens.

Also the opposition parties should ask the government to intervene with the Vietnamese government to verify the dire condition and the reported hidden genocide against the Khmer Krom people by the government of Vietnam, as characterized by Rebecca Sommer, the German human rights advocates, as “Eliminated without Bleeding.” Instead pulling the border markers as Sam Rainsy did recent in Svay Rieng province, which was not very well received by local and international NGOs and International organization, such as, the United Nations.

There is no doubt that Hun Sen will try to stop those who try to topple him from power even with peaceful and nonviolent means. He will first use the totally corrupt and politicized legal and judicial system under his control to arrest and jail those who dare to challenge his absolute power.  If the judicial means does not stop those who protest against him, Hun Sen will not hesitate to kill them. Therefore, those opposition leaders who choose to go against Hun Sen’s murderous regime should be aware of this savage side of the Cambodian dictator. Unfortunately, there is no other way for those who lead the opposition to Hun Sen but to risk losing their life before Cambodia can see any chance of surviving.

Burma’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is an obvious example of that courage that is needed from any Cambodian opposition leader who choses to challenge a cruel dictator like Hun Sen.  Not willing to take risk is not an option for any opposition leader who claims to want to save Cambodia. Cambodians must change their way of thinking and doing things in politics including controlling their emotion regarding language use in addressing the Veitnamese issues (See some selected email exchange between a group of Overseas Cambodians in Frnace and USA on Cambodian/Vietnam relationship.)

 The old way of relying on foreigners and the kings to save Cambodia, will not work.

As the great Physicist, the great Albert Einstein had said that

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein, Physicist

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Khmer form of governance under the God-King ideology  during the Angkor Empire was best captured by Bernard Philippe Groslier when he wrote:

“Our judgment may perhaps be warped owing to the disappearance of all secular writings and of an incalculable number of works of art.

     But there is no evidence of any healthy philosophy developing outside the cult of the king-god, after whose disappearance there was in any case nothing capable of regenerating the nation.

     In such a closed society nothing was left to pin one's faith on - except Buddhism, a religion of total renunciation.”      

     Source: Bernard Philippe Groslier: “An Uncertain Legacy: the Khmer Paradox;” Thierry Zephir; Khmer: the Lost Empire of Cambodia; pp. 114-5

•          Comparison of Administrative, legal, and Political Organizations between 

     Sinic and Indic civilizations and its impact of national security and survival

Ø  Sinic/Vietnamese civilization (Vietnam)

Ø  Administration: conceptually can be compared to a pyramid with the ruler at the apex with clearly defined links established between the apex and the lowest officials in the provinces who formed the base of this administration.

Ø  Law: the law was written code, detailed in form and complete with learned commentaries.

Ø  Qualification: based on scholarship (Exam based on Confucius teaching ) and meritocracy. Strict rules covered the amount of authority possessed by each of official and qualifications for each grade.

Ø  Border: And a further reflection of the character of the state the Vietnamese believed in the necessity of clearly defined borders with its neighbors, with the use of a map and border markers.    

Source: Milton Osborne; Southeast Asia: An Introductory History; (George Allen & Unwin, Boston, 1983)

•          Comparative Administrative and Political Organizations between Sinic and Indic civilizations, and its impact on national security and survival

Ø  Indic civilization (Cambodia, Champa)

q  Administration: conceptually can be compared to a series of concentric circles with the ruler with absolute power at the center circle, and the largest circle represents the state. There is a lack of close linkage between the center of the kingdom and outer regions, as well as the existence of numerous petty centers of power largely independent on their greater neighbors.

q  Law: no clearly defined authority in written legal form. Control over the more distant regions of the kingdom was readily delegated to provincial governors who were able to exercise almost complete power, providing that they did not challenge the king’s position as the ultimate arbiter of affairs within the state. 

q  Qualification: appointments were not based on scholarship or meritocracy. Birth into quasi-hereditary family, ability and an opportunity to gain the ruler’s notice all played their part in determining advancement.

q  Border: no precision on physical limitation, but rather on the porous concept of hinterland or buffer zone. No use of map nor border markers

Source: Milton Osborne; Southeast Asia: An Introductory History; (George Allen & Unwin, Boston, 1983)

____________________________________________________________

Background reading

Model One - “Basic” Strategic Planning

This very basic process is typically followed by organizations that are extremely small, busy, and have not done much strategic planning before. The process might be implemented in year one of the nonprofit to get a sense of how planning is conducted, and then embellished in later years with more planning phases and activities to ensure well-rounded direction for the nonprofit. Planning is usually carried out by top-level management. The basic strategic planning process includes:

1. Identify your purpose (mission statement) - This is the statement(s) that describes why your organization exists, i.e., its basic purpose. The statement should describe what client needs are intended to be met and with what services, the type of communities are sometimes mentioned. The top-level management should develop and agree on the mission statement. The statements will change somewhat over the years.

2. Select the goals your organization must reach if it is to accomplish your mission - Goals are general statements about what you need to accomplish to meet your purpose, or mission, and address major issues facing the organization.

3. Identify specific approaches or strategies that must be implemented to reach each goal - The strategies are often what change the most as the organization eventually conducts more robust strategic planning, particularly by more closely examining the external and internal environments of the organization.

4. Identify specific action plans to implement each strategy - These are the specific activities that each major function (for example, department, etc.) must undertake to ensure it’s effectively implementing each strategy. Objectives should be clearly worded to the extent that people can assess if the objectives have been met or not. Ideally, the top management develops specific committees that each have a work plan, or set of objectives.

5. Monitor and update the plan - Planners regularly reflect on the extent to which the goals are being met and whether action plans are being implemented. Perhaps the most important indicator of success of the organization is positive feedback from the organization’s customers.

Note that organizations following this planning approach may want to further conduct step 3 above to the extent that additional goals are identified to further developing the central operations or administration of the organization, e.g., strengthen financial management.

Model Two - Issue-Based (or Goal-Based) Planning

Organizations that begin with the “basic” planning approach described above, often evolve to using this more comprehensive and more effective type of planning. The following table depicts a rather straightforward view of this type of planning process.

Summary of Issue-Based (or Goal-Based) Strategic Planning

(Note that an organization may not do all of the following activities every year.)

1. External/internal assessment to identify “SWOT” (Strengths and Weaknesses and Opportunities and Threats)

2. Strategic analysis to identify and prioritize major issues/goals

3. Design major strategies (or programs) to address issues/goals

4. Design/update vision, mission and values(some organizations may do this first in planning)

5. Establish action plans (objectives, resource needs, roles and responsibilities for implementation)
6. Record issues, goals, strategies/programs, updated mission and vision, and action plans in a Strategic Plan document, and attach SWOT, etc.

7. Develop the yearly Operating Plan document (from year one of the multi-year strategic plan)

8. Develop and authorize Budget for year one(allocation of funds needed to fund year one)

9. Conduct the organization’s year-one operations

10.Monitor/review/evaluate/update Strategic Plan document

Some disturbing exchange of emails between a group of Cambodians living in France and USA, especially in tone that make Cambodians look more like victimizers than victims

“We, Cambodians, are frustrated because the foreigners do not take our grievances seriously. The foreigners, in turn, are frustrated by our unsophisticated, and at times, violent language and action against Vietnamese people.

We, the Cambodian leaders and the people, need to be more sophisticated, knowledgeable and creative in our response to realpolitik. Many of us now respond with emotionalism, naiveté or outright disingenuous propaganda.”

Source: Theary Seng: Open Response of Ms. Theary C. Seng to Mr. At Keo's Open Letter:

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----E-mail d'origine-----
De : Hoeun Hach <hoeunh@yahoo.com>
A : Kith <tithhuon@aol.com>
Envoyé le : Mardi, 9 Février 2010 12:43
Sujet : Fw: Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Hoeun Hach <hoeunh@yahoo.com>
To: vf2k@free.fr
Sent: Tue, February 9, 2010 5:38:40 AM
Subject: Fw: Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Hoeun Hach <hoeunh@yahoo.com>
To: rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo.fr>
Sent: Tue, February 9, 2010 5:35:21 AM
Subject: Re: Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party

Date: 2/9/10

I'd like to respond to Jake ( it is bottom of this text), and hello Jake.

     Jake, if I may tell you a universal law that it applies to human beings.  If you are hungry, you need to eat.  Food  is for you.  The same is true to us, Khmers.  Khmers  have been invaded and occupied since 1979.  The invaders intend to destroy us and force Khmers to become Vietnamese called Indochina Federation.  I call it " Gas Chamber" for Khmers. Khmers in Cambodia are muzzled tightly.  The invaders are authority and controlling all positions.  At first arrival, they called themselves " rescues" in 1979. Now the invaders call us " racists"  while the invaders are pillaging our Rights, natural resources, farmlands, towns, villages, rivers, and sea.   Read my article " Race Card " you tell me what you see.

     Unity is very important.  If Khmers oversea believe unity is important, Khmers now can do two things (1) join with Khmers Mchas Srok (KMS) as a unity voice Khmer concerns at the UN to unmask the truth about the invaders. And (2) Khmers can join Sam Rainsy Party-the only political party is surviving at the moment.  Khmers don't need to depend on " fate."  If Khmers choose to believe in unity, the unity will survive us. No one else is going to believe in unity until Khmers believe in unity.

Writer: Hoeun 

From: rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo.fr>
To: Hoeun Hach <hoeunh@yahoo.com>; rithkomar@yahoo.fr; koh russey <kohrussey@comcast.net>; kretia1@free.fr; longrith@yaoo.com; Sophorn Sar <sophornsar@yahoo.com>; Moha sal <khmerologist@yahoo.com>; Sovann Ros <sovannros@yahoo.com>; thavary UNG <TUng@revere.mec.edu>; Jake MN <jake.pmn@gmail.com>; Timothy Chhim <timothychhim@aol.com>; Kim Ya LIM <Kim-ya.LIM@finances.gouv.fr>; ngeth <mngeth@yahoo.com>; vt km <vtkmspirit@yahoo.fr>; vanvanny@yahoo.com; vinrupp@yahoo.com; Bounthuon SALY <salybounthuon@yahoo.fr>; KANHA TEP <cktep2002@yahoo.com>; moanpreuk@go.com; chher909@aol.com; chal.ou@wanadoo.fr; nou.khemarak@belgacom.net; khmerization <khmerization@gmail.com>; Heang UNG BUN <sacrava@aol.com>; samngatki@yahoo.com; khmerintelligence@yahoogroups.com; khonrex@yahoo.com; thach.thach@khmerkrom.org
Sent: Tue, February 9, 2010 3:07:39 AM
Subject: Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party

Cher compatriote,

Je ne veux pas discuter avec vous de Kem Sokha, il a sa propre personnalité et il est libre de faire ce qu'il veut comme tout un chacun.

Ce que je veux savoir c'est votre propre opinion concernant l'union fait la force, que voulez vous faire de notre réunion ????
Accepteriez vous d'y participer et de vous unir avec nous tous ????

Remarque personnelle :

De toute façon aussi bien Kem Sokha que Sam Rainsy et bien d'autres peuvent venir assister et décider ensemble de l'avenir de notre pays s'ils sont tous des khmers véritables, mais apparemment on m'a dit que Sam Rainsy n'est pas 100% khmer, sa mère est une vietnamienne adoptée par son grand père, c'est peut être pour cette raison qu'il est aussi tordu que A Hun Sen et qu'il n'a jamais l'intention de dénoncer son copain, ils nous cachent leur jeu avec ces yuons kantorp.

Parce que ces deux là se comprenaient, ils nous jouent la comédie c'est sûr, A Hun sen a besoin de A Sam Rainsy et vice versa ??? et c'est pour cette raison que Lok Excellency Sam Rainsy est si hautain envers les autres et surtout avec moi RITHY KOMAR ???

Or l'union que je voulais c'est l'union entre les vrais khmers, pas avec les khmers à 50% ou les xmers métissés viet-chinois ou des viets transformés en khmers comme actuellement dans notre pays.

Jusqu'à ce jour je ne crois pas que nous les khmers nous puissions nous supporter et accepter de nous unir, et j'en doute énormément, le CAMBODGE est condamné à être dans la FEDERATION INDOCHINOISE dirigée par les vietnamiens pourk A yeuk yuons kantorp si kantoouk oap kantinn dos kantuy ????

Vous êtes tous responsables dans le cas où cette fédération indochinoise puisse se faire avec la complicité de A Hun sen et sa bande parce que vous êtes tous restez inactifs par peur et par intérêts personnels donc par TRAHISON.

KHMERS KANDAL KHMERS LEU KHMERS SURIN KHMERS KROM doivent accepter de se parler et de s'unir pour libérer notre EMPIRE KHMER des viets les voleurs des terres ancestraux et des meurtriers de nos aieuls.

RITHY KOMAR

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

De : Hoeun Hach <hoeunh@yahoo.com>
À : rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo.fr>
Envoyé le : Lun 8 Février 2010, 23 h 54 min 43 s
Objet : Re: Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party

My beloved countrymen !

     I see the same way what you see about Kem Sokha.  He is hunger for power more than he is hunger for unity and the survival of Khmers.  When he talks, he seems to focus on personal attack toward SRP and Sokha seems to believes that Sam Rainsy Party is a personal party of Sam's own party.  Sometimes I hear only Sokha's tone of voice, neither direction nor vision.  He just screams to get his voices heard.  If Sokha keeps doing the way he is doing, Vietnamese, Hun Sen, and other CPP member will destroy us easily.  This is how we fall.

     Can I say this statement to you? I don't mean to insult you, but I'd just like you to think and I'd like you to tell me what that mean in general.   Here, I say it.

     Just because Kem Sokha is a Human Right Party it does not mean he understand Human Right.  He only uses it to elevate his personal image and he deliberately pulls SRP down.  There are American expressions  " If I fall down, I would pull you down, too." and " If I don't win, you, too, don't win."  This is what I see about Kem Sokha.  What is your opinion?

    If I may say some more, I would say.  Just because his name is Sokha ( safe), it does not mean he would help us and/or the country be safe (sok).  " If I don't feel sok, you, too, don't feel sok" 

From: Hoeun

From: rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo..fr>
To: sithan hin <sithankhmer@yahoo.com>; Kim ya LIM <kim-ya.lim@wanadoo.fr>; rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo.fr>; Jake MN <jake.pmn@gmail.com>; koh russey <kohrussey@comcast.net>; kretia1@free.fr; Bounthuon SALY <salybounthuon@yahoo.fr>; Moha sal <khmerologist@yahoo.com>; Yeun Ros <rosyeun@gmail.com>; Heang UNG BUN <sacrava@aol.com>; Kem Sokha <rightcambodia@yahoo.com>; phaypheap@aol.com; phonkong@optusnet.com.au; pichborey@infonie.fr; bunchhay.ham@ascom.fr; bankosal@hotmail.com; vnuch@akrion.com; vktan@club-internet.fr; Ra Vudth <ravudth@yahoo.com>; Im Sinath <im_sinath@yahoo.com>; Chhay Soeun <chhayoo@hotmail.com>; Chham Seng Hour <hourkfp@yahoo.com.au>; CHANSARETH SAK <sak_vcatv_aca@msn.com>; sssocheat@yahoo.com; Samrach Son <son.samrach@yahoo.com>; chthvaraman@yahoo.com; Sophorn Sar <sophornsar@yahoo.com>; Sovanna Tim <sovanna_tim@msn.com>; Boran Tum <b.tum@comcast.net>; tbora@ozemail.com.au; daryneth.prak-lenain@wanadoo..fr; Hean Kong <konghean999200@yahoo.com>; chhang.marith@hotmail.com; sakhonn.chak@socgen.com; Boros Sopheap <khunpymoch@yahoo.com>; Kim Nguon Seng <naychy@aol.com>; Chean Rethy MEN <cheanmen@khmerstudies..org>; smorokot@yahoo.com; dhara tang <javaraman@yahoo.com>; Sem Yin <semyin@yahoo.fr>; neungsin@yahoo.com; Chhoeurm Nouth <chhoeurm..nouth@cegetel.net>; Dara POK <dara.pok@wanadoo.fr>; lesjeuneskhmers@free.fr; Ban KI MOON <inquiries@un.org>; Barak OBAMA <president@whitehouse.gov>; Hoeun Hach <hoeunh@yahoo.com>; son quoc <sonquoc007@yahoo.com>; sonchumchuon@hotmail.com; Sovann Ros <sovannros@yahoo.com>; thavary UNG <TUng@revere.mec.edu>; Bunthan Mom <win_bunthan@yahoo.com>
Cc: ranariddh norodom <n.ranariddh@pop3.telesurf.com.kh>; sihamonie norodom <sihamoninorodom@wanadoo.com>; Vacheara norodom <vacheahranorodom@hotmail.com>; Holl BUOR <holl_buor@hotmail.com>; Tith Huon <tithhuon@aol.com>; Setha Douc-Rasy <setha.douc-rasy@igr.fr>; hannso@lewebcafe.com; hann@rocketmail.com; heder@soas.ac.uk; henryhson@msn.com; hour_bak@iprimus.com.au; lenglim2002@yahoo.com; afpcambodia@bigpond.com.kh; aryasatya@rocketmail.com; Bunkhean Chhun <bchhun@mpls.k12.mn..us>; bong sokhom <bongsokhom@yahoo.fr>
Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 1:42:10 AM
Subject: Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party

CHERS COMPATRIOTES,

Si Lok Sithan Hin notre poête a approuvé mon idée et non l'idée de Lok Lim KimYA, (en cas de doute relisez mon mail ci dessous), que décide le groupe de Lok Sithan le poête ??? Je ferais ce qui lui plaira ainsi qu'à son groupe de milliers de membres, il n'a qu'à me dire franchement et honnêtement sans intermédiaire.

Et je demande aussi à vous tous avec vos groupes de me dire le plus vite possible vos décisions, faudrait il nous réunir à Toulouse ou non ????

Devrons nous rester inactifs pour regarder la disparition de notre pays et l'extinction de notre race khmère ????

L'union fait la force mes amis, il est temps de nous connaitre et de nous apprécier dans la joie et non dans la colère, laissons notre colère dans l'océan de la mélancolie, rejoignez moi RITHY KOMAR..

Savoir pardonner c'est le seul moyen pour nous tous de garder notre patrie et notre race se perpétuera.

Il faut me comprendre je n'ai pas l'intention de vous donner des ordres pour être chef car je ne veux pas, chacun d'entre nous doit d'abord faire ses preuves pour mieux commander les autres.

La question aujourd'hui est de savoir voulez vous laisser notre pays entre les mains de ces vietnamiens et A Hun sen et sa bande encore longtemps????

Avez vous le courage de venir nous unir à Toulouse pour de bon afin de bien nous comprendre dans le secret le plus absolu.????

Je demande à nos amis khmers américains de bien vouloir traduire mon texte ou mes textes pour que tout le monde puisse me comprendre et ne pas me dire qu'ils ne savaient pas lire.  

RITHY KOMAR

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De : sithan hin sithankhmer@yahoo.com
Envoyé le : Dim 7 Février 2010, 21 h 15 min 20 s
Objet : Re: Re : Re : Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party

Eight firms given land for farming

The Phnom Penh Post; Monday, 01 February 2010 15:01 Khouth Sophakchakrya

(Comments: this article shows the subtlety with which the Hun Sen regime is hiding the encroachment by Vietnam into the land of Cambodia. Among the newly made concession of land for plantation in the North East of Cambodia, land concessions were given to three countries, including Korea, Malaysia, and Vietnam. But, land granted to Vietnam amounted to 20,200 hectares, whereas those grated to Korea and Malaysia, were only 6, 600 and 7,000, respectively. More importantly, Korea and Malaysia do not have common border with Cambodia, only Vietnam does. Therefore Vietnam is the only country that can send their own workers to tender these newly concession of land by the Hun Sen regime.

How can anybody in their right mind to expect that these Vietnamese workers are going to go back to Vietnam? Korea and Malaysia are by necessity relying on the Cambodian labour force, therefore, would contribute to the employment of the Cambodian people; whereas Vietnam would not benefit at all the Cambodian people in terms of employment. So, Vietnam stands to benefit in the short term as well as in the long run, by bringing more immigrants into Cambodia to work in these newly granted land, and by owning more land in Cambodia, than poor Cambodian peasants.

Did we hear any words from the old and the new kings on this important issue? The answer is a resounding NO. And yet, most Cambodian opposition parties leaders are still asking and believing that the old and the new kings are real defenders of the Cambodian interests.

No wonder, that Sihanouk can do anything he wanted to do without any fear of being judged badly. Sad but true, the Cambodian people is near death because Cambodians cannot do without their kings. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 02, 2010)

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THE Ministry of Agriculture Friday provided more than 50,000 hectares of land to eight companies – domestic and foreign – for agriculture, an official said.

Hong Narith, chief of cabinet at the ministry, told the Post Sunday that two Cambodian firms had been given 16,900 hectares. A Malaysian firm received 7,000 hectares, a South Korean firm 6,600 hectares and four organisations from Vietnam the remaining 20,900 hectares, he added. The concessions were for land in Mondulkiri, Ratanakkiri and Kratie provinces, said Hong Narith, although he was unable to give the names of the firms concerned.

“We expect these companies will … plant trees and raise animals to boost the economy in Cambodia and to provide work to people through the development of the agricultural sector,” he said, adding that if the proposals were not fulfilled then the licences would be withdrawn.

Yang Saing Koma, president of the Cambodian Centre for Study and Development in Agriculture, said the land could have been distributed differently.

“The government should be thinking about the population increasing and social land concessions to provide ... for cultivation in the future,” he said.

OHCHR regrets outcome of case against members of Sam Rainsy Party

Statement of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights in Cambodia
Phnom Penh, 29 January 2010

(Comments: as an old saying goes; " Beauty is in the eye of the beholder;" in a recent posting in the Sam Rainsy Party email, it is said that the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human rights (OHCHR) in Cambodia had criticized the Hun Sen regime, therefore had supported Sam Rainsy recent border incident at the border in Svay rieng province.

 In this article, it is true that the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia had criticized the Hun Sen government for abusing its power and by using the politicized judicial system to crack down on any opposition party members who dare to challenge his dictatorship, when it observed that:

“OHCHR regrets once again that the courts have been used to respond to a public interest issue that could have been resolved in a more open, constructive manner, through public debate within Cambodia’s democratic institutions. Mr. Sam Rainsy was sentenced to two years imprisonment for damage to property and incitement to racial discrimination (Article 52 and 61 of the UNTAC penal law, respectively). Ms. Meas Srey and Mr. Prum Chea were sentenced to 1 year imprisonment for damage to property. All three were further sentenced to heavy fines and compensation ranging from 5 to 50 millions riels.
”

 But, the UNHCHR also mentioned that;

“Mr. Sam Rainsy allegedly took it upon himself to remove several border demarcation poles on 25 October 2009 in a border village in Svay Rieng province, adjacent to Viet Nam. As a Member of Parliament and a leader of the opposition, he could have raised his concerns about the current process of border demarcation and sought clarification from the relevant authorities or the border demarcation committee, or discussed them at the National Assembly or otherwise publicly….

In a democratic society, it is preferable that Government policies or decisions are addressed through public debate. From a human rights point of view, the best response to any allegation is to respond to it with the truth, facts and evidence, and to ensure, wherever possible, a transparent process. In doing so, political leaders should refrain from using border issues in an attempt to gain political dividends by stirring popular sentiments against neighbouring countries and peoples. This is a slippery road that may lead to further conflicts, violence and infringements of human rights.” Please, also read the companion  article titled; “Sam Rainsy should not make political games out of border dispute.”

From these quotations, the UNHCHR appeared to have imparted the responsibility to both sides in this unfortunate case.  Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 03, 2010)

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OHCHR regrets once again that the courts have been used to respond to a public interest issue that could have been resolved in a more open, constructive manner, through public debate within Cambodia’s democratic institutions. Mr. Sam Rainsy was sentenced to two years imprisonment for damage to property and incitement to racial discrimination (Article 52 and 61 of the UNTAC penal law, respectively). Ms. Meas Srey and Mr. Prum Chea were sentenced to 1 year imprisonment for damage to property. All three were further sentenced to heavy fines and compensation ranging from 5 to 50 millions riels.

Mr. Sam Rainsy allegedly took it upon himself to remove several border demarcation poles on 25 October 2009 in a border village in Svay Rieng province, adjacent to Viet Nam. As a Member of Parliament and a leader of the opposition, he could have raised his concerns about the current process of border demarcation and sought clarification from the relevant authorities or the border demarcation committee, or discussed them at the National Assembly or otherwise publicly.

The trial took place on 27 January in Svay Rieng provincial court. The court building was cordoned off by heavy security forces. A selected number of members of the public including local village and commune authorities and several Members of Parliament from Sam Rainsy Party were allowed in the gallery, although there remained available space. The media were not allowed in. Two human rights observers, including OHCHR, were authorized to observe the proceedings. Whilst it is not the role of OHCHR to determine the merits of the case, it observed that on several occasions the President of the court did not interrupt the civil party lawyer who attacked verbally the accused and their lawyers in an aggressive manner. Due process and international standards provide that trials should be public and respect the principle of equality of arms, whereby all parties must be treated with equal respect.

Border demarcation is an important matter of state sovereignty. It is always a complex and politically delicate process, involving neighbouring countries, sensitive negotiations and potentially volatile popular feelings. This is an issue which has led in the past to serious conflicts between Cambodia and its neighbours. It is all the more important that the matter is handled carefully by the Government but also by political parties, with patience, tact, reason and responsibility.

In a democratic society, it is preferable that Government policies or decisions are addressed through public debate. From a human rights point of view, the best response to any allegation is to respond to it with the truth, facts and evidence, and to ensure, wherever possible, a transparent process. In doing so, political leaders should refrain from using border issues in an attempt to gain political dividends by stirring popular sentiments against neighbouring countries and peoples. This is a slippery road that may lead to further conflicts, violence and infringements of human rights.

Sam Rainsy should not make political games out of border dispute

The Phnom Penh ost; Wednesday, 03 February 2010 15:03 Sourn Serey Ratha

(Comments; I share Mr.  sourn Serey Ratha when he said that: "But in my opinion, making apologies and expressing regrets in politics amounts to the same thing when one is looking for a political advantage."

Since this affair has touched on the meaning and significance of the 1979 imposed "Treaty of Peace, Friendship,and Cooperation," and  was rendered official by the supplements signed by the new king in 2005, that is so important to Vietnam's main obejective to keep a firm grip on Cambodia, the king would not dare to give pardon to Sam Rainsy, this time. naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 3, 2010)

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It is my hope that Sam Rainsy will never again use Cambodia’s border dispute as a factor in his political game, as he did with the 1997 grenade attack when he filed a lawsuit against Hun Sen in a New York court and then later withdrew it.

Dear Editor,

I have observed that Sam Rainsy’s recent political actions seem to stand at odds with his efforts in the past to fight for truth and justice.
A case in point is the border issue with Vietnam.

What the public has taken away from growing tension over border demarcation along Cambodia’s shared border with Vietnam is that Sam Rainsy has used the existing disagreement to create additional problems.

A recent declaration by the Sam Rainsy Party stated that the border post uprooted by Sam Rainsy last October was one among several that were “fraudulently erected well within Cambodian territory” – a fact, the declaration states, that is borne out by historical maps and recent satellite photos.

The declaration asserts that “state-of-the-art computer programs” have provided hard evidence of fraud in the placement of border posts.

But what has Sam Rainsy done with this evidence?

He has urged foreign governments and international organizations to review this evidence in order to illustrate the false dealings of the Cambodian government.

But he has done nothing to illuminate what the SRP expects the country to do about the evidence to protect its territorial integrity.

Sam Rainsy did very well to combat falseness with truth, but how will the SRP move from truth to justice?

I would not expect Sam Rainsy to write a letter seeking Hun Sen’s leniency and the right to return to Cambodia and participate in the 2013 elections.

He has already stated that he has no intention of writing a letter of apology, but he has written to express regrets for some of the difficulties of the past.

But in my opinion, making apologies and expressing regrets in politics amounts to the same thing when one is looking for a political advantage.

It is my hope that Sam Rainsy will never again use Cambodia’s border dispute as a factor in his political game, as he did with the 1997 grenade attack when he filed a lawsuit against Hun Sen in a New York court and then later withdrew it.


Sourn Serey Ratha
Cambodian Action Committee for Justice & Equity

Obama's words ring true for Cambodians too

CAAI News Media;

http://khmernz.blogspot.com/2009_07_22_archive.html

by Gaffar Peng-Meth

(Comments: This article by Dr. Peng-Meth Gaffar is right on the dot as far as the relevance of the  message of the speech by President Barack Obama at the parliament of Ghana, to the Cambodia and its people. As I have often suggested that nobody in this wide world that can help the Cambodian people but themselves.

The harmful habit of going to ask from neighbors and other nations to come and help Cambodia since the fall of Angkor empire in the 15^th century, is the curse, whenever the Cambodian kings are fighting each other for power, is the worst curse for Cambodia. This reliance of foreign help is more deadly when the Cambodian kings or recently other so-called leaders had asked for helped, and are willing to be used by Vietnam to “save” Cambodia.

Practically, all modern Cambodian so-called leaders, including: Son Ngoc Thanh (The Viet Minh), Po Pot (North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong), Hun Sen, (The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong), and Sihanouk by all brands of Vietnamese Communists.

Until Cambodians start to learn to help themselves and to stop relying on foreign help, Cambodia can never get out of the deadly trap they have put themselves in, since the fall of Angkor in the 15^th century. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 01, 2010)

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July 22, 2009

Washington, DC, United States, — U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech to a special session of Ghana’s Parliament during his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa earlier this month could well have been addressed to Cambodia’s Parliament and the Cambodian people. “We must start with a simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans,” Obama said. Africa could be replaced with “Cambodia” and Africans with “Cambodians.”

Obama declared, “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy; that is tyranny. And now is the time for it to end. With strong institutions and a strong will, I know that Africans can live their dreams whether in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Congo, or in Ghana,” he said.

Referring to those who have stood up for democratic principles despite grave danger, he said, “Make no mistake. History is on the side of these brave Africans, and not with those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power.”

There is nothing new in stating that a nation’s future is up to its people. Leaders and politicians have said that throughout history. But Obama added, “With strong institutions and a strong will,” people can live their dreams. So can Cambodians.

Two weeks ago, I wrote in my column in this space that the 1991 Paris Peace Accords promised Cambodia a liberal democracy whose citizens could enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms. After being subjected to three years, eight months and 20 days of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s rule and the loss of an estimated 1.7 million lives, the Paris Peace Accords offered Cambodia and its citizens the best anyone could have wished for.

Yet, almost 18 years after the accords were signed, Cambodia is neither a liberal democracy nor do the people enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms.

The 18 signatory states to the Oct. 23, 1991 Final Act had declared “to commit themselves to promote and encourage respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cambodia.” But their commitment has fallen short.

Denial – a defense mechanism to escape from unpleasant reality or a painful truth – is not a monopoly of any group in particular but a general human behavior. But one who accuses others generally seeks to absolve himself from culpability for an unforeseen consequence.

As the signatory states to the peace accords and Cambodia’s faction leaders vowed commitment to liberal democracy in Cambodia and to human rights and fundamental freedoms for the Cambodian people, the unsuccessful attainment of the common goals is a collective failure.

A respected Western commentator said the “international community can assist in creating the opportunity for a more democratic system, but it cannot force the local politicians to behave in a democratic fashion.” True, the accords provided precisely that – the opportunity for a more democratic system.

“Cambodia will follow a system of liberal democracy,” stipulated the accords, which outlined in Cambodia’s Constitution provisions for the powers and limitations of each of the three branches of government – a system of separation of powers and checks and balances – and for conflict resolution through regular channels, among other things.

The architect of the European Union, Jean Monnet, said, “Nothing is possible with men; nothing is lasting without institutions.” And the great forefather of the American Constitution, James Madison, said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

While Madison saw people as the primary control over government, he counseled the need for “auxiliary precautions” when framing a government “administered by men over men.”

Keeping in mind the warnings of Monnet and Madison, it is nevertheless true that men create, staff, and run admirable as well as corrupt institutions. Consequently, the man or woman at the helm of a political ship will carry sway over the course of the nation.

A leader of high integrity, high values, and strong democratic beliefs would steer Cambodia’s ship to a better shore than those who sell the nation’s natural resources for private gain; evict the weak and the underprivileged from their land to allow development by the wealthy and the powerful; sue and lift the immunity of lawmakers; and jail or run out of the country those whose words and opinions differ from theirs.

One Western commentator wondered if Cambodia ever had the social and cultural basis for democracy to succeed, and a Cambodian commentator spoke of the necessity to empower institutions to enable the country to follow a course of liberal democracy in which the peoples’ constitutional rights were secure.

Indeed, the Paris Peace Accords provide a good foundation for liberal democracy and for human rights and freedom of the Cambodian people. But the bottom line is that Cambodians need to strive toward these goals, and foreign donors need to insist on the application of the framework outlined in the Accords, with a consequence attached for non-compliance.

Man can learn, unlearn, and relearn. Encourage man to think freely, to innovate and not to shy away from risks; dare man to read, write and speak without fear; instill in man hope, which specialists define as “energy and ideas that drive people to change their circumstances,” to reach goals, to have motivation, and to seek improvement. This is the road to a better way for Cambodians.

The necessity of Understanding and Using Stategic Planning in the Defense of Cambodia

A thin line between Cambodia and Vietnam
By Jared Ferrie

(Comments: this article once again shows how Hun Sen and his CPP are accommodating Vietnam colonization of Cambodia. But, as high State Department official had recently told me that he does not think Vietnam is committing any attempt in political domination of Cambodia; but, only an economic domination. What he said was that it is OK for Vietnam to dominate Cambodia, as long as it is an economic dominance.

But, I reminded him that he should learn about how Vietnam had committed genocide against Champa and against Kampuchea Krom people, and not to take the Vietnamese encroachment on Cambodian territories out of its historical and ideological context.

As far as Sam Rainsy recent act of showmanship in Svay Rieng province is concerned, the question is what would be the best way to help Cambodia in its fight against Vietnam colonization. By his act, Sam Rainsy is violating the “1979 treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation” with its supplements that was signed by the new king in 2005, under the encouragement of his father Norodom Sihanouk.

Now that this treaty had become official, which means that Vietnam is now able to control Cambodia internal political activities, which prevent any protest against any acts legal or not, against Vietnam. This aspect of Vietnam ‘s control of Cambodia destiny was clearly illustrated by the kidnap and arrest of the Reverend Tim Sakhorn, and then sent to Vietnam to be jailed, last year, because he simply tried to defend the genocide committed by Vietnam against his compatriots in Kampuchea Krom.  

Sam Rainsy, should have instead criticized Hun Sen internal policy which includes among other things, systemic corruption, the grip on the judicial and legal system, the suppression of press and human rights.  These  issues may not as flashy or eye-catching as the border issues, but they are more amenable get to stronger international support, and thus could help to unmask Hun Sen true and ugly nature.

Exposing Hun Sen’s dictatorship with non violence means  is the only way to give a better  chance to the Cambodian people to survive, and a better alternative to Sam Rainsy current and recent political philosophy and strategy, at the border. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 29, 2010)

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PHNOM PENH - The leader of Cambodia's main opposition party, Sam Rainsy, skipped his court date on Wednesday, eluding an arrest warrant issued for allegedly uprooting border markers on the frontier with Vietnam. Rainsy instead remained in France, where he had fled in advance of the hearing because he felt the case was politically motivated.

The Svay Rieng province court convicted villagers Meas Srey and Prum Chea to one year in prison and ordered them each to pay 5 million riel (US$1,200) in compensation to district authorities for moving the border posts. Rainsy was convicted in absentia to two years in prison, handed an 8 million riel fine and ordered to pay 5 million riels compensation to district authorities. All three must
pay an additional 50 million riel in compensation for destroying the border posts, according to the ruling.

The case highlights the ongoing controversy of Vietnamese influence over Prime Minister Hun Sen's government, some 30 years after the government in Hanoi ordered troops to invade Cambodia. The two countries are now in the process of demarcating their 1,270-kilometer long border. They are also negotiating investment agreements that could see Vietnam pouring billions of dollars into Cambodia.

On December 26, during a conference in Ho Chi Minh City, officials signed a memorandum of understanding intended to pave the way for more Vietnamese investments in Cambodia. No deals were finalized, but the economic agreements covered projects including electricity generation, fertilizer production and rubber plantations, as well as a proposal to explore for bauxite mining in Mondulkiri province. A Vietnam official in Phnom Penh told the Phnom Penh Post that revenues from bauxite mining alone could amount to US$6 billion.

Against the backdrop of a possible $12 billion worth of new Vietnamese investments, Rainsy implied that Cambodian officials were reluctant to criticize their larger neighbor about alleged Vietnamese encroachment on Cambodian lands.

"I am defending Cambodia's independence and territorial integrity regardless of these ongoing investment projects and financial deals," he said in an e-mail from Paris. "Maybe those in the Phnom Penh government take those material interests into consideration in their handling of border issues with Vietnam, but I don't."

A spokesman for the Cambodian government, Phay Siphan, said in an interview that increasing economic ties with Vietnam had no bearing at all on the border demarcation process. He said a commission is carefully analyzing data from maps drawn up during the colonial period of French rule in order to determine exactly where the border lies.

"The job of the border commission between Cambodia and Vietnam is not to lose or gain territory from either side," said Phay. "Sam Rainsy is misrepresenting the work of the border commission."

Rainsy, who is a fierce critic of Vietnamese influence in Cambodian affairs, was charged with incitement of racial discrimination and destruction of property for his role in an October 25 incident in Svay Rieng province. Rainsy allegedly joined five villagers in uprooting the wooden poles after hearing complaints that they had been placed in a nearby rice field. Two of those villagers were arrested and sentenced on Wednesday.

To back up his case, Rainsy's eponymous political party (SRP) on Monday released what it said was evidence that the uprooted border demarcation posts were placed 300 to 500 meters inside Cambodian territory. The SRP referred to maps drawn up by the French in 1952, which defined the border and which were given to the United Nations by the Cambodian government in 1964. Those were corroborated by maps produced by the United States military in 1966, according to the SRP.

Rainsy said he enlisted the help of cartographers, historians, geographers and computer experts who examined the maps and used satellite pictures and GPS coordinates to determine that the uprooted border markers were indeed placed within Cambodian territory. Rainsy refused to name the experts, but he noted that he also received "technical assistance" from a French map engineer at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.

Cambodian officials threatened to lay further charges after the release of the information by the SRP. "The government will consider taking legal action to prohibit any illegal publication that affects the security of the social order," Tith Sothea, a government advisor who works at the press office of the Council of Ministers, told the Phnom Penh Post on Monday.

In his e-mail, Rainsy said that threat sounded "rather Stalinist". He added: "They are embarrassed and afraid because I am exposing scientific, objective and factual evidence of what I am claiming."

Phay, the government spokesman, confirmed that the government is investigating the information made public by Rainsy and the SRP, and that the investigation could lead to further charges if the claims are shown to be false. "We don't want to see any misleading information that will affect law and order and national security," he said.

Phay also accused the SRP of releasing the information in order to distract attention from Rainsy's case. "He has the right to freedom of expression, but it can't cover up what has been done." He said that rather than releasing the information to the media, the SRP should have brought it forward for debate in parliament, or even in a separate court case.

But Rainsy alleged that the courts are "political tools" used by the ruling Cambodian People's Party to "crack down on opposition". Many rights groups and analysts share that view. Last year, a spate of lawsuits against opposition parliamentarians, journalists and activists prompted a litany of criticism from international rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as the United States Embassy in Cambodia.
"This is a public secret. Everyone knows that the court is under control of the government," said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. "There is an attempt by the ruling party to consolidate its power." He said the case against Rainsy was an example of that trend. "This issue of the border could have been downplayed. They take any chance to silence the opposition."

But Rainsy has so far refused to be silenced, taking up his cause with governments in Europe while participating in radio call-in shows in Cambodia. His party has also vowed to begin investigating other sections of border between the two countries.

Jared Ferrie is a Phnom Penh-based journalist.

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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New casino launched in Vietnam border SEZ

The Phnom Penh Post; Friday, 22 January 2010 15:02 Soeun Say

(Comments: Vietnam continues its politics of slowly but surely taking over the land from the Cambodian people with the total support of Hun Sen and the new and old kings. The so-called Special Economic Zone is, no more and no less, an open and indirect way to allow the Vietnamese to be moving freely into Cambodia. Since the Hun Sen regime is so corrupt, there is no official who is going to verify whether these Vietnamese are going to stay in Cambodia as colonizers once they are in the country.

All this is happening under the watchful eyes of the old and the new kings without a word from them.

Are these kings, as Sam Rainsy implied by asking the new king to give him a pardon after the Svay Rieng affair (See an artilce in this page titled 'Sam Rainsy petition King to drop Rainsy case,'  real patriots and protectors of the land of Cambodia?

In my opinion, the answer is NO. As I have often said before; don’t blame the Vietnamese for this slow but irreversible colonization of Cambodia; only with the consent of the Cambodian so-called leaders that this colonization process is feasible. The Cambodians are as much to be blamed for this ongoing disintegration process of the Cambodia. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 28, 2010)

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(Comments: While Hun Sen provides free pass to come and go into Cambodia, he continues to put obstacles to those Khmer krom people who escape from the genocide in Vietnam to come into Cambodia, despite the fact that officially, any Khmer Krom can come and stay in Cambodia as a Cambodian citizen. Hun Sen must obey Vietnam’s order, and make sure  that the protection of Cambodian citizens is subordinated to Vietnam’s national interests.  Yet, both the old and new kings of Cambodia have nothing to say about this tragedy of the Khmer Krom people.

It is tragic to see that Sam Rainsy and his party members continue to ask the old king to intervene in the border issue with Vietnam. Sad affair indeed! Cambodian are so tightly linked and submitted to the persona of a king that they cannot do without them. Yet, if there were to be a viable solution for Cambodia, new leadership without the reliance on the kings has to be created. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 26, 2010)

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POLICE in Boeung Tumpun commune have forwarded to their superiors information about a group of ethnic Khmer Krom who say they are fleeing persecution in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region, and a representative of the group said Monday that he was planning to meet today with the commune chief to discuss their plight.

Members of the group – deported on December 5 from Thailand after a failed asylum bid – have been seeking formal recognition of their citizenship since arriving in the Kingdom, but are poor and reportedly running out of food.

The deportees’ status has been uncertain since their arrival, despite repeated requests to the Ministry of Interior and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to formally recognise their citizenship.

Boeung Tumpun commune police officer Tep Bora said the basic identifying information, collected on January 14, was to be sent to Meanchey district police on Monday.

“Last time we got all the information about the group, and now it is being submitted to the police chief to process the legal documents for them,” Tep Bora said.

“We’re doing our work as they requested.”

Five of the original group of 24 have returned to Thailand so far this month in a second bid to gain asylum there, having lost confidence in Cambodia’s ability to help them, group representative Thach Soong said.

Last week, Thach Soong issued a public appeal to Surya Subedi, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, asking him for assistance in ensuring they receive formal permission to settle in the Kingdom permanently.

A sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen in December stipulated that the processing of asylum seekers would become the sole responsibility of the government.

Thach Soong said police briefly visited members of the group on January 22, marking the second time the deportees have been met by the authorities this month.

“We were checked in on briefly by commune police [officer] Taing Sopha last Friday, but I don’t know exactly what this visit was about,” Thach Soong said. “He left quickly after seeing us; there was no talk.”

Without identity cards, Thach Soong said, the deportees, who have been receiving aid from a local NGO, will remain unable to rent property, attend school or seek medical care at hospitals.

In advance of today’s meeting with Thach Soong, Boeung Tumpun commune chief Sous Sarin said Monday that only local police had the authority to give the deportees the documents they need to remain in Cambodia legally.

A Human Rights Watch report released last week reiterated concerns about the government’s processing of Khmer Krom who flee Vietnam and seek refuge in Cambodia.

“While the Cambodian government stated that it considers Khmer Krom (ethnic Khmers from southern Vietnam) who move to Cambodia from Vietnam to be Cambodian citizens, authorities routinely failed to provide protection in the form of political asylum, let alone full citizen’s rights, to many Khmer Krom living in Cambodia,” the report said.