Table of Contents
1. Slick money in Cambodia's oil sector
2. An Icon fades in Cambodia
3. My letter to theECCC questioning Sihanouk's role nd association with the Khmer Rouge
4. Ly Yong Phat given land in natinal park
5. Defamation: Mu Sochua returns to kingdom
6. Hun Sen lashes out at former PM Pen Sovann
7. Marking VN borders to conitue despite SRP
8. Clinton hails exapnding ties
9. Right groups ask VN to free Khmer Krom
10. Rainsy claims "big victory" on demarcation
11. Crunch time in corruption fight
12. Keeping the kingdom honest
13. SRP seeks Sihanouk's aid
14. PetroVietnam and total paid govt $26 mil in Jan
15. An Alternative Vietnam?
16. 48 years after the ICJ verdict; a Khmer- Thai love-hate relationship
17. Thailand- Cambodia; A Love-Hate relationship
18. The Khmer Issarak was anti French
19. God & King The Devaraja Cult In South Asian Art & Architecture
20. Officials reject ASEAN concerns
21 The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk
22. Will he rise above himself?
23. Khmer Krom will not received social land concessionter; officials
24. Taksin verdict due today
25. Police criticized over KKrom
26. PM says Sam Rainsy will miss 2013 polls
27. Watch what's pulling us down
28. The Downfall of Human rights
29. Father Francois Ponchaud; the Priest the exposed Pol Pot to the world
30. An Open Letter to Sam Rainsy's supporters and critics
31. Chomsky and the Khmer Rouge
32. Francois Ponchaud; the priest who exposed Pol Pot to the world
33. Three more VN rubber companies to get land
34. The Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians; Case No. CMBD/01 - Sam Rainsy - Cambodia
35. Hun Sen visits Preah Vihear
36. Understanding the fundamentals of "Nam Tien'; a necessary but not sufficient for a successful roadmap to freedom for the Cambodian people
37. Eight firms given land for farming
38. OHCHR regrets outcome of case against members of Sam Rainsy Party
39. Obama's words ring true for Cambodinas too
40. The necessity of Understanding and Using Strategic Planning in the Defense of Cambodia
41. A thin line between Cambodia and Vietnam
42. Vietnam Colonialism
43. New casino launched inVietnam border SEZ
44. Govt inaction menas K Krom still in limbo
45. To live and to die with Hun Sen
46. Khmer Krom migrants appeal to UN envoy as conditions deteriorate
47. Can King Sihanouk be, at the same time, a defender of Cambodia's borders and a strong supporter of Hun Sen and his CPP?
48. SRP petition King to drop Rainsy case
49. Govt marks liberation from KR
50. Welcome to lift
51. PM blasts January 7 detractors
52. Rainsy facing uphill battle in wake of arrest warrant
53. Royal letter: Sihanouk praises five star leaders
54. CPP leadrs receive five star promotion
55. Khmer Krom continue lobby of govt for citizenship, aid
Slick money in Cambodia’s oil sector
The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 05 May 2010 15:00 Ellie Dyer and Vong Sokheng
(Comments: Cambodia is for sale under Hun Sen and his CPP rule. The whole Cambodian territory is now for sale to the best bidders, and the most dangerous of them is the Vietnamese oil company and the indirect control of all oil production distribution, as well all aspects of exploration by SOKIMEX, owned and controlled by Sok Kong, a Vietnamese national and close friend of Hun Sen, not for the benefit of the Cambodian people, but, mostly for the benefit of Hun Sen, his friends, and extended family members.
As the article has pointed out the handing out of oil contracts to foreign companies by the Hun Sen’s regime, not only benefit Hun Sen staying in power for ever, but also affect very disastrously the majority of the population of Cambodia through the negative impact on the environment.
The most astonishing is the fact we never heard a word from either the old or the new kings on this tragic affair. Don’t blame the Vietnamese alone in this tragic situation of Cambodia. The Cambodians are as much at fault in this human tragedy of major proportion. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. May 5, 2010)
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Kingdom’s latest oil venture raises questions over funding, impact on the environment
Building blocks for exploitation Already, most of the Kingdom has been divided by the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority (CNPA) into distinct areas and blocks. The only areas that remain undelineated are three regions on the western border with Thailand, in the far northwest, and east, stretching around block 24 near the Tonle Sap, which also has not been classified. Click the link to see Cambodia oil deposit map of exploration concessions: Cambodia oil deposit map of exploration concessions.docx | Cambodia’s new deal The Japanese Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) has signed a memorandum of understanding that officials said would lay the groundwork for a product-sharing contract (PSC) in Cambodian territory.
The deal was overseen by the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority (CNPA). Details of the agreement, however, remain shrouded in secrecy.
Source: Cambodian National Petroleum Authority.
JON TURNER AND ELLIE DYER |
THE financing of Cambodia’s newest oil deal remained undisclosed on Tuesday despite international and domestic calls for transparency in the Kingdom’s nascent extraction sector.
Regardless of the pomp and circumstance seen at a rare public signing of a study and survey agreement – made between the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) and the Cambodia
ational Petroleum Authority (CNPU) – questions about the scale of funding, investment and bonuses involved in domestic oil deals remained unanswered.
Such reticence came amid BHP Billiton’s internal investigation into accusations of graft, widely thought to relate to dealings surrounding a Cambodian concession, and pressure from international watchdog Global Witness for the issue to top a government donor meeting in June.
The need for transparency in the Kingdom has also been the subject of much domestic discussion in recent months as groups such as Cambodia’s NGO Forum call for accountability in the sector to ensure benefits from the extractive industries are spread throughout the country.
The issue has become especially crucial as activity in the sector is increasing, watchdog groups say. A CNPU press release issued Tuesday stated that Cambodia has recently experienced a spike in exploration activities.
At the signing ceremony, held in the Council of Ministers office in Phnom Penh, there were no indicators of the potential windfall to be gained from the extraction of natural resources in northern Cambodia’s Block 17.
“The details have yet to be figured out,” said JOGMEC’s Executive Vice President Fumiaki Fujita, when asked what initial funding would go towards a two-year geological survey of the 6,500-square-kilometre area. He sidestepped numerous questions about financing, saying it was too early to judge investment, adding only that “transparency is to be guaranteed” in later stages of extraction development.
OBVIOUSLY, CAMBODIA SHOULD HAVE AUDITED ACCOUNTS SHOWING [PAYMENT] RECEIVED.”
Deputy Prime Minister Sok An also did not mention financing in his speech to around 100 suited dignitaries, instead stating: “On behalf of the government, I hope that JOGMEC efforts will encourage other Japanese companies to become leading businesses for oil and gas in Cambodia”.
A representative from CNPU refused to release any financial details of the deal when contacted by the Post on Tuesday, and JOGMEC officials confirmed only that “some kind of payment” would be made to the government if it seeks an extraction licence. They did not elaborate.
The reticence to disclose investment follows criticism by interest groups of the allegedly murky nature of Cambodia’s energy deals.
Global Witness called last week for extractive-sector transparency to be a subject of discussion at an upcoming meeting between the government and its donors.
Its statement followed Hun Sen’s confirmation last week that Total had agreed to pay the government US$28 million for offshore Block 3, of which $8 million would be dedicated to a “social development fund”.
The exact details of the Total investment have yet to become clear, but were likened by the prime minister to Cambodia’s deal with mining giant BHP Billiton – now internally investigating graft allegations over $2.5 million in unofficial fees paid to the Kingdom for a mining concession.
The reluctance of global corporations to release detailed information about their energy deals has taken on added significance, according to Global Witness.
The group said it believes that the JOGMEC deal, coupled with reports of increased testing by other potential investors at onshore sites, shows that Cambodia is more likely to possess onshore oil reserves than was previously thought.
But George Boden, spokesman for the watchdog, said that any oil deal centring on the Tonle Sap basin, parts of which have been designated as a protected area by UNESCO, had the potential to harm the environment and a “massive” number of livelihoods.
“There is no reason to believe there is a position to ensure oil extraction in the Tonle Sap region doesn’t have negative environmental consequences or is of benefit to the people,” Boden said.
“As a general rule, there is no reason that once a deal has been signed that companies shouldn’t be voicing payments made. Obviously, Cambodia should have audited accounts showing [payments] received,” Boden added Tuesday, speaking via phone from London.
JOGMEC’s Fujita responded Tuesday, saying that to his understanding the area under investigation does not fall within the protected zone.
He added that any seismic survey carried out by the company would include an environmental impact assessment.
Corporate openness regarding oil deals has, however, been hard to achieve.
Penelope Semavoine, a Total spokeswoman in Paris, told the Post on Monday that she was unable to disclose details of the energy firm’s revenue and taxation arrangement with the Cambodian government.
Nevertheless, after a year of relative quiet, the government is paying renewed attention to the sector. A CNPU press release, distributed at Tuesday’s meeting, stated: “Although today Cambodia has not yet commercially produced oil and gas, recently Cambodia has experienced an increase in exploration activities.”
Earlier this year, it was confirmed that PetroVietnam had paid money to the government after the signing of an exploration deal for onshore Block 15. Total is negotiating with the government for rights to onshore Block 26.
Hun Sen is also keeping up pressure on companies already operating concessions. Last month, he ordered Chevron – which owns a 30 percent stake in Block A, a 4,709-square-kilometre area in the Gulf of Thailand – to start producing oil by 2012 or face losing its permit.
And although JOGMEC has yet to discover whether its venture will be worthwhile, company officials remain hopeful for the future.
“At this stage it is difficult to say what the outcome [of a survey] is going to be for the area. But, with the knowledge we have regarding Vietnam and Thailand now, we have identified resources in this region which are supposed to be located close to the area,” Block 17, said JOGMEC’s Fujita.
According to the press release, JOGMEC was previously known as Japan National Oil Corporation, and performed an airborne gravity and magnetic survey in Cambodian onshore areas from 1997 to 1999.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JAMES O’TOOLE
An icon fades in Cambodia
By Sebastian Strangio Asia times, April 1, 2010
(Comments: This article is one of the most comprehensive and well-researched on Sam Rainsy as an opposition party leader in Cambodia. However, it did not probe far enough the relationship between his father and Sihanouk, which has had a restraining factor on Sam Rainsy as an opposition leader. As Sihanouk has now given his enormous political weight to support Hun Sen in exchange for Hun Sen’s support against the possibility that the former king might be called at least to testify if to be tried in the current Khmer Rouge Trial, has enormously restrained Sam Rainsy’s ability and flexibility as an opposition leader. Sam Rainsy must be careful with Sihanouk otherwise, Sihanouk may come out even stronger to denounce Sam Rainsy father in that 1959 attempted coup by Sam Rainsy’s father against the former king.
Perhaps, the most revealing fact about Sam Rainsy’s character as a person and as a party leader, is the fact that is not very open to new idea, and tend to be very secretive and autocratic in all decision making in his party. Which led one former party member to comment that:
“For example, Ken Virak was a member of the SRP's Steering Committee who left to form his own party - the People's Power Party (PPP) - in 2007 after becoming disillusioned with the SRP's internal workings. He said the SRP had given up its role as a democratic opposition party "step by step" and that its steering committee - nominally in charge of party decision-making - no longer had real power.
"There is no democracy inside the party. Most of the decisions are made only by a minority of members who are powerful in the party and associated with Sam Rainsy," he said. "I found that before every election, members of the party always broke away because of the political decision-making and partisanship," he said.“
Like most Cambodian political leaders, Sam Rainsy most obvious weakness is his lack of clear conceptuatlization of strategy and tactics to gain voters, according to Ou Virak, an local NGO leader, when he made this comment: "He said the SRP's lack of concrete policies has personalized its frequent spats with the government and the lack of party vision has dragged it into various unwinnable battles with the CPP-controlled parliament. "There's no proper analysis or real policy," said Ou Virak. "If you're going to oppose something or are you in a position to offer anything, that's different?"
The rest of article is concerned with the fatigue of the donors, and Sam Rainsy seems to have lost contact with the Cambodian people by staying abroad. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 28, 2010)
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PHNOM PENH - By uprooting six wooden border markers last October along the Vietnamese border, Cambodia's opposition leader Sam Rainsy again cast himself in the familiar role of a thorn in the flesh of authority.
Earlier this year, a court sentenced Rainsy to two years in prison in absentia for uprooting the posts. He now faces additional misinformation charges that carry a possible 18 years in prison. He has been stripped of his parliamentary immunity twice in the past year.
Though his Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) remains the kingdom's biggest proponent of Western-style democracy, Rainsy's decision to go into self-imposed exile in France to continue his campaign against alleged Vietnamese incursions into Cambodian territory
has raised questions whether the 61-year-old politician has lost his direction and his party its past relevance in a fast-shifting political landscape.
Premier Hun Sen, who in 1997 ousted his long-time rival Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a bloody factional coup, has successfully consolidated his position at the center of the country's politics. Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP) has presided over a period of rapid economic growth - between 2004 to 2007 gross domestic product grew at an average of around 10% - and the party's continued success at the ballot box has demonstrated that the majority of Cambodians are willing to overlook its more authoritarian tendencies in exchange for economic progress.
Meanwhile, the past year has been a tumultuous one for the SRP, which controls 26 seats in Cambodia's 123-seat National Assembly. Aside from Rainsy's border imbroglio, SRP lawmakers Mu Sochua and Ho Vann both lost their parliamentary immunity after being accused of defaming senior CPP officials. These political stand-offs earned attention in the chambers of the US Congress and the European parliament in Brussels, but it's unclear whether the SRP's antagonistic strategies have maximized it's chances of leveraging Cambodia's demographic changes (as much as half of the population is under 24 years of age) into medium-term political gains.
By some assessments, the party has declined since its mid-2000s peak, a trend illustrated by its failure to capture the voters who withdrew their support from the royalist Funcinpec party after it split along factional lines in 2006. "All those votes should have gone to the SRP, and they didn't," said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.
He said the SRP's lack of concrete policies has personalized its frequent spats with the government and the lack of party vision has dragged it into various unwinnable battles with the CPP-controlled parliament. "There's no proper analysis or real policy," said Ou Virak. "If you're going to oppose something or are you in a position to offer anything, that's different?"
The SRP's campaigns against Hun Sen's authoritarianism and his cozy ties to former invader and occupier Vietnam have done little to change the country's political or economic realities. The CPP continues to control all three branches of government, as well as a large swathe of the print and broadcast media.
At the 2008 polls, the CPP captured over 58% of the popular vote and notched 90 National Assembly seats - more than the two-thirds majority needed to pass laws unanimously. The SRP increased its parliamentary representation from 24 to 26 in 2008, but its share of the popular vote remained steady at around 22%.
Over the same five-year period, the vote for the royalist movement - once a powerhouse of Cambodian politics under the Funcinpec party - shrank from 20.8% of the vote to just over 10%. Most of those lost votes were usurped by the ruling CPP, despite its long-time and often heated antagonism towards the royalist party.
Another political observer said that SRP's failure to capitalize on the rift in the royalist movement represented a "huge" missed opportunity for the party and that its recent political theatrics, including the border post stunt, had "steered the party way off message".
"They talk about party leaders being persecuted on the basis of esoteric rights that many Cambodian people have very little ownership of. They've adapted to appeal to outside constituencies rather than Cambodian voters," the observer said.
Sorpong Peou, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo, concurred that the SRP's appeals to distant international organizations focused on democracy promotion and good governance have achieved little for the party domestically, where it remains "at the mercy" of Hun Sen and his ruling party.
"[The CPP] is willing to allow a degree of opposition in order to legitimize its domination and uses this type of legitimacy to gain international support," she said. "In this sense, the opposition's appeals have little real impact on domestic politics."
To be sure, Rainsy has been down before only to bounce back. Between 2005-06 he lived in self-exile in France for a year after being stripped of his parliamentary immunity and ordered jailed for 18 months on criminal defamation charges. He only returned to Cambodia in February 2006 after recanting comments he made about Hun Sen and receiving a royal pardon from King Norodom Sihamoni.
This time, though, Rainsy faces a less accommodating international landscape given the recent diplomatic overtures to Hun Sen's government made by the United States, which has prioritized a policy of counterbalancing China's rising regional influence. For years, Rainsy benefited from the US's antagonistic approach towards the government, a policy influenced by a bloody 1997 grenade attack on a peaceful opposition rally that many claim was orchestrated by members of Hun Sen's personal bodyguard unit.
Ou Virak said that one new problem for Rainsy is that repeated petitions to international organizations - one of the few cards the leader has left to play - could be falling on increasingly deaf ears. "You can do it once or twice, but governments get fatigued, donors get fatigued ... You're running a risk of people no longer paying attention," he said. "Eventually he'll have to take it to the next level and that means facing possible imprisonment." He added: "He's no Aung San Suu Kyi. He's not going to come back."
Donor darling
When Sam Rainsy returned to Cambodia from France in 1992, he was a rising star in the royalist political firmament. A founding member of then-prince Norodom Sihanouk's Funcinpec party in 1981, Rainsy had risen through the ranks to become an elected parliamentarian during Funcinpec's stunning win in the United Nations-backed 1993 elections and was appointed minister of finance in the Funcinpec-CPP coalition government.
His ascent, however, was short-lived and the fall that followed set the tone for a political career that would be marked by a consistently adversarial relationship with the government. In October 1994 - just over a year after his appointment - Sam Rainsy was dismissed from his post in a major cabinet reshuffle following his criticisms of the corruption and nepotism that plagued the coalition. The following year, his continued criticisms led to his expulsion from the party and the loss of his National Assembly seat.
At the time of its founding in 1995, the Khmer Nation Party (KNP) - the SRP's predecessor - was a breath of fresh air on the Cambodian political landscape. Unlike the CPP - which secured its support through a patronage system established in the 1980s - and Funcinpec, which traded heavily on the prestige of the monarchy, Sam Rainsy's new party put liberal democratic principles front and center. At the time, he said his expulsion from Funcinpec would give him the opportunity "to mobilize millions of people" sharing the same ideals.
Even with its egalitarian bent, the SRP's constituency to this day remains overwhelmingly urban. In 2008, it won six of its 26 seats in Phnom Penh and five in urban Kampong Cham, as well as three each in Kandal and Prey Veng, both densely populated provinces close to the capital. In half of Cambodia's 24 provinces and municipalities - among them the most remote and least populated - the party failed to win a single seat.
Caroline Hughes, an associate professor of governance studies at Murdoch University in Australia, claims that the SRP is not totally to blame for its poor electoral performances in rural areas, where the CPP used intimidation and patronage to secure votes. She said Sam Rainsy - a "donors' darling" in the early 1990s - has gradually become a more "marginal" figure because of waning international support, a rift with the Cambodian union movement and a concerted campaign of violence and intimidation against his supporters that included the bloody 1997 grenade attack.
"I don't think we can blame the SRP for the weakness of the Cambodian political opposition when the government has worked consistently to reduce the political space for any kind of organized activism on any issue," she said.
Others, however, believe the party's growth has been stunted by the erosion of its own internal democratic processes and by the constant threat of defections and government intimidation. The SRP, Ou Virak said, is "like a scared child" frightened by the threat of infiltration by the ruling party and suspicious of newcomers. "There are some good people in the party that I know that cannot move up in the ranks," he said. "There are some very good people who were left out."
For example, Ken Virak was a member of the SRP's Steering Committee who left to form his own party - the People's Power Party (PPP) - in 2007 after becoming disillusioned with the SRP's internal workings. He said the SRP had given up its role as a democratic opposition party "step by step" and that its steering committee - nominally in charge of party decision-making - no longer had real power.
"There is no democracy inside the party. Most of the decisions are made only by a minority of members who are powerful in the party and associated with Sam Rainsy," he said. "I found that before every election, members of the party always broke away because of the political decision-making and partisanship," he said.
Ken Virak said that all opposition groups, including the new Human Rights Party (HRP) and his PPP, must unite if they are to have a chance at cutting into the CPP's majority at the next national election, which must be held by 2013. But a united opposition is still a distant threat to CPP dominance: proposed mergers between the SRP and HRP and two remaining royalist parties have all foundered on personal disagreements between their leaders.
Political family
Born in Phnom Penh in 1949, Rainsy's formative years were influenced by Cambodia's rough and tumble politics. His father, Sam Sary, was a key member of Sihanouk's Sangkum Reastr Niyum government, but fell from grace after he was implicated in the so-called Bangkok Plot of 1959, an attempt to topple the government with the support of Thailand's right-wing Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat.
Sam Sary disappeared in 1962 and was presumed killed, possibly by the government. Shortly afterwards, Rainsy's mother, In Em, took the remaining family members to live in France, where he was educated and remained for the next three decades. In a recent Phnom Penh Post interview, Rainsy described his father's death as a "traumatizing" experience, but said that his political views permeated the family and influenced the trajectory of his own political development.
Certain pivotal events in Europe, including the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, were topics of conversation at the dinner table and went some way to forming the ideals that grew into the SRP's blend of liberal internationalism with appeals to Khmer nationalism.
"When it came to Southeast Asia, my father was in favor of a strict neutrality - that Cambodia should not move closer to the communist world," Rainsy said. "This has marked my background and my conviction that communism is oppressive - that freedom is essential and that we have to fight for [it]."
Rainsy said that despite being founded largely on his own initiative in 1995, the KNP - renamed the SRP in 1998 because of legal disputes over the KNP name - had grown into an "organization of its own" linking Cambodia with Khmer communities abroad. He also downplayed his role as the party's figurehead, referring to it as an "anachronistic" notion.
"If it was a one-man show, the show would have stopped a long time ago given all the problems that we've been facing," he said.
Rainsy said that the SRP was the only party in Cambodia that holds organized elections from the grassroots, a system that was in strict opposition to the CPP's centrally controlled networks. "They appoint their cadres - their apparatchiks - at the grassroots, but we are the only party that has organized elections," he said. Similarly, the "loss" of the former Funcinpec vote was largely "due to intimidation and vote-buying in non-transparent elections", Rainsy said - a claim the opposition has made consistently since the July 2008 election.
Asked how the party might erode the CPP's entrenched network of patronage and make electoral headway in rural areas, Rainsy said that current and future demographic changes were swinging voters towards the SRP - a factor reflected in the party's recent formation of a new youth congress. "It will take less time than one might imagine now because of the progress of technology, information, communication and education," he said. "History is accelerating."
Koul Panha, executive director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, a local election monitor, said Rainsy retains substantial political capital for taking a principled stance against corruption in the 1990s and maintaining it has a party platform ever since. He believes the party's main challenge is improving its public relations.
"I think he still has that credibility. He resigned from a key position in government and showed he is that kind of politician," he said. "The problem is how to communicate that credibility to the people." It's likely to remain a problem for the party as long as Rainsy campaigns on issues that appear to have more resonance with foreign audiences than with local voters.
Sebastian Strangio is a reporter for the Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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My Letter to the ECCC questioning former king Sihanouk'd his role and association
with the Khmer Rouge
Subject: Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge
To: info@eccc.gov.kh
Date: Friday, April 23, 2010, 7:02 AM
April 23, 2010
Dear Sir:
I am writing to ask you why former king Norodom Sihanouk is not called in to testify at the ECCC.
In my opinion and knowledge about former king Sihanouk, he ought to be a major witness in the Khmer Rouge trial. I even think that in view of his past association with the khmer Rouge during the 1980's, he should be tried along with other Khmer Rouge leaders, such as; Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Noun Chea, not to mention those who are now senior leaders of the CPP, such as; Chea Sim, Heng Samrin, Sar Kheng, Hun Sen, and Keat Chhon.
Please, go to this web page (Pasted below) to see more infromation on the role and the association of Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge.
It seems to me that many Cambodians inside and outside Cambodia already feel that the current trial is only a show trial, similar to the one that was orchestrated and run by the Vietnamese occupiers, in 1979.
I would appreciate it very much having your comments on this important question on the role and association of former king Norodom Sihanouk with the Khmer Rougel. Sincerely yours.
PS; here is a link to my professional background information:
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D.
Ly Yong Phat given land in national park
The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 22 April 2010 15:03 Cheang Sokha
(Comments: Hun Sen and his CPP continues to steal from the poor to give to the rich. There is no respect for national treasure, in this case, such as national park land. But, don’t blame Hun Sen alone. Did Sihanouk ever open his loud mouth to protest on behalf of the poor Cambodian people? Not one word from both the old and young king.
This is a constant in present day Cambodia, the old and the new kings are all under Hun Sen’s thumps and therefore under the Vietnamese control.
Cambodia is a very weird and abnormal country, to say the least. There is no place for rational thinking, nor for decency. Only brutality and criminality are working smoothly here in the land of the Khmers. Then one can ask how on earth can this country survive a very smart, organized modern, and disciplined people like the Vietnamese. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 22, 2010)
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THE government has granted more than 4,000 hectares of protected national park land in Koh Kong province to an agriculture company owned by Cambodian People’s Party Senator Ly Yong Phat, who has been at the centre of several land disputes stemming from controversial land concessions.
In accordance with a sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and dated March 12, Ly Yong Phat’s company, the LYP Group, has been given a 10,000-hectare Koh Kong land concession, 4,100 hectares of which cuts into Botum Sakor National Park.
Ly Yong Phat confirmed Wednesday that he had received the concession, but said he had not yet finalised development plans for the site.
The senator’s companies have previously been awarded concessions in Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Oddar Meanchey provinces that have led to fights with villagers who accused the companies of impinging on their land.
In Koh Kong and Oddar Meanchey, those concessions led to mass evictions, and villagers in Kampong Speu are currently embroiled in a dispute with Ly Yong Phat’s Phnom Penh Sugar Company.
Ny Chakrya, head of monitoring for the rights group Adhoc, said the decision to grant the senator another concession was inappropriate in light of the ongoing dispute in Kampong Speu’s Thpong district.
“The concessions are meant to develop and help the people, but we see that many people have suffered from the concessions,” Ny Chakrya said.
Mathieu Pellerin, a consultant for the rights group Licadho, said national parks are supposed to be protected, but that protected areas had been opened up by other recent land concessions. In February, for example, Hun Sen granted 1,650 hectares of Ream National Park in Preah Sihanouk province to the Hong Kong Research Investment and Development Consulting Group.
Nhil Thun, director of Botum Sakor National Park, could not be reached Wednesday, and provincial Environment Department Director Kao Sinthuon said he didn’t know about the Koh Kong concession.
Defamation: Mu Sochua returns to Kingdom
The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 21 April 2010 15:02 Meas Sokchea
(Comments: While Mu Sochua has now returned home, Sam Rainsy the great party leader of the same name is still hiding in Europe. Is this a sign of a good leader? As Hun Sen has recently said, but did not explain why, that Sam Rainsy will not be pardoned this time, unless he is wiling to go to jail first. That will make Sam Rainsy even more reluctant to come back and be in jail.
Hun Sen will not pardon Sam Rainsy and the hew king will not dare to go against Hun Sen, because this time what Sam Rainsy is doing is an act of “Lèse Majesté” against the Vietnamese-conceived and impose 1979 treaty and its supplement signed by the young king in 2005, known as the Treaty of Friendship. Peace, and Cooperation, which is no more no less, a piece of agreement between Hun Sen and the Vietnamese to allow the latter to have full control of Cambodia by not allowing any Cambodian to criticize any Vietnamese acts of aggression against the Cambodian or the Khmer Krom people.
My sincere respect goes to Mu Sochua who, contrary to Sam Rainsy, had dared to return to Cambodia, thus, had endangered her own life to come back to challenge openly Hun Sen politically-controlled justice system, while Sam Rainsy is still hiding in Europe.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 21, 2010)
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Defamation
Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker Mu Sochua, who arrived in Cambodia last week not long after missing a Supreme Court hearing for the defamation case filed against her by Prime Minister Hun Sen, said Tuesday that she would be willing to show if she were summoned again, though court officials said they had no immediate plans to schedule a new hearing.
Mu Sochua was in the US for the April 7 hearing at which the Supreme Court was expected to read out a verdict in the case. The verdict was postponed in line with her request that it be delayed until she returned. In August, Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Mu Sochua guilty of defaming Prime Minister Hun Sen by alleging that he had defamed her in a speech in April 2009. She was ordered to pay a fine of 16.5 million riels (around US$3,975), and that judgment was upheld by the Appeal Court in October. On Tuesday, she reiterated that she would not pay the fine.
Sam Rainsy’s lawyer asks for border post committee
The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 21 April 2010 15:02 Meas Sokchea
THE lawyer for opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Tuesday asked Phnom Penh Municipal Court to form a committee to investigate the placement of border markings in Svay Rieng province’s Chantrea district that are at the centre of two separate cases concerning allegations of Vietnamese encroachment.
Investigating judge Oeung Sieng said Tuesday the court would consider forming the committee, which Choung Choungy, Sam Rainsy’s lawyer, said should include himself, Oeung Sieng, government lawyer Ky Tech and government officials involved in border-demarcation efforts.
The committee would be tasked with visiting the site of the border markings in Chantrea district to determine their precise location, information the court could then take into account when deciding on charges facing Sam Rainsy, Choung Choungy said.
The court last month charged the president of the Sam Rainsy Party with falsifying public documents and spreading disinformation after he staged several press conferences during which he accused government officials of turning a blind eye to demarcation work that he said was robbing farmers of their land.
The charges could fetch him up to 18 years behind bars. In January, Svay Rieng provincial court sentenced him to two years in prison for charges stemming from an October action in which he helped Chantrea villagers uproot the border posts.
Oeung Sieng on Tuesday did not give a timeline for when the court would decide on whether to grant Choung Choungy’s request. “I have not decided yet. He just delivered [his request] this morning. I am reading it,” he said.
Ky Tech said he would accept the court’s decision on the matter. “This does not mean that I support the request, but however the court decides, I will respect it,” he said.
Tuesday’s questioning session, which lasted about an hour, marked the second time that Sam Rainsy, who is currently abroad in self-imposed exile, failed to appear when summoned by the court.
When issuing its latest summons, the court said an arrest warrant would be filed for Sam Rainsy if he refused to show, but Oeung Sieng on Tuesday again declined to comment on the likelihood that a warrant would be issued.
Also Tuesday, Choung Choungy asked that government lawyers alter the coordinates they have provided for the border posts in court documents, describing them as incorrect.
Hun Sen lashes out at former PM Pen Sovann
23 Dec 2008
By Chivita
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy
(Comments: This article is a historical one and interesting as well. To put it bluntly this article can be labeled as the dialogue between two greatest Cambodia traitors.
Penn Sovan continues to thank the Vietnamese for liberating Cambodia, while Hun Sen continues to work for the Vietnamese, knowing that his fate will be like Penn Sovan if he does not deliver the whole Cambodian land people to the Vietnamese, as caught in the so-called treaty of Peace, friendship and cooperation, that was imposed on Cambodia when the Vietnamese invaded it in 1979, and it was rendered official by the supplements to that treaty that was signed in 2005, by King Sihamoni under the pressure from his father, the ex-king.
This is the stark reality in Cambodia.. Only traitors can rule Cambodia with the guaranty from the Vietnamese and the support of the Sihanouk. Cambodians cannot continue to blame others, but themselves. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 19, 2010)
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"I only face those who know history, those who have good manners, those who are grateful, then I respect and praise them, but for me to talk to the likes of him, he has mental problem or crazy, but that’s his illness, I am not replying back" - Pen Sovann
Prime minister Hun Sen attacked a 7-January VIP, saying that the latter lied and distorted the truth when he stated that he (Hun Sen) was his subordinate during the liberation struggle from the Pol Pot regime.
Hun Sen said: “There is a guy who claimed to be the father of 2-December and 7-January. He said that I am his foot soldier. This guy (using derogatory “Ah noeung”) was making noise in Phnom Penh the other day, I saw him saying that he is the father of 7-January and 2-December. Since mid-1977, I was the biggest leader on the eastern shore of the Mekong River, I already built up a lot of troops, so there was nobody bigger than me. This guy, by what I know, he was a lieutenant in the Vietnamese army only, and he pretended to be my boss, and he made noise through the Fly nest or Beehive radio station. Now, I want to send a message to this fellow: be moderate will you? If you lie, be moderate in your lie, give a decent lie. I don’t need to provide his name, but in Khmer he is called the liar-in-chief.”
Hun Sen made this lashing during a diploma distribution ceremony for students at the Vanda Institute which was held at the Pedagogy University in Phnom Penh on the morning of 22 December.
Even though he did not reveal the name of the person whom he lashed out at, he admitted that this fellow told the truth when he claimed that Hun Sen was the one who arrested him and sent him to prison in Vietnam.
Hun Sen added: “He told the truth on one point only: when he said that I arrested him at his house. You told the truth on this point only. (It was) I with Ta (Grandpa) Say Bou Thang – at that time, I was the vice-PM and minister of Foreign Affairs – (who made the arrest). It was because we can’t talk to each other anymore, and at that time, I did not arrest him so I can take the position, it was H.E. Chan Si who became the prime minister.”
According to Cambodian history, Pen Sovann was the former PM of the Phnom Penh regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979.
Nevertheless, Pen Sovann, who is currently the president of the HRP rule committee, did not provide any reaction to Hun Sen’s lashing. However, he raised the following question instead: “I am telling the ordinary people, including monks, civil servants, and the government, even foreign and local journalists came to ask me for my reaction. I told them that I will not reply to those who falsify history, those who do not understand Khmer history. If you want the truth, I ask TVK for one hour to broadcast once again 2-December and 7-January documents that I now have. So, let TVK broadcast the original documents of 2-December and 7-January, and let it show the images of who said what, let (the people) look at them. I only face those who know history, those who have good manners, those who are grateful, then I respect and praise them, but for me to talk to the likes of him, he has mental problem or crazy, but that’s his illness, I am not replying back.”
Nevertheless, Pen Sovann provided information on how he met Hun Sen: “The Khmer Rouge sent him (Hun Sen) to attack Vietnam, but Vietnam fought back and they destroyed all of the KR. When he (Hun Sen) returned back, Pol Pot, his boss, wanted to kill him, then he fled to Vietnam. The Vietnamese were angry, they said that he brought KR troops to attack them along the border in Song Bea province, and the Vietnamese arrested and jailed both him (Hun Sen) and Ung Phan. It was him (Hun Sen) who told me that Vietnam jailed him, at that time, I was preparing to form the Front and I asked to meet with Le Duc Tho, and I told Le Duc Tho not to send him (Hun Sen) to tough jail yet because I was trying to gather important people to form a front at that time. I was teaching politics for the front at the Vietnamese Army Unit no. 7 barrack.”
Marking of VN border to continue despite SRP
The Phnom Penh Post; Monday, 12 April 2010 15:03 Meas Sokchea
(Comments: Since “the Vietnamese started its “Nam Tien” or “Southward March” soon after Vietnam began its liberation from the Chinese in 939 AD, to conquer, first Champa, then Kampuchea Krom, and now Cambodia proper, the concept of its border with its neighbours is not a fixed but a moveable one.
How many Cambodians inside and outside Cambodia, do understand what this concept of movable border really mean? In other words, for Vietnam, there is no border between itself and the neighbouring countries. This concept of “movable border” can be seen from the Vietnamese text as follows:
“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.” (Source: NGUYEN THE ANH; “Nam Tien from the Vietnamese texts;” Pierre Bernard Lafont (éditeur); Les Frontières du Vietnam, (Edition Harmattan, Paris, France, 1989) pp.121-27)
That is why despite so many international treaties such the 1954 Geneva Conference and the 1991 Paris Conference, where there was an official recognition of the border by the international community including Vietnam; and yet, this fact did not stop Vietnam from continuing to reject the border demarcationbetween itself and Cambodia.
As long as there is no ability and willingness to defend the country territorial sovereignty, as the Hun Sen’s government with the support of Sihanouk have totally submitted to Vietnam's imperialism, Vietnam will continue to revise the border between itself and Cambodia, to its advantage, and to keep that border wide open for tits illegal immigrants to be pouring into cambodia without obstruction. That is the constant of Nam tien throughout the vietnamese hsiotry, since 938 AD.
All these manoeuvres have been made to buy time, so as to send more illegal Vietnamese immigrants into Cambodia to take over the land from the Cambodian people. The 1979 unequal treaty and its supplements that was signed in 2005 by the new king, made the imposed treaty in 1979 an official one.
Unless Cambodia can come up with a real and concrete plan to defend its territory, the Vietnamese will continue to move into Cambodia and take over its land, without any hesitation.
I must add that the Vietnamese could not have continue to take over the Cambodian land that easily if there were no help from the Cambodian leaders, such as Son Ngoc Thanh (Viet Minh), Sihanouk (North Vietnam/Viet Cong), Hun Sen (the Socialist Republic of Vietnam), Pol Pot (Viet Minh and North Vietnam), who had all cooperated with the Vietnamese in this sinister strategy known as “Nam Tien.”.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 16, 2010)
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THE Constitutional Council on Friday dismissed a request by the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) that the government suspend joint demarcation of the Cambodia-Vietnam border, saying the request did not fall under its jurisdiction.
When contacted Sunday, Pen Thol, spokesman for the nine-member council, did not comment in detail, saying the council’s decision spoke for itself.
“I can’t comment over this, because it is a decision of the Constitutional Council. [The SRP] has the right to say what it wants,” he said.
On Wednesday, 14 SRP lawmakers sent a letter to Council President Ek Sam Ol, asking him to postpone the planting of border posts pending an investigation into the party’s claims that four border marker posts in Svay Rieng province’s Chantrea district lie up to 500 metres inside Cambodia’s legal territory.
Sam Rainsy has already been jailed for two years following an incident in which he joined villagers in uprooting six temporary border markers in the area.
SRP spokesman Kimsour Phirith said the Constitutional Council’s ruling was a result of political “bias”, noting that most of its members are members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).
“We knew that the Constitutional Council was mostly composed by the CPP and therefore the decision must be politically biased,” he said. “But we must do it to show Cambodians that the law was not enforced properly as the system requires.”
Kimsour Phirith said the planting of Vietnamese border posts violated Article 2 of the Constitution, which pledges the government to protect the country’s territorial integrity.
Clinton hails expanding ties
The Phnom Penh Post: Tuesday, 13 April 2010 15:02 Cameron Wells
(Comments: This article shows how Cambodians should never rely on anybody to extricate itself from the present tragic situation it is in. Hilary Clinton,, like her husband bill Clinton, has now praised Hun Sen for his cooperation with the USA. Bill Gates, the defence Secretary had invited Tea Banh, Hun Sen defence minister, to the Pentagon and was greeted with full honour.
Once again, for the USA or any other country, the bottom line for their international relations purpose, is Real Politicks. In other words, whoever is in power, and no matter how that power came from, whether by normal democratic way or by a power grab.
The reality for the major power is to deal with whoever is in power. So, in this instance, Hilary Clinton was concerned and willing to cut military aid to Hun Sen’s Cambodia because she was fighting for the right of the Uighur refugees. However, she is totally silent on Hun Sen mistreatment of members of the opposition party, such as Mu Sochua, whom she knows well. In Hilary Clinton’s mind, the Cambodian tragedy is less important than the fate of the Uighur refugees.
How sad and tragic the Cambodian situation is. Again, let me repeat here, that Cambodians cannot depend on anybody but themselves to get out of this tragic and deadly situation. But, to do so Cambodians need to have good leaders. Unfortunately, Cambodia is sorely lacking in this crucial component for its survival. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 14, 2010)
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US SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton has praised the growing partnership between Cambodia and the United States despite the suspension of a shipment of military trucks as punishment for the Kingdom’s deportation of 20 Uighur asylum seekers to China last year.
“Together, we have expanded cooperation on law enforcement issues, food security, the environment, and international peacekeeping,” she said in a letter congratulating the Kingdom on its upcoming Khmer New Year celebrations.
“On this festive occasion, let me reaffirm our commitment to both the partnership between our governments and the friendship between our people.”
The praise comes despite a statement by US government officials that the deportation of the Uighurs would affect Cambodia’s relationship with Washington.
The US also faces calls from international rights advocates to take a tougher stance against Cambodia after its action against the Uighurs, which many observers saw as an attempt to appease key donor China.
The group Human Rights Watch has written to Clinton, calling for more severe US government sanctions such as a renewed ban on military-to-military funding and the return of refugee status-determination responsibilities to the UN refugee office.
“We share the State Department’s deep concern about the fate of this group ... [and] have received unconfirmed reports that some returnees have been tried and sentenced to death,” the letter stated.
However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong on Monday called the Uighurs’ deportation a “very small” issue, and said Clinton’s letter was proof that the bond between the US and Cambodia remains strong, despite the withholding of military aid.
“Deputy Prime Minister Hor Namhong welcomes her statement,” he said. “We hope that bilateral ties between the United States and Cambodian governments develop further after the 60th anniversary of our bilateral relations in July this year.”
Clinton also praised the work of the Cambodian government in finally bringing Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, to trial.
“This past year, Cambodians marked an historic milestone when, for the first time in three decades, a Khmer Rouge official was held accountable for his crimes,” she wrote.
Rights groups ask VN to free Khmer Krom
The Phnom Penh Post; Friday, 09 April 2010 15:04 Khouth Sophakchakrya
(Comments: Vietnam continues to practice genocide, by definition, against the Khmer Krom people. Yet, Hun Sen and his CPP continue to help the Vietnamese in their genocide mission, by not allowing the Khmer Krom people to come and live in Cambodia as they had fled the unrelenting persecution by the Vietnamese government. What is surprising is the fact that we never heard a word uttered by the old or the new kings on this tragic affair.
Yet, the Cambodian opposition parties in Cambodia continue to rely on the old and the new kings to help them fight against Hun Sen and his CPP, and per extension, against the Vietnamese aggression. For instance, recently, Sam Rainsy had requested the old king to help him return to Cambodia. Does he not know that the old king is supporting Hun Sen one hundred percent?
Sad indeed, to see such a dependence on the monarchy to save Cambodia, when it is clear that the old king is dependent on Hun Sen to avoid being tried at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal because of his past involvement with the murderous regime. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 9, 2010)
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KHMER Krom advocacy groups have called on authorities in Vietnam to release ethnic Khmers being held in Vietnamese jails and to relax cultural and religious restrictions ahead of next week’s Khmer New Year holiday.
Thach Setha, president of the Khmer Krom Association, said that on the occasion of the annual holiday, which begins April 14, Vietnam should loosen government controls and respect the rights of the country’s ethnic Khmer minority.
“I asked for the Vietnamese government to provide freedom and release Khmer Kampuchea Krom who have been arrested and jailed due to land disputes and attempts to preserve their religion and culture,” he said.
Thach Setha said that “hundreds” of Khmer Krom are languishing in prison on political charges after advocating for the use of the Khmer language and the right to practise Theravada Buddhism, which differs from the Mahayana Buddhism practised by the ethnic Vietnamese majority.
A Human Rights Watch report released in January 2009 documented the “severe and often shrouded methods used by the Vietnamese authorities to stifle dissent” among the country’s ethnic Khmer minority, particularly “ethnic-based grievances” and demands for religious freedom.
“Wary about the possible nationalist aspirations of the Khmer Krom, the Vietnamese government is quick to suppress peaceful expressions of dissent,” the report stated, noting that the government prohibits most peaceful protests and bans the formation of independent human rights groups.
In a meeting in the Mekong Delta on Tuesday, President Nguyen Minh Triet said the Khmer minority was an inseparable part of the Vietnamese nation, and had contributed to Vietnam’s economic development despite the great difficulties stemming from previous wars, according to a state-run media report.
The report also quoted the president as saying that the Communist Party of Vietnam always “made efforts to stabilise the economy and consolidate national solidarity in order to support and improve the lives of ethnic groups including the Khmer ethnic minority”.
However, Thach Sung, a representative of a group 22 Khmer Krom asylum seekers deported from Thailand in December, said that he did not believe that the Vietnamese authorities had done anything to improve the lives of ethnic minorities in the country, especially the Khmer.
“The Vietnamese government always tells the international community that they always pay attention to improving the lives of ethnic groups in their country, but it is not true,” he said.
“They consider Khmer Krom as animals and then tortured us when we demand freedom.”
Ny Chakrya, a senior investigator for local rights group Adhoc, said that the Khmer Krom should be able to live “with the same peace and freedom” as ethnic Vietnamese living inside Cambodia.
Rainsy claims ‘big victory’ on demarcation
The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 08 April 2010 15:03 Vong Sokheng
(Comments: This article shows that there is definitely a delusional view from Sam Rajnsy to expect that Hun Sen will release the peasants that he led to jail because of his impetuous act by removing the borders markers in Svay Rieng province a few months ago. As I said before and now saying again that by removing the border markers Sam Rainsy not only led to the jailing of the innocent Cambodian peasants that followed his act on the border markers, but he touched on the raw nerves of the Vietnamese, Hun Sen’s boss, by violating the content of the 1979 imposed treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation, and its supplements signed by the new king in 2005.
That Treaty is the key for Vietnam to keep Cambodia under its total control, by not allowing any protest against Vietnam by any Cambodia on any subject, under any circumstance.
To expect that Hun Sen is going to allow Sam Rainsy to come back freely to Cambodia and to release those poor peasant s from jail, is sheer delusion from Sam Rainsy’s part. What a contrast between Mu Sochua and Sam Rainsy! Mu Sochua has the courage to plan to return and face Hun Sen’s controlled justice system, while Sam Rainsy is still hiding in France (Please, see a campanion article titled "High court postpones verdict for Mu Sochua," posted just below this one.
Sam Rainsy by hiding has not shown sign of a courageous and brave leader, as he claimed to be. He is neither Nelson Mandela , nor Aung San Suu Kyi.
Last but not least, the new and the old kings would not be able to intervene on behalf of Sam Rainsy as violation of the 1979 treaty content is not permissible by the Vietnamese. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 8, 2010)
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OPPOSITION leader Sam Rainsy has proclaimed a “big victory” for Cambodia, citing court documents he says show the government shares his view that demarcation efforts along the Vietnamese border have been carried out illegally.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the Sam Rainsy Party president repeated his claim that six wooden demarcation posts in Svay Rieng province that he uprooted with local villagers in October – a move that landed him a two-year jail term – were placed inside Cambodian territory.
He added that despite official denials, government documents filed to Phnom Penh Municipal Court as part of its latest case against him acknowledged that the markers were actually “approximately” 516 meters from the legal border.
“The government and I have now reached the same conclusion regarding border delineation in Samrong commune in Svay Rieng province’s Chantrea district,” Sam Rainsy wrote.
The politician, who is currently in self-imposed exile in France, also called for the release of two
Cambodian farmers who were jailed for a year after October’s border incident.
Sam Rainsy is scheduled to appear in court on April 20 to answer to charges that he falsified public documents and spread misinformation in his bid to expose encroachments.
Tith Sothea, a member of the Council of Ministers’ Press Quick Reaction Unit, said Sam Rainsy’s claims lack substance, and that the government will not drop the charges facing him.
“I think the destruction of the border-demarcation markers was illegal and interrupted the speeding of the government’s work,” he said. “If he is a real democratic politician he has to appear in court to confront the government.”
Chuong Choungy, Sam Rainsy’s lawyer, said he would appear in court on his client’s behalf.
“I will request that the court set up the investigative committee comprised of border experts from the government and the SRP, as well as investigative judges that will be able to bring justice for my client,” he said.
High court postpones verdict for Mu Sochua
The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 08 April 2010 15:03 Meas Sokchea
THE Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed issuing a verdict in the defamation case involving Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker Mu Sochua, officials announced in a short hearing.
Judge Khim Pon told the court that the hearing would be pushed back to an unspecified date after Khmer New Year, in line with Mu Sochua’s request for a delay until after her return from the United States.
In August, Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Mu Sochua guilty of defaming Prime Minister Hun Sen and ordered her to pay 16.5 million riels (around US$3,975) in fines and compensation, a verdict that was upheld on appeal in October.
In a letter sent to the Supreme Court president on March 29, Mu Sochua requested that the court delay the hearing until after April 17.
Mu Sochua confirmed Tuesday that she will be returning to Cambodia on April 16, but maintained that she would not pay any fines associated with the defamation suit, which has received widespread criticism.
Government lawyer Ky Tech, who is representing Hun Sen in the case, said the decision to delay the hearing was up to the court, but called for a speedy conclusion to the case.
“I think that this case should not be delayed [for a] long time. It should be processed soon,” he said.
Crunch time in corruption fight
The Phnom Penh Post; Friday, 02 April 2010 15:05 Sebastian Strangio
(Comments: This article and the following one (Keeping the kingdom honest) are addressing the subject of corruption in Cambodia. However, they are both weak analyses of this monumental problem in Cambodia, especially in the oil and mineral sectors.
For instance, the well publicised anti-corruption that was recently passed by the National Assembly of Cambodia, is only a piece of written materials, like the constitution. What is missing is the apparatus to implement and to make sure that these laws are properly implemented. That is still sorely missing in Cambodia.
Those of us who have been following Cambodia’s corruption and the systemic and systematic abuse that Hun Sen has been doing to the constitution by using the completely politicised judiciary system to destroy all those who had dared to oppose him, is the real problem and not the absence of a good piece of paper, like the constitution.
Cambodia is nowhere near a state that respects the rule of law. The regime run by Hun Sen and his CPP is not a democracy, but, it is more like a kleptocracy.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 6, 2010)
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KEY PROVISIONS
Law on Anticorruption
· Article 4: Exempts from prosecution any gift given “in accordance with custom or tradition”.
· Article 11: Chairman and vice-chairman of the Anticorruption Unit (ACU) to be appointed by the prime minister.
· Article 36: Empowers the ACU to punish “illicit enrichment”, the unexplained increase in an individual’s wealth.
· Article 39: Any person leaking confidential information about corruption can be punished with up to five years’ jail.
· Article 41: Complaints lodged with the ACU that lead to “useless inquiry” carry up to six months’ jail or 10 million riels in fines.
ONE month after passing its long-awaited Anticorruption Law, Cambodia is entering a make-or-break period in its fight against corruption, a veteran Hong Kong corruption fighter said this week, and the first year after the law comes into effect will be significant in determining the legislation’s ultimate success.
Under the law, set to come into effect in November, two new bodies will be tasked with fighting the Kingdom’s endemic levels of corruption: a National Anticorruption Commission (NAC), which will guide the country’s anti-graft policies, and an Anticorruption Unit (ACU), based at the Council of Ministers, which will carry out day-to-day investigations.
Tony Kwok Man-wai, the former deputy commissioner of Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), said that Cambodia lies “at the crossroads” in its fight against graft.
“From my experience, it is most important that the ACU can have a good start for the first few months of this operation,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “This is a time when the public will be behind it. The government and the ACU should take advantage of the public support.”
Kwok, who served at the ICAC for 27 years and oversaw Hong Kong’s transition from a place of “womb to tomb” corruption to what he now calls one of the “cleanest societies” in Asia, said the first year of operation will be critical for both bodies.
“If they fail to get a good start, it will cause a lot of disappointment and the public will probably become even more cynical than before. It will be very difficult for the government and the ACU to get the proper amount of support they need again,” he said.
The law has already been criticised by some experts, who say it is merely a watered-down version of a draft formulated in 2006. According to a briefing paper on the new law put together by international corruption experts last month, a copy of which was obtained by the Post, changes to the 2006 draft included the removal of key provisions, resulting in an “overall narrowing effect” on the scope of the law. In particular, the briefing paper says an entire chapter – dealing with “large-scale specific actions” aimed at creating a “culture of intolerance” towards corruption – was removed from the 2006 draft.
Among its provisions, the redacted chapter called for the development of a “corruption-free personnel recruitment system for government”, as well as the development of a code of ethics for civil servants based on international standards. In addition, it called for the reform of election financing and greater transparency in public administration. It also recommended that a large-scale anticorruption education campaign be conducted in the country’s schools and universities. None of these provisions appear in the version of the law that was passed last month.
Other experts say the law contains provisions that are either too broad or too vaguely defined. Article 4 of the law bans the giving of gifts – as well as loans, fees, rewards or commissions – in exchange for favours, but exempts any gift that is given “in accordance with custom and tradition”.
Leslie Holmes, a professor of political science at the University of Melbourne who specialises in comparative corruption, said the wording of the article gives much leeway to the authorities.
“Few states now would accept the vague notion of ‘in accordance with custom or tradition’ – it’s far too obviously open to abuse,” he said.
He added that although many countries eschew the strict no-gift provisions adopted by Hong Kong’s ICAC in the 1970s, an increasing number have set explicit values for the gifts that are acceptable – permitting, for example, one US$100 gift per source per year. No defined value limits are listed in the final version of the Cambodian law.
The paper also raises concerns about what international experts perceive as weak whistle-blower protections, saying Article 13 of the law – which states that the ACU will maintain the confidentiality of its sources – is “a vague statement … not a robust protection of rights”.
The law also introduces a new offence (Article 41) that carries fines and jail terms of up to six months for “defamation or disinformation complaints on corruption lodged with the Anti-corruption Unit or judges, which lead to useless inquiry”.
Alan Doig, a corruption expert at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Bangkok, said that although such laws exist in other countries, most draw a distinction between malicious and well-intentioned reports.
“As it stands ... most reporting persons will not know where their allegations might lead [and] will be put off by such draconian sanctions,” he said by email.
Holmes described Article 41 as “much more clearly a disincentive to blow the whistle” than exists in most other countries, but added that giving whistle-blowers total anonymity could create a flood of ill-intentioned allegations. “There’s no easy solution to this one,” he said.
Officials at the Council of Ministers directed questions about the new law to Om Yentieng, chairman of the government-run Committee of Human Rights, who said he was too busy to speak Thursday. Sar Sambath, who has been appointed to sit on the ACU, could also not be reached for comment.
A matter of trust
Despite criticisms about specific articles, Kwok said the new law was sufficient to fight corruption – he described the inclusion of provisions about illicit enrichment (Article 36) as “particularly commendable” – provided it is backed up by the necessary resources and professionalism on the part of the ACU.
“Resources are clearly inadequate,” he said, noting that the 80 staff members earmarked so far for the ACU is far less than the 1,300 deployed in Hong Kong, which has half Cambodia’s population. He also said that although he was struck by the enthusiasm of the young officials he met at workshops last week, they lacked much-needed experience.
“They probably need a lot more professional training and resources,” he said, adding that best practice, based on Hong Kong’s ICAC, is for anticorruption budgets to be pegged at around 0.33 percent of the national budget. Most countries in the region, he added, devote around 0.01 percent.
The government “should demonstrate its political will by giving them a lot more resources”, he said.
Doig said it was unclear whether the new institutions would have the capacity to deal with the wide range of crimes listed in the law, from petty street crimes to high-level graft.
“Such an agency has to be a strategic decision, given the levels of resources and expertise it may consume,” he said, adding that the failure to think through priorities, sequence and timing, can “overload a new agency and certainly compromise its organisational confidence and maturity”.
Ultimately, however, Kwok said the law’s success will hinge not on specific articles but on whether the public believes in and supports the system.
“We should not be too concerned with this nitty-gritty, because the whole system is based on trust,” he said. “We should not criticise them before they’ve even started – we should give them a chance.”
Keeping the Kingdom honest
The Phnom Penh Post; Monday, 05 April 2010 15:01 Solinn Lim
Cambodia needs transparent legal mechanisms to govern the development of its natural resources, preventing damage to society and the environment.
Over the past weeks, news on oil, gas and mineral mining rose to the attention of the media and the public with significant discoveries of silver, gold and bauxite, with Chevron also announcing oil operations to start in the Kingdom in 2012. While Cambodia has good reason to be pleased with these prospects, there are a number of important aspects that need to be considered in order to meet realistic public expectations and ensure good governance.
The task ahead of the Cambodian government is a large one. Cambodia will need transparent and accountable legal mechanisms and investment strategies in order to ensure that the valuable but finite extractive revenues will be reinvested into advancing important economic sectors, so that they provide opportunities for our country to grow. Provision of better social services such as healthcare and education will give everyone the chance to improve their standard of living, while investment in economic diversification will help ensure the competitiveness of other critical sectors such as garments, agriculture and tourism, which then can provide large and sustainable employment to Cambodia’s unskilled labour force. This is indeed a challenging task, and many civil society actors including Oxfam are prepared to support this preparation.
Recently, we’ve seen the Cambodian government establish specialised institutions to oversee oil, gas and mining development and start to take necessary steps towards responsible and accountable revenue management, including the recent disclosure of $26 million in signature bonus payments and social funds by PetroVietnam and Total. This is a good example that shows commitment to transparency.
Let me tell you about a large-scale gold mine I saw in Ghana, Africa. It was way beyond the small diggings we know from our small gem miners in Ratanikkiri and Pailin. One mining site seemed 100 times bigger than our Olympic Stadium, and all around were rumbling digging machines that had wheels the size of houses. Its depth was twice the distance from Wat Phnom to the Independence Monument. As Cambodia is preparing to reap the benefits of oil, gas and hard minerals, it has to reflect on the importance of balancing not only the potential benefits of these resources but also the social and environmental impacts.
From Oxfam’s experiences in extractive industries around the world, too often people’s livelihoods are interrupted and their communities are polluted by these projects. Operations at modern mines and oil projects can begin and end in fewer than 10 years. Communities must be prepared for sites to close. If reclamation funding or bonding for the cleanup is not properly negotiated, the community can be left with contaminated land and water, and no jobs. However, there is a way to ensure that this does not happen.
To ensure equitable benefit sharing, community participation in decision making is vital. Oxfam has developed a position paper on Free Prior and Informed Consent that gives the details on what we believe constitutes appropriate consultation. This includes adequate time for decisions to be made; disclosure of adequate and independently verified information about the potential costs and benefits of a project, and the absence of any coercion or intimidation within the decision-making processes. We know that what we are asking is realistic, as there are precedents for good consultation processes in countries around the world including Canada, Australia and the Philippines.
By having taken the first steps to meet realistic public expectations and ensure good governance, Cambodia can increase its opportunity for sustainable development as set out in the government’s rectangular strategy. There is also clear opportunity for Cambodia to stand out as a leader and influence policies regionally and beyond.
Solinn Lim is regional coordinator for the extractive industries programme of Oxfam America’s East Asia regional office.
SRP seeks Sihanouk’s aid
The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 01 April 2010 15:02 Khouth Sophakchakrya
(Comments: This article in which the Sam Rainsy Party has again and again has been seeking help for the former king, Sihanouk. Does Sam Rainsy not know that Sihanouk has been since 1987, supporting Hun Sen against his own son, Ranariddh, during the 1993 UN sponsored elections, and especially after the 1997 coup d’ état by the Cambodian dictator Hun Sen.
Why Sihanouk has been on Hun Sen side? The answer is that Sihanouk is not stupid and knowing since 1987, when he and Hun Sen met in Fer-en-Tardenois, near Paris, that the Khmer Rouge as a political movement was over, and since Sihanouk was deeply involved with this murderous group, during the 1980’s in the efforts to fight against the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, under the advisement of the the Chinese leaders, he had no choice but to side with Hun Sen, otherwise he will have been accused of complicity with the Khmer Rouge, which is a crime against humanity; therefore would have been tried by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
That is why Hun Sen had passed a law not to allow the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to bring the former king to justice. For Sam Rainsy to ask Sihanouk to help him shows that he is desperate or he roves that Cambodia leaders cannot live without the king, even though the former king had been committing crime against the Cambodian people by supporting the traitor Hun Sen. The “Flip Flop” king is smart enough to know that Sam Rainsy like the majority of Cambodians are still supporting him, despite all he had done to destroy Cambodia.
For more detailed information on the background of Sihanouk, Hun Sen, and the Khmer Rouge triangle deal, please, click this link to a page of this web site:
Sihanouk and his Tragic Role in Contemporary Cambodia
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 1, 2010)
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SAM Rainsy Party officials say they will seek the help of King Father Norodom Sihanouk on the issue of border incursions by the Vietnamese, a party official said Wednesday, as the former monarch returned from Beijing.
“He returned to Cambodia while the ruling [Cambodian People’s Party] threatens the people who struggled to protect the border land,” SRP spokesman Yim Sovann said. “We will ask him to find justice for us because he understands about the border work.”
Sihanouk, who receives medical treatment in China, travelled home with his wife, Queen Mother Monineath Sihanouk, and son, King Norodom Sihamoni.
The royal family was met at Phnom Penh International Airport by a delegation of leaders, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, National Assembly President Heng Samrin and Senate President Chea Sim, before travelling back to the Royal Palace.
“The King Father and his wife returned to Cambodia to join this happy New Year with his people,” said Um Daravuth, the King’s Cabinet officer.
During his time abroad, Sihamoni received a routine health check in Beijing, before travelling on to Prague and France.
PetroVietnam, Total paid govt $26m in Jan
The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 24 March 2010 15:00 Steve Finch and Nguon Sovan
(Comments: In a recent email written by a member of the Sam Rainsy Party from France proudly proclaimed that he was given assurance from a "high French official" that the Sarkozy’ s government did not give any special favour to the Hun Sen regime. Yet, Sarkozy not only invited Hun Sen and his wife to attend the 14th of July 2009 French National Day; but the Cambodian dictator and his wife were given the honour of being seated at the front row with Sarkozy and other World leaders.
Why did Sarkozy, as Prime Minster of France, did that obvious honour and favour to the Cambodian dictator? The answer can be found in this article. It is the "black gold," which was the main factor as to why Sarkozy had given that honour to the Cambodian dictator and his wife. This is nothing new in the French approach to world affairs; otherwise known as “Real Politicks.”
The other main factor is the fact that the French government has always been following the Cambodian old king's behaviour. The French government is fully aware that Sihanouk had given his full support to Hun Sen. Since the majority of the Cambodian people still blindly follows the old king, it is normal for the French to conclude that it is Hun Sen that is important to France to get the “black gold” from Cambodia .
Hidden behind this deal is another constant feature of the French government foreign policy, which is to go with Vietnam. That is why the Vietnamese oil company PetroVietnam and the French oil company Total, are now given by Hun Sen the new oil block in the Tonlé Sap region to open up another oil field in Cambodia. In this case, Hun Sen had done Cambodia in, once again, in favour of both France and Vietnam, not very friendly nor respectful of Cambodia's rights and interests.
Now consider that Vietnam has already full control of all aspects of the oil business in Cambodia through its multi dimensional corporation SOMINEX, under the chairmanship of a Vietnamese national, Sok Kong, the Cambodian people not only did not get anything out of this oil bonanza, but, also loose even more control of its destiny. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 26, 2010)
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THE Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, better known as PetroVietnam, and French energy firm Total together gave the Cambodian government US$26 million in signature bonuses and social funds in January, an energy official confirmed Tuesday.
Declining to be named, the official from the Cambodia National Petroleum Authority (CNPA) told the Post that PetroVietnam had paid money to the government following the signing of an exploration deal for onshore Block 15. Deputy Prime Minister Sok An signed the deal with PetroVietnam officials on November 12 at the Hotel Intercontinental in Phnom Penh, according to press reports.
Block 15 is located north of the southeastern edge of Tonle Sap lake and mostly covers areas of Siem Reap and Kampong Thom provinces.
The CNPA official was unable to break down the total amount given by each company, but the revenues marked a huge rise on the $800,000 the government received in December, according to a presentation by Ministry of Economy and Finance Secretary General Hang Chuon Naron, who spoke at the Cambodia Outlook Conference in the capital March 17.
The payment by Total related to the 2,430 square-kilometre Area III, the official said, an offshore block in an overlapping zone with Thailand that was supposed to have been agreed on in mid-2009, but has been subject to unspecified delays.
Area III lies within a disputed 27,000 square-kilometre area that cannot be explored until Phnom Penh and Bangkok agree on a production-sharing deal.
Last year Total officials told the Post that the firm would also sign with the government a 10-year conditional agreement for onshore Block 26, which covers a huge area of 22,050 square kilometres that extends southeast, from the capital to the Vietnamese border.
It remains unclear why Total made a signature payment to the government in January while deals for Block 26 and Area III are “still under discussion”, Jean-Paul Precigout, the main negotiator for Total in this case, wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.
Precigout did not respond on Tuesday to further questions on the issue.
According to Hang Chuon Naron’s presentation last week, the $20 million in combined revenues from the two companies related to signature bonus payments, while the remaining $6 million were for social funds, according to a disclosure cited as part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global standard for openness within the energy industry.
An alternative Vietnam? The Nguyen kingdom in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Questa;
by Li Tana
(Comments: this is a remarkable piece of information on how “Nam Tien,” was able to reach its objective of conquering Champa and Kampuchea Krom, despite the civil war that was going on between the Northern dynasty led by the Trinh, and the Southern dynasty led by the Nguyen, Vietnam still able to use the word of author of this article:
“By creating a new state, the Nguyen put themselves into a rebellious position that was fraught with danger, for they were far weaker than the Trinh in almost every way. The north had well-established institutions, its territory was three or four times larger than that of the Nguyen, and it possessed correspondingly more military strength. In addition, the Trinh were established in an area occupied by ethnic Vietnamese and therefore governed their own people, while the Nguyen administration governed the former lands of Champa, an Indianized kingdom which had remarkably different traditions from those of the Vietnamese.(1) Yet the Nguyen government not only survived, defeating seven campaigns launched by the Trinh, but also progressively pushed its border further into the south, securing control over three-fifths of the territory that makes up present-day Vietnam in the space of just 200 years. Why did forces operating in a new environment survive, and triumph, while those that remained in familiar surroundings faltered?”
In order word, for the Vietnamese, necessity is the mother of conquest. It also shows how Flexible and well-organized the sino-centric Vietnam was, compared to the rigidity of the Indianized kingdoms of Champa and Cambodia.
While Vietnam has been able to adjust and adapt to the new environment thanks to their forward looking leaders, the Cambodian autocratic leaders are remaining in the same mode of operandi, worst yet, they are looking backward to find answer to their present problems.
Please, also read the companion article titled “Status of the Latest Research on the Date of the Absorption of Champa by Vietnam” By a Cham historian, Po Dhama. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 22, 2010)
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The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Nguyen kingdom which controlled the area later known to the West as Cochinchina, had its origins in modern central Vietnam. The Nguyen annals portray Nguyen Hoang, the governor of Thuan Hoa and Quang Nam, which then marked the southern frontier of Dai Viet, as the founder of this kingdom of the south. War broke out in 1627 between the Nguyen in the south and the royal Le-Trinh government which controlled the region from Nghe An to the Red River delta. By creating a new state, the Nguyen put themselves into a rebellious position that was fraught with danger, for they were far weaker than the Trinh in almost every way. The north had well-established institutions, its territory was three or four times larger than that of the Nguyen, and it possessed correspondingly more military strength. In addition, the Trinh were established in an area occupied by ethnic Vietnamese and therefore governed their own people, while the Nguyen administration governed the former lands of Champa, an Indianized kingdom which had remarkably different traditions from those of the Vietnamese.(1) Yet the Nguyen government not only survived, defeating seven campaigns launched by the Trinh, but also progressively pushed its border further into the south, securing control over three-fifths of the territory that makes up present-day Vietnam in the space of just 200 years. Why did forces operating in a new environment survive, and triumph, while those that remained in familiar surroundings faltered?
Space to manoeuvre and the growth of new social elements seem to have provided a crucial stimulus for what would later develop into a society and polity far removed from the Confucian model of the Le dynasty. These differences can be seen in many aspects of life.(2) Where population growth and an accelerating cycle of natural disasters(3) made life increasingly insecure and impoverished in the Le/Trinh north, in the Nguyen south natural abundance prevailed, and the population was small. Where political and economic disasters from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries forced northern peasants against their will to quit their homes and drift to the southeast or the northwest, Vietnamese families in the dynamic Nguyen realm willingly moved to live amongst non-Vietnamese on the open, shifting frontier.
From the seventeenth century, the Red River delta ceased to be the only centre of Vietnamese civilization: a new centre - Phu Xuan (Hue) - challenged Thang Long (Hanoi), and a second important socio-economic zone - Thuan Quang - took shape far from the Red River delta. This was more than a simple southern extension of the former Vietnamese economy and society. Rather, a new society developed, with a different cultural background and quite different political and economic circumstances. As residents of a region over which the hostile Le/Trinh northern government never formally renounced control, southern Vietnamese described their territory as the "inner region" (Dang Trong), and characterized the northern Red River plains as the "outer region" (Dang Ngoai). The terminology indicates clearly that they perceived the south as a distinct entity, and the emergence of marked dissimilarities between the two areas amounted to two different ways of being Vietnamese.(4)
The formation of Dang Trong was a dramatic and fundamental change in Vietnamese history, comparable in significance to Vietnam's securing independence from China. At first sight, these events may seem, as they were often presented in nineteenth-century official histories, to be little more than the story of the survival and ultimate success of a family which had failed to advance itself in the Thang Long court; however, Nguyen successes produced a new society and a new culture. Economic factors played a decisive role: within a few short decades, Dang Trong became richer and stronger than the north (although not strong enough to topple the Trinh), despite being a newly-opened region, less populous and at this stage smaller than the old Red River delta. Both the economic condition of the people and the comparative openness of society in Dang Trong contrasted favourably with the so-called "central government" of the royal Le kingdom. These advantages formed the basis of the Vietnamese Nam Tien (southward expansion) which finally brought them to the Mekong delta.(5) Dang Trong became the historical engine of change, and pulled the national Vietnamese centre of gravity - whether seen in political, economic or even cultural terms - southwards from the seventeenth century until the imposition of French rule.(6)
A Non-Confucian, Buddhist South
Status of the Latest Research on the Date of the Absorption of Champa by Vietnam
By Po Dhama
http://www.reninc.org/PDFS/ChamBook.pdf
As of AD 968, Champa found on her northern frontier a Vietnam state which proclaimed itself independent from China (while recognizing the latter’s nominal sovereignty). From that date onwards, a struggle started between the two countries which proved fatal to Champa.
First, Vietnam gained from her southern neighbor the territory between the Hoánh-Sôn Pass and the Lao-Báo Pass, conceded by Champa in 1069 in exchange for the liberation of King Pudravarman III they had captured. Then in 1307, she got the territory between the Lao-Báo Pass and the Hái-Vén Pass (as a marriage present for a Vietnamese princess whom King Ché-Man wanted to marry). But the succeeding Cham kings, realizing that the survival of their country was at stake, attempted to recapture the territories that their predecessors had ceded to Vietnam. This resulted in endless wars between the two countries, with ups and downs for each of the belligerents. This continued until 1471 when the Vietnamese King Lé Thanh Ton captured Vijaya, the political and religious center of Champa and destroyed it to erase all traces of the culture of the country he had just annexed.1
Based on these historical facts, historians at the end of the nineteenth century, and even the beginning of the twentieth century, made comments on the date of the disappearance of 5 4 Proceedings of the Seminar on that Indianized country. Some believed that the Cham kingdom ended in 1471, others maintained that it survived until 1692.
Those contradictory opinions, which originated from the Annals written at the order of Vietnamese kings and were based on the misunderstood notion of Nam-Tién (the March southwards), which forms the basis for the formation of the Vietnamese state, were both false. In effect, researchers at the beginning of this century took what is written in the Vietnamese annals on the disappearance of Champa at its face value, without checking whether those annals have contradicted themselves and without subjecting it to a close scrutiny. On the other hand, nobody referred to the Historical Chronicles of Champa, no doubt because they did not read Cham scriptures.
But those omissions led them to error. After scrutinizing the Vietnamese Annals in their entirety and the Historical Chronicles of Champa, we came to the conclusion that Champa, as an organized state, did not disappear either in the fifteenth century or in the seventeenth century but only at the beginning of the second quarter of the nineteenth century. So as to better show how we came to this conclusion, it is useful to examine first why authors studying Cham history like J. Moura, J. Leuba, G. Maspéro and Coedès2 believed that 1471 marked the end of Champa. For those authors, as well as those who adopted their view, the fact that Vijaya —which was the political, administrative, and religious capital of Champa in the fifteenth century—was captured and destroyed in 1471 by the Vietnamese and that, from that date onwards, epigraphy in Sanskrit and ancient Cham, which until that date had served as the written source for the history of Champa, was no longer in existence and this gave evidence for the collapse of the country.
Champa 5 5
The Vietnamese Annals for that period should confirm their belief. In effect, it was recorded in those texts that Champa was reduced to Kauthara (Nha-Trang) and Panduranga (Phan Rang and Phan RÚ), which covered about one fifth of the territory occupied by the Chams under the reign of Ché Bang Nga (G. Maspéro, op. cit. 1928, p. 240), and that territory was cut up into three principalities. It is understandable that those researchers logically inferred that the Cham Kingdom ceased to exist because they thought that the small territory that remained led the three principalities to a quick disappearance. But the reality was much more complex. In effect, in order to study the end of Champa, one must shed the European perspective as applied to the local fact. As we have mentioned in a previous work,3
Champa was not a unitary state but a kind of confederation of five principalities Indrapura, Ameravati, Vijaya, Kauthara, and Panduranga), each with a capital of its own. Moreover, the fact that from 1471 onwards Champa was reduced to Kauthara and Panduranga did not prevent these two principalities from perpetuating the political, economic, and religious traditions of Champa, although in a more restricted area. On the other hand, Vijaya was not a capital in the modern European conception of the term. If, in the fifteenth century it was a political, administrative, and religious capital of the Cham kingdom, it was the residence area of a person called in the Cham texts “the King of kings of Champa.” So, the title was that of a prince whose principality, at a time, held the military and political supremacy over the other principalities constituting Champa.
And in the fifteenth century it was Vijaya. But in the previous centuries, it was not always so since R. Stein and G. Coedès have shown that the political and religious center of Champa was first situated in the southern part of the country then moved toward the north in the area of Hué before the third 5 6 Proceedings of the Seminar on quarter of the fourth century, then to Mi-Son, under the reign of Bhadravarman. But in the middle of the eighth century that center moved southward at Panduranga, then in the third quarter of the ninth century, in the extreme north of Indrapura and around 1000 at Vijaya. The political center of Champa has been varied according to the period, and at certain moments, in the middle and at the end of the twelfth century for instance, there were even two centers, one in the north and one in the south. The capture and destruction of Vijaya by the Vietnamese in 1471 should not be viewed as the date of extinction of Champa in her entirety, but only the destruction of the political power of the Vijaya principality, the center of Southern Champa.
Evidence is also given by the Vietnamese Annals, by the reports of Europeans traveling in the country and by the Chronicles of Champa,5 which well after the fifteenth century, still mentioned the existence of a kingdom named Champa. On the other hand, we should not believe that after 1471 Champa consisted only of Kathura and Panduranga and that these two principalities were condemned to a quick disappearance. This would amount to forgetting the dynamism and combativity of the people of those two principalities, who since the past five centuries, had caused trouble to Vijaya for imposing its supremacy on them, as correctly remarked by G. Coedès. Finally, the fact that the Vietnamese Annals announced the disappearance of Champa in 1471 should not be accepted without verification.
In effect, the Vietnamese Annals were written with a very precise goal: to glorify the Vietnamese kings, rationalize their politics, and exult the greatness of Vietnam.6 By this fact, even if those annals have transmitted to us a wealth of historical information of great value, they have also conveyed doubtful data and even contradicted themselves in many places. Thus, we should take their statements, especially those dealing with Champa 5 7 the relations between Vietnam and its neighbors, only after a close critical scrutiny. Most students of Vietnamese history omitted this test when they treat the relation between Champa and Vietnam. As a matter of fact, according to the Vietnamese Annals Champa disappeared in 1471, but from the same annals we learn that Champa attacked Vietnam in 1611, hoping to retake the territory of Bînh-dinh. However they were defeated and Dai-Viet occupied their land which reached as far as north of Cape Varella.7 Always according to those annals, Champa attacked its northern neighbor once more in 1653 but was again defeated and the Vietnamese reset their southern frontier in the Cam-Ranh region.8 Finally, always according to these Annals, Champa—from now on confined to the only territory of Panduranga—attacked again in 1692, trying to liberate the Kauthara territory which had been annexed by Vietnam in 1653. If Champa often attacked the Dai-Viet country in the seventeenth century, it is because it did not disappear in 1471.
According to our own sources,9 the Nguyen Lord after the 1692 victory, decided to annex the remaining territory of Champa. He changed the name of Chiém-Thanh, which the Vietnamese had until then given to Champa, into Tran Thuan-Thanh, divided the country into three districts (Phan Rang, Phô Hai, Phan Ru) and placed at the head of each of them one of the three military officers who had commanded the victorious Vietnamese army. A month later, the Nguyén Lord changed Tran Thuan-Thanh into Phò Binh-Thuan. It was the reference to this annexation—which proves that Champa at least existed until the end of the seventeenth century—that led a number of authors to say that Champa disappeared in 1692. But Cham
chronicles and reports by European travelers on the one hand and the Vietnamese Annals10 on the other have disproved this assertion. In fact, the text relates that at the end of 1693 a revolt
5 8 Proceedings of the Seminar on of the people of Panduranga (Champa) forced the Vietnamese occupation army to withdraw and the Nguyén Lord to repeal his decision of annexation and to reestablish Panduranga (Champa) to its 1693 frontiers, which from now onwards was referred to as ThuÎn-Th¿nh in Vietnamese texts, and to restore to its leader the prerogatives and title of “võêng” (king).
Champa, although reduced since 1653 to the sole territory of Panduranga, continued to exist after 1692. It is by systematically scrutinizing the chronicles written in Cham script as well as the royal archives of Panduranga,11 then comparing them with the Vietnamese Annals and the reports of Europeans travelers who had visited the region since the end of the thirteenth century that we could prove that Champa continued to exist after 1692 and that we could determine the exact date of its absorption by Vietnam.
At the beginning of our study, we doubted the veracity of the Chronicles written in modern Cham because E. Aymonier noted that by comparing the names of Cham Kings in their list with the list of the kings of Vijaya in the epigraphy, he found that the names were not identical.12 He concluded that the chronicles written in so-called modern Cham were not historically reliable. However, serious research findings proved that, contrary to what had been believed by E. Aymonier and other authors after him, the chronicles in modern Cham did not give a list of Vijaya kings but a list of kings who reigned after the fifteenth century in the southern part of the country. This allowed Professor P. B. Lafont to confirm, with evidence in his support, the value of the chronicles written in modern Cham, thus rehabilitating those texts.13
The historical value of those chronicles written in so-called modern Cham having been established, we compared their content with passages in the Vietnamese Annals dealing with (Champa 5 9) Champa as well as with letters and reports written by European travelers who had visited the coast of present-day Vietnam, 14 we reached the first conclusion that the events of 1692 did not bring about the disappearance of Champa but mark a significant turning in the history of that country. From that date onwards, there was a growing intrusion of the Vietnamese Court in the affairs of Champa, now reduced to the territory of Panduranga. This is explained by the fact that Champa—which had recovered its independence in 1693—wanted to affirm its sovereignty on the Vietnamese immigrants who came in increasing numbers to settle on Cham territory and whom the Court of Hué wanted to place under their own authority. It resulted in a difficult coexistence in the hinterland of that country. But the problem was settled to the advantage of the Vietnamese. The powerful Court of Hué decided to create a prefecture of BÛnh-ThuÎn to which, at first, all the Vietnamese residing in the Cham territory were administratively subjected and then later on, all the lands exploited by these immigrants.
It resulted in an usurpation of the Panduranga (Cham) territory by the Court of Hué. As the Vietnamese living in Champa were not concentrated in any single locality but scattered all over the country, Panduranga (Champa) did no longer form a geographical unity but a territory scattered with Vietnamese enclaves with extraterritorial rights. In spite of the many conflicts that then opposed the natives and the Vietnamese immigrants living in their neighborhood and in spite of the growing intrusion of the Court of Hué in the internal affairs of Panduranga (Champa) the Chams continued to preserve what little independence still was left to them until the conflict between the TÉy-Sên and Nguyén Anh (the future Emperor Gia-Long) in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. That armed conflict took place partly on the soil of Panduranga
6 0 Proceedings of the Seminar on (Champa) which witnessed the passing of troops of the conflicting
parties and which was occupied in turn by those troops who tried to protect their line of communication.
Champa would logically have disappeared in that turmoil. But once the war was over, Nguyén Anh, becoming Emperor Gia-Long, reconstituted Champa in 1802 , and placed at the head of its government Po Sau Nun Can, one of his companions at-arms and a prince of the Panduranga royal family. Champa (Panduranga) then regained its own life. But, although reconstituted as a real state, with its own army and administrative organization different from Vietnam’s, it was no longer an independent state as it was before, but rather an autonomous territory the existence of which depends on the Vietnamese emperor’s good will.
After Gia-Long’s death, Minh-Ménh’s accession to the throne in 1820 15 should have brought about the disappearance of Champa, for the new emperor had very strong centralization ideas and the will to unify under his guardianship all the territories situated from the China frontier to Ca-Mau Cape.
However, Minh-Ménh let it survive. But the ruler of Champa, Po Phank to committed a serious error in taking side with Lé Vãn Duyet, the Viceroy of Gia-Dinh in the conflict which opposed the latter to Minh-Ménh and broke the relations which bound Panduranga (Champa) to the Court of Hué.
Consequently, at Lé Vãn Duyét’s death in 1832,16 Emperor Minh-Ménh ordered his troops to occupy and annexed Panduranga, integrating its territory to the province of Binh-Thuan. Then, from now on, Champa ceased to exist. The anti-Vietnamese revolts led by Katip Sumat17 in 1833–1834 and that led by Ja Thak Va in 1834–1835 could not change the course of history, yet these revolts seriously shook the Court of Hué, as evidenced by the Vietnamese Annals, which devoted to the latter (Champa 6 1) more space than to the revolt by Lé Van Khäi in Saigon.18
Our research in the chronicles written in the so-called modern Cham, the interest of which can no longer be in doubt, in the royal archives of Panduranga (funds of the Société Asiatique de Paris), in the Vietnamese Annals as well as in the correspondence and stories written by European travelers, permitted us to affirm that it was neither 1471 nor 1692 that dated the disappearance of Champa, but much later on. In 1978 we proposed the date 1822.19 But after the discovery of new manuscripts, the existence of which had been ignored, we can now definitely set Champa’s absorption by Vietnam in 1832.
A question remains to be asked: Why have researchers, until now, never been interested, in a scientific manner, in the date of Champa’s disappearance as we have mentioned earlier? Cham researchers have all accepted without verification the judgment by E. Aymonier on the documents written in modern Cham. Thus believing that those chronicles were not useful for the historian, they refrained from consulting them and believed in the dates 1471 or 1692 put forward by researchers on Vietnam history. As for these authors, their writing show that Cham’s history is of interest to them as far as it validates their theory of Nam-Tién (Vietnamese people’s march southward).
Therefore, they accepted the statements of the Vietnamese Annals, without subjecting them to criticism, that affirmed that 1471 was the date of Champa’s destruction and placed the southern frontier of Vietnam at that time at Cape Varella, or the passages mentioning [Âi-ViÙt’s annexation in 1692 of what had remained of Champa. And they accepted them although the same Annals contradicted those statements in a later part. It is not surprising that no serious research had previously been conducted on the date of Champa’s absorption by Vietnam. 6 2
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Proceedings of the Seminar on Po Dharma.
Notes
1. With regard to this subject, please refer to the studies by G. Maspéro in Le royaume de Champa, Paris-Bruxelles, 1928, and G. Coedès in Les États indouisés d’Indochine et d’Indonésie, Paris, 1964.
2. J. Moura. Le royaume du Campa. Paris 1883; J. Leuba. Un royaume disparu, les Chams et leur art. Paris-Bruxelles, 1923; G. Maspéro. op. cit., 1928 and G. Coedès, op. cit.,1964.
3. Po Dharma. Le Panduranga (Campa) 1802–1835. Ses rapports avec le Vietnam. 2 vols. Publications de l’EFEO, 1978 tome 1, pp. 58 sq.
4. R. Stein. Le Lin-yi. Sa localisation, sa contribution à la formation de Champa et ses liens avec la Chine. Peking, 1947; et G. Coedès, op.cit. 1964.
5. A list enumerating those sources is to be found in Po Dharma: Chroniques de Panduranga. Dissertation at l’EPHE IVth section, 1978 and Le Panduranga (Campa), 1987.
6. LÔ Th¿nh Khäi. Le Viet-Nam, Histoire et Civilisation. Paris 1955.
7. See Po Dharma. “Les frontières du Campa (dernier état des recherches)” in Les frontières de la peninsula Indochinoise. Les frontières du Vietnam. Paris, 1988.
8. [Âi-Nam Nh`t-Thång ChÚ (DNNTC), Vol X–XI, pp. 60–61 and vol XII, p. 7; Phô BiÔn TÂp-Lôc (PBTL). Saigon, 1972, Vol. I, p. 83; LÞch-TriÖu HiÕn-Chõêng LoÂi ChÚ (LTHCLC). Saigon, 1972, Vol I, pp. 110–112; J. Tissanier. Relation du Voyage du P. Tissanier de la Cie de Jésus depuis la France jusqu’au royaume du Tonkin pendant les anneés 1658, 1659 et 1660. Paris, 1663, p. 176; H. Chapouille, Aux
Champa 6 3 origines d’une église. Rome et les missions d’Indochine au XVIIe Siècle. Paris, 1943, tome I, p. 9; P. Y. Manguin. “Une relation ibérique du Campa en 1595” in BEFEO, LXX, 1981, p. 266; Phan Khoang.ViÙt Sù Xö [¿ng Trong 1558–1777. Cuéc Nam-TiÕn cuÀ DÉn-téc ViÙt-Nam. Saigon, 1969, p. 388; TrËn Trãng Kim. ViÙt-Nam Sø-Lõïc.Saigon, 1971, vol. II, p.79.
9. [Âi-Nam Thúc-Lôc Ch¾nh BiÔn (DNTLCB). Hanoi, 1962, vol I, pp. 147–151; DNNTC, vol XII, p. 7; “Lettre de M. Féret à un missionnaire datée à Nha Ru le 4–2–1694.” MEP, Vol. 37; Mannevillette. Instructions sur la navigation des Orientales et de la Chine. Paris, 17715, p 447; Phan
Khoang, 1969, p.217; PhÂm VÃn Sên. ViÙt sø tÉn-biÔn. Nam-BÄc phÉn-tranh hay l¿ loÂn phong-kiÕn ViÙt-Nam. Saigon, 1959, vol. III, p. 293; J. Boisselier. La statuaire du Champa. Publication de l’EFEO, 1963, pp. 376–377.
10. DNTLCB, vol I, pp. 147–151; DNNTC, vol XII, p. 7. For the Chronicles of Panduranga, see Po Dharma, 1978.
11. Catalogue des manuscrits cam des bibliothèques françaises, Publication EFEO, 1977; Complément au catalogue des manuscrits cam des bibliothèques françaises. Publication EDEO, 1981; Inventaire des archives du Panduranga du Fonds de la Société Asiatique de Paris. Travaux du CHCPI,
1984.
12. E. Aymonier. “Légendes historiques des Chames” in Excursions et Reconnaissances, XIX, 32, 1890, pp. 145–206.
13. P. B. Lafont. “Pour une réhabilitation des chroniques redigées en cam moderne” in BEFEO, LXVIII, pp. 105–111.
14. Po Dharma, 1978 et 1987, vol I, pp. 67–69.
15. [Âi Nam ChÚnh BiÔn LiÙt TruyÙn (Nh¿ TÉy-sên) (DNCBLT), Saigon 1970; Ho¿ng LÔ Nh`t Thång ChÚ (HLNTC), translated and annotated in French by Phan Thanh Thòy, Publication EFEO, 1985; DNTLCB, vol II,
6
48 YEARS AFTER THE ICJ VERDICT, A KHMER-THAI LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP
By Khmer Surin
THE SON OF THE KHMER EMPIRE កុលបុត្រមហានគរខ្មែរ
(Comments: these two articles one written by a anonymous Khmer Surin, and the other by a well-known and eminent professor, Dr. Charnvit Kasetsiri on the complicate Cambodia, and yet not as deadly as the relationship between Cambodia and Vietnam.
Recently, because of Hun Sen’s effort to deflect from the Vietnamization Cambodia, of which he is the supporter and the instrument for Vietnam’s colonialism, by making the recent row between Cambodia and Thailand regarding the Preah Vehear’s dispute a case of national security issue. In so doing, Hun Sen had succeeded to divide the Cambodian people, both internally and externally, into two different groups with totally opposite view on the Preah Vihear dispute. One group which supports Hun Sen and the other does not. The supporters of Hun Sen never give any serious thoughts as to why Hun Sen had all the sudden become a great defender of the Cambodian national interests, while the historical records had shown that he was put there in this powerful position by the invading army of the Socialist republic of Vietnam (SRV), on Christmas day, 1978. Thailand had a Cambodian descent as prime minister, Khuang Abhavong. Did we ever hear a Khmer Krom as prime minister of Vietnam?
The question is to ask whether Cambodia can afford to fight the Thai at this juncture when every honest Cambodian would know that the Vietnamese would use the 1979 treaty of Friendship Peace and Cooperation to come and “liberate” Cambodia again, as they did in December 25, 1978.
I leave the readers to decide for themselves as to the advisability whether Hun Sen is doing the right thing by continuously provoking the Thai, so as to start a real war between these two neighboring countries with the same civilization, as oppose to between Cambodia and Vietnam of totally different civilization. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 19, 2010)
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បើខ្មែរមានមេដឹកនាំល្អ ខ្មែរអាចធ្វើអ្វីក៏បានដែរ!
๔๘ ปีหลังจากคดีศาลโลก, ความสัมพันธ์รัก-เกลียดระหว่าง เขมร-ไทย
Forty-eight years after the International Court of Justice rendered its decision regarding Preah Vihear Temple on June 15, 1962, Thailand continues to blindly disobey the world court’s decision. The dispute was started when Field Marshal Sarit of Thailand ordered troops to occupy Preah Vihear temple and the adjacent areas some 50 years after the temple became under Cambodia’s sovereignty under Franco-Siamese treaty of 1904-07. Preah Vihear is considered sacred to the Khmers, second only to Angkor Wat because of its unsual breathtaking site on top of cliff.
The ongoing conflict is a political pawn used by the Abhisit government to stir Thai nationalism in order to secure his undemocratic PM seat. The same repeating situation has now passed on to other Khmer temples of Prasat Ta Moan and Ta Krabey, with Thai troops illegally occupying Khmer Temples. If necessary, Cambodia may have to go back to the world court once again over these temples. Instead of focussing on its internal problems and fostering good neighbourly friendship, the Thai government choses a dangerous hostile path with its neighbours. It fought a brief border dispute war with Laos back in 1987-88 and now with Cambodia. How can such a country expects others to respect and obey it’s own law and be in good terms when Thailand itself does not even respect international law and continues to be arrogant and uncivilized toward its neighbours.
The ICJ decision of 1962 was clear in black and white. The Thai government may be able to fool its citizen regarding the verdict, but it can never fool the world. Let’s review the decision once again:
“In its Judgment on the merits the Court, by nine votes to three, found that the Temple of Preah Vihear was situated in territory under the sovereignty of Cambodia and, in consequence, that Thailand was under an obligation to withdraw any military or police forces, or other guards or keepers, stationed by her at the Temple, or in its vicinity on Cambodian territory.”
For over eight hundred years, Thailand has an immense awe and insatiable appetite for anything Khmer. Over 40% of its current language contains Khmer words, as seen in common terms like (walk-เดิน, birth-กำเนิด, nose-จมูก, grandny-ยาย, comrade-สหาย, music-เพลง, soldier-ทหาร, road-ถนน, etc.). Its culture is a mirror image of Khmer. Many Thai Kings and Queens over hundreds of years had Khmer blood, not to mention its people, especially those in the north-eastern provinces. The inventor of the Thai writing system was King Ram Kamhaeng (1239-1298). He was a at least half Khmer. He devised 44 Thai scripts based on lower case Khmer alphabets. The Thai numerals are identical to Khmer. The royal traditions and royal language between the two kingdoms are almost identical. An interesting note to this is that Princess Bejaratana Rajasuda, 84, (the only daughter of His Majesty King Vajiravudh, Rama VI) is first cousin of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and third cousin with former King Norodom Sihanouk. Khuang Abhaiwong who was of Khmer descent served three terms as Thai prime minister (1944–45, 1946, 1947–48).
The relationship of Thailand and Cambodia is very unique. One can say that it is a love/hate relationship. With so much similarity like kinship, it would be nice if we all can live in fraternal peace and harmony. The recent Thaksin appointment as an advisor to the royal government of Cambodia should be a symbolic solidarity of friendship between the two countries, and should not be regarded as negative thing as publicized by the Abhisit government. It was not something new that Cambodia had appointed foreign advisors. Lee Myung-Bak was also an economic advisor of Cambodia before he was elected president of South Korea. Thaksin had mentioned that if Cambodia is more prosperous, wouldn’t it be also good for Thai exported goods? And this would be a step toward the ASEAN Economic Community of 2015. With all said, maybe Mr. Abhisit should consider cooling off and withdraw all troops from Khmer territory per ICJ verdict of 1962 before the war of words get out of hand and burst into a full-scale war. Ignorance of the law and greediness are not the way to go if we are to live in peace and prosperity for many generations to come.
website: http://www.icj-
| Thailand-Cambodia
A Love-Hate Relationship | Charnvit Kasetsiri http://kyotoreview.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/issue/issue2/article_242.html | Reprint / March 2003 The violence which culminated in the burning of the Royal Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh on January 29, 2003, was both shocking and unexpected. The rioting not only inflicted extensive damage to Thai-owned property (fortunately, no one was killed) but severely strained Thai-Cambodian relations. It also warrants study of the history of Thai-Cambodian relations to understand the deep-seated causes of what took place so that similar incidents can be avoided in the future. Among the neighboring countries of Southeast Asia, none seems more similar to Thailand than Cambodia (perhaps not even excluding Laos and the “Tai” people scattered throughout such countries as Burma, Vietnam, and southern China). Both nations share similar customs, traditions, beliefs, and ways of life. This is especially true of royal customs, language, writing systems, vocabulary, literature, and the dramatic arts. In light of these similarities, it seems surprising, therefore, that relations between Thailand and Cambodia should be characterized by deep-seated “ignorance, misunderstanding, and prejudice.” Indeed, the two countries have what can be termed “a love-hate relationship.” This lack of understanding is reflected in the thinking of a considerable number of educated Thais and members of the ruling class, who distinguish between the Khom and the Khmer, considering them to be two separate ethnic groups. They assert that it was the Khom, not the Khmer, who built the majestic temple complexes at Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and who founded one of the world’s truly magnificent ancient empires. They further claim that Khmer culture, for instance its various forms of masked dance drama, is merely a “derivative” of Thai culture. (This is despite the fact that the word “Khom” is derived from the old Thai “Khmer krom,” meaning “lowland Khmer.” In spoken Thai, “Khmer” was gradually dropped, leaving only “krom,” which over time became, first, “klom” or “kalom,” and then eventually “Khom.”) The border between Thailand and Cambodia is approximately 800 kilometers long, stretching along the provinces of the lower Northeast from a point known as “Chong Bok” in Ubon Ratchathani (where the Thai, Laotian, and Cambodian borders meet and which some refer to as the “Emerald Triangle”) and ending in Had Lek sub-district of Klong Yai district, in Trat province. This long border is symbolic of the long history of relations between the Thais and the Khom-Khmer, which date from before the founding of the Sukhothai kingdom in the thirteenth century, thus starting the “love-hate relationship.” A similar relationship exists between the Japanese and the Koreans. Much of what defines Japanese culture today has been influenced by and is part of the cultural heritage of Korea. Buddhism, silkmaking, lacquerware, architecture, and sculpture – the most refined aspects of culture which the Japanese identify with China – passed to them first through Korea. But because of Japan’s successful transformation into an industrial powerhouse, that country has overlooked its debt to Korea and, in fact, treats Korea as an inferior. Those elements of Thai culture which are generally considered to have originated in India, such as Buddhism, architecture, artistic designs, and even a significant portion of the Thai lexicon, did not enter Thailand directly from India. Rather, they were all second-hand transmissions, so to speak, having first passed through the Sri Lankans (including the Tamil), the Mon, or the Khmer. Even the concept of divine kingship (devaraja) and much of the special vocabulary associated with the royal court were, as M.R. Kukrit Pramoj, a noted intellectual and former Thai prime minister, said, “derived from Cambodia.” Thai leaders in the past were filled with tremendous admiration for anything Khom-Khmer. Khun Pha Muang, who ruled the city of Muang Rad, somewhere in present-day northern Thailand, and was instrumental in the founding of the Sukhothai kingdom, was given the title “Sri Intrabodintrathit” (before it was changed to “Sri Intrathit”). This is a name taken from the lord or phee fah of the city of “muang Sri Sothonpura.” Pha Muang’s royal regalia, known as “Pra Khan Jayasri,” the Jayasri sword, and his royal consort named “Sikara Maha Devi,” were all bestowed by the King of Angkor. This is the message conveyed to us by a fourteenth-century stone inscription of Wat Srichum at Sukhothai (the authenticity of which has never been questioned, unlike that of the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription). The Thai term “phee fah” (referring to a king) and the term “Sri Sothonpura” are direct references to a Khom-Khmer king and his royal capital. The king in question was probably King Jayavarman VIII (1243-1295) and the royal capital of Sri Sothonpura is certainly Angkor Thom. In other words, the earliest royal Thai titles – King Sri Intrabodintrathit, the Pra Khan Jayasri sword, and the consort Sikara Maha Devi – were derived from the Khmer, one of the most highly advanced civilizations in Southeast Asia at the time and a source of knowledge and inspiration to the Thai people. It is possible that Sikara Maha Devi was a daughter of King Jayavarman VIII and thus the Thai leader Khun Pha Muang, one of the founders of Sukhothai, was a son-in-law of the Khmer King. The early history of the Lao Lan Xang kingdom in Luang Prabang shares distinct similarities. Fah Ngum, the founder of the kingdom, had sought refuge at Angkor, where he was given a sacred Buddha image (Phra Bang) and where he took a Khmer consort (Mahesi) before establishing his supremacy over all the Lao people (A.D. 1353). This respect and admiration for anything Khmer also characterized the Ayutthaya period from the mid-fourteenth century onward. Interestingly, the flourishing of Khmer art and culture at the Thai court was the result of war, a war in which the victors adopted elements of the superior civilization of the losing side. The glorious Khom-Khmer civilization ultimately sank into decline, as Sri Sothonpura (Angkor Thom or Sri Yasodharapura), seat of the kingdom, fell three times to invading armies – first to King U-Thong in 1369, second to King Ramesuan in 1388/9, and finally in 1431 to King Sam Phraya. The sacking of Sri Sothonpura can be compared to the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767, but Thai historians are reluctant to make this analogy as it casts Thais in the role of “villains,” a role more comfortably attributed to the Burmese. However, the Thai conquest of Sri Sothonpura led to a burgeoning of Khmer art and culture in Ayutthaya, just as the Mongol conquest of China led to the Mongol adoption of Chinese customs and culture (the founding of the Yuan dynasty at Peking). As Professor David Wyatt of Cornell University once noted, in fact, “Ayutthaya is the successor of Angkor.” Another example from the Ayutthaya period is the decision by King Prasat Thong (1630-1656) to build the principal prang at Wat Chaiyawatanaram in the Khmer style and to bestow on the Khmer-style palace he constructed on the banks of the Pasak River (located today in Nakhon Luang district of Ayutthaya province) the name “Nakhon Luang.” This is a name taken directly from Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, as Thais at the time referred to the Khmer capital as (Phra) “Nakhon Luang” or in Pali-Sanskrit, Nagara, the City. The admiration of the Thai ruling classes for things Khmer-Khom remained in evidence even into the Ratanakosin (Bangkok) period. King Rama IV, or King Mongkut (r.1851-1868), for instance, ordered a Khmer stone temple disassembled and reconstructed on Thai soil, but “Phra Suphanphisan, after a trip to the ancient Khmer capital at Angkor, informed the King that all the stone temples were too enormous to be taken apart and transported to Siam. Hearing this, the King ordered that Prasat Ta Prohm, a relatively smaller temple, be relocated instead. Four groups of 500 men each were dispatched…to deconstruct the prasat on the ninth day of the sixth lunar month.” The account of this event, which appears in “The Royal Chronicles of King Rama IV” by Chao Phraya Thipakorawong, occurred in 1860, before the Siamese ceded “sovereignty” over Cambodia to the French in 1867. It is unclear to us precisely why King Mongkut wished to have an enormous Khmer temple reconstructed in Siam at a time when the French were gradually extending their control over much of Indochina. What is interesting, however, is that the attempt to move the temple structure failed when “some 300 Khmers came out of the forest and attacked the men who had come to disassemble the temple, killing Phra Suphanphisan, Phra Wang and one of Phra Suphanphisan’s sons. Phra Mahatthai was stabbed, and Phra Yokkrabat was injured. The phrai commoners, however, escaped injury by fleeing into the forest.” It was obvious that the Khmer were angered by the theft of their property and responded violently. The incident convinced King Mongkut to abandon the plan to “disassemble” the prasat and instead to construct a small model of the Angkor Wat temple complex. “Craftsmen constructed a model of Angkor Wat and installed it at Wat Phra Sri Ratanasasadaram (the Temple of the Emerald Buddha), where it remains to this very day.” (Prime Minister Hun Sen visited the model at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in early 1990s during an official visit to Thailand for discussions with then-Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan.) Despite the Thai love and admiration for anything Khmer, the Thais have also felt considerable hatred for the Khmer, as evidenced by a ritual called the phithi pathomkam. While Ayutthaya was busy fending off Burmese incursions, the Khmer King Satha (Chetta I, r.1576-1596) took the opportunity to attack Ayutthaya from the east. In revenge, so the chronicles say, King Naresuan ordered the capture of Khmer ruler to be beheaded and washed his feet with the blood. The phithi pathomkam ritual re-enacts this story of revenge. However, Professor Kajorn Sukhapanich, a noted Thai historian, did not believe that the ritual, as recorded in the royal chronicles, ever really occurred. He claimed that Khmer King Satha fled and took refuge in Laos. In general, present-day Thai view Khmer leaders and kings as traitors and ingrates. This idea was probably started by King Vajiravudh, or Rama VI (r.1910-1925), in his official nationalism campaign. It was handed down and developed by Field Marshal Phinbun and Luang Wichit in the 1930s-1940s when Thailand, with Japanese help, seized Siemreap and Battambang from French Indochina. It was also heightened by the dictatorship of Field Marshal Sarit when the International Court of Justice ruled that the great temple of Phra Viharn on the border belonged to Cambodia. The pro-Americanism of Thailand and the neutrality of Sihanouk Cambodia during the Cold War further encouraged mutual dislike between the two countries and peoples. Thais are not particularly fond of Norodom Sihanouk, for example. A Thai riddle asks, “What color (si) do Thai people hate?” The answer is neither red (si daeng) nor black (si dam), but “Si-hanouk.” This, of course, is the Thai perspective, but how do the Khmer view their kings, such as Satha and Sihanouk? Certainly as national heroes and saviors, as men who fought to preserve their country’s independence in the face of Thai aggressors intent on seizing control of Cambodia. Much the same could be said about King Anu of Laos, r.1805-1828, considered by Lao historians as a national hero, whereas to the Thais, he was a “rebel” against the Bangkok monarch King Rama III (r.1824-1851). The history of Thailand and its neighbors, especially Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, is one with both positive and negative elements. Some events have bred hatred, for instance of the Burmese by the Thais; others have generated contempt and feelings of superiority or inferiority, as in the case of Thailand’s relations with Cambodia and Laos. These feelings have led to significant misunderstandings. Clearly, then, there is a need for an earnest and systematic study of the history of relations between these countries. This study deserves support from national and regional organizations such as ASEAN. Unfortunately, however, once the smoke clears from the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh, all that is likely to matter is the extent of the financial damage and how and when compensation will be paid. Or if any analysis of the incident does take place, it is likely to reach the facile conclusion that the Khmers are “the villains” – they burned down Thai Embassy, after all – and the Thais are “the good guys” – we did not burn the Cambodian Embassy. It is convenient for Thais to forget that Ayutthaya rulers sacked Angkor three times. It would be far preferable, however, to examine the violent events of January 29 in order to draw lessons for solving the problems that continue to affect the neighboring countries of the Southeast Asian region. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Select Bibliography The following texts shed some light for a better understanding of our Southeast Asian neighbors, especially Cambodia, its history, and the question of the Khmer legacy. Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. เขมรสามยก (Khamen sam yok / Cambodia: Three Times). 1993. A travel account of three trips made in 1992 and 1993, this book provides a day-by-day account of the Princess’s experiences in Cambodia, intending to give an understanding of the country and its customs. Filled with general information, the book is easy and pleasurable reading, and, importantly, contains beautiful photographs which help clarify the descriptions of modern day Cambodia (to 1992), as well as the historical sites at Angkor. 309 pages. 500 baht. George Coedes. Angkor: An Introduction (translated into Thai by Pranee Wongthes as เมืองพระนคร นครวัด นครธม ). 1986. A popular book, currently in its seventh printing, written by an eminent French scholar from the Ecole Française d’Extrème Orient. Coedes once worked in Thailand and was the first man to read the Ramkhamhaeng Inscription Stone in its entirety. This text is a “must read” for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of the history of the ancient Khmer and the concept of divine kingship which informed the building of the great prasart. The book traces the development of the magnificent Khmer civilization and its eventual collapse. A smooth translation of the original, easy to read. 228 pages. 195 baht. David Chandler. A History of Cambodia (translated into Thai by Phanngam Ngaothamasarn, Sodsai Khantiworapong, and Wongduen Narasajja as ประวัติศาสตร์กัมพูชา / Prawatsat Kamphucha). 1997 (second printing, 2000). Chandler, an eminent American scholar, is a former professor at Monash University, Australia. The book recounts the history of Cambodia, beginning from ancient times (before and after Angkor) and continuing to the present day (before and after the Khmer Rouge). It provides the “best background” to Cambodian history currently available in Thai. The book received an award for best translation of a work of non-fiction in 1999. A valuable reference book, suitable for reports, articles and advanced study. 412 pages. 250 baht. Nikhom Musikakhama. ประวัติศาสตร์โบราณคดี กัมพูชา (Archeological History of Cambodia). 1993. A text published by the Fine Arts Department to mark the official opening of the National Museum at Phimai by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn in 1993. The book is an attempt by the government to illustrate that: “Just as the two banks of the Mekhong River have not been able to separate the Thais from their Lao brothers and sisters, the Dongrak Hills have failed to separate Thailand from Cambodia.” This is a dense and fairly serious work, tracing the history of the Khmer people from before the founding of Angkor to the fall of the empire at the hands of Vietnamese and Thai invaders. The book serves as an excellent guide for determining what is “reliable” and what is “unreliable” in the study of historical “records.” Special attention should be paid to Chapter 5. 430 pages. Jit Phumisak. ตำนานแห่งนครวัด (Prawatsat Borankhadi Kamphucha / The Legend of Angkor Wat). 1982 (second printing, 2002). This book, by an important Thai thinker and writer, is in the style of a cultural travel guide. It is an attempt to clear up misunderstandings and “overcome Thai prejudice and contempt for the Khmer.” Although it is somewhat romanticized, the book is full of insightful conversations between young men and women who ask questions and look for answers to the mystery of the rise and fall of the Khmer empire. First printing B.E. 2525 (1982), second printing B.E. 2545 (2002). Beautiful illustrations. 196+ pages. 175 baht. Bernard Groslier. นี่ เสียมกุก (Syam Kuk). (Translated into English by Benedict Anderson from the French “Les Syam Kuk des bas-reliefs d’Angkor Vat” in Orients pour George-Condominas, Sud-est Asie/Privat, Paris, 1981; Thai version edited by Charnvit Kasetsiri). 2002. The book presents the debate over the identity of the figures known as “Syam” carved into the stone prasat at Angkor. “Were they Thai? Where they Siamese? Were they mercenaries? Were they primitive babarians? Precisely who were they?” The book also discusses a new theory which posits that these figures were none other than the Kuay or Kui, one of the oldest indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia, who are somewhat disparagingly referred to as the “Suay” in Thai or the “Kha”in Lao. These people inhabited remote areas between the Khmer and the ancient Champa kingdoms. (M. Groslier was the French curator who remained at Angkor until the very last moment during the Khmer Rouge period. He believed that the flourishing of the ancient Khmer civilization was due to its ability to harness waterpower. To him the Angkorian Empire was a hydraulic society.) 165 baht. Sujit Wongthes, editor. พระนเรศวรตีเมืองละแวก แต่ไม่ได้ “ฆ่า” พระยาละแวก Phra Naresuan ti muang Lawaek dai tae maikai kha Phraya Lawaek / King Naresuan Captured the City of Lovek, But Did Not “Kill” its King). A history text consisting of dense but readable academic articles by Janchai Phakatimkom, Boonteun Srivorapong, and Santi Pakdeekham, which present new information, new perspectives, and new theories which contrast with long-standing readings of “historical records.” According to these articles, King Naresuan, in 1593, did in fact attack Lovek, the capital of the Khmer empire after the fall of Angkor, but he did not kill the Cambodian monarch, and the Pathomkam ritual, in which the blood of the Khmer king was used to wash King Naresuan’s feet, did not occur. These writers contend that the Khmer King of Lovek fled to Laos where he lived out the rest of his days. This book is recommended for the way in which it opens up new perspectives on the past and for its rejection of old-fashioned “fanatical nationalism.” (The editor is a national artist and cultural treasure; Janchai is a history professor at Ramkhamhaeng University, and Santi is an instructor at Srinakarintrawirot University – see his translation of the text on differences between Thai and Cambodian perspectives.) 184 pages. 155 baht. Charnvit Kasetsiri. วิถีไทย (Withi Thai / The Thai Way). 1997. This is an historical and cultural guidebook intended to give Thai readers an understanding of and respect for their Southeast Asian neighbors. It takes the approach that by understanding “them,” we can better understand “ourselves.” The book attempts to break down the barriers imposed by borders, prejudice, and outdated nationalistic attitudes. For information on Cambodia, readers are directed to the chapters entitled “Across Cambodia from Atop Phra Viharn” and “Angkor Wat: Record of a Journey to the Celestial Palace of the Khom.” 321 pages. 230 baht. Theeraphap Lohitakul. รัก ชื่น ขื่น ชัง อุษาคเนย์ (Rak, chun, khun, chang Usakhane / Love, Admiration, Resentment and Hatred in Southeast Asia). 2002. Written in a romantic style by one of the country’s most highly regarded travel writers, this book is a cultural guide to Southeast Asia with interesting historical asides. What is most noteworthy is the writer’s obvious respect and admiration for cultures and peoples different from the Thais. At the same time, however, the book’s title and chapter headings such as “Reassessing the Past: From Bang Rachan to Suranaree” and “To Whom Does Phra Viharn Belong? A Question We Should Perhaps Stop Asking” point to elements of love and hate in relations between neighboring countries in the region. Very easy to read, with beautiful illustrations, the book is an attack on ethnocentrism. 304 pages. 200 baht. Apichart Kaweephokha. ปราสาทสด๊กก๊อกธม ประวัติศาสตร์และอารยธรรมขอม สระแก้ว บันเตีย เมียนจาย (Prasat Sdok Kok Thom prawatsat lae arayatham khom sra keo bantai mainchai / Prasat Sadok Kok Thom: Khom History and Civilization in Sra Kaew and Bantay Mian Jai). An admirable attempt to promote cross-cultural understanding at the local level. The book makes use of historical information, stone inscriptions, cultural travels, religious rituals, and other local activities to break down national barriers and promote cooperation between Sra Kaew province in Thailand (the location of the Prasat Sadok Kok Thom) and Bantia Mian Jai province in Cambodia (site of Prasat Bantay Chamar). The writer is the chief district officer in Khok Sung district, Sra Kaew. 190 pages. 100 baht.
Thai historian Charnvit Kasetsiri is senior advisor to the Southeast Asia Studies Program at Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand. This article was translated by Michael Crabtree, with assistance from Somjit Jirananthiporn. | | TOP | NEXT |
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http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Khmer_Issarak
Encyclopedia
(Comments: The article titled “The Khmer Issarak was anti-French,” is rather unique in Cambodian turbulent and most of time mysterious if not secretive. The Khmer Issarak and the Khmer Serei are two of the most mysterious Khmer marquis fighters in all Cambodia modern history with a tremendous impact on the present and future of Cambodia.
Why Mysterious? Because, until today, not many Cambodians, especially the young ones, have not even heard of these two groups. Yet, they played a crucial role during the period leading to independence of Cambodia in 1953 and after that date. One name stands out of these groups is Son Ngoc Thanh whose, association with both the Issaraks and the Khmer Serei. But, more importantly, Son Ngoc Thanh name is also closely linked with the Japanese and the Viet Minh.
Other names mentioned in this article are Nuon Chea, Achar Mean (alias Son Ngoc Minh), and Tou Samouth, a Khmer Rouge and pro-Vietnamese leader, not to mention other infamous names such as Chantaraingsey, Poc Khun, and Dap Chhuon. Nuon Chea was the second man or the theoretician of the Khmer Rouge, now under incarceration for the crimes committed against Humanity.
Perhaps the saddest part of this article is the fact that it pointed out very clearly how Cambodians are so dependent on the Vietnamese, to come and help them when they are fighting each other. His is the real factor that has been leading Cambodia to where it is now that a deep and dark hole, from which it cannot extricate itself from so easily.
I hope, our young and old people would find it interesting about their won history, even the darkest period of Cambodia’s long, tragic, and tortuous history. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 18, 2010)
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Khmer nationalist political movement formed in 1945 with the backing of the government of Thailand . It sought to expel the French colonial authorities from Cambodia , and establish an independent Khmer state.
The widely differing political ideologies within the movement led to its eventual break-up, with many of its figures going on to participate in the Cambodian Civil War.
Founding of the independence movement
The Khmer Issarak (”Independence”) movement was founded in 1940 by Poc Khun in Bangkok, Thailand, almost at the same time as Son Ngoc Thanh was petitioning the Japanese assistance in expelling the French.
Like Thanh, the Thai regime hoped to exploit French weakness in Cambodia, though its ultimate purpose was to bolster its own territorial ambitions. In November 1940, Thailand took control of Battambang and Siem Reap provinces, an action sanctioned by the Japanese four months later. The newly-formed Khmer Issarak organisation was used in legitimising these acquisitions by making Poc Khun the representative of Battambang in the Thai parliament.
The leftist Issaraks
The other major Issarak grouping was started by two ex-monks, Achar Mean and Achar Sok, who went on to become better-known as Son Ngoc Minh and Tou Samouth, respectively.
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Son Ngoc Minh
Son Ngoc Minh , also known as Achar Mean, was a Cambodian communist politician whose first notable career achievement was in 1950 when he was appointed the head of provisional revolutionary government of the United Issarak Front organized at Hongdan...
Tou Samouth , also known as Achar Sok, was a Cambodian Communist politician. One of the founder members of the Party in Cambodia, and head of its more moderate faction, he is mainly remembered for mentoring Saloth Sar, the man who would later become Pol Pot.-Career in the Khmer resistance:Samouth,...
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After an independence riot in Phnom Penh on 20 July 1942, Mean fled north to Kampong Chhnang where he decided to form an armed resistance band. Achar Sok, a professor of Pali at a monastery in Phnom Penh, also took part in the 1942 disturbances: after an incident in 1945 in which the monastery was struck by stray US Air Force bombs, he fled and eventually made his way to the Viet Minh.
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The Việt Minh was a national liberation movement founded in South China on May 19, 1941 . The Việt Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from France and later to oppose the Japanese occupation.-World War II:During World War II, Japan occupied French Indochina...
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These two men were essentially the founders of communism in Cambodia; by the end of 1945 they were both working together with the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), in Vietnam, where the Viet Minh were leading the August Revolution
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On August 19, 1945, the Việt Minh under Hồ Chí Minh began the August General Uprising [Tổng Khởi Nghĩa], which was soon renamed the August Revolution...
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after the Japanese capitulation
The surrender of Japan in August 1945 brought World War II to a close. By August 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy effectively ceased to exist, and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent...
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. They obtained many new recruits amongst the Khmer Krom minority of southern Vietnam.
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The Khmer Krom - Khmer people living in the Delta and the Lower Mekong area. Mostly regarded as the indigenous ethnic Khmer minority living in southern Vietnam...
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After the Second World War
Poc Khun's Thai-sponsored organisation had fallen apart as early as 1946 due to internal dissension: the concept of a Thai-funded Cambodian nationalist movement did not seem so compelling to people already tired of the exploitation of Cambodia by the French.
By December 1946, Thailand was forced to relinquish control over Battambang, Siem Reap
and Stung Treng; Thai officials were quick to sign a deal with another rebel leader, the regional warlord , offering their support for his anti-French guerrilla bands: this was in the
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(Dap Chhuon
Dap Chhuon, also known as Chhuon Mochulpich or Chhuon Mchoul Pech was a right-wing Cambodian nationalist, guerrilla leader, regional warlord, and general....)
unlikely hope that they could incite a rebellion in the region and then annexes it under the guise of calming the situation. Thailand also offered support to Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey and a number of other individuals controlling armed units, but the Thai-sponsored Issaraks were greatly weakened by the fall of the leftist Thai government in 1947.
(Norodom Chantaraingsey
Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey was a member of the Cambodian royal family, and Cambodian nationalist. Initially a leader of the guerrilla resistance against the colonial French, he went on to become a prominent general in the Khmer National Armed Forces during the Cambodian Civil...)
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Throughout the second half of the 1940s, Viet Minh groups continued to infiltrate into northern and eastern Cambodia, working alongside the growing leftist Issarak groups. The ICP continued to give support, education and instruction to native Khmers. with Chhuon as its president.
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(The KPLC
On 1 February 1948, the Issarak movement formed the Khmer Peoples Liberation Committee
Khmer National Liberation Committee
The Khmer People's Liberation Committee was a Cambodian anticolonial movement, formed by Khmer Issarak elements on February 1, 1948...)
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Five of its eleven leaders were sympathetic to the Vietnamese, which pushed away certain elements of the Issarak movement. Though Chhuon was nominally anti-communist, the organisation also had two important Viet Minh supporters: Sieu Heng, who was head of the ICP North-Western branch, and his nephew Long Bunruot, who later changed his name to Nuon Chea and rose to become deputy leader of the CPK (Communist Party of Kampuchea ), second only to Pol Pot. Nuon Chea , also known as Long Bunruot , is a retired Cambodian communist politician and former chief ideologist of Khmer Rouge....
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(Communist Party of Kampuchea
The Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as Kampuchean Communist Party , was a communist party in Cambodia. Its followers were generally known as Khmer Rouge .-Foundation of the party; first divisions:..).
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By this time the Viet Minh was leading a concerted attempt to foster Issarak anti-colonialism and to turn it into support for communism in general, and Vietnamese communism in particular. This was especially the case on the eastern side of the country, where guerrilla cells were often commanded by Vietnamese, and Cambodian recruits into them often attended ICP political schools. There, they were taught Marxist-Leninism and the virtues of cooperating with Vietnam. On the other side of the country, Son Ngoc Minh had returned from Thailand with enough weapons to equip a fairly large company. In 1947 he established the Liberation Committee of South-West Kampuchea (this is particularly of note, because by the end of the civil war of 1970-75 the south-west had one of the most powerful and well organised communist armies in Cambodia, and which would form the main core of Pol Pot's support). By late 1948 many areas of the country were under the effective control of powerful Issarak organisations.
By 1949, however, the Issarak movement in this form was coming to an end: the French began to exploit the greed of some Issarak leaders by giving them colonial positions, while others went off to join more radical organisations. Chhuon's KPLC expelled Sieu Heng and the majority of the other leftists, and remodelled itself as the Khmer National Liberation Committee, with Prince Chantaraingsey as its military commander. Tou Samouth and the other leftist Issaraks formed the United Issarak Front
, which had heavy Vietnamese involvement. Chhuon went over to the French, while Chantaraingsey eventually left the KNLC and aligned with the right-wing, anti-monarchical Khmer nationalists, the Khmer Serei, under Son Ngoc Thanh.
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(The United Issarak Front was a Cambodian anti-colonial movement 1950–1954. The UIF waged war against the French Union forces...)
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Legacy of the Issarak movement
The Issarak bands of the 1940s and 1950s, although not a single organised movement , were important in the nationalist and communist movements not just because many later joined Norodom Sihanouk 's Sangkum or the communists, but also because of their aims, principles, and their use of guerrilla tactics and on occasion extreme violence.
Many of the component groups of the Khmer Issarak - particularly its more rightist elements - participated in government under Prince Norodom Sihanouk after independence. Leading Issarak Dap Chhuon, for example, was given considerable power as Royal Delegate and Governor of Siem Reap , though he was to be killed by Sihanouk's forces in 1959 after being alleged to be involved in a coup plot. The only major group not to be integrated with Sihanouk's government was Son Ngoc Thanh's Khmer Serei, who remained resolutely anti-monarchist.
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(King Norodom Sihanouk regular script was the King of Cambodia until his abdication on 7 October 2004. He is now "King-Father of Cambodia," a position in which he retains many of his former responsibilities as constitutional King.The son of King Norodom Suramarit and Queen Sisowath Kossamak,...)
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Not only would the guerrilla tactics and organisation of the Issarak forces be mimicked by the communist forces during the Cambodian Civil War, but many later communists were first introduced to the concepts of Marxist-Leninism whilst involved with the Issaraks. In the eastern area of Cambodia, the leaders of those Viet Minh-influenced forces remained largely unchanged up to and beyond the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea
. Until purged by Pol Pot in 1976, their forces not only wore differing uniforms to those of Pol Pot loyalists, but were noted to be exemplary in their treatment of the civilian population and to retain a certain degree of loyalty to Sihanouk.
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(The Khmer Rouge period refers to the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge political party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea....
The source: http://www.absotuleastronomy.com/)
God & King The Devaraja Cult In South Asian Art & Architecture
IDH238
by Arputha Rani Sengupta
Regency Publications
ISBN 8189233262
(Comments: The reason why I post this review of a book on the God-King cult is the fact that as the article pointed out in Asia and especially in Cambodia “the king did become god.” In this context, it is interesting to point out that it was Sihanouk who had brought the word “varman,” to add to the ending of his name Norodom Sihanouk Varman. The word “varman means “protected or shielded” by a god. This habit of ending of a Cambodian king’s name by the word “varman” had been abandoned since the fall of the Angkorean Empire in 1432. Why did Sihanouk do this? The answer is to make him a god-king, with all the benefit that goes with this name ending. (Please, see the definition of "varman" in an excerpt posted just below this article.)
No wonder that it works for Sihanouk that most of the Cambodian people still think of Sihanouk as a living god, which in turn, had allowed him to dominate all the aspects of life in Cambodia until today, since he became king in 1941.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 11, 2010)
About the Book
George Cedes and K. Ananda Coomaraswamy made astute observations on the cult of deified royalty in South Asia for the first time. The cult of Devaraja or God King was the Cambodian State religion, while it may have originated in Java under the great Shrivijaya at a time when it exercised some control over Cambodia and Siam. Of the thirteen temples attributed to the Khmer Kings in Cambodia six were certainly dedicated, between the ninth and eleventh centuries, to the royal linga. A seventh, Angkor Wat, became the mausoleum of its founder Suryavarman ll. And, finally, Bayon, built at the end of the twelfth century was installed with an image of Jayabuddha, named after jayavarman VII. The focus of the new cult instituted by jayavarman II was a deity known in Khmer language as 'the master of the world who is the king', the equivalent in Sanskrit being devaraja. The Cambodian version is similar to the Hindu cult of the World Ruler, the Chakravartin.
In Asia the king did become god. And all power, religious and secular, was centered in him, the task of tracing the Devaraja Cult is simplified in a series of Temple Mountains where the consecrated image is associated by its name with the kingly founder, thus revealing 'several devaraja' in a flourishing cult. In the cult, a unique image created in a particular era was passed on to the successor. The hypothesis of a single devaraja venerated as a deity throughout the centuries ought to raise some difficulties. The devaraja cult in India as elsewhere in Asia is unique when considered as a philosophical and religious conception that coincides with the veneration of ancestors and guardians of the soil. It seems that the originality of the devaraja cult lay in the integration of the personal cult of the king into a system in which the deification of the eternal principle of royalty was adopted to ensure stability, peace and prosperity.
On 27th and 28th March 2001 distinguished scholars gathered in the influence of the royal cult in Asian art and architecture, which merits greater attention. The proceedings published in this volume, it is hoped, is a fitting tribute to Dr. Grace Mac Cann Morley, who encouraged advancement of knowledge in order to place the material culture of India in its historical and cultural context.
About the Author
Arputha Rani Sengupta is Associate Professor in History of Art at the National Museum Institute (Deemed University), New Delhi, since 1996. she has coordinated several symposiums, including God & King: Devaraja Cult. She has lectured widely and published extensively her writings on diverse aspects of art and culture in journals and contributed to leading publications, including the IGNCA. Sengupta specialises in cross cultural studies and Globalisation during the early Buddhist period in India. She is currently writing on Symbols and Substitutes in Early Buddhist Art under ICHR grant. Her book on Art of Terracotta (2005) brings together extraordinary votive terracotta of India from early historic to late medieval period to trace their morphology, cult and cultural synthesis. In particular the phenomena of 'Interpretation Ramana' may be observed in early terracotta that reveals unprecedented assimilations. The internationalism and interculituralism evidenced by the material culture of the Early Buddhist Period in India is investigated further in her forthcoming book on Buddhist Jewellery.
Sengupta has been teaching Art History since 1977. She was Assistant Professor in History of fine Arts in Stella Maris College, Chennai and at Lasbrey Teachers' College in Imo State, Nigeria. A First Ranker in History of fine Arts from the University of Washington, Seattle, and obtained her Ph. D. in Art History from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. As a practicing artist she has also exhibited extensively and has received awards for her paintings, several of which are in public and private collections.
CONTENTS
Foreword | iii |
Tribute | v |
Editors Note | vii |
List of Illustrations | xiii |
List of Participants | xv |
The God-King and the Cloud-Maiden: Royal Ritual and Urban Form at Sigiriya | 1 |
Senake Bandaranayake | |
A Plausible Explanation of the Origin of the "Devaraja" Cult in Ancient India | 11 |
M.L. Nigam | |
Gods and Kings Who Would Be Gods | 17 |
Muthusamy Varadarajan | |
Cultural Contacts of south India and South-East and Far-East Asia: An Exploration of the Phenomenon of the Devaraja Cult | 25 |
Raju Poundurai | |
The Concept of Divine Theory of Sovereignty in West and Central Asia as Depicted in Literature and the Arts | 41 |
Mansura Haidar | |
Apotheosis of the Indonesian King in Singasari Dynasty | 51 |
Shashibala | |
Exploring the Idea of Divine Kingship through Bharatanatyam | 61 |
Parul Pandya Dhar | |
Devaraja in Cambodian History | 65 |
Lokesh Chandra | |
The Devaraja Cult and Khmer Architecture | 83 |
Bachchan Kumar | |
Kingship and the Cult of Devaraja in Kampuchea | 89 |
B. L. Nagarch | |
The Devaraja Cult: Inscriptional, Art and Architectural Evidences from Cambodia | 101 |
Sachchidanand Sahai | |
Devaraja in the Pallava and Chola Times | 119 |
R. Nagaswamy | |
The Devaraja Concept in Ancient Tamilakam: Numismatic and Art Historical Evidences | 129 |
S. Suresh | |
Portraits of the Thanjavur Nayak Kings and Their Worship | 139 |
Kudavayil Balasubramanian | |
The Devaraja Cult at the Crossroads of Cultures | 145 |
Arputha Rani Sengupta | |
Suggested Readings | 153 |
The use of Varman as an honorary suffix
From Laurence Palmer Briggs; “The Ancient Khmer Empire;” The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, February, 1951. P. 26.
“The suffix “varman” attached to a name having a religious and political significance to form a name of a king or person of high rank appeared in Funan about this time (early third century A.D.). varman in sanskrit, means “armor,” and used in the sense indicated above can probably be translated as “protector’ and apparently “protégé.” Thus Jayavarman from Jaya “victory,” and “varman” means “protégé of victory.’
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.
Again, where is the voice of the old and the new king concerning this sad and dangerous affair? Their silence only means that these two kings are only instruments to be used by Hun Sen to help Vietnam. Don’t forget that both kings were involved in the signing of the 2005 supplement treaty to the unequal 1979 treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation, which allows Vietnam to muzzle all those Cambodians who would dare to criticize Vietnam’s continued efforts to colonize Cambodia. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. March 10, 2010).
Please, see a companion article titled “Surin Clarifies comments,” on how ASEAN Secretary General Surin answered Hun Sen’s accusations, in a civilized manner.
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.
The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk
http://icarusfilms.com/new2009/sih.html
(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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COUNTERVAILING FORCE’S FORUM |
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."
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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)
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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:
- Is Sam Rainsy is as bad as Hun Sen?
- Is he an effective and capable leader?
- Can he be compared to other well-known modern heroic leaders such as; Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mahatma Ghandi?
- Will he be able to challenge Hun Sen?
Answers:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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)
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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."
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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)
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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)
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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 17th 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:
- The Origin and raison d’être of “Nam Tien” (From Model One; (1) Identify your purpose or mission statement)
- 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)
- 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”
- Crowdedness in the River Delta due to high growth of the population
- 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
- Perception by Vietnamese leaders regarding weaker administrative and military organization and leadership in neighbors’ Indianized countries; namely; Champa and Khmer Empire
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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 14th 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.
- 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),
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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:
- 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.
- 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”
- Gradually, pushing those Chams and Khmer famers out of the productive land thus denying them a way of subsistence (a genocide by definition).
- Organizing the new settlements into self-sustained Vietnamese civilian and military units run from the central bureaucracy under the leadership of the emperor.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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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)
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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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
Dear all, Lok Lim Kim Ya a la meme de ma vision. Il est impossible maintenent de trouver un LEADER. Donc un group de leaders ou un comite de leaders est possible. Merci. Sithan
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- On Fri, 2/5/10, rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo.fr> wrote:
From: rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo.fr>
Subject: Re : Re : Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party
To: "Kim ya LIM" <kim-ya.lim@wanadoo.fr>, "rithkomar" <rithkomar@yahoo..fr>, "sithan hin" <sithankhmer@yahoo.com>, "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
Cc: usembassy@camnet.com.kh, "DIPLOMATE 16" <russemba@online.com.kh>, embindia@bigpond.com.kh, Britemb@bigpond.com.kh, "Chinaembassy" <chinaembassy@bigpond.kh>, germanembassy@everyday.com.kh, consulatfrance@bigpond.com.kh, eurohrpcambodia@yahoo.com, info@eccc.gov.kh, marcellemonde@eccc.gov.kh, "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>
Date: Friday, February 5, 2010, 3:16 AM
Bonjour lok Lim Kim Ya, Bonjour mes autres amis, Lok Lim KimYa a aussi raison, on risque de faire le jeu de A Hun Sen quand on crée un gouvernement en exil et une armée pour libérer notre pays, mais si on ne fait rien à quoi celà sert il de se réunir. ????? Car à mon humble avis c'est la seule et l'unique façon de renverser ce régime sanguinaire qui refuse de nous dire la vérité sur le passé de chacun des dignitaires. Or les procureurs et les juges d'instruction n'ont pas osé instruire d'autres suspects comme A Hun sen, A Dith Munty, etc ...ils s'en foutent, la mort de ces 5 millions de nos concitoyens khmers restera seulement dans les annales sans qu'aucune justice ne nous soir rendue. Même l'ONU actuelle sous la direction de BAN KI MOON ne veut plus parler de nos morts et de la justice, on n'a permis de juger que seulement une dizaine pas plus et en 2015, le TKR fermera ses portes alors qu'il restait au moins une bonne vingt mille khmers rouges meurtriers de nos compatriotes et on ne juge que 10 supposés khmers rouges sans A Hun sen, sans A Norodom Sihanouk, sans A Dith Munty, sans A Sok An, sans A Sar Kheng sans My Men Sam An, sans A Meas Muth et sans tous les autres qui vivent heureux parmi leurs victimes et enfants de leurs victimes, c'est insensé ??? On se moque vraiment de notre souffrance et de nos morts qui sont morts pour rien. C'est celà la justice et on ne doit pas faire un gouvernement en exil et une armée pour les déloger ????? Qu'attend on mes amis, on attend que les vietnamiens exterminent le reste de notre population khmère véritable pour que la race yuon sakey yeur vive sur notre sol ???? ? C'est celà que vous voulez tous bande de salopards ????? Vous êtes tous responsables si vous ne voulez rien entendre et si vous continuez à dire qu'il ne faut pas faire ceci celà, il faut les laisser faire !!!! Pour ma part, je suis dégagé de toute responsabilité dans la fin de notre race et la disparition de notre pays dans le giron de cette fédération indochinoise.... TANT PIS POUR NOUS !!!!DEBROUILLEZ VOUS A PRESENT !!! Les Norodom, les Sisowath et les autres sont des voyous de la pire espèce, ils sont nés que pour donner notre pays aux vietnamiens et aux thailandais et laochiens parce qu'ils préfèrent plutôt les millions de dollars USD plus que nos terre la terre de nos ancêtres, ils seront tous damnés durant des siècles et des siècles. RITHY KOMAR ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- De : Kim ya LIM <kim-ya..lim@wanadoo.fr>
À : rithkomar <rithkomar@yahoo.fr>; sithan hin <sithankhmer@yahoo..com>; 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>; monovithya Kem <monovithyakem@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>
Envoyé le : Ven 5 Février 2010, 8 h 47 min 21 s
Objet : re: Re : Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party
Bonjour à tous,
Je crois que je suis rêvé en lisant vos mail, que vous êtes en train de concoter de former un mouvement de lutte armée pour combattre contre le gouvernement de Hun Sen. Si on fait çà on joue le jeu de Hun Sen et des Viets, ils sont très contents qu'on rend dans leurs jeux parce qu'ils sont plus forts que nous sur ce point. Sur le plan national et international, vous êtes disqualifiés. Ou vous croyez les bobards rapportés par les gens à la frontière pour qu'on les aident à vivre gracieusement.
Pour devenir un bon leader est le travail du groupe, ce n'est pas qu'il tombe du ciel ou par rumeur. Si on attend un bon leader, qu'on pourrait toujours attendre qu'il ne viendra jamais ou c'est le contraire qu'il est un escroc comme Ranariddh et son clan qu'ils nous avaient bien enculé.
J'ai constaté que nos compatriotes voudraient être chef pour être nourri par les autres et commander.
Par bon sens, unissons-nous pour notre pays et nos compatriotes, le leader viendra après.
LIM Kim-Ya
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Message du 04/02/10 21:17
De : "rithkomar"
A : "sithan hin" , "Jake MN" , "rithkomar" , "koh russey" , kretia1@free.fr, "Kim-Ya LIM" , "Bounthuon SALY" , "Moha sal" , "Yeun Ros" , "Heang UNG BUN" , "Kem Sokha" , "monovithya Kem" , 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" , "Im Sinath" , "Chhay Soeun" , "Chham Seng Hour" , "CHANSARETH SAK" , sssocheat@yahoo.com, "Samrach Son" , chthvaraman@yahoo.com, "Sophorn Sar" , "Sovanna Tim" , "Boran Tum" , tbora@ozemail.com.au, daryneth.prak-lenain@wanadoo.fr, "Hean Kong" , chhang.marith@hotmail.com, sakhonn.chak@socgen.com, "Boros Sopheap" , "Kim Nguon Seng" , "Chean Rethy MEN"
Copie à :
Objet : Re : Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party
Chers oss lok, Lok Sithan, A votre avis, que devons nous faire??? On nz peut pas trouver tout de suite un leader véritable avant de faire la guerre. Il faut donc attendre jusque là en attendant est ce que vous êtes d'accord pour venir nous rejoindre à Toulouse pour nous réunir ???? et vos amis ??? RITHY KOMAR
De : sithan hin
À : Jake MN ; rithkomar ; koh russey ; kretia1@free.fr; Kim-Ya LIM ; Bounthuon SALY ; Moha sal ; Yeun Ros ; Heang UNG BUN ; Kem Sokha ; monovithya Kem ; 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 ; Im Sinath ; Chhay Soeun ; Chham Seng Hour ; CHANSARETH SAK ; sssocheat@yahoo.com; Samrach Son ; chthvaraman@yahoo.com; Sophorn Sar ; Sovanna Tim ; Boran Tum ; tbora@ozemail.com.au; daryneth.prak-lenain@wanadoo.fr; Hean Kong ; chhang.marith@hotmail.com; sakhonn.chak@socgen.com; Boros Sopheap ; Kim Nguon Seng ; Chean Rethy MEN
Envoyé le : Jeu 4 Février 2010, 21 h 09 min 26 s
Objet : Re: Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party
Dear all, Yes the Mekong River will be the Border Line between Thailand and Viet Indochina in the near future. Let try a WAY TO UNITE KHMERS, especially Khmers Overseas. Trough all my composing poems I do call for UNITY, but we cannot find a competent leader to lead us, or may be possible a LEADERSHIP CORE instead until we will fing a real competent leader. And Kem Sokha had the intention to destroy (used by Hun Sen from hehind the scene) not to strenghten the UNION. This is my view. Kem Sokha just ran his Political Party and raingsu ran his, but PLEASE STOP INSULTING AND KICKING EACH OTHER until each other can build a trustworthy, and that time will come or not, I don't know! Regards. Sithan
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On Thu, 2/4/10, rithkomar wrote:
From: rithkomar
Subject: Re : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party
To: "Jake MN" , rithkomar@yahoo.fr, "koh russey" , kretia1@free.fr, "Kim-Ya LIM" , "Bounthuon SALY" , "Moha sal" , "Yeun Ros" , "Heang UNG BUN" , "Kem Sokha" , "monovithya Kem" , 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" , "Im Sinath" , "Chhay Soeun" , "Chham Seng Hour" , "CHANSARETH SAK" , sssocheat@yahoo.com, "Samrach Son" , chthvaraman@yahoo.com, "Sophorn Sar" , "Sovanna Tim" , "Boran Tum" , tbora@ozemail.com.au, daryneth.prak-lenain@wanadoo.fr, "Hean Kong" , chhang.marith@hotmail.com, "sithan hin" , sakhonn.chak@socgen.com, "Boros Sopheap" , "Kim Nguon Seng" , "Chean Rethy MEN"
Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010, 9:19 AM
CHERS COMPATRIOTES, Jum Reap sour Lok pha -aun Jake MN, Ce que vous venez de me dire est peut être vrai parce qu'il faut comprendre que chaque khmer a ce germe de guerrier solitaire idiot et égoïste, il a la manie de vouloir commander les autres même s'ils sont incapables. C'est pourquoi j'ai proposé que l'on se réunisse dans un endroit ensemble tous les partis politiques ou mouvements ou associations pour discuter de nos problèmes nationaux, un très grande danger est à notre porte, il faut nous réunir et vite et j'attends leur réponse si nos concitoyens khmers à l'étranger acceptent de venir vers moi pour une grande réunion de dernière chance soit à PARIS soit à TOULOUSE, soit dans un autre endroit pas en Amérique c'est trop compliqué pour s'y rendre. A cette réunion, il n'y aura pas de chef ni de petit chef, on est sur le même pied d'égalité pour d'abord se comprendre et s'apprécier ensuite travailler ensemble main dans la main en créant des comité central, comité juridique, comité diplomatique, comité de sécurité, comité de relation publique et de communication, comité social etc ... Et dans chaque comité, il faut voter à main levée de tous les membres au nombre soit de 5, soit 7 ou 9 etc ..... Pour le moment aucun chef de parti n'a le droit de se déclarer qu'il est le chef de ce mouvement de lutte armée en exil.
Si vous êtes d'accord alors appelez moi au numéro 06 78 93 84 33 RITHY KOMAR
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- De : Jake MN
À : rithkomar@yahoo.fr
Envoyé le : Jeu 4 Février 2010, 17 h 28 min 55 s
Objet : Human Right Party Vs. Sam Rangsy Party
Jum reap sour Lok: RITHY KOMAR
Thanks for your replied.
Even though I don’t understand much French, Lok Sithan also has replied e-mail to me also.
I thank you for your and his input and clarified to the question I had earlier. Now come to my worry, I am worry how we (Cambodian) ever come to be a “united force” to save our country from Hanoi’s endeavor. If we are not able to be as”ONE”; either by external force (Hanoi manipulates the game they play to erase Cambodia from the face of the earth) or because some Cambodians think about only their own interest and forget about the long-term interest as the whole nation; Cambodian, as a nation, surely die in a couple generations. Only it remnant people, culture and history that may stay a little longer before it all disappear from anybody memory. How sad!
Is this the Cambodian fate? How can we recover?
Jake
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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) ----------------------------------------------
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 15th 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 15th 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
January 31, 2010
Dear Gaffar:
When I was teaching a course called country risks analysis at SAIS, The Johns Hopkins University, one of the basic components that I developed in that course was the concept and operation of strategic planning. Based on this main component of my course, I went on to develop the page in my web site titled "A Suggested Roadmap to Freedom for the Cambodian People."
As you can see in the article pasted below, strategic planning is extremely important for any organization, whether in it is in business, NGO, or politics. This concept is what is sorely missing in all the Cambodian organizations that I had come to be acquainted with.
On the other hand, from what I can learn from reading Vietnam history, the Vietnamese seem to have it in everything they have been doing, especially in "Nam Tien" or "Southward March." That is why I cannot see how Cambodians can get out of the present mess that we are in as a result of "Nam Tien"; and that is why I have been trying (without much success) to push for those who are claiming to be leaders to take note of this major deficiency in the conceptualization and organization of their political programs.
Please, take a look at it and tell me what you think about the role of strategic planning in our fight for freedom. Am I too theoretical, maybe?
Warm regards.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC.
February 1, 2010
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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
Model Three - Alignment Model
The overall purpose of the model is to ensure strong alignment among the organization’s mission and its resources to effectively operate the organization. This model is useful for organizations that need to fine-tune strategies or find out why they are not working. An organization might also choose this model if it is experiencing a large number of issues around internal efficiencies. Overall steps include:
1. The planning group outlines the organization’s mission, programs, resources, and needed support.
2. Identify what’s working well and what needs adjustment.
3. Identify how these adjustments should be made.
4. Include the adjustments as strategies in the strategic plan.
Model Four - Scenario Planning
This approach might be used in conjunction with other models to ensure planners truly undertake strategic thinking. The model may be useful, particularly in identifying strategic issues and goals.
1. Select several external forces and imagine related changes which might influence the organization, e.g., change in regulations, demographic changes, etc. Scanning the newspaper for key headlines often suggests potential changes that might effect the organization.
2. For each change in a force, discuss three different future organizational scenarios (including best case, worst case, and OK/reasonable case) which might arise with the organization as a result of each change. Reviewing the worst-case scenario often provokes strong motivation to change the organization.
3. Suggest what the organization might do, or potential strategies, in each of the three scenarios to respond to each change.
4. Planners soon detect common considerations or strategies that must be addressed to respond to possible external changes.
5. Select the most likely external changes to effect the organization, e.g., over the next three to five years, and identify the most reasonable strategies the organization can undertake to respond to the change.
Model Five - “Organic” (or Self-Organizing) Planning
Traditional strategic planning processes are sometimes considered “mechanistic” or “linear,” i.e., they’re rather general-to-specific or cause-and-effect in nature. For example, the processes often begin by conducting a broad assessment of the external and internal environments of the organization, conducting a strategic analysis (“SWOT” analysis), narrowing down to identifying and prioritizing issues, and then developing specific strategies to address the specific issues.
Another view of planning is similar to the development of an organism, i.e., an “organic,” self-organizing process. Certain cultures, e.g., Native American Indians, might prefer unfolding and naturalistic “organic” planning processes more than the traditional mechanistic, linear processes. Self-organizing requires continual reference to common values, dialoguing around these values, and continued shared reflection around the systems current processes. General steps include:
1. Clarify and articulate the organization’s cultural values. Use dialogue and story-boarding techniques.
2. Articulate the group’s vision for the organization. Use dialogue and story-boarding techniques.
3. On an ongoing basis, e.g., once every quarter, dialogue about what processes are needed to arrive at the vision and what the group is going to do now about those processes.
4. Continually remind yourself and others that this type of naturalistic planning is never really “over with,” and that, rather, the group needs to learn to conduct its own values clarification, dialogue/reflection, and process updates.
5. Be very, very patient.
6. Focus on learning and less on method.
7. Ask the group to reflect on how the organization will portray its strategic plans to stakeholders, etc., who often expect the “mechanistic, linear” plan formats.
Return to the topic Strategic Planning.
A thin line between Cambodia and Vietnam
By Jared Ferrie
Asia Times; Southeast Asia; Jan 28, 2010 |
(Comments: this article once again shows how Hun Sen and his CPP are accommodating Vietnam colonization of Cambodia. But, as a high State Department official had recently told me that he did not think Vietnam is committing any attempt to politically dominate of Cambodia; but, he admitted that Vietnam does have economic domination of Cambodia. 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 as well. This political domination means that vietnam can prevent any protest against any acts legal or not, against Vietnam by any Cambodian citizen or group of citizens. 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.)
Vietnam Colonialism |
http://www.hobotraveler.com/co8vietnamcolonialism.php |
What is Colonialism ?
See Colony for detailed and long explanations about colonization.
The history of a country is about being conquered or being the conqueror of another country. A country can dominate another or be dominated?
Tell, explain, discuss the colonization in this country. Tell who, when, where, why, and what happened. When did it start, and when did it end, or did it end. As a traveler I have notices that a country that in the past was the colonizer of a country will return to visit the country in the future as a tourist. So in former French Colonies you will encounter French people and in former English Colonies you will meet English people, and so on and so forth. TYPE OR WAYS OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE RULED?
1. Colonies of settlement.
2. Colonies of exploitation
3. Missionary Colonies - i.e. reducciones in South America by the Spanish
4. Protectorates: A relationship between two states in which the stronger state guarantees to protect the weaker one from external aggression or internal disturbance in return for full or partial control over its foreign and domestic affairs.
5. Mandates
6. Trusteeship system Colony - Colonialism |
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Naranhkiri Tith; Ph.D. Washington DC. June 11, 2009
Vietnam Nam Tien or colonialism http://www.cambodiana.org
Washington - DC - USA
2009-06-11 11:20:13
Viet Nam has been clever in using its status as a victim of Chinese, French, colonialism, American Imperialism to hide its own worst kind of colonialism. Vietnam colonialism is more deadly than any other types of colonialism, as it uses genocide as the ultimate end of eliminating minorities (Cham and Khmer Krom) once they have been conquered. The naked and brutal Vietnamese colonialism was well captured by American military historian, Bernard when he wrote: "It is interesting to compare the Vietnamese colonization process with the corresponding process of state-building going on in Europe at that time; for too many well-intentioned writers (particularly those in the United States who feel that Europe must continually make amends for her colonial performance) tend to gloss over the non-European colonial processes that were going on simultaneously. In Europe, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed what could be called a national "regroupment" process: Spain left the Low Countries; non-German states lost their influence in Germany; and the Turks, after a high tide that had brought them to the gates of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, returned to the lower reaches of the Balkans. In Europe outside Russia, only Austria-Hungary was to survive as a major multinational state until 1918, and no new state rose to power by ethnic assimilation of alien areas. Viet-Nam was obviously doing exactly the opposite: It carved out its territory through military conquest over states whose level of indigenous culture was at least equal, if not superior, to its own. In other words, it did not invoke the moralistic rationale of "Manifest Destiny," "la Mission Civilisatrice," or "the White Man's Burden"; its action, like the German Drang nach Osten, was simply a manifestation of the vitality of its people. It was simply and purely a process of colonial conquest for material gains, no more, no less. The fact that it took place on contiguous territory does not make it any more respectable than, say, the Russian conquest of Hungary." (Brenard Fall; The Two Viet-Nams; A Political and Military Analysis; (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1971), pp 10-19
As the old saying goes, the worst abusers are those who were abused themselves.
Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D. Former Professor in Internaitonal economics and Finance, at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. | |
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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Officials say they hope development will lead to more projects
ANEW US$2 million casino opened on Thursday in a special economic zone (SEZ) which lies on the border between Cambodia and Vietnam.
Top Diamond, a 1,600-square-metre casino, is the first of three gambling outlets expected to be built in the Phnom Den SEZ, developers said Thursday. It has been constructed about 1km from the international border with Vietnam.
The 200-employee casino was built on land leased by Cambodian developers Doung Chhiv Investment on National Road 2.
Managing director Hout Chanthou said: “This location has great potential. I hope that businessmen will stop by here to gamble.
“This is the first casino here. If it is successful, we will be opening two more casinos. I also have plans to build a new US$4.5 million three-star hotel in the next year.”
Deputy of National Police Commissioner, Sok Phal, said Thursday that there are now 32 licensed casinos in Cambodia.
“We hope that one will be set up on the Cambodia-Laos border in the near future soon,” he said, citing numerous casinos already built along the Kingdom’s borders with Thailand and Vietnam. “Casinos can create jobs for Cambodian people in those areas.”
Investors hope to expand on the casino market as part of the development of SEZs. Cambodia currently has 19 licensed areas, but only six are in operation.
Construction in the Phnom Den SEZ, which was created in 2006, is due to finish in 2015.
Duong Tech, general manager of Duong Chhiv Group, told the Post on Thursday that the company has completed about 15 percent of its development plans for the area. Its progress has slowed as a result of the world economic crisis.
“So far we have built a warehouse, a casino and 42 apartment units. Our plan for the SEZ is to build three casinos on the land,” he said.
Tek Tong Lim, governor of Kirivong district in Takeo province, told the Post that development has aided the local economy.
“We are happy to have a SEZ. It will also bring more jobs to many people in the district,” he said. “Local people will be better off, as the zone will create infrastructure in the area, which will support many factories to buy people’s agriculture products.”
Sok Samnang, chief of police at the Phnom Den International checkpoint, said that the number of tourists who entered Cambodia through the crossing remained stable despite the world financial crisis.
“There are about 80 to 100 tourists who go across the border every day. This number is the same as last year. We hope that it will increase in the next year because of the new casino operation,” he said.
“Cambodian and Vietnamese people have a good trade relationship here. But we only trade fruit and vegetables.”
Govt inaction means K Krom still in limbo
The Phnom Penh Post; Tuesday, 26 January 2010 15:03 Cameron Wells and Tharum bun
(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.
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| To Live and to die with Hun Sen Asia Times; January 22, 2010 By Paul Vrieze
(Comments: This depressing article clearly shows that there is no way with the present kind of Cambodian opposition leadership, the chance that Hun Sen will be toppled by free elections is possible, especially when Hun Sen has the full support of the old and the new kinks and the is no chance that the majority of the Cambodian people, including those so-called educated ones are still supporting Sihanouk. vietnam and Thailand have changed thier leadership many times in the past, Cambodian has never been able to change anything since the Angkor time. change in Cambodia is going back to the Angkor period, that most Cambodians could only see the good side, but never the disastrous one. Unfortunately, the bad side that what is left from the Angkor time, which a blind relaince on other and the king to save Cambodia.
So Hun Sen grip to power will continue for the forseeable future. Unfortunately, time is not on Cambodia's side. With the acceleration of the Vietnamization of Cambodia thorugh the taking over of the Cambodia economy by the Vietnamese, and by the uncontroalled flow of illegal Veitnamese immigrants allowed by Hun Sen and with the tacit approval of the new and old kings, Cambodia's chance to survive is very minimal.
Recently a Cambodian intellectual friend of mine had suggested that he believes in miracle and that with miracle Cambodia can therefore get out of the current deadly situation created by Veitnam colonialism with a high content of genocide.
For my part, I don't believe in miracle. I believe only in hard work, and honest and capable leadership, which is now sorily missing in Cambodia. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. janaury 22, 2010)
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PHNOM PENH - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen recently marked his 25th anniversary as the Southeast Asian nation's leader. First appointed by the Cambodian National Assembly on January 14, 1985, he became at 33 years old the youngest prime minister in the world.
Hun Sen's journey from a communist leader to an elected head of government spans a quarter of a century of civil war, domestic and international upheaval, a negotiated peace and transition to democracy through which he and his Cambodia's People's Party (CPP) have imposed themselves as the country's deliverers of stability and order.
By retaining the helm in Cambodia's fractious politics for 25 years, he now stands among a unique category of leaders, ranking as the 11th-longest ruling leader in the world. In Southeast Asia, only the Sultan of Brunei, the number one longest-serving government leader since assuming office in 1967, has been in power longer than Hun Sen. Of the other nine longer-serving leaders, five are heads of governments in Africa and four are from the Middle East.
Hun Sen reflected on his long political career and humble beginnings in a speech at the National Institute for Education in Phnom Penh on January 12. "I became [foreign] minister when I was 27 years old, deputy prime minister when I was 29 years old and prime minister at 33 years old," Hun Sen said of his appointments in the People's Republic of Kampuchea - the communist state set up by Vietnam in 1979 after it toppled the Khmer Rouge, whose bloody regime caused the death of about 1.7 million Cambodians.
He recalled how he joined the anti-republican maquis, a movement which consisted of several resistance groups including the Khmer Rouge, in April 1970, explaining his move was "based on an appeal from King [Norodom] Sihanouk", Cambodia's monarch who had been ousted in a coup d'etat earlier that year. "Throughout 40 years, I have known all kinds of tastes. I knew how my commander commanded the troops and I knew how to make tea for him. I knew how to wash clothes for him," Hun Sen said in his now trademark plain-speaking public-address style.
The prime minister went on to talk about his political future, confirming his intention to run in the next election in 2013. "The party conference announced my candidacy for the future prime minister and ... last week Chea Sim [president of the CPP] also reconfirmed my nomination for the premiership," Hun Sen said before taking aim at opposition parties.
"Please do not try to limit the mandate of the premiership. You want the mandate limited because you are worrying you will lose to me," he said, while also reminding the audience he still had another three-and-a-half years in office under the mandate of the 2008 election, which his party, the CPP, won with a two-thirds legislative majority.
Hun Sen started on his political path in 1978, when he became a founding member of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation after fleeing to Vietnam in 1977 to avoid Khmer Rouge purges in the Eastern Zone, where he had been a Khmer Rouge regimental commander. The Front consisted of former Khmer Rouge cadres who were prepared by Vietnamese officials to become Cambodia's new leadership after the removal of the Khmer Rouge government.
The Vietnamese army and the Front brought down the Democratic Kampuchea regime on January 7, 1979, in reaction to bloody raids by Khmer Rouge forces into Vietnamese territory in 1978. As the Front's leaders assumed their positions in the new PRK government after the Khmer Rouge regime was toppled, Hun Sen became foreign minister.
The early years
Current and former government officials and people who knew Hun Sen in his youth or as a budding young communist leader said his rhetorical talents and ability to lead, learn, adapt and survive the changing political and ideological terrain in Cambodia were apparent from the start in his personality.
Hun Sen was born as Hun Bunnal on August 5, 1952, in Peam Koh Snar in Kompong Cham province, a village of tobacco farmers located on the banks of the Mekong River. Local villager Chhe Noeun, 61, who claimed to be a childhood friend of the premier, said during a visit to the village that he spent much time listening to his younger friend talk. "He was one of the kids who was smarter than the others. His speaking, his rhetoric, was very good. During farm work, he liked to chat a lot, he made a lot of jokes," he said.
Noeun said Hun Sen left the village to stay in a Buddhist pagoda in the capital when he was about 16 years old. The Hun family, he said, had left the village in about 1963 to move to Memot district, located on the Vietnamese border, but they returned in 1969 after the start of the American bombing campaign in east Cambodia.
After Hun Sen left the village, Noeun said, he did not see him again until 1974 when he showed up on a motorbike at a local primary school as a Khmer Rouge cadre carrying an AK-47 rifle. Hun Sen told his friend, "I just came again today and I don't know when I will come back or if I will die."
Veteran CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap said during an interview last week that he remembered Hun Sen exhibited leadership qualities and a capacity to learn quickly early in his career. These skills, Yeap said, allowed Hun Sen to gain loyalty from his staff, to impress officials from Vietnam, whose military remained in Cambodia from 1979 to 1989, and to sway members of the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party - the previous name of the CPP.
"I met him in 1979 ... He was the youngest foreign minister in the world," Yeap recounted. "Even though he was five years younger than me, I saw he was hard working," he said. "[Hun Sen] only finished grade 3 or 4, before joining the resistance movement. Even though he studied a little bit, he learned very fast," Yeap said. "He liked to communicate with people, especially with those with more experience."
One man who takes a darker view of the young Hun Sen and his rise to power is Pen Sovann, the first prime minister of the PRK, who served as premier for only a few months in 1981 before being arrested and held under house arrest in Hanoi for nine years by the Vietnamese government. "Vietnam ordered me to be arrested by 12 armed soldiers. Hun Sen was there to read the charges against me," Sovann said during an interview at his Takeo province home. Sovann said he was purged by the Vietnamese authorities because of his independent political leadership and his opposition to a number of government policies proposed by Vietnam.
He claimed Hun Sen was appointed prime minister in 1985 because "[Vietnamese authorities] believed and depended on Hun Sen as they believed he would do everything for Vietnam." The former prime minister, who knew Hun Sen from the time he joined the Front in Vietnam, characterized him as smart and a talented public speaker, but also as an authoritarian with few scruples.
"He learns very fast and then he can lecture [on a topic] later on," he said. "Hun Sen has outstanding capacities. His intellect is strong, but he has no morals to go along with it." Sovann said he was "not surprised" by Hun Sen's world-beating political longevity. "Hun Sen likes power; he wants to increase his power. He doesn't listen to anyone ... If anyone criticizes him, he will do anything to defend his power."
Following the Paris Peace Agreements in the early 1990s and the subsequent United Nations-supervised transition from a Vietnamese-backed communist government to a fledgling democracy, Hun Sen quickly showed he was a clever politician who could woo Cambodia's largely rural and uneducated electorate. By the end of the decade, he had also managed to disband the Khmer Rouge step by step by offering amnesty to defectors.
Despite his political skills, Hun Sen did not shy away from using violence against political opposition. In 1997, he took over the government by force and the ensuing fighting killed about 100 people, mostly from the rival Funcinpec Party, according to a 2008 US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, which referred to the takeover as an "unlawful seizure of power".
Before the military takeover, a grenade attack hit a peaceful opposition rally in Phnom Penh, which killed 16 children, men and women and wounded more than 100 others. Recent disclosures of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) probe into the attack, which was conducted because an American citizen was injured in the blast, were made under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Cambodia Daily, a local English-language newspaper.
The investigation, which was cut short due to intensifying threats to the FBI agent, found evidence that directly implicated Hun Sen's bodyguard unit and the CPP, while highly placed witnesses declined to cooperate with the FBI, according to the records disclosed to the newspaper. The US government reacted to the violent events of 1997 by banning direct aid to Cambodia for a decade. As the US Congressional Research Service noted, "The autocratic tendencies of Prime Minister Hun Sen have discouraged foreign investment and strained US-Cambodian relations."
Mixed reviews
Although opinions vary among researchers and observers on Hun Sen's accomplishments during his 25-year reign, most acknowledged the transformation of war-torn Cambodia into a stable, peaceful country with an open and growing economy as his principal achievement. Before economic growth came to a halt last year due to the global economic crisis, Cambodia's economy grew an average 9.5% per year from 2002 to 2008, according to a recent World Bank report.
However, human-rights abuses, land evictions, rampant corruption among government officials, a lack of an independent judiciary and intimidation of political opponents have also been part of life in Cambodia under Hun Sen, local and international human-rights groups have said. Last year saw a rise in court cases against political opponents and other critics of Hun Sen.
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, of the eponymous political party, is currently in France but facing criminal charges in Cambodia over the removal of boundary posts along the border with Vietnam. Rainsy said Hun Sen had shown during his long premiership that his objectives were personal and did not serve ordinary Cambodians. "It is obvious that Hun Sen's only or predominant goal is to remain in power, to survive politically ... Power is everything for him. But above all, power means impunity for him and his clan," Rainsy wrote in an e-mail.
"But when survival is your life goal you cannot have any vision. This is why Cambodia under Hun Sen is going nowhere, if not down the drain, [through] corruption, poverty, human-rights abuses, in spite of competent civil servants, dedicated civil society and abundant natural resources," he wrote. "Hun Sen has had only two ways in dealing with his political opponents: Buy them or eliminate them either physically, [through] grenade attack, military coup [...] or politically, [through] sham lawsuits ... There is no example in the whole world of any country being a democratic and prosperous one with the same top leader for decades," Rainsy added.
According to historian Evan Gottesman, author of the 2003 book Cambodia After the Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen's durability is in itself exceptional. "The fact that the same man who led Cambodia in 1985 could also run the Cambodia of 2010 is remarkable," Gottesman said via e-mail. "Hun Sen's most impressive achievement was his ability to lead Cambodia from being an isolated communist country to economic and political integration with the non-communist countries of the region," he said.
"Hun Sen's greatest failure is his failure to promote, in fact, his willingness to undermine democratic institutions such as an independent judiciary, accountable security forces and a professional civil service," he added. According to Gottesman, three qualities are central to Hun Sen's hold on power: The first is ideological flexibility, which he said became apparent when Hun Sen decided to quickly abandon communist orthodox ideas in the late 1980s when it suited the situation.
"The second is a willingness to be absolutely ruthless with his opponents when he feels it necessary. The third is his cultivation of a patronage system that supports him," Gottesman wrote. "[A] lack of an independent judiciary or accountability for human-rights abuses persist because these hallmarks of modern democracies do not serve the interests of leaders who intend to remain in power indefinitely," he added. Reflecting on how the character of the 1980s communist PRK regime, many of whose officials are still in the government, influences Cambodia today, Gottesman said, "Cambodia's government is still built on patronage systems that support top officials, with Hun Sen at the top."
Rights and wrongs
International environmental watchdog Global Witness said in a February 2009 report entitled "Country for Sale" that its research indicated revenues from Cambodia's growing oil and mining industries were being siphoned off by a network of corrupt officials. "Rather than using these millions to lift its people out of poverty, Cambodia's government could instead continue to follow the example of neighboring Burma [Myanmar], where an autocratic elite uses money generated from the country's natural resource wealth to rule over an impoverished majority," the report warned.
Janice Beanland from rights group Amnesty International's Southeast Asia Team said in an e-mail that the protection of human rights in Cambodia under Hun Sen had come "a very long way" since the 1985 communist regime. However, she added that his government had often failed to undertake serious attempts to further improve the country's human-rights record, which remains poor. "[T]he lack of accountability and the culture of impunity that held sway [in the 1980s] remains in place to quite a degree. Judicial reform remains a plan, rule of law is not yet in place and for most Cambodians, there is very limited protection for human rights," Beanland said.
"[I]f the prime minister had wanted to institutionalize human-rights protection - through the legal system, the government administrative structures and independent institutions - he would have had the power to do so," she said. "The continued lack of integrity and independence within the court system, for instance, testifies to the limited human-rights commitment of the government."
Chea Vannath, a local independent political analyst, said Hun Sen's most important accomplishment was restoring peace in Cambodia, while adding that his premiership had lacked in economic management and improving child and maternal health. "His achievement is that he was able to bring peace to Cambodia, a very valuable achievement. His shortcoming is the economy, it moves but it stumbles ... It seems the economy could have done better, maternal and child health should also be better," she said.
Vannath said Hun Sen's strengths included his ability to cope and navigate a changing political climate and system, his ability to equitably share political power with others and his vigilance to not rest on his laurels."So far, another blessing is [his] good health," she added.
According to historian Henri Locard, who has taught at the Royal University of Phnom Penh since the early 1990s, one of Hun Sen's primary skills is his ability to fascinate the Cambodian public. "Hun Sen is a past-master in the control of rhetoric ... He is sure to hold the majority of the population by the invisible thread and the fascination of his words," Locard said. After the dark days of the Khmer Rouge and the communist government, Cambodians now "relish all their newly-acquired freedoms", he said, adding, "With one major exception: the freedom to challenge his all-embracing power ... there is a great deal of self-censorship exerted in this country."
Indeed, many civil society members and researchers consulted for this article, foreign and local, declined to comment directly on Hun Sen's premiership. CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap contested Hun Sen's record of human-rights abuses, tolerance of corruption and intimidation of political opponents. "Fighting corruption is not easy. Europe and the US have these problems too," he said. "Sam Rainsy breaks the law and then he says his rights are violated when he gets charged."
Yeap contended that Hun Sen and other CPP members had built up the country after its near-complete destruction by the Khmer Rouge. "I would like to ask you who could do it? [Opposition leaders] Sam Rainsy, Ranariddh, Kem Sokha couldn't do it ... They came later on, then they demanded this, they demanded that. They want freedom to attack everyone, everything. The CPP cannot allow them to do that."
On December 27, the 25th anniversary of his appointment as acting prime minister, Hun Sen met with members of his family at a hotel in Phnom Penh and contemplated a time when he no longer ruled Cambodia. Should that day come, according to Hun Sen, members of his powerful extended family could find the tables turned against them if they alienated ordinary Cambodians.
"If Hun Sen loses power, you will become a target for attacks if you do not follow my advice," he said during his televised remarks, advising his family that they should show charity and concern for the less fortunate. It was a rare reflection by the strongman leader on the eventual limits of his rule.
Paul Vrieze is a reporter with the Phnom Penh-based The Cambodia Daily. Phann Ana, also a reporter at the newspaper, contributed to the reporting.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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Khmer Krom migrants appeal to UN envoy as conditions deteriorate
The Phnom Penh Post; Tuesday, 19 January 2010 15:02 Cheang Sokha
(Comments: while Hun Sen is allowing Vietnamese to come freely without even visa, he did not want to give asylum to those Khmer Krom people who have come to Cambodia to seek refuge against Vietnam’s persistent genocide practice against them.
Why have we not heard from either the old or the new king about this human tragedy inflicted by Vietnam on the Khmer Krom people? Is this the same old king named Sihanouk who was recently (See my letter to Khmer Info, posted below) praised by the Sam Rainsy Party as the defender of Cambodian borders and national interests?
Why are the opposition parties, namely, the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party not proposing ”a law of return,” similar to that of Israel regarding the Jews, that would allow all those Khmer Krom people who want to escape from Vietnam’s well known genocide practice to enter Cambodia freely?
This venue is far better, from a humanitarian and legal point of view, than to move the border markers, as Sam Rainsy did a few weeks ago. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 19, 2010)
A GROUP of ethnic Khmer Krom who say they are fleeing persecution in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region are making a public appeal to a UN-appointed rights watchdog, claiming Cambodian officials have not been receptive to their pleas for citizenship.
Thach Soong, a representative of 19 Khmer Krom still seeking asylum after fleeing to Phnom Penh following their deportation from Thailand on December 5, said the government has ignored their repeated requests to formally recognise them as Cambodian citizens.
The group now hopes the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Surya Subedi, who began his second official visit to the Kingdom on Monday, can step in.
“We know he is visiting Cambodia, so we want to ask him for help,” Thach Soong said.
“If he doesn’t help us, then we will die.”
The group has remained in limbo since arriving in December. They have asked for formal identity cards, food, housing and official recognition as Cambodian citizens.
They had no confidence in the government’s ability to help them.
Officials have so far brushed aside requests for identity cards and housing, causing alarm among the asylum seekers.
Already, five among the group – a woman, two men and two girls – have returned to Thailand in another attempt to seek asylum there, Thach Soong said.
“They had no confidence in the government’s ability to help them,” he added.
Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, could not be reached for comment Monday. But he has previously said that any Khmer Krom is entitled under the constitution to live in Cambodia.
Accused monks hiding
Also, five Khmer Krom monks who claim police are accusing them of distributing anti-Vietnamese leaflets that have outraged senior government officials remain in hiding.
“We dare not show our faces, because we fear arrest,” said Liv Phally, one of the five, who believe authorities have targeted them.
Interior Ministry officials, however, have stated that they have never threatened to arrest the monks.
January 14, 2010
Dear Infos Khmer;
I am wondering whether you could explain to me if Sihanouk is really as nationalistic as you seemed to imply in your article (pasted below). Why then, did he recently send a gloving letter (pasted below) to Hun Sen, Chea Sim, and Heng Samrin, and why did his son Sihamoni just promoted these three CPP senior members to five-stars generals? Does this make sense to you? It does certainly not make any sense to me, at all. Regards. N Tith
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ROYAL LETTER
King Father Norodom Sihanouk has hailed Prime Minister Hun Sen, Senate President Chea Sim and National Assembly President Heng Samrin for attaining the rank of five-star general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, a rank awarded to them by King Norodom Sihamoni last week. “I and the Queen Mother offer warm praises for this promotion, which is befitting your renown as supreme nationalists and extremely good, clever and able leaders who received major successes in every field,” Sihanouk said in a letter dated December 23, adding that the three had raised Cambodia’s prestige. “May you receive additional major successes forever, and may you be blessed with the four Buddhist blessings,” he added.
Teh Phnom Penh Post, December 31, 2009
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In a message dated 01/14/10 11:16:29 Eastern Standard Time, infos.khmer@gmail.com writes:
15 January 2010
SAM RAINSY PROVES KING FATHER NORODOM SIHANOUK WAS RIGHT
ON BORDER ENCROACHMENTS
In a statement in French from Beijing dated 16 March 2005, King Father Norodom Sihanouk condemned continuous border encroachments by the Vietnamese authorities.
In particular, He mentioned the case of Svay Rieng province, the very Cambodia’s province where Member of Parliament and opposition leader Sam Rainsy uprooted last October six alleged new border demarcation stakes, a gesture made in the defence of Khmer farmers victims of land grab associated with border encroachments.
The King Father specified that Vietnam had recently created "new borders" to her benefit and to the detriment of Cambodia by digging canals within Cambodia’s territory. This type of border encroachment is precisely what Sam Rainsy is exposing with regard to a relatively new Vietnamese-dug canal nearby Cambodian farmers’ rice fields where he pulled out the alleged new border demarcation stakes.
Sam Rainsy will show all available maps (French-era maps, US Army maps, satellite maps with precise GPS coordinates) that prove that, at least in Svay Rieng province’s Samraong commune where he took the defence of Khmer farmers last October, King Father Norodom Sihanouk was right.
King Father Norodom Sihanouk was also right when he said the Vietnamese-subservient Hun Sen government is pushing Cambodia to commit suicide as a nation.
SRP Cabinet
To read the full text of the royal statement in French with unofficial translation in Khmer please click at http://tinyurl.com/yk99v3d
EXTRAIT DE LA DECLARATION DE
SA MAJESTE LE ROI PERE NORODOM SIHANOUK
EN DATE DU 16 MARS 2005
Aujourd’hui, personne ne peut nier que le Cambodge a perdu une partie importante de son intégrité territoriale terrestre et maritime.
Par exemple, nous trouvons un nombre non négligeable de villages [cambodgiens] qui se trouvaient bien à l’intérieur du Cambodge [dans les années 1960] et qui se trouvent désormais bien à l’intérieur de la RSV [République Socialiste du Vietnam].
Tout récemment, [des témoins] ont pu constater que ces « frères Viets » sont devenus propriétaires de villages khmers.
[Au début des années 1970], les Vietnamiens du Sud Vietnam envoyaient des lettres aux Viets de Svay Rieng, avec cette mention sans équivoque : « Svay Rieng, Vietnam ».
[Un témoin français] a vu des militaires Viets se conduire en maîtres chez les Khmers de la ville khmère de Snuol [dans la province frontalière de Kratié].
La RSV a « créé » de nouvelles frontières (à son profit) en construisant, dans les décennies 1980 et 1990-2000, des « portiques » et des canaux bien à l’intérieur de nos frontières de 1963-1969.
Notre Cambodge [actuel] représenté par l’équipe de S.E. Var Kim Hong [le négociateur en chef pour les questions de frontières nommé par le Premier ministre Hun Sen] accepte de se suicider en reconnaissant, même aux yeux du droit international, que le Cambodge n’a pas de frontières précises.
Le mot « suicide » n’est pas exagéré. Parce qu’un pays qui reconnaît qu’il n’a aucune frontière précise, légale est un pays mort.
[Signature de Norodom Sihanouk]
[End]
SRP petitions King to drop Rainsy case
The Phnom Penh Post; Friday, 08 January 2010 15:03 Meas Sokchea
(Comments: Here again and again, Sam Rainsy is going to ask the new king to help him after breaking the law. Although, he has recently written that he had never asked Hun Sen for forgiveness, but public records indicates otherwise.
What Sam Rainsy is doing by asking the king to help him is to provide the king an opportunity to say that he does help defend Cambodian opposition party members, while in reality, it is a well-known fact that both the new and old kings are working and supporting Hun Sen one hundred percent.
Sam Rainsy should know that, according to a recently released secret CIA Report, the fact that his father, Sam Sary, had worked with Ngo Dim Diem (President of South Vietnam), the Thai military Junta, and Dap Chhuon, and Son Ngoc Thanh to topple Sihanouk from power, in the 1960s, Sihanouk will never forgive nor forget Sam Sary for betraying him, as shown in that recently released secret CIA report as follows:
“Prospects of Sihanouk 's ouster appeared to brighten in December, when Sam Sary--enticed by the Vietnamese--defected to Saigon, Sary not only as in full agreement with Diem concerning the desirability of removing Sihanouk, but was able to advise the Vietnamese concerning Chhuon's attitude, if they did not know of it already. In the first week of January 1959, Ngo Trong Hieu, the representative of Diem's special intelligence (SEPES) in Phnom Penh, traveled to Bangkok for a week of talks with senior members of the Thai ruling Junta, plus Sam Sary. In conversation with General Prapat stated that the Thais had determined to support an anti-Sihanouk coup, but conceded that its success involved cooperation by Cambodian army chief of staff Lon Nol. The plotters, however, were not entirely without assets 0n their own. In addition to Dap Chhuon and his 3,000 men in Siem Reap province, an estimated 1,200 Cambodian dissidents under Son Ngoc Thanh were "training" on the Thai side of the border, and there appears to have been a smaller group of Cambodian dissidents in South Vietnam.”(CIA Secret Report on Cambodia, released in 2007 under the information Freedom Act titled “Prince Sihanouk and the New Order in Southeast Asia”)
How could Sam Rainsy not have known this historical fact about the dispute between Sihanouk and his father? Hun Sen is totally aware of this historical fact, and for that reason he will not accept a plea for a pardon from Sam Rainsy even at the request of king Sihamoni.
Only, if Hun Sen feels that Sam Rainsy is still useful to him as an efficient opposition leader, can Sam Rainsy hope to have any chance for not going to jail, this time. In other words, Sam Rainsy owes his life to his being inefficient as an opposition leader.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 9, 2010)
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THE opposition Sam Rainsy Party has been collecting thumbprints for a petition calling on King Norodom Sihamoni and the National Assembly to urge the dropping of a criminal complaint against Sam Rainsy, who faces charges of destroying public property and racial incitement in connection with an October border protest in Svay Rieng province, SRP lawmaker Ho Vann said Thursday.
Ho Vann said the petition had more than 200,000 thumbprints, and that it would also be sent to King Father Norodom Sihanouk. He said he did not know when the petition would be finalised.
This is not a request for amnesty because sam rainsy has not been found guilty yet.
King Norodom Sihamoni has the formal authority to grant pardons, though Ho Vann stressed that the petition was not a pardon request.
“This is not a request for amnesty because Sam Rainsy has not been found guilty yet,” he said.
Prime Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday that he would not ask the King to pardon Sam Rainsy if the Svay Rieng provincial court were to hand down a guilty verdict in his upcoming criminal trial.
The charges against Sam Rainsy stem from an October 25 incident in which he joined villagers in uprooting six wooden border markers in Svay Rieng close to the border with Vietnam, which they said were planted in their rice fields by Vietnamese authorities.
Senior Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Cheam Yeap on Thursday dismissed the petition as irrelevant, saying that any decision to drop the criminal complaint would need to be made by the provincial court.
“If the court doesn’t agree to this, then the complaint will continue,” he said. “The National Assembly would not think to intervene because it is up to the court.”
Govt marks liberation from KR
The Phnom Penh Post; January 08, 2010. Vong Sokheng and Sebastian Strangio
(Comments; In an article published in your esteemed Newspaper, titled “Govt marks liberation from KR,” I would like to point out that in analyzing the January 7, so-called "liberation Day" both the historical and ideological contexts are important and relevant.
In the historical context, the question is; is Vietnam a Communist country, and is communism a doctrine that believes in Freedom? Has Vietnam been practicing colonialism against its weaker neighbouring nations?
The answer to the first question is based on the fact that it was Ho Chi Minh, who created the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), to bring all three countries that formed the French Indochina under Vietnamese control. It was Ho Chi Minh’s dream to inherit from France what was then known as “French Indochina” that comprised Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
As to the answer to the question, it is a historical fact the Vietnam has been practicing colonialism known as “Nam Tien,” since the 14th century when Vietnam started its "Southward March" known as “Nam Tien;" first against Champa, by obliterating that kingdom in the 17th century, and immediately thereafter, against Cambodia by taking over Kampuchea Krom, then presently against Cambodia proper by sending illegal immigrants into Cambodia proper by imposing treaties such the 1979 'Treaty of Friendship, Peace and Cooperation," with the tacit agreement and support of the Hun Sen regime.
.
Having made these observations, it must be recognized that Vietnam could not have succeeded in implementing its colonialism without the help and cooperation from the so-called Cambodian, Cham, and Laotian leaders, in exchange for sex, financial and political gains.
Australian Historian Milton Osborne probably gave the most appropriate and fair assessment of that fateful day of ‘celebration' or day of 'infamy' on January 7th. when he wrote that:
“They (Vietnamese) tended to be seen either as Saviours or quasi-colonizers who were determined to shape a Cambodia responsive to their interests. I declare my own position in judging that the Vietnamese invasion should surely be regarded as having liberated Cambodian population from Pol Pot’s tyranny. But, I am unprepared to see it and the subsequent role Vietnam played throughout the 1980s as essentially an exercise in altruism.” Source: Milton Osborne; Phnom Penh, A Cultural and Literary History; Signal Books, Oxford, p. 179.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 8, 2010)
Welcome to Lift
The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 06 January 2010 15:01 Post Staff
(Comments: It is not very often that one get a positive and hopeful message from anybody in Cambodia, since the day when the Khmer Rouge emptied all cities in Cambodia on that fateful day in April, 1075. This much needed and welcome change in the making has arrived, in Cambodia. This is refreshing and uplifting to see young Cambodian people taking the initiatives to set the roadmap to sanity and hope.
We should congratulate these young Cambodians for their courage and fortitude in initiating a wind of major a defining change. From their statements, they are aware of the road blocks ahead of them, when they said that:
“I think free speech in Cambodia today is better, but limited in some cases such as politics or corruption. Cambodian people can speak openly with their friends or relatives and every-where if we compare it to the past, but it is a bit difficult to talk about political situations in public places”
Mom Kunthear, 29, reporter.”
And
“Media is very important in our society. Firstly, it plays an important role in educating people. Secondly, it can entertain people. Another thing is that we can write in order to inform people about particular problems and issues in our society.”
Tha Piseth, 20, intern
And
“We are now part of the world society. When we see something that is wrong, we want to speak honestly about it. If we cannot speak about it, then what can we do?”
Sovan Philong, 27, photographer
Congratulations for your determined courage, hope and forward-looking attitude, while being conscious of the treacherous problems that lie ahead of you.
Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 6, 2010)
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The writers, reporters, photographers and thinkers of the Lift team Left to right: Tha Piseth, Sovan Philong, Mom Kunthear, Keo Kounila,Bun Tharum
It is us, the students and young adults of Cambodia, who form the majority of the population, and it is us who will be the driving force behind the changes and improvements in all sectors of Cambodia’s development and preservation.
We’re thrilled that you are reading the first issue of Lift! But, let us assure you that the possibilities for this magazine are greater than what it is now, and its future is in your hands.
Rather than being a magazine that we create and you read every week, we want Lift to become a conduit for online and on the ground exchanges between upwardly mobile Cambodians. By promoting and serving Cambodian students and young professionals as they work to improve themselves, we hope it will also facilitate cooperation in the ongoing development and improvement of the Kingdom.
It is us, the students and young adults of Cambodia, who form the majority of the population, and it is us who will be the driving force behind the changes and improvements in all sectors of Cambodia’s development and preservation.
Our parents and grandparents faced the seeming impossibility of enduring and recovering from years of war, and now we have the opportunity to build on their courage and strength by using our freedom to help Cambodia reach its social and economic potential.
Rather than dwelling on the obstacles to development, our magazine will strive to connect young Cambodians with opportunities, both at home and abroad, to hone their own skills in order to become professionals capable of creating innovative solutions to the problems of today.
Besides being a weekly guide to the news, opportunities and issues within education and careers in Cambodia, we will provide an opportunity to communicate our experiences and goals, and work together to overcome the obstacles standing in our way. Send emails to lift@phnompenhpost.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with any ideas, problems, suggestions or comments in order to begin building our online community.
We have chosen free speech as the theme for our first issue because it is through our ability to speak honestly about the issues that effect us at school, work or life, that we will be able to come up with ideas and best practices for how to solve these problems.
As Cambodia integrates into a global society and economy, we must be sure to look out for the interests of our country and our people. While foreign investment through commercial and social projects has helped Cambodia greatly in the past two decades, international involvement often comes at a cost. Only through the development of our own intellectual and financial capacity will Cambodia’s development be truly sustainable.
We are the future of Cambodia. The Kingdom’s role in the globalising world will be shaped by our ideas and decisions. However, our ability to build a better country for future generations depends on the actions we take now.
This magazine is for those of us who are willing to work towards a brighter future, those of us who are willing to put in the time today in order to make an impact tomorrow. We are not waiting for anything. We are upward bound!
Our Free speech thoughts... |
| I think free speech in Cambodia today is better, but limited in some cases such AS politics or corruption. Cambodian people can speak openly with their friends or relatives and every where if we compare it to the past, but it is a bit difficult to talk about political situations in public places”
Mom Kunthear, 29, reporter
| |
| Media is very important in our society. Firstly, it plays an important role in educating people. Secondly, it can entertain people. another thing is that we can write in order to inform people about particular problems and issues in our society.”
Tha Piseth, 20, intern
| |
PM blasts January 7 detractors
Tuesday, 05 January 2010 15:02 Cheang Sokha and Vong Sokheng
(Comments: As usual, Hun Sen mixed up between the toppling of the Khmer Rouge, and what the Vietnamese real intention is behind the so-called liberation of Cambodia. The Vietnamese came into Cambodia only after all the mass killing was already done by the Khmer Rouge. Why did they not come and “liberate” Cambodia earlier? Because, to do that, would not serve ting said that, I heir long term objective, which is to take over Cambodia. Allowing the massacre to take place is to weaken the Cambodian people ability to resist the Vietnamese invasion.
According to Soviet Sources (From Mosyakov’s Soviet Archives on Soviet-Vietnamese relations), the Vietnamese communists thought that eh Khmer rouge was getting out of their control, and they had waited until the damage was done by the mass killing then only did they intervene.
The other related issue is the question as to who created the Indochina communist Party (ICP) that includes the Khmer Rouge? The answer is Ho Chi Minh, with his dream of having the greater Indochina under Vietnamese control. As Australian historian, Milton Osborne has aptly observed that:
“They (Vietnamese) tended to be seen either as Saviours or quasi-colonizers who were determined to shape a Cambodia responsive to their interests. I declare my own position in judging that the Vietnamese invasion should surely be regarded as having liberated Cambodian population from Pol Pot’s tyranny. But, I am unprepared to see it and the subsequent role Vietnam played throughout the 1980s as essentially an exercise in altruism.” Source: Milton Osborne; Phnom Penh, A Cultural and Literary History; Signal Books, Oxford, p. 179.
But, after having said that, without the help of the Cambodian so-called leaders, that include Pol Pot, Son Ngoc Thanh, Sihanouk, Sihamoni, and of course, Hun Sen and his CPP, the Vietnamese could not have taken over Cambodia that easily. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 6, 2010)
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Defends CPP celebrations of fall of Khmer Rouge regime.
PRIME Minister Hun Sen on Monday branded as “animals” opposition politicians and other commentators set on painting January 7, the date on which the Khmer Rouge regime fell from power 31 years ago, as an anniversary not of liberation but rather of invasion and occupation.
“The day of January 7 is not an enemy for anyone. It is a victory for all Cambodian people and the nation,” Hun Sen said during a speech at the inauguration of a school in Battambang province. Like other senior government leaders, the premier was among the Khmer Rouge defectors who fought alongside the Vietnamese to overthrow the regime.
“The oppositionists who use the legacy of January 7 for their political campaigns are sinful, and they will end up 92 floors underground,” he said in an apparent reference to a Khmer proverb holding that the depth at which sinners are buried correlates directly with the gravity of their sins.
“You can lie about everything else, but don’t lie to yourself,” he continued. “Things will be difficult for the bad people who do not recognise the truth of history. We can say they are not human. They are animals. They know who gave birth to them.”
Opposition leaders regularly accuse the ruling Cambodian People’s Party of using the January 7 anniversary to stage shows of strength throughout the Kingdom. Senior CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap said Monday that the party this year would organise a rally of 10,000 supporters at its central headquarters in Phnom Penh.
“The party will continue to support Prime Minister Hun Sen as the long-term leader, and we will promote the political platform of the protection of the monarchy of the Kingdom and the prevention of the return of the genocidal regime,” he said.
“Only the CPP has enough power to protect the monarchy and the throne, and to bring political stability to the nation.”
He added that government officials would use the anniversary to call for strong law enforcement and respect for the rule of law.
Sam Rainsy Party spokesman Yim Sovann defended opposition lawmakers’ attempts to highlight what he described as the malevolent presence of Vietnamese forces following the Khmer Rouge overthrow. Vietnamese soldiers withdrew from Cambodia in 1989.
“The SRP still considers January 7 as the day the Vietnamese soldiers invaded Cambodia, and I think that these anniversaries should not be used to promote any one party,” he said.
Pen Sovan, a senior member of the Human Rights Party who served as prime minister in the early 1980s and was later arrested for speaking out against Vietnamese influence, said he believed that the January 7 anniversary could be used to mark both the fall of the Khmer Rouge and the occupation of “Vietnamese colonisers”.
“I acknowledge that January 7 is the day that millions of Cambodian people were liberated from the genocide, but I oppose it because the Vietnamese used the fall of the genocidal regime to keep Cambodia under its control,” he said.
Leaflets found in Takeo
Hours before Hun Sen delivered his remarks, police in Takeo town reported finding about 600 anonymous anti-Vietnamese leaflets scattered outside a high school, said a senior police official at the Interior Ministry who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to discuss the incident.
“We are conducting an investigation to find out who distributed the leaflets and why,” the official said.
A copy of one of the leaflets obtained by the Post asserted that January 7, 1979, should be remembered as the day that Cambodia became a captive of Vietnam. The leaflet employed a racist epithet in reference to the Vietnamese throughout.
“January 7 is the day that Khmers fell into the iron grip of the communist [Vietnamese] who abused and occupied Cambodia,” the leaflet reads.
“The communist dictatorship regime of Hun Sen is a puppet of the communist [Vietnamese], since they were installed by the [Vietnamese] when they came to power on January 7, 1979.”
New Year’s Eve fireworks
On a lighter note, Hun Sen regaled his Battambang audience Monday with a description of how he spent New Year’s Eve at Preah Vihear temple shooting off fireworks with Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and Pol Saroeun, commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.
“There is no need to search in Iraq or Iran,” he said to laughter. “The weapons inspection teams should come to inspect the fireworks in Cambodia.”
Rainsy facing uphill battle in wake of arrest warrant
The Phnom Penh Post; Tuesday, 05 January 2010 15:01 Sebastian Strangio
Observers remain divided on the eventual outcome of border incident raid on the borders
ANALYSIS
Ccomments: Again and again, Sam Rainsy is fooling his constituency by evading the possibility of going to jail while allowing those who innocently followed recent grandstanding act of showmanship by removing the temporary markers in Svay Rieng province to go to jail while he is abroad.
His excuse is that he will not go back until those who are now under Hun Sen’s threat, are freed. That is not what one would expect from a real leader. But Sam Rainsy is not Aung San Suu Kyi, as Ou virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, had pointed out, as follows:
“Ou Virak, however, was not optimistic about the likelihood of Sam Rainsy returning to face jail. “He’s no Aung San Suu Kyi,” he said. “He’s not going to come back.”
I really feel sorry for those who are still following this disingenuous and fake leader. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 5, 2010)
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BY uprooting six wooden stakes close to the Vietnamese border, opposition leader Sam Rainsy has again cast himself in a familiar role as the agent provocateur of Cambodian politics. The act, committed during a Buddhist ceremony in Svay Rieng on October 25, was small but symbolic: With attentions distracted by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s high-profile standoff with the Thai government of Abhisit Vejjajiva, the border stunt gave voice to the enduring Khmer fear of Vietnamese domination and was a none-too-subtle hint about the cosy relationship between Hanoi and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.
But with the issuing of an arrest warrant for Sam Rainsy by Svay Rieng provincial court last week – effectively marooning the SRP leader overseas – the government has upped the ante on the opposition, and political observers have offered a mixed analysis on what moves it has left to play.
SRP spokesman Yim Sovann said Monday that the party had “a clear policy” for negotiating Sam Rainsy’s return: the release from prison of those detained in land disputes with powerful business interests, including the two Svay Rieng villagers detained for involvement in the October 25 incident.
On the one hand, the fact that an arrest warrant is hanging over the opposition leader’s head is hardly novel. “Sam Rainsy has been out of the country around half of his time as opposition leader,” said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights. “This is nothing new.”
The most recent point of comparison is Sam Rainsy’s absence during 2005-06, when he lived in self-exile in France for a year after being stripped of his parliamentary immunity and sentenced in absentia to 18 months in prison on criminal defamation charges. Sam Rainsy only returned to Cambodia in February 2006 after recanting comments about Hun Sen and receiving a Royal pardon from King Norodom Sihamoni.
Hang Chhaya, executive director of the Khmer Institute for Democracy, described the issuing of an arrest warrant for Sam Rainsy as a “political game” that could pose concerns for the opposition leader. He said it was hard to know if it would mirror the events of four years ago, but that if he remains overseas much longer it will be detrimental for the SRP. “You need all hands on deck in order to help build the country,” he said.
Despite the precedent of 2005-06, Ou Virak said that one new problem for Sam Rainsy is that repeated petitions to international organisations – one of the few cards the leader has left to play – could be falling on increasingly deaf ears. “You can do it once or twice, but governments get fatigued, donors get fatigued.… You’re running a risk of people no longer paying attention,” he said. “Eventually he’ll have to take it to the next level, and that means facing possible imprisonment.” And unlike 2005-06, he added, the prospect of a political settlement seems slim.
Writing in an email from Paris, Sam Rainsy said he would give the authorities time to respond to his “consistent and legitimate offers” before returning to Cambodia, but also held out the prospect of reassessing the situation with his colleagues and political allies if he receives no answer.
Either way, he said, his absence is unlikely to hurt the party. “By past experiences, I can say it affects the SRP only to a limited and manageable extent, but my ‘absence’ from Cambodia gives us many opportunities elsewhere,” he said.
His 2005-06 absence was compensated for by the “continuous presence on the spot of countless competent and dedicated colleagues at all levels”, Sam Rainsy said, pointing to the party’s successes at the 2007 commune council polls as evidence that it would not be detrimental to the party.
Others predicted a resolution to the issue on similar terms to 2006. Thun Saray, president of local rights group Adhoc, said the current situation, like the earlier standoff, would likely reach an equilibrium before the next cycle of elections in 2012-13.
“[In 2005] the political space was narrowed down for more than a year and later on, when the election approached, the situation became better again,” he said, adding that the ruling party could not move towards a one-party state without undermining its democratic legitimacy. “When election time approaches, they have to show the public and that they believe in democratic principles in order to attract support,” he said.
Ou Virak, however, was not optimistic about the likelihood of Sam Rainsy returning to face jail. “He’s no Aung San Suu Kyi,” he said. “He’s not going to come back.”
ROYAL LETTER: Sihanouk praises five star leaders
The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 31 December 2009 15:03 Sebastian Strangio
(Comments: Sihanouk’s “Win/Win” strategy at its most perfect form and at its worst consequence for the Cambodian people and Society. Sihanouk always wants to be right all the time. In this case, he needs Hun Sen on his side to survive, and at the same time he is smart enough to know Cambodia is twisting downwards in the wind, because of Hun Sen’s betrayal by delivering Cambodia, free of charge, - lock stock and barrel - to Vietnam.
But, he is now safe, because thanks to Hun Sen who came up with a special law to forbid the former king to testify in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, as requested by the international prosecutors.
Now, Sihanouk can say to those who criticized him that “where things are so ugly in Cambodia under Hun Sen, is it Sihanouk or Hun Sen who is the worst leader fro Cambodia? You see when you rejected Sihanouk, look what you have now.”
But, of course, he has forgotten that by allying with Hun Sen, he has allowed Hun Sen to destroy Cambodia and its society. Sihanouk has shown his real self with his cowardice, crassness, and extreme selfishness. Yet, there are so many Cambodians who still respect him as a god-king. Poor Cambodia, the end is near. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 1, 2010)
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ROYAL LETTER
King Father Norodom Sihanouk has hailed Prime Minister Hun Sen, Senate President Chea Sim and National Assembly President Heng Samrin for attaining the rank of five-star general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, a rank awarded to them by King Norodom Sihamoni last week. “I and the Queen Mother offer warm praises for this promotion, which is befitting your renown as supreme nationalists and extremely good, clever and able leaders who received major successes in every field,” Sihanouk said in a letter dated December 23, adding that the three had raised Cambodia’s prestige. “May you receive additional major successes forever, and may you be blessed with the four Buddhist blessings,” he added.
CPP leaders receive five-star promotion
The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 23 December 2009 15:00 Vong Sokheng
King Norodom Sihamoni has promoted Prime Minister Hun Sen, Senate President Chea Sim and National Assembly President Heng Samrin to the unprecedented rank of five-star general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces on Tuesday. In a Royal Decree, the King said the three leaders had been successful in establishing peace, national stability, national development, the protection of Cambodian sovereignty and international cooperation.
Khmer Krom continue lobby of govt for citizenship, aid
The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 31 December 2009 15:02 Sen David and Cameron Wells
(Comments: While Hun Sen is opening the door for the Vietnamese to come into Cambodia, he is closing the door to our compatriot the Khmer Krom people. More devastating is the fact that the new and old kings are silent about this tragedy.
I strongly suggest that Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha should get together and propose a law of return - similar to case of the Jewish people who are allowed to return to Israel, - to allow the Khmer Krom to have the right to seek asylum in Cambodia anytime they so choose and after verification that they really are Khmer Krom and not disguised Vietnamese.
It is essential that Sam Rainsy should stop doing this bombastic act like removing the temporary border markers and to let down those who had followed him in this irresponsible act, are now facing Hun Sen’s wrath and punishment, while Sam Rainsy is hiding in Europe. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. January 3, 2010)
We need safety. i’m afraid the government has a secret plan to deport us.
A group of 24 ethnic Khmer Krom deported from Thailand earlier this month has resolved to continue seeking government assistance despite being denied refugee status by the UN refugee agency and amid fears that the government may seek to deport them to Vietnam, a rights group advocating on their behalf said Wednesday.
The group, which has said it fled to Thailand because of persecution and religious repression in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region, was deported to Cambodia on December 5. They arrived Monday at the offices of the local office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees seeking refugee status and assistance with food and housing.
A UNHCR spokesman confirmed Wednesday that they were unable to help because of a sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen on December 17 that made issues related to asylum seekers the sole responsibility of the government.
Ang Chanrith, executive director of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Human Rights Organisation, said the group will continue to write letters to the government and commune chiefs in a bid to garner a response.
“The group now knows the UNHCR’s position,” he said. “They will wait to see if the response letter is negative or positive. If it is positive, they can live [here]. If it is negative, they can take the letter back to the UNHCR and say, ‘Look, we have nowhere to stay.’”
Ang Chanrith added that the NGOs currently providing shelter for the group could not continue to do so indefinitely, but could only do so “for another one to two months”.
Thach Soong, 49, a Khmer Krom representative for the group, said Wednesday that the group still fears being sent back to Vietnam.
“We need safety. I am afraid the government has a secret plan to deport us.”
Ministry of Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak said Wednesday that no such plan exists.
“They have enough rights,” he said, adding that as ethnic Khmer Krom, they possess the same general rights as anyone of Khmer ethnicity.
“The government cannot find land and shelter for them because many other citizens do not have land or shelter either. The asylum seekers must realise that the right for asylum is no longer under the authority of the UNHCR,” Khieu Sopheak said.