Covering letter to petition 

April 23, 2009

Dear Cambodian brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, grandpas and grandmas:

I hope by now you have heard of the tragic story of Venerable Tim Sakhorn who is a courageous and humble Khmer Krom monk in Phnom Den, Karivong district, Takeo province, Cambodia.

He was kidnapped, defrocked, and disappeared in Phnom Penh in 2007, with some reports stating that he was crammed into a Toyota by unidentified assailants. He had resurfaced a few days later in Vietnam.

There, he was immediately charged with violating and endangering the security of Vietnam, using the 1979 so-called Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation imposed under duress by Vietnam during its invasion of Cambodia in 1979, as the excuse. He was tried and quickly convicted as charged by a Vietnamese court, put under house arrest in Vietnam for nearly two years, stripped of his Cambodian identity and declared that he is a Vietnamese. Only under the pressure from the European Union and the Human Rights Watch - Asia (HRW), was he recently allowed to temporary return to visit his family in Cambodia, under a Vietnamese passport with a visa that is only valid until April 17, 2009. 

Considering his tremendous personal sacrifice by enduring the physical and psychological pain, along with an uncommon courage and dignity in the face of murderous, determined, and unrelenting enemies during all his adult life, in Vietnam and later on in Cambodia, the Venerable Tim Sakhorn who has just escaped to Thailand, is, by definition and through the examples of other great heroes in history, a true Cambodia hero. He deserves our admiration and respect for what he has been trying to do to defend Cambodia and her people against the unrelenting and murderous onslaught by the Vietnamese government within a well-designed and executed plan to complete the final phase of the Vietnamization of Cambodia known as “Southward March” or “Nam Tien” in Vietnamese.  

However, a more ominous message behind the recent atrocities committed by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) on  the brave Ven. Sakhorn represents a strong warning to all Cambodians that SRV will not tolerate any protest, however benign it may be against Vietnam by Cambodian, under the so-called Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation that was imposed on Cambodia when Vietnam invaded in 1978. More deadly and more dangerously, is the fact that Vietnam has unilaterally reserved the right to intervene militarily by invading Cambodia once again, should Hun Sen’s absolute rule is under any real threat of being toppled by the opposition parties. One can also infer that Hun Sen has been allowing the opposition parties to be operating, so long as the latter are not operationally effective. Unless we, Cambodian-Americans, who are living in complete freedom in this country, will act more vigorously and soon, the fate of the Cambodian people will be in jeopardy.  

Based on the above observations, dear fellow-Cambodians, let us show our courage and civic duty as dignified and honorable human beings by joining hands to sign this proposed petition to the United States President Barack Obama to ask him to investigate the Vietnamization of Cambodia once again, and if the information that we have provided turn out to be true and accurate, we respectfully request him to use his presidential authorities to ask the Vietnamese and the Hun Sen regimes to stop committing atrocities against all Cambodians in Cambodia or in South Vietnam or Kampuchea Krom.

I strongly hope you still remember that in mid November 2005, we sent a petition to President George W. Bush to ask him to look into the same Vietnamization of Cambodia by sending unverifiable number of illegal immigrant into Cambodia with the support of Hun Sen and his CPP, in order to complete the Ho Chi Minh’s dream of transforming the former French Indochina Federation into the “greater Vietnam”.

Former President Bush did not listen to us much and chose to make Vietnam the main ally of the US in Asia. This time with the election of President Obama along with his message of CHANGE in the United States and in the world, it will be a totally different situation. His message of YES WE CAN is loud and clear and it’s time for all of us who believe in dignity, honor, and freedom, to do all we can so that our voice will be heard by the new president of the United States of America. We can all stand to benefit from this new era of hope. We believe President Obama is a once in a life time true reformer and defender of freedom for America and for the rest of the world as well.

Let us spread the words by saying YES WE CAN to stop the Vietnamization of Cambodia through President Obama who is prone and proven to be a true democratic leader in the world. YES WE CAN if we are heard by him, and with  supports from many international NGO’s and human rights organizations such as European Union Parliamentarian, Asia Human Rights Watch under the leadership of Brad Adams, Christophe Peschoux, country representative of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and a German Human Rights Advocate, Rebecca Sommer. The world seems to finally hear and listen to our Khmer Krom people’s voice. The world has finally paid attention. Let us bring our case to them and made our historical day, the history of our own writing and not the Vietnamese’s.  

My dearest friends once again, look hard into our country of birth Cambodia from “Family Tree” report to “Cambodia for Sale” and from prostitution every where in the country to poor children along the waste centers, from the golf course along the Cambodia/Vietnam borders to the rice fields for rent to the Vietnamese along the borders, from the national oil resource to the national touristic center of Angkor Wat, etc... Over 60% of everything belongs to the Vietnamese, mainly through majority ownership and control of the most important corporation in Cambodia, SOKIMEX, led by Sok Kong, a self-confessed Vietnamese citizen. The Vietnamese are now in full control of the destiny of Cambodia and her people, and the Cambodia government under Hun Sen and his CPP. The Venerable Tim Sakhorn’s case is a clear example of what we, Cambodians, should be doing if we want to have any chance to remain free and retain our national identity as Khmer people.

Please, fellow-Cambodians, help us spread this urgent message by signing this petition and return it to us as early as possible. This is such a unique opportunity for all decent Cambodians to get support from the most important leaders of the countries in the world who are now well-informed on the atrocities committed by the SRV. 

From the land of the free and from every corner of the world including in Cambodia proper and in Kampuchea Krom, you can start now by signing this petition by going to the following website, http://www.petitiononline.com/Khmer799, making sure to write the word Khmer with K in capital letter.

We need some of you to volunteer as leaders to go around the communities to collect signatures (especially from those who do not have access to the internet) as many as you possibly can and send hard copies of those signatures to the following address:

Attachments:

1 -   Joel Brinkley "Cambodia's Curse" (Foreign Affairs Magazine, March/April, 2009)    

2 - 1948 Geneva Convention on Genocide (United Nations)

3-    Rebecca Sommer:

             a- “Eliminated without Bleeding” video (web link “http://rebeccasommer.org/documentaries/Khmer-Krom/index.php”)

 b- “Khmer Krom in Southern Vietnam Face Oppression from Hanoi Regime,”   (Huffington News Network, March, 2007) 

4 -       “Time of Reckoning for Khmer Krom” (The Phnom Penh Post: Wednesday, February 25, 2009)

5 -   “Dissident to Seek Residence” (The Phnom Penh Post, Wednesday, 08 April, 2009)

6 -   Report of Ambassador K. L. Bindra

Cambodia’s Curse

Struggling to Shed the Khmer Rouge's Legacy

http://jungle-bar.blogspot.com/2009/04/foreign-affairs-hes-govt-destroying.html

Foreign Affairs: March/April 2009

Joel Brinkley

(Comments: Joel Brinkley’s article recently published in Foreign Affairs Magazine is one of the most encompassing look and analysis of the ongoing tragedy of the Cambodian people under Hun Sen and his CPP. I highly encouraged to all those who are sincerely interested in trying to help Cambodia and its people to have a better chance to survive from the Vietnamese and their slaves, Hun Sen and his CPP.

The international community is as much to be blamed for Hun Sen continued oppression and systemic corrupt practice with impunity of the Cambodian people, as it has been showing a tremendous degree of indifference and condoning towards this Cambodian endless tragedy as much as those Cambodians who have sold their soul to the devils.

Nobody can save Cambodia, if the majority of Cambodians, especially those who have the privilege to be living in comfort and freedom in the safe-haven of their host countries such as the USA,  Canada, Australia, and Europe, continue to chose to remain indifferent and even sympathetic to Hun Sen and his CPP.    Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 16, 2009)

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  Theary Seng often thinks of that April morning in 1975 when she watched her parents cheering on the Khmer Rouge as its soldiers marched into Phnom Penh. She was four years old. Within days, Pol Pot's foot soldiers had killed her father; three years after that, her mother died in a prison compound. Today, Theary Seng runs a nonprofit legal-advocacy group in Phnom Penh. She is eager to move on. But the rest of Cambodia, and much of the world, remains mired in the nation's sorrowful past. During its four-year reign, the Khmer Rouge killed as many as two million people. Nowadays, the venal government of Prime Minister HE may take "ten lives or even a hundred lives," she told me in August, "but what's that compared to two million? That's still the Cambodian standard, and that's the international standard."

  The devastation Pol Pot wreaked on his country remains hard to comprehend, even three decades later. His goal, as he put it, was to return Cambodia to "year zero" and transform it into an agrarian utopia. To that end, he purged his nation of educated city dwellers, monks, and minorities, while imposing a draconian resettlement program that uprooted almost everyone else. These measures led to the deaths of one-quarter of the country's population.

  The Khmer Rouge fell in 1979, when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and replaced the regime with a puppet government, in which HE became the foreign minister. When Vietnamese forces pulled out ten years later, they left behind several Cambodian factions battling for control. Then, in 1991, these groups' leaders signed a UN-sponsored peace accord, giving Cambodia the extraordinary opportunity to start over. Before Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and even the Balkans, Cambodia was the international community's grand nation-building project. The country's new constitution awarded Cambodians the human rights, personal freedoms, and other protections of a modern democratic state. And in 1993, the United Nations staged a national election to select a democratic government. After the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia would remake itself at last, and its people would have a chance to thrive.

  But in the 16 years since that election, the government has squandered that opportunity. HE came in second in the 1993 election but muscled his way into the government nonetheless. Four years later, he staged a coup. Since then, his government has been looting Cambodia's natural resources, jailing political opponents, kicking thousands of the weakest out of their homes, and fostering an expansive system of corruption, all the while ignoring any challenges or complaints from organizations and governments around the world.

  "People in America, all they know of Cambodia is the Khmer Rouge," Joseph Mussomeli, then U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, told me in August. "Cambodia is trying to make it in the twenty-first century, but Washington is still stuck in the 1970s." Its perception skewed by this outdated vision, most of the world barely seems to notice that the HE government is destroying the nation.

  GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER

  One word comes up over and over again in conversations with Cambodians: "impunity." Prime Minister HE and his family, aides, and friends do more or less whatever they want and face few consequences. In August, the prime minister's nephew, Hun U-Know-Hu, ran over a motorcyclist while speeding in his Cadillac Escalade, ripping an arm and a leg off the victim. Hun U-Know-Hu began to drive off, but Hun U-Know-Hu had shredded a tire in the accident and was forced to pull over. The Phnom Penh Post described what happened next: "Numerous traffic police were seen avoiding the accident scene, but armed military police arrived. They removed the SUV's license plates and comforted Hun ." According to the newspaper, a military police officer was overheard telling him, "Don't worry. It wasn't your mistake. It was the motorbike driver's mistake." Meanwhile, the victim bled to death on the street. A few days later, Hun U-Know-Hu gave the dead man's family $4,000, and the case was closed.

  The continuing problem of contract killings is the signal example of impunity. Last summer, two men speeding by on a black motorcycle shot and killed Khim Sambor, a reporter for the opposition newspaper Moneaksekar Khmer (Khmer Conscience), and his 21-year-old son as they walked down the street. No suspect has been arrested. Nor have any suspects been arrested for the drive-by shootings, in broad daylight, of dozens, if not hundreds, of trade-union leaders, journalists, and political activists over the last decade or so. Although no one has proved that government officials were behind these murders, the police have made no effort to solve the crimes. Citing the deaths of union leaders in the last four years, the UN high commissioner for human rights said in a report last year that they were "emblematic" for what they revealed "about impunity for crimes which appear to possess a political dimension."

  Perhaps even more revealing is the laxity with which Cambodians long treated Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's foreign minister and a key architect of the Khmer Rouge's ideology. After the Khmer Rouge was deposed, many of its members, including Ieng Sary, went into hiding in the jungle in the western part of the country, from where they waged guerrilla warfare for almost two decades. Ieng Sary moved back to Phnom Penh in the late 1990s, having defected to the government and having been pardoned by King Norodom Sihanouk. In time, he settled in a comfortable housing development for ruling-party officers, down the street from the Senate's golf course.

  To most outsiders, permitting Ieng Sary to quietly return to the capital was akin to allowing Joseph Goebbels, Rudulf Hess, or other Nazi leaders to move back into their Berlin homes after World War II. But Cambodians find it utterly unremarkable that a Khmer Rouge leader lived openly among them for years. Ask anyone how that could be, and you get a puzzled look. And if Ieng Sary faced no retribution and no censure for years, why would the killing of a journalist here or of a trade-union official there raise concerns?

  Ieng Sary was finally arrested in November 2007 to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, along with four other surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. After years of tortured negotiations, the UN convinced the Cambodian government to try Ieng Sary and the others in a hybrid Cambodian-UN court. But delays and charges of corruption are now hobbling the proceedings. (The tribunal announced in January that the first trial would begin in March.) Several court employees have complained that their supervisors are forcing them to kick back 20 to 30 percent of their salaries. These claims have enraged UN officials but have evoked little surprise among Cambodians. After all, they learn about corruption firsthand -- starting in the first grade.

  BAD EDUCATION

  Every day, just before Chhith Sam Ath's two young sons head out the door for elementary school in Phnom Penh, he gives them a small wad of cash. And every day, they hand it to their teacher as they enter the classroom. So do all the other students. Children who do not make the daily payments are likely to get bad grades. In the upper classes, teachers sell students the answers to final examinations -- an expected practice, especially in urban schools. "You go to school and learn how to bribe people," said Chhith Sam Ath, who is executive director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia. As in many developing countries, school attendance is not compulsory. And education officials say that some Cambodian families do not send their children to school simply because they cannot afford the daily bribes.

  Im Sethy, the education minister, told me in August that the ministry's policy is to "cut down on these irregularities." But he also expressed sympathy for the teachers, who are paid $40 a month. "We have to increase the salaries," he said. In the meantime, the ministry has given teachers permission to hold other jobs to supplement their incomes. Im Sethy said that his staff had sent a circular to the schools warning of suspensions and lost promotions if teachers were caught taking bribes. "We catch about a hundred of them a year."

  By neglecting education, Cambodia's leaders are crippling the country's development. Only about 75 percent of Cambodian children even enter the first grade. The average class size is 53 students. In many rural areas, teachers have no more than a third-grade education. Cambodian students repeat grades so often that it takes them an average of ten years to make it through the sixth grade. Only half the children who begin school get that far, and just 23 percent of those who get to the sixth grade make it to high school. And those who do graduate have diplomas that every employer and every university admissions officer will suspect were obtained through bribery rather than study.

  Like many other Cambodian officials, Im Sethy blames the Khmer Rouge for today's educational problems. He notes that about 80 percent of Cambodia's teachers were killed under its rule and only ten percent of the schools were left standing. "We had to organize the education system from scratch," he said. Thirty years later, Im Sethy insisted, the school system is still recovering.

  A ROLLS-ROYCE IN A TRAILER PARK

  Driving around Phnom Penh during the national election campaign last summer, one could see the same poster pasted to almost every fence and wall. "HE saved Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge," it said. Actually, it was the Vietnamese who "saved" Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge; nonetheless, HE's party, the Cambodian People's Party, won the July 27 election by a wide margin, taking 90 of 123 seats in parliament.

  To help assure the party's victory, operatives handed out cash and gifts to voters all over the country in the weeks leading up to the election. In Samrithy, who works for the NGO coordinating organization the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, said that his niece got two shawls and 20,000 riel (about $5). These payouts buy voters' loyalty -- even though after 30 years of HE's party being in power, per capita income stands at about $590 a year and at least one-third of the country lives on less than $1 a day. About eight out of every 100 children in Cambodia die before they reach the age of five, according to UNICEF. Of those who survive, 37 percent are so malnourished that their growth is stunted physically or mentally. Seven percent of Cambodia's children are, in essence, starving to death. Life expectancy, according to UNICEF, is 59 years.

  These problems -- and the government's neglect of them -- are most apparent in places such as Bon Skol, a village of 679 people about 100 miles west of Cambodia's border with Vietnam. Mou Neam is the Cambodian People's Party chief in Bon Skol. He makes earthen cooking pots and earns about $1.20 a day selling them at the market. Mou Neam lives in a two-room shanty on stilts. Like everyone else in the village, he has no electricity, no running water, no telephone, no toilet. But he is relatively well-off and has a small black-and-white television. Once a week, he trudges to town carrying a car battery. With a fresh charge, which costs 50 cents, "I can watch TV for a week," he says with a grin.

  His neighbor, Cha Veun, is not so fortunate. Forty-six years old and toothless, she says she stopped attending school after the second grade. She earns less than 50 cents a day, also making earthen pots. Cha Veun and her family of four live on a ten-foot-by-ten-foot raised platform with no walls and a palm-frond roof that leaks during the rainy season. She has no television or toilet -- or much else.

  About 80 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people live in rural villages like Bon Skol, in conditions more or less like Mou Neam's and Cha Veun's. The government acknowledges that only 16 percent of the population has toilets, leaving the rest -- some 12 million men, women, and children -- to defecate outside, over the aquifers from which they draw water to drink, cook, and bathe.

  Many people in Phnom Penh and other cities disdain HE and the members of his political party for living far beyond their official means. Although a minister's salary is about $300 a month, HE is building himself a four-story mansion the size of a suburban office building, with a heliport on the roof. While it is under construction, HE is staying at his country estate, which has a private golf course. But Cambodians in the countryside seldom see any evidence of this ill-gotten largess. The government controls all the television stations; newspapers, although relatively independent, do not circulate outside the cities; and, according to the government, only about three percent of the population has access to the Internet.

  Most Cambodians in the provinces hear about HE only when he comes to visit, as he did Bon Skol three years ago. On that occasion, the prime minister asked what the village needed. Someone suggested a Buddhist temple, and with a sweep of the hand, HE directed one of his ministers to build one. A gilded edifice now sits in the center of the village, like a Rolls-Royce in a trailer park.

  CORRUPTION RULES

  One afternoon last May, a few months before the election, a convoy of motorcycles and rickshaws pulled up in front of the National Assembly to deliver a petition. The documents, which had been signed by 1.1 million Cambodians -- eight percent of the population -- and filled dozens of boxes, urged the assembly to pass an anticorruption bill that has been languishing for more than a decade. The United States had paid for the initiative. "Our assessment was that there was not the political will to pass the anticorruption law," Erin Soto, who heads the Cambodian office of the U.S. Agency for International Development, told me. "When political will does not exist, it must be built."

  The U.S. embassy in Cambodia has made anticorruption a priority in its relationship with the HE government. It funded two comprehensive studies that were published in 2004 and 2005. They showed in stunning detail that Cambodian government officials steal between $300 million and $500 million a year (most years, the state's annual budget is about $1 billion). In September, after working in Cambodia for several months on a World Bank project, Antonia Corinthia Naz returned home, disgusted by the graft. Naz, an environmental economist from the Philippines, complained that every step along the way, one Cambodian government official or another had demanded a kickback, sometimes asking for 20 percent of Naz's daily salary.

  For Cambodians, this is to be expected. "Everyone is corrupt," said Ok Serei Sopheak, a prominent political consultant. [1] "It's a way of life here. Everything is done under the table." Thus, last spring, it came as no surprise to the motorcycle and rickshaw drivers delivering the boxes filled with the anticorruption petitions that the National Assembly official who greeted them refused to accept the documents.

  TU CASA ES MI CASA

  Corruption and impunity play directly into Cambodia's policy of evicting thousands of poor families from their homes. In 2001, the government enacted a land law that was supposed to establish rules for mediating property disputes. Eight years later, it has yet to write the regulations that would implement the law. In the meantime, the government and its favored developers have simply seized the land they wanted. Phnom Penh is booming, and when a developer spots a choice piece of land, he pays off the relevant official to get a newly minted title and rid the property of its residents, who are almost always poor, uneducated people. When residents resist, the government often charges them with trespassing and throws them in jail.

  Three years ago, soldiers and police officers showed up in the middle of the night outside of Un Phea's crude home in central Phnom Penh. They threw her family and hundreds of her neighbors into the street and torched their homes. The residents were then herded onto buses, ferried 15 miles out of town, and dumped in a rice paddy without so much as a bottle of water or a tarp. This also created a problem for the owner of that paddy. "He had not been told," Yeng Virak, executive director of the Community Legal Education Center, said, recalling that night. "Suddenly, there were 1,000 people on his land."

  Chum Bon Rong, deputy director of the National Land Authority, which is supposed to arbitrate such disputes, told me last summer that his agency had received more than 3,000 land-seizure appeals in the previous two and a half years. Of those, only about 50 cases had been adjudicated in favor of the evicted residents. And some of those cases had subsequently "disappeared," Chum Bon Rong said, after they were referred to another agency tasked with implementing the National Land Authority's findings.

  After people like Un Phea are evicted, they are forgotten. Licadho, a local human rights group, noted in a report published last year that these people routinely suffer from malnutrition and various infectious diseases, as well as stress-related problems and depression. One day in August, Un Phea sat in the mud outside her shanty in what used to be the rice paddy, peeling bamboo shoots -- and seething. "Before, I sold water and some eggs in front of the royal palace and made a good living. Here, it is hard to work," she explained. She is 25 but already looks decades older. "They dumped us here and gave us no money, no land title, nothing." The community has no water, not even a pump. "We have to buy water from the water seller," she said, nodding toward a cistern beside the house. Mosquito larvae roiled the water. Tacked to her shelter's front wall, a poster warned of dengue fever.

  NO STRINGS ATTACHED

  In 2006, the National Land Authority got $615,000 from Japan to buy a computer system -- one of the many donations that are helping bankroll the Cambodian government today, with uncertain results. About 2,000 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and donor groups are registered to work in Cambodia -- more per capita, some of them have said, than in any other country. Aid groups run projects in health, education, the environment, and governance. Every year, they hold a meeting to discuss priorities for the coming year. Invariably, some admonish their peers not to give any money until the government ends the land seizures, puts a stop to the contract killings, and passes the anticorruption law. Year after year, HE and other senior officials exuberantly espouse the donors' goals -- and then return to business as usual. The exercise is "little more than a studied attempt to tell donors what they want to hear," a 2007 UN report lamented. "The government has learned that they are not serious," said Chhith Sam Ath, of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, an umbrella group for about 85 donor organizations. "They do not stand behind what they say."

  Once, just once, a major donor held back money because of government skimming. Charging "misprocurement on 42 contracts and declared non-eligible expenditures" of $12.2 million in 2006, the World Bank withheld funds until the government started returning what had been diverted. Stéphane Guimbert, the World Bank's senior economist in Phnom Penh, says that the bank has set up more stringent financial monitoring. In December, the bank also started a new program called Demand for Good Governance, a $20 million grant to help "NGOs, grass roots groups, independent media, trade unions, etc., to support transparency and accountability programs in Cambodia" -- with the funds, however, to be disbursed to the government.

  In Samrithy, of the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, says donors rationalize giving money even though they know a share of it will be stolen. "Some money goes this way or that way, but it's useful if some of it reaches the poor. Not all of it does, but some does," he said. And so, as the Cambodian government continues to ask for funds, donors continue to disburse them. In 2007, they gave $550 million after the government promised to pass the anticorruption law, and in 2008 they pledged another $689 million. Although the law had still not been passed by the end of 2008, donors pledged almost $1 billion for 2009. On average, donors supply about half of Cambodia's annual budget.

  THE VIRTUES OF DEPENDENCE

  International donors, in other words, are effectively bankrolling the Cambodian state, and that despite economic growth rates that until recently exceeded ten percent. Former U.S. Ambassador Mussomeli said these figures were less impressive than they seemed because Cambodia's recent growth started "from a very low base." At the same time, Cambodia's economy relies on three principal sources of income: textiles, tourism, and agriculture. Its reliance on textiles is so extreme, in fact, that Cambodia has become beholden to U.S. retailers. As Mussomeli put it, "Levi Strauss or the Gap could destroy this country on a whim."

  Another outsider, Chevron, discovered oil offshore several years ago. The company is still trying to determine the size and marketability of the field, but the Cambodian government says it hopes to begin pumping oil in 2011. The International Monetary Fund estimated last year that the country could earn as much as $1.7 billion from oil within ten years of the date pumping begins.

  This worries diplomats and donors: Will oil wealth not simply sluice down the corruption sewer? And with all that new money, will the government still need the NGOs? Without the involvement of international groups, "a lot of services would suffer, maybe collapse," said Suomi Sakai, who headed UNICEF's Cambodian office until last August. For the time being, the government officers who want to attract outside funds -- the better to skim them -- make sure that at least some things are done so that Cambodia shows a good face to international organizations. Kek Galabru, the head of Licadho, whose Web site regularly documents government abuses, says the government largely leaves her alone because it can point to her organization to secure money from the international community. As she put it, "The government can say, 'Look at Licadho. They are free.'"

  If the government no longer needed donor money because of oil revenues, would it shut down Licadho's Web site, take over the newspapers, and crack down in other ways? "The little that has come out now suggests that the pockets of oil are more scattered and may be less commercially viable" than was once thought, said Guimbert, of the World Bank. "That could be a blessing in disguise. But I don't want to discount the black scenario. It could still happen." Hence the need, he said, to bring transparency to government spending. "There is a sense of urgency here."

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This article appears in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

Posted by Jeff at 4/16/2009 10:19:00 AM

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The Khmer Krom are an indigenous people in southern Vietnam, hanging on to their culture, language, Buddhist religion and way of life as a distinct, differentiated people, against all obstacles they endure since Vietnam became a communist country says rights advocate and documentary filmmaker Rebecca Sommer.
 
The New York City-based German citizen -- a frequent contributor to Huntington News Network -- says international human rights organizations have become increasingly alarmed about Vietnam's oppression of the freedom of speech and religion of the Khmer Krom. Numerous reports on severe human rights violations have been repo in Kampuchea Krom.rted, but little has been done by the international community.

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Please, click on :"View Photos" or on the "blank  space" to see some of the most telling and horrific pictures depicting how miserable the daily life of the Cambodian people now living in kampuchea Krom is, under Vietnam's centuries-old practice of genocide against them and other minorities.

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The Khmer Krom, who originated as the "first peoples" in the Mekong River Delta, usually live in villages surrounded by rice fields. The majority of the deeply religious Khmer Krom population sustain themselves with farming, fishing and hunting.
 
Since ancient times, the social and spiritual center of each Khmer Krom village is the community owned and maintained Buddhist temple. Together with the circle of village Elders, the Khmer Krom Buddhists are the religious leaders of their communities, guiding their communities in accordance to the teachings of "peace, nonviolence and harmony with all living beings."
 
Sommer said that Vietnam’s communist leaders in Hanoi continue to forcefully "Vietnamize" the Khmer Krom people in a way that will inevitably deprive them of their traditional land, culture, language, way of life, and their religion.
 
“Once a prosperous people, the Khmer Krom are by now one of the poorest of the poor, in Vietnam,” Sommer added.
 
"For my documentary ‘Eliminated Without Bleeding’ in 2005 various I visited Buddhist temples which were clearly invaded by ethic Vietnamese,” Sommer told HNN. “They build houses in the sacred Temple grounds against the consent of the Khmer Krom community. Schools use the Vietnamese language, and the Khmer Krom have great difficulties finding access to bilingual education. Numerous monks get arrested for teaching in their temples the Khmer Krom language to the village children."
 
Sommer, a representative of the NGO Society for Threatened Peoples International, added: "I investigated especially the situation of the oppression of their religion, and I can tell you, it looked pretty bad. Monks who teach in the temples to their communities historical facts on their peoples get swiftly arrested, disrobed, imprisoned, beaten, even tortured and sometimes killed.”
 
Sommer explained that the Buddhist religion is fully controlled by the Vietnamese authorities, and infiltrated by force and intimidation with communist doctrines. Monks who teach young monks must mix religion with communist propaganda. If they don’t, Sommer said, “they are arrested and disrobed as traitors. Everyone lives in fear, the villagers, the monks, it was extremely depressing to realize, how oppressed these people live, it was terrible. So many Khmer Krom fled Vietnam, and are in limbo as refugees, not recognized by the international community to need serious help."
 
On Feb. 8, 2007, about 200 Khmer Krom Buddhist Monks took part in a peaceful protest in Province Soc Trang, to publicly endorse the Khmer Krom’s plight to the Vietnamese government to be allowed to fully practice their Buddhist religion.
 
"I heard and saw so many examples on how the Vietnamese government is restricting everything they can,” Sommer told HNN. “Buddhist ceremonies are limited, or even banned completely; imagine if your government prohibits you from celebrating Christmas, or tells you that you can only celebrate Christmas in summer! That's how the Khmer Krom feel," said Sommer.
 
Reacting to the peaceful demonstration of the monks, on the first day the local Vietnamese police forces entered the Khmer Krom villages, surrounded their temples and arrested approximately 60 Buddhist Monks, while the rest of the monks escaped and went into hiding.
 
"We got warned, if we even get out of our houses to show solidarity, we would get arrested too," said one Khmer Krom elder who wishes to stay anonymous. " We honor our monks, they are the heart of our Khmer Krom peoples; to see them treated like criminals while they just represent our collective voice and wish to be allowed our religion, is devastating and very humiliating, not only for the monks, for all of us Khmer Krom."
 
The NGO Khmer Krom Federation reports that Vietnamese authorities launched operations on an unprecedented scale, aiming to identify and punish those responsible for the demonstration, hoping consequently to subdue once and for all the emerging human rights movement within the Khmer Krom community.
 
The four temples which where mainly involved with the protest continue to this day to be surrounded by heavily armed police and military units.
 
U.S. Ambassador Michael Marine on March 14, 2007 went to visit one of the surrounded temples in Soc Trang to intervene with the local police and military. RFA told Sommers on March 15 that the ambassador has been told by the Vietnamese authorities to not interfere with Vietnam’s internal affairs.
 
Six Buddhist Monks are currently in prison and were disrobed -- a common practice used by authorities to hold religious people in prison as civilians.
 
"We fear for their lives, we are sure they get tortured at this moment," said Sereivuth Prak, vice president of KKF.
 
The other monks are under house arrest and are not allowed to leave the Temple complex.
 
We hear that they are not even getting food or water," said Prak. "The Khmer Krom communities are under harassment and individuals, especially the families of missing monks are interviewed on a regular basis with intimidating practices in the pursuit of information about organizers and participants of the demonstration."
 
"The Vietnamese military and police forces want to find, detain and punish those monks which they feel are responsible for the protest," said Giap Tran, another representative of the KKF. "We get numerous reports from our frightened communities, all equally disturbing, which we reported to the United Nations."
 
“Vietnam has a well documented history of detaining Khmer Krom monks and village leaders for prolonged periods without charge or trial, as well as the routine and systematic use of torture,” Sommer told HNN.
 
Reacting to the bullying of the demonstrating monks in Vietnam, numerous other monks and Khmer Krom in Cambodia, and those living in exile in the U.S., Canada, France and Australia showed their solidarity and also demonstrated peacefully at Vietnamese embassies, Sommer said.
 
Sadly, one monk, Eang Sok Thoeun, who fled Vietnam and lived in Cambodia may have been murdered after returning from a demonstration of solidarity on Feb. 27, 2007 at the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Phen, Cambodia the next day.
 
He was found dead on Feb. 28, 2007, with his throat slit, and Cambodian authorities claim that he was a drug addict and committed suicide.
 
"This is absurd, they do not even have money to buy food as refugees in Cambodia, imagine a Buddhist monk being on drugs, that is just an outrageous claim," said Giap Tran, from KKF.
 
"I fled together with Eang Sok Thoeun, and lived with him in our refugee hiding place -- for sure I would know if he used drugs, and he did not,” Giap Tran added. “He was a devoted monk, and wanted to promote human rights, nothing else, and that's why he was killed," said a Khmer Krom monk, who wishes to stay anonymous.

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Time of reckoning for Khmer Krom

Written by Brendan Brady

The Phnom Penh Post: Wednesday, 25 February 2009

(Comments: Finally our compatriots and brothers, the Khmer Krom, are now being given some long over due attention, not by the Hun Sen regime  or Sihanouk, but by the international community. At last, the international community has started to acknowledge that the Vietnamese government is conducting a wholesale effort to eradicating the Khmer Krom from their ancestral home land in South Vietnam.

Not only Hun Sen and his CPP did not do anything to defend the Khmer Krom, they even help the Vietnamese government to suppress them, using the so-called treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation, which was imposed on Cambodia in 1979.

This is a continuation of the destruction of the land and people of Cambodia by Vietnam, using their centuries old and successful strategy known as the “Leopard Skin Strategy” consisting of implanting Vietnamese colonizers in small illegal groups of retired soldiers and convicts, then the Vietnamese government would later claim all the land colonized by their citizens as their own.  This Vietnamese colonization and suppression of the Khmer culture, religion, and persons, is a genocide as defined by the 1948 Geneva convention on that subject.

As I said many times before, don’t blame the Vietnamese alone for this crime, but more blame should be attributed to the Cambodian leaders (From Chey Chettha to Hun Sen, passing through Son Ngoc Thanh, Sihanouk, and Pol Pot) who never learned the lesson of history by allying themselves with the Vietnamese. The end of the Cambodian people is near and nothing can be done if most Cambodians do not know their own history, especially the lesson from that history to never ask Vietnam for help. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. February 28, 2009)

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EUROPE TAKES NOTICE AMID REPORTS OF ABUSES 

In December 2008, two Italian parliamentarians - one representing the EU - visited the region to advocate for greater cultural and religious freedoms for Khmer Krom. They were prevented from boarding a flight from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City. The rebuff came from a Vietnamese state tour agency claiming the pair failed to supply sufficient itinerary information before their arrival, but to most local observers it seemed to be a thinly veiled attempt by some Vietnamese government officials to thwart any attempts at advocacy for ethnic Khmers in their country. Two months earlier the EU passed a resolution calling for increased pressure on human rights reforms in Vietnam, including a specific mention of "discrimination" and "persecution" against Khmer Krom, and, in one of its few references to individuals, singled out the case of Tim Sakhorn, an outspoken Khmer Krom monk who disappeared in Phnom Penh 2007, with some reports stating that he was crammed into a Toyota by unidentified assailants. He resurfaced in Vietnam, was charged with violating national unity, and after a year in prison, now reportedly lives under house arrest in Vietnam.

IN February 2007, a young politically active monk was found dead at the Tronum Chhroeung pagoda in Kandal province: His throat had been slit.

The body of the monk, an ethnic Khmer born in Vietnam named Eang Sok Thoeun, was discovered the morning after he had taken part in a demonstration at the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh protesting the treatment of ethnic Khmers in southern Vietnam - a group known in Cambodia as Khmer Krom, or Southern Khmer.

Police declared his death to be suicide and disposed of his body without further investigation. Rights groups and Khmer Krom activists suspected his murder was politically motivated.

This Friday, Khmer Krom clergy will gather at Wat Samaki Reangsay, their spiritual base in Phnom Penh, to commemorate the second anniversary of Eang Sok Thoeurn's death.

The commemoration comes on the eve of a much larger forum to address what rights groups and Khmer Krom activists describe as a persistent and often violent campaign by the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments to stifle the rights and distinct identity of the ethnic group.

Pledge of action

Two centuries ago, what is now the southern delta of Vietnam was part of the Khmer Kingdom. Vietnam says one million ethnic Khmers still live there. Khmer Krom leaders put the number 10 times higher and claim a further 1.5 million Khmer Krom have migrated to Cambodia.

Abuses against Khmer Krom by the Vietnamese state will be raised at the United Nations Human Rights Council in May, according to local rights officials.

In meetings with the UN's special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, and the UN refugee office in Bangkok last month, Ang Chanrith, executive director of the Phnom Penh-based Khmer Kampuchea Krom Human Rights Organisation, was told the international body would call on Vietnamese officials to defend charges against its treatment of Khmer Krom and Montagnard hill tribes, as well as other indigenous groups.

"She said she would take action on the situation and that our case would be presented," he said, adding that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bangkok had also agreed to revisit past reports of official violent suppression received from Khmer Krom  seeking asylum in Thailand. He said the UNHCR had previously not been receptive to these reports. 

The news has renewed hope for Khmer Krom activists. For Young Sin, president of the Khmer Krom Buddhist Monks Association and a former teacher of the slain monk, the United Nations may be able to exert leverage over Vietnam in a way that regional groups cannot.

"If the UN intervenes and puts pressure on the Vietnamese government, it wouldn't dare continue carrying out the kinds of repression it has inflicted on the Khmer Krom people," said Young Sin, who is also abbot of Wat Samaki Reangsay.

A history of violence

Just how politically sensitive the topic is can be judged from the responses from Cambodia and Vietnam to a comprehensive report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the subject. Released last month, the report stated that Khmer Krom monks in Vietnam seeking greater religious and personal freedoms had been unfairly threatened, defrocked and imprisoned. In Cambodia, the rights group said, activist Khmer Krom monks have been deported to Vietnam.

The report - "On the Margins: Rights Abuses of Ethnic Khmer in Vietnam's Mekong Delta" - tracked escalating tensions between Khmer Krom and the authorities on both sides of the border.

Hanoi's Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dzung rejected the report as a "total fabrication", and said freedom of speech and religion in Vietnam were constitutionally protected, the state-controlled Viet Nam News agency quoted him as saying. A spokesman for the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh also rejected the report, saying that his government did not discriminate against any of its 54 official ethnic groups.

HRW also accused the Cambodian government of abetting Vietnam, "a close ally", to suppress the voices of Khmer Krom who flee across the border to Cambodia and advocate for greater freedoms for their communities.

Citing eyewitness accounts and confidential internal documents prepared by Vietnamese security officials, HRW said Vietnamese agents have long operated inside Cambodia with help from the government to identify "cells of reactionary" Khmer Krom and devise "effective measures of interdiction and management".

Rights advocate Ang Chanrith corroborated the charge, saying the Cambodian government allows Vietnamese agents to operate locally: "We often see Vietnamese agents at our gatherings. They wear plainclothes and videotape us in order to identify the monks who attend demonstrations. They speak Vietnamese to each other, and our demonstrators see them often and can now recognise them."

Reaction from the Cambodian government to HRW's report was unsympathetic. Religious Affairs Minister Min Khin declined to comment, while Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith rejected the report's findings, saying "criticism by civil society groups of the [Cambodian and Vietnamese] governments does not help protect the Khmer Krom".

"They don't know anything. They work only for money," he added. "But the Cambodian government works peacefully with Vietnamese authorities for the prosperity of the Khmer Krom."

Reporting in the Cambodian press was mixed. The major newspapers affiliated with the ruling Cambodian People's Party, such as Rasmey Kampuchea and Kampuchea Thmey - did not mention the HRW report, saying they did not receive it. Opposition-affiliated papers did.

Um Sarin, president of the Cambodian Association for the Protection of Journalists, said fears of government disapproval drove some newspapers to ignore the scathing report.

International image

Activists say the consequences of official suppression are thoroughly debilitating.

"Khmer Krom live in poverty, and their identity and religious practices have been destroyed," said Thach Setha, head of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Community. "The Vietnamese government doesn't allow Khmer Krom to use the internet, to listen to Voice of America or Radio Free Asia on the radio, and has blocked our access to education."

But Ang Chanrith is confident international attention to the issue will force Vietnamese authorities to relax their treatment, if not agree to real concessions.

"We have to use international groups to put pressure on the Vietnamese government to allow Khmer Krom to exercise their rights," he said.

He recently returned from a trip to Stockholm, where he presented reports of abuses against Khmer Krom, including allegations of collusion between Cambodian and Vietnamese authorities to keep a tight grip on activists. He is banking on the UN, however, to bring results.

The human rights record of each UN member state is subjected to public scrutiny, or a Universal Periodic Review, every four years. This May, Vietnam's number is up, amid a fresh stream of criticism against its government's treatment of ethnic groups living within its borders.

Sara Colm, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said that given the lack of independent oversight within the tightly controlled communist state, international organisations, including her own, submitted reports to the UN Human Rights Council detailing rights abuses in Vietnam, including the situation of the Khmer Krom. Vietnam is thought to have filed its own report to the UN over statements accusing it of rights abuses, although a spokesman for the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh said he was unaware of any such response.

Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said that although Vietnam has a bitter past with much of the West and remains a communist state, its integration into global markets means it needs to take international opinion into account.

"It's clear Vietnam cares about its international image, including its track record on human rights," he said. "In recent years, it has taken pride in its enhanced global standing through its admission into the World Trade Organization and its election to a two-year seat on the UN Security Council."

"The challenge now is to get the Vietnamese government to replace its rhetoric about human rights with actual progress on the ground.  The government should be trying to engage in peaceful dialogue with the Khmer Krom, rather than throwing them in jail," Adams said.

Meanwhile, as the UN prepares for its review, the monks at Wat Samaki Reangsay rehearse the prayers they will chant for the soul of their slain brethren. Abbot Young Sin said threats will not deter his monks from practising their religion and fighting for others to do so.  And he

rejected accusations that monks are overstepping their role as clergy.

"Buddhism is absolutely compatible with calling for peace," he said. "Advocating for the freedoms for lay people is our responsibility."

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NETH PHEAKTRA 

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Reordained, monk Tim Sakhorn flees: NGO

Written by Meas Sokchea

The Phnom Penh Post; Tuesday, 14 April 2009

(Comments: Now the Reverend Tim Sakhorn is ordained to be a Buddhist monk again, but had to flee to Thailand to escape Hun Sen has been attempting to eliminate him at the request of the Vietnamese. Who needs enemy when we have leader like Hun Sen? The Cambodian society as is since the Angkor time cannot produce any heroic people.

Therefore, the Reverend Tim Sakhorn is an exception. He is a true hero by definition and through the examples of other great heroes in history.

 That is why our small group is trying to use the new change in policy in the Obama Administration based on respect for a more open, decent, and free world, by writing a petition to the president of the United States to use his presidential power with his slogan “Yes We Can” to stop the genocide against the Khmer Krom and to stop Vietnam pursuit of imperialism in Cambodia and Laos known as “Nam Tien” or “Southward March.”

Perhaps more threatening behind this case of wholesale abuse of the Reverend Tim Sakhorn is the implementation of the last phase of the Vietnamization of Cambodia. The persecution of the reverend Tim Sakhorn was done under the so-called Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation that imposed on Cambodia in 1979, during Vietnam occupation of Cambodia from 1978 to 1989, (Please see the content of the treaty and the comments on the illegality of that treaty, posted below).

The arrest of Tim Sakhorn strongly suggests that Vietnam will not tolerate any protest however benign it may be against Vietnam by Cambodian under the above mentioned treaty. More precisely and more dangerously, Vietnam unilaterally reserves the right to intervene militarily by invading Cambodia again, should Hun Sen’s absolute rule is under a real threat of being toppled by the opposition.

Ironically, one can also infer that Hun Sen will allow the opposition to be operating, so long as the opposition is not operationally effective; thus, he can claim that he is in favor of democracy by allowing the oppostion parties to operate within the parliamentary system, under Hun Sen full control.tolerate any protest however benign it may be against Vietnam by Cambodian individual under the above-mentioned treaty. More precisely and more dangerously, Vietnam unilaterally reserves the right to intervene militarily by invading Cambodia again, should Hun Sen’s absolute rule is under any real threat of being toppled by the opposition. One can also infer that Hun Sen will allow the opposition to be operating, so long as the opposition is not operationally effective.  

Unless we, Cambodian-Americans, who are living in complete freedom in this country, will act more vigorously and soon, the fate of the Cambodian people will be in jeopardy. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. April 14, 2009)

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KHMER Krom activist Tim Sakhorn was ordained again as a monk at a pagoda in Battambang on Friday and has now fled to Thailand where he is seeking refugee status, according to Sann Sang, the deputy director of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Community.

"Now, it is up to the UNHCR [the UN High Commissioner for Refugees] to determine if he has the right to stay in Thailand," he said.

He added that Tim Sakhorn would be willing to leave for another country if necessary.

The 41-year-old monk was arrested in June 2007 by Cambodian police and defrocked before being extradited to Vietnam.

But after imprisoning Tim Sakhorn for a year and then keeping him under house arrest, Vietnam allowed him to visit Cambodia, which issued him a visa until April 17.

Even though Tim Sakhorn has said he just wants to live with his family and tend his farm in Cambodia, he did not feel the Cambodian authorities were protecting him, according to Ang Chanrith, the executive director of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Human Rights Organisation.

"When he was arrested, the [Cambodian] government did not take action to protect him, so he has lost confidence in the government," Ang Chanrith said last week.

Christophe Peschoux, the country representative of the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, could not confirm that the monk had fled to Thailand.

"If he went to Thailand, it's because he feels unsafe in his own country," Peschoux said.

 TREATY OF PEACE FRIENDSHIP AND COOPERATION BETWEEN THE PEOPLE’S REPLUBLIC OF KAMPUCHEA AND THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM

The people’s Republic of Kampuchea and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Base on the traditions of militants solidarity and fraternal Kampuchea-Vietnam friendship which have withstood numerous tests and become an indestructible force assuring victory to the cause of the defense and building of each country.

Profoundly realizing that the independence, freedom, peace, and security of the two countries are highly linked and that the two parties have the duty to help each other with all of their strength to consolidate and defend the great revolutionary gains already acquired in the course of nearly 30 years of difficult struggle full of sacrifices.

Affirming that the militant solidarity and the long term, comprehensive friendly cooperation between Kampuchea and Vietnam respond to the vital interests of the people of the two countries and at the same time constitute a factor firmly guaranteeing peace and stability in South East Asia , conforming to the fundamental interests of the peoples of the countries in the region and contributing to the maintenance of world peace.

Convinced that the complete victory of the Kampuchea people under the glorious flag of Kampuchea National United Front for National Salvation, the correct line of independence , sovereignty and international solidarity of each country and mutual respect for legitimate interests constitute the solid basis for the uninterrupted development of relation of friendship and cooperation between the two countries,

Proposing to strengthen the militant solidarity, long-term, friendly co-operation and mutual aid in all areas in order to consolidate independence, build a prosperous country and happy life for the people of each country and  contribute to the maintenance of peace and stability in South-east Asia and in the world in conformity with the objectives of the movement of non-aligned countries and the United Nations Organization Charter,

Have decided to sign the present treaty and are in agreement on the articles listed below :

Article 1

the two parties undertake to their almost to incessantly defend and develop the traditions of militant solidarity and the relations of friendship and fraternal Kampuchea-Vietnam co-operation, mutual confidence and mutual aid in all spheres on  the basis of mutual respect for independence and sovereignty, mutual respect for legitimate interests, non-interference in the internal affairs of the order, equality and mutual benefit.

the two parties undertake to educate the cadres, combatants and inhabitant of respective countries and preserve forever the purity of traditions of militant solidarity and of loyal Kampuchea-Vietnam friendship.

Article 2

On the principle according to witch the defense and build of one’s own country are rightly the work of the people of each country, the two parties undertake to accord each other, mutually and wholeheartedly, support and aid in all spheres and in all necessary forms with a view to reinforcing the capacities to defend the independence, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and peaceful labors of peoples of each country against all maneuvers and all acts of sabotage of the imperialist forces and international reactionaries. the two parties will take efficacious measures to carry out these commitments when one of them so requests.

Article 3

With a view to helping one another to build their own countries and life of well-being and happiness, the two parties will intensify their relations of exchange and fraternal co-operation for mutual interest and will help each other in the economic, cultural, educational, health, scientific and technique fields and in the training of cadres through the exchange of experts and experiences concerning national construction in all spheres.

To attain this goal, the two countries will sign the necessary accords and at the same time intensify contacts and co-operation between the state services concerned and the mass organizations of the two countries.

Article 4

The two countries undertake to settle by peaceful negotiation all the differences witch might arise in the relations between them. the two countries will enter into negotiations to sign a treaty on the delineation of the national borders between the two countries on basic of present border lines and are determined to build border lines of durable peace and friendship between the two countries.

Article 5

The two parties completely respect each other’s line of independence and sovereignty.

the two parties maintain a foreign policy of independence, peace, friendship and non alignment according to the principle of non-interference in any form in the internal affairs of their own country and of refusing to allow any country to use their territory to intervene in other countries.

The two countries take into consideration the tradition of militant solidarity and longstanding fraternal friendship among the Kampuchea, Lao, and Vietnam peoples and undertake to intensify these traditional relations on basis of mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country. the two parties are strengthening their relations in all field with the socialist countries. Being South-East Asian nation, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam maintain a policy of friendly relations and of good neighborliness with Thailand and the other countries of South-East Asia and actively contribute their share to the peace, stability and  prosperity of the South-East Asian region. The two parties are developing their relation of co-operation with the national independence countries (sic), the national liberation movements and the democratic movement. Resolutely supporting the struggle of the people of various countries for peace, national independence, democracy and social progress, the two parties actively contribute to the solidarity and growth of the non-aligned movement against imperialism and the other international reactionary forces with a view to recovering and safeguarding national independence and advancing toward the establishment of a new world economic order.

Article 6

The two countries will have regular exchanges of views on questions concerning the relation between the two countries and international problems of common interest. All questions in the relations between the two countries will be settled through negotiation in a spirit of understanding and of mutual respect, conforming to reason and heart.

Article 7

The present treaty is not aimed at opposing any third country and does not affect the rights and obligations  of each party according to bilateral or multilateral agreements to which it is signatory.

Article 8

The present treaty will enter into effect immediately from the day the letters of ratification are exchanged. The ratification will be carried out according to the procedures of each party.

Article 9

The present treaty is valid for a period of 25 year and will be tacitly extended each time for a period of 10 years if one of the two parties does not inform the other in writing of bits desire to annul the treaty 1 year before the date of its expiration.

The present treaty is made on 18 February 1979 in Phnom Penh, capital of the People’s Republic of  Kampuchea, in two copies, in Cambodian and  Vietnamese, the two copies being equally valid.

For the People’s Revolutionary Council of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea

HENG SAMRIN

President of the People’s Revolutionary Council

For The Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

PHAM VAN DONG

Premier of  the Government

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Some useful notes on the 1979 Treaty of peace , Friendship, and Cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia

1.A.     From a brief glance at the 1979 Treaty, it appears that Cambodia signed the treaty as an independent nation. However, most, if not all of us, know that when this Treaty was signed, Cambodia was under Vietnam’s power (military aggression and dictatorship, and according to various reports, there were about 200,000 Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. In fact, none of the four accords listed above provides for Cambodia to be a neutral state. On closer inspection, the treaty provides for a military alliance. Article 2 of the 1979 Treaty stipulates that parties

“undertake to whole-heartedly support and assist each other in all domains…in order to strengthen…each country against all schemes and acts of sabotage by imperialist and international reactionary forces”.

1.B.     Article 5 of same treaty refers to the “importance [of] the long-standing tradition of militant solidarity [yuddhsammaki] and fraternal friendship between the Kampuchean, Lao and Vietnamese peoples.” Clearly, these articles provide for military partnership between Cambodia and Vietnam.

1.C.     For the above reasons, the1979 Treaty is incompatible with the neutrality status as stipulated under the Paris Peace Accords. Article 1(2)(d) of the Paris Peace Accords 1991, provides that Cambodia promises:

“to terminate treaties and agreements that are incompatible with its…neutrality”.

1.D.     The view that 1979 Treaty is not compatible with the Paris Accords has its supporters. Professor Steve Ratner, who was the Attorney-Advisor of the Office of Advisor of the US State Department and was a member of U.S delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, states that in his opinion this Treaty is incompatible with Paris Accords: (Steven R. Ratner, The Cambodia Settlement Agreements,” American Journal of International Law. 87(1)(1993)).

Source: Radio Free Asia

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