By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Guam Pacific Daily News
March 3, 2010
I promised last week to discuss today the 25-year treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation concluded by Heng Samrin, a former Khmer Rouge commander who is now a leader in Cambodia's government, and Vietnam's prime minister Pham Van Dong on Feb. 18, 1979.
This treaty binds Cambodia and Vietnam in what the treaty terms, "militant solidarity and fraternal friendship." In a stroke of the pen, the signatories extol a symbiosis of interests between Cambodia and Vietnam, opening the door to an even more thorough Vietnamization of Khmer land and culture than might have taken place in a federation of the states of the former French Indochina.
Retired Johns Hopkins professor Naranhkiri Tith observes on his Web site that the 1979 treaty between Hanoi and its puppet in Phnom Penh "became official in 2005" when Cambodia's King Sihamoni, "with the support of his father Sihanouk," put his royal signature on "supplements" to the treaty, thereby making Cambodians complicit in the Vietnamization of Cambodia.
Some readers have requested a review of Vietnam's historical expansionism and its contemporary revolutionary activities that ended with the 1979 treaty. I will provide that review today and then deal with the treaty.
A saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention."
Vietnam, which broke off its thousand-year bondage to China in 939, began its southward movement a few decades later, to escape Mongol and Chinese military threats in the north. Migration to the west was hampered by natural and physical barriers. To the south, the territory was unoccupied and the land was fertile. The horizon seemed infinite.
The migration was ongoing, even as other kingdoms were encountered. In 1406, the ancient kingdom of Champa's capital, Vijaya, was seized and the kingdom was extinguished in 1471. Then, in 1630, Vietnamese princess Ngoc Van, married to Khmer King Chey Chetha II, promoted Vietnamese settlements in the low delta in Khmer Preah Suakea (Ba Ria) and Prey Nokor (Saigon).
The 1979 friendship-cooperation treaty brings Hanoi's influence as far west as the border with Thailand.
What started as a necessity dictated by the search for security and growth became a strategy for expansionism. The intention to expand its influence is illustrated even in the name of the political party founded by modern Vietnam's leader, Ho Chi Minh, in 1930 -- the "Communist Party of Indochina." Ho Chi Minh didn't just want to liberate Vietnam from the French; he defined the task of CPI "to make Indochina completely independent."
In 1941, Minh created the Viet Minh, an abbreviation of "Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi," or "League for the Independence of Vietnam," and spread its anti-French activities to Laos and Cambodia, where the Viet Minh later fragmentized the anti-French local Khmer Issarak front into a Khmer Viet Minh front.
In 1949, the Viet Minh instituted the "Ban Van Dong Thanh Lap Dang Nhan Cach Mang Cao Mien" -- "Canvassing Committee for the Creation of the Revolutionary Kampuchean People's Party" -- and created the Kampuchean People's Liberation Army in 1950.
Although the CPI was dissolved to demonstrate Vietnam did not harbor expansionist intentions toward its neighbors, it resurfaced in February 1951 as the Vietnam Workers' Party (Lao Dong), with the same agenda. In November of that year, the Revolutionary Kampuchean People's Party was created. It has been said the RKPP and the Cambodian local Communist Pracheachon Party were one and the same.
As Prince Sihanouk wrote in February 1960, the Pracheachon Party was "working indefatigably ... and specifically to bring Cambodia under the heel of North Vietnam."
Finally, in 1952, the Hanoi-created "Kampuchean Resistance Government" emerged to rival Sihanouk's royal government.
When the 1954 Geneva Accords ordered the Viet Minh to leave Cambodia, they took with them to Vietnam between 4,500 and 8,000 Cambodians, mostly young children.
According to Cambodian Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Kampuchea was born on Sept. 30, 1960, after the first party congress of 21 people met for three days and three nights. According to Pol Pot, a Cambodian revolutionary movement that "truly belonged to our people," existed prior to the Geneva Convention, but its dissolution after the 1954 agreement was acknowledged because "people lacked a correct and enlightened guideline." Pol Pot described 1968 as the year when armed struggle -- civil war -- began.
Undoubtedly, Hanoi was aware that its publicly proclaimed "fraternal brothers and sisters," the Khmer Rouge, were not so "fraternal" privately, and it knew its relationships with the Khmer Rouge were unsatisfactory. But Hanoi let the Khmer Rouge be while it looked to building its own Kampuchean puppets. Hanoi was biding its time.
And as it was fighting a war against the Americans in Vietnam, Hanoi threw in its battle-tested troops to fight Lon Nol's republican army, enemies of Prince Sihanouk, who had allied himself with Hanoi. It was Hanoi's troops that routed Lon Nol's army and put Pol Pot in power in Phnom Penh.
Neither Hanoi nor the world governments intervened to stop the genocide that followed. However, when the Khmer Rouge's fierce independence of Hanoi was more than the latter would tolerate, Hanoi concluded it was time to teach its insolent comrades a lesson. The invasion of Cambodia followed, on Christmas Eve 1978.
Phnom Penh was captured and a subservient regime was installed, leading to the signing of the February 1979 treaty between the master and the puppet comrades.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
Guam Pacific Daily News
March 3, 2010
I promised last week to discuss today the 25-year treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation concluded by Heng Samrin, a former Khmer Rouge commander who is now a leader in Cambodia's government, and Vietnam's prime minister Pham Van Dong on Feb. 18, 1979.
This treaty binds Cambodia and Vietnam in what the treaty terms, "militant solidarity and fraternal friendship." In a stroke of the pen, the signatories extol a symbiosis of interests between Cambodia and Vietnam, opening the door to an even more thorough Vietnamization of Khmer land and culture than might have taken place in a federation of the states of the former French Indochina.
Retired Johns Hopkins professor Naranhkiri Tith observes on his Web site that the 1979 treaty between Hanoi and its puppet in Phnom Penh "became official in 2005" when Cambodia's King Sihamoni, "with the support of his father Sihanouk," put his royal signature on "supplements" to the treaty, thereby making Cambodians complicit in the Vietnamization of Cambodia.
Some readers have requested a review of Vietnam's historical expansionism and its contemporary revolutionary activities that ended with the 1979 treaty. I will provide that review today and then deal with the treaty.
A saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention."
Vietnam, which broke off its thousand-year bondage to China in 939, began its southward movement a few decades later, to escape Mongol and Chinese military threats in the north. Migration to the west was hampered by natural and physical barriers. To the south, the territory was unoccupied and the land was fertile. The horizon seemed infinite.
The migration was ongoing, even as other kingdoms were encountered. In 1406, the ancient kingdom of Champa's capital, Vijaya, was seized and the kingdom was extinguished in 1471. Then, in 1630, Vietnamese princess Ngoc Van, married to Khmer King Chey Chetha II, promoted Vietnamese settlements in the low delta in Khmer Preah Suakea (Ba Ria) and Prey Nokor (Saigon).
The 1979 friendship-cooperation treaty brings Hanoi's influence as far west as the border with Thailand.
What started as a necessity dictated by the search for security and growth became a strategy for expansionism. The intention to expand its influence is illustrated even in the name of the political party founded by modern Vietnam's leader, Ho Chi Minh, in 1930 -- the "Communist Party of Indochina." Ho Chi Minh didn't just want to liberate Vietnam from the French; he defined the task of CPI "to make Indochina completely independent."
In 1941, Minh created the Viet Minh, an abbreviation of "Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi," or "League for the Independence of Vietnam," and spread its anti-French activities to Laos and Cambodia, where the Viet Minh later fragmentized the anti-French local Khmer Issarak front into a Khmer Viet Minh front.
In 1949, the Viet Minh instituted the "Ban Van Dong Thanh Lap Dang Nhan Cach Mang Cao Mien" -- "Canvassing Committee for the Creation of the Revolutionary Kampuchean People's Party" -- and created the Kampuchean People's Liberation Army in 1950.
Although the CPI was dissolved to demonstrate Vietnam did not harbor expansionist intentions toward its neighbors, it resurfaced in February 1951 as the Vietnam Workers' Party (Lao Dong), with the same agenda. In November of that year, the Revolutionary Kampuchean People's Party was created. It has been said the RKPP and the Cambodian local Communist Pracheachon Party were one and the same.
As Prince Sihanouk wrote in February 1960, the Pracheachon Party was "working indefatigably ... and specifically to bring Cambodia under the heel of North Vietnam."
Finally, in 1952, the Hanoi-created "Kampuchean Resistance Government" emerged to rival Sihanouk's royal government.
When the 1954 Geneva Accords ordered the Viet Minh to leave Cambodia, they took with them to Vietnam between 4,500 and 8,000 Cambodians, mostly young children.
According to Cambodian Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Kampuchea was born on Sept. 30, 1960, after the first party congress of 21 people met for three days and three nights. According to Pol Pot, a Cambodian revolutionary movement that "truly belonged to our people," existed prior to the Geneva Convention, but its dissolution after the 1954 agreement was acknowledged because "people lacked a correct and enlightened guideline." Pol Pot described 1968 as the year when armed struggle -- civil war -- began.
Undoubtedly, Hanoi was aware that its publicly proclaimed "fraternal brothers and sisters," the Khmer Rouge, were not so "fraternal" privately, and it knew its relationships with the Khmer Rouge were unsatisfactory. But Hanoi let the Khmer Rouge be while it looked to building its own Kampuchean puppets. Hanoi was biding its time.
And as it was fighting a war against the Americans in Vietnam, Hanoi threw in its battle-tested troops to fight Lon Nol's republican army, enemies of Prince Sihanouk, who had allied himself with Hanoi. It was Hanoi's troops that routed Lon Nol's army and put Pol Pot in power in Phnom Penh.
Neither Hanoi nor the world governments intervened to stop the genocide that followed. However, when the Khmer Rouge's fierce independence of Hanoi was more than the latter would tolerate, Hanoi concluded it was time to teach its insolent comrades a lesson. The invasion of Cambodia followed, on Christmas Eve 1978.
Phnom Penh was captured and a subservient regime was installed, leading to the signing of the February 1979 treaty between the master and the puppet comrades.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
6 comments:
Man, this guy's portrait is bigger than Khmerization itself. What's the deal here?
This guy needs a real job that is why his portrait is begger than khmerization itself.
Ah kwack doesn't understand your Phd crabs!!!
Youn is covertly taking control of Cambodia. Ah Saddam Hun Sen allows Hanoi agents to blend in and living quietly among the populations. Hanoi agents spy and gather intelligent around Cambodia. Hanoi agents know every inch of Cambodia's geography. They will silence anyone who criticize Youn. In Cambodia, it's a capital punishment to speak negatively of Youn. Youn is using a very dirty and nasty tricks to take this last piece of very highly valuable territory of Cambodia. When the time is right, Youn will make the move. Youn will never cease the ambition of having Cambodia.
Dr. Peang-Meth these days like to quote his good friend, Dr. Tith, to attack Sihanouk and the current king for signing to ratify the 1985 supplemental treaty in 2005. As a Ph.D and a former professor, one would expect Prof. Peang-Meth to fully understand Cambodia's constitution which states "the king shall reign but does not rule". Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy, not an absolute monarchy and therefore the king has no power, except to fulfill his constitutional duty. If Dr. Peang-Meth remember very well he would have known that King Sihamoni did not voluntarily, "with the support of his father Sihanouk", signed the 1985 supplemental treaty in 2005 as stated by Dr. Tith. King Sihamoni and Sihnouk strongly stressed that they opposed the treaty and signalled that the king might not sign the treaty, but Hun Sen angrily and publicly threatened to topple the king and dissolve the monarchy if the king refused to sign the treaty. This article is an excellent piece without this erroneous quote from Dr. Tith.
I do agree that Sihanouk has done many bad things, but he has done very good things also. We must give credit where his credit is due. His son, Sihamoni has done nothing bad as yet. I don't defend Sihanouk's bad action, I just wanted to point out that, regarding the 1985 supplemental treaty ratified in 2005, King Sihamoni and Sihanouk did not agree to sign as claimed by Dr. Tith. The king only agreed to sign after Hun Sen threatened him with a coup and the dissolution of the monarchy. If we are in Sihamoni's shoes, what would we do? refused to sign and get arrested by Hun Sen after he staged a coup? Either we or Dr. Tith or even Dr. Peang-Meth will sign if we are all in Sihamoni's shoes. A constitutional king has to sign any documents presented by the government. Emperor of Japan, king of Thailand (sometimes he refused because the army backs him), Queen of Sweden, Queen of Denmark etc have to sing all the documents presented to them by the government because the constitution say so and the queen of England has to sign all the documents presented to her by the government because this is the throne's tradition and they have to respect the constitution. Anything goes wrong the government will take full responsibility according to the constitution. So, for the 1985 supplemental treaty signed in 2005, it is all Hun Sen's responsibility for forcing the king to ratify it.
4 March 2010 8:14 AM,
I am with you 100%. You have raised several good points which I truly agree with.
Without Sihanouk, Cambodia could be in a worse shape since most Cambodians in power only look after themselves and not Cambodia.
Unity and working for the country seem to be the qualities that evade Cambodians so what is happening to the country is not unusually surprising.
8:14 AM, so what do you have to say about Cambodian complicit in Vietnamizaion?
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