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| Cambodian police chased and beat Buddhist monks who had gathered at the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh on December 17 (2007) to deliver a petition asking for the release of monks imprisoned in Vietnam (The Buddhist Channel). |
By School of Vice
My plan for a restful weekend, free from contention and discord has been thrown into the wind by some of the (shall I say ‘mildly’ disturbing?) comments posted in this forum under an article otherwise carrying a reader’s appeal for reprieve in exactly that: discord among Khmers, so that critical attention could be diverted to helping so many people still being at the mercy of, perhaps, the worst floods I have seen in my life time. So to that reader and others, I offer my sincere apologies!
Of course, some form of discord may not be necessarily a bad thing. Men argue with one another; with ghosts, the gods, spirits, etc. They even argue with themselves, but even this is not a bad sign either! It’s when they cease to argue or communicate that there is a real cause for concern! That said; let me go over some of the points raised.
Japan may have been predominantly governed by one main political party since World War II, but she has never been during that period, ruled by a single one-party state.
Japan's freedom and liberal democracy arose out of the ashes of WWII in which countless thousands of Allied and Japanese lives were lost, and the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still being felt today by many innocent Japanese.
What political system does Cambodia possess? How has she been ruled since 1991? Constitutional monarchy? Liberal democracy? Or a mixture of feudalism and military rule, maybe?
How many incumbent Japanese Prime Ministers had resigned or been forced to resign from office within the last 8 years alone by public pressure and criticism? How many Cambodian PMs have left office within the last 27 years or so despite countless disasters and tragedies?
How had South Korea achieved her political freedom from authoritarian rule in the late eighties? Waves of workers' strikes and demonstrations, plus plenty of violent clashes with the Korean riot police!
The current flooding that is crippling the populace today is perhaps the worst in living memory and not entirely unexpected given the wholesale destruction of the country's natural defence against such "natural" occurrences once provided by abundant rainforest cover.
There is an open war being waged against the Khmer people today on both political and economic fronts, and this war is corroding and killing the body and soul of the Khmer people who - as can be seen from images often posted here - are paying with their lives and limbs.
Peace is all that any rational human being really desires. But what kind of legacy does this present "peace" create for Cambodia's next generation and the one after that? The passed down habit of fear, mistrust, alienation from authority and neighbours, abusive power over others as a certain means to forging personal security for oneself and one's clans only? Do Khmer people have any say in how they like to be governed at all?
To avoid violent change, why not simply listen to the will of the people? Who really destabilised and overthrew those past Cambodian regimes? Who really conspired to exterminate the Khmer 'intelligentsia' without whose support a regime could not last?
While I appreciate the need for 'peace', I appreciate even more and firmly the necessity for secure and lasting peace. I don't know where you live or your standard of living and well-being, but the state that millions of people in Cambodia find themselves in today is barely better than the ones they found themselves in along the Khmer-Thai border of the 1980s. Travelling in the country and talking to ordinary people in Cambodia one senses their deep-seated insecurity and psychological vulnerability that lurk behind their gentle veneers. It's not uncommon for them to weep abruptly or unexpectedly before strangers and each others.
Is this the state of things that deserve to remain as it is, hoping somehow that the very people who have been content to keep them there so far will have a sudden change of heart and lead them off to some sort of Promised Land instead?
Please be more responsible with selecting specific facts to endorse certain points; unless, one deliberately sets out to mislead and misinform others through well-honed eloquence.
And no, there’s no need to go the way of Pol Pot either. There are better options and alternatives beside xenophobia and genocide on the one hand, and living under foreign yoke, on the other. Cambodia does not have to wage a total war with Vietnam or Thailand to defend her sovereignty; there are other means and peaceful venues to consider. There are plenty of small states around the world living next to larger ones who do not compromise their independence or sovereignty in the manner the Cambodian regime is compromising. I can neither grasp nor accept as valid this line of argument that you must chop off your legs in order to walk again, or compromise your freedom so as to preserve it!
When one sees those violent cops beating Khmer Krom monks on the streets of Phnom Penh, who does one think benefit from such coercive measures? The Khmer cops? The Cambodian nation? Or the ones who control and influence their actions? And if a handful of peaceful protesters such as these monks called for such stern measures, does this fact not indicate just how much trepidation this regime and its foreign patron have in store for themselves were 15 million Cambodians, or even half that number, to rise up or simply refuse to accept their rule?
6 comments:
This is another great piece from School of Vice. The comment that warranted your response comes from one of Hun Sen's aides who happened to live in America, but has returned to join Hun Sen. You are totally correct, we cannot compare Cambodia to Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc. Japan has always been a multi-party system that allows greater freedom of expression and assembly/protests where their PMs or governments have on many, many occasions bowed to pressures from the people and resigned. Nothing like this has happened in Cambodia, not under Hun sen for sure.
Korea and Taiwan have emerged from dictatorship with great sacrifices from their people, but even under dictatorship, their people have more rights than we Khmers today, where, if they stand up or speak out about changes, they have always been threatened with arrests or jail terms.
Those who act as an apologist for Hun Sen's brutal rule are often those who benefited from his dictatorship. Without any personal benefits from Hun Sen, they will wake up to the fact and would never dream of defending Hun Sen, but will come out screaming injustice like the rest of us. History has proven that dictatorship and despotism have destroyed Cambodia and have made Cambodia an international beggar until today. We don't want to see this situation going on in Cambodia forever and therefore, one way or the other, Hun Sen must realize his incompetence and mistakes and step down to let other good leaders show their political and leadership talent in rescuing Cambodia from future destruction.
3:02 PM
Very well said, indeed. Thanks for the info.
“Hun Sen's aides who happened to live in America, but has returned to join Hun Sen”?
How can you be certain of this? How and from whom you’ve got this information? Subjectivity should not be the basis of your analysis. This presumption is a pattern that drove you to many errors in the past as well as today. Some of our intellectuals, mostly from the left side of the political spectrum, spent their live times to build their dreamed society and ended-up few decades ago to an almost certain state of complete destruction of their, or rather our beloved homeland Cambodia. Some of them, still alive now, but as we know, do not even recognize their “errors”. Yes I say error, since it is human and “not faults” which implies the notion of blames! This is fact and not history re-written by the winners. No one among Khmer Rouge leaders in the Case 002 of KR Court recognized their faults. Not for the deaths of two millions lives; not for the complete destruction of social tissue; not for the complete absence of an education system (by the way, yes they had a plan to train engineers from scratch just only in seven years!); not for constituting a killing machine that obliged everyone to accuse each other to preserve his own life but ended up by eliminating every one. Among themselves they started to kill Hu Nim, Hu Yun and many others of their companions from Paris. At the end Ta Mok killed Son Sen before the final act of the group. All that is facts can be fully explained by historians.
The problem is that some survivors of the group, contributors on the blog didn’t see that Democratic Kampuchea was the cause of near death of our people as a nation! Yes, no one denied the fact that KR and Communist Vietnam were of the same ideology but turned arch-enemies soon after the Cultural Revolution in China. Yes there used to be animosity between Cambodia and VN since the Seventeen Century, and especially after the lost of Kampuchea Krom to Vietnam. After a decade of dark years of VN occupation, happily our country has been saved by the Paris Accord of 1991. And now Cambodia is member of the ASEAN and enjoys the backing of all of the international institutions as well as many useful friends in the Western world and here in Asia, great countries as Japan, China, and South Korea. In top of this, we are more or less in peace with our neighbors (I am well very conscious about the going on pressure from VN on PP regime)!.
For myself, I have never been member of any political party whiter in power or in the oppositions, since I know for well the burden of this. I used to think that I should be an independent mind, above all parties as much as possible, I know very well that can be very fragile a political standing for an individual who does not want to refrain himself from expressing his idea. I know that I can be easily accused from any side when I say something that is not favorable to their party. I am also knowing for well that I will get nothing in return. Regardless, I keep speaking my conscience for the survival of Cambodia, for the present and for the future: survival today, strength tomorrow with helps from the younger, more educated generations and with supports by more economic development enable by political stability...
I am not completely careless about labeling since, for me, it is always part of Cambodian political culture.
Labeling people is a practice known all along the Cambodian recent history. Event before 1970, first they painted their political rivals as red Khmers or blue Khmers; and generally those painted politicians ended up as traitors and assassinated.
During the Khmer rouge regime, this practice became a very powerful killer machine. Soon after April 1975, the KR labeled every one, mostly “New People”, those deported from cities and towns as CIA agents, KGB agents or Youn agents. The next day after the labeling, they brought those to the killing fields. We can see all along of the three years and half of their reign, even amongst the Khmer rouge cadres, those who had different opinions from “Angkar” were labeled as this or that and ended their lives in Office S21 famously known as Toul Slaeng. Millions more ended their last days in many killing fields dotting all over the country.
Here I simply speak my mind against the idea of another possible endless war in my country Cambodia. You and I all know that wars bring destructions, lost of lives most of the times among innocent people. War ruins our economy and most importantly deprives children and younger generation from the right to education. There were no schools under Democratic Kampuchea as well as during the State of Kampuchea under VN occupation. Do we need all that again for Cambodia because you are not at the helm of the country?
I can be wrong in my opinion as Khmer with national conscience, without political affiliation, without any interests what so ever in any position associated with the power in Phnom Penh.
4:42 AM, I know who the writer is. I can even name him, but I'm not going to name here, unless he personally challenge me to name him.
So what's the plan now?!
You guys wanted to get rid of Hun Sen without the bloodbath right? And you can not wait 30 years for him to retire!.I heard he got lung or throat cancer? But that was just the wishful thought/rumor parts of his opponents. Hun sen was ruthless in the past for power and at present he shows no sign of willingness to let go of his hard earned power.
Do you guys have any thoughts of helping Hun Sen to get ASEAN Presidency(?) or its secretary general post so that Khmer premiership could become vacant/ available for us to compete! Just asking! Never Mind!
Oh,this is personally to School of Vice and Khmerization..... A friend of mine who wrote the appeal asked me to thank you both for posting it over the week end but I can tell you that he was in tear on the phone saying "all I've asked was a temporary.. but ...then.."
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