By ,
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The body of
Cambodia’s late King Norodom Sihanouk returned to his homeland on a
plane from China on Wednesday, welcomed by tens of thousands of mourners
who packed tree-lined roads in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital
ahead of the royal funeral.
Sihanouk, 89, died Monday of a heart attack in Beijing, where he had been receiving medical treatment since January.
The former monarch was the last surviving Southeast Asian leader who
pioneered his nation through postwar independence. He served as prime
minister and twice as king before abdicating the throne for good in
2004.
His son and successor, King Norodom Sihamoni, had traveled
with Prime Minister Hun Sen to Beijing this week to retrieve the body.
Both men accompanied the royal casket as it returned to Cambodia on
Wednesday on his final journey home.
The casket will be driven
from the airport to Royal Palace, where it will lie in state for three
months, during which time the public can pay respects before it is
cremated according to Buddhist ritual.
More than 1,000 people,
some with tears in their eyes, gathered outside the palace in
swelteringly hot weather, many of them kneeling before a portrait of the
late monarch. They carried flowers, lit candles, burned incense and
prayed.
“I needed to come here today to pray and see the body of
the king because he dies only one time, not twice,” said Khy Sokhan, a
73-year-old woman in a wheelchair outside the palace.
In Beijing
late Wednesday morning, traffic authorities cleared several roads and a
highway as a bus festooned with yellow flowers and apparently carrying
Sihanouk’s body traveled to the airport with a few dozen black cars and
minibuses.
China’s state television carried live coverage of the
procession while Chinese flags at Tiananmen Square and other key
locations in the capital flew at half-staff. China’s Foreign Ministry
said State Councillor Dai Bingguo was escorting Sihanouk’s body to
Cambodia.
Sihanouk played many roles in the Cambodia he helped
navigate through half a century of war and genocide. He was a known as
revered independence hero, communist collaborator, eccentric playboy,
and a cunning and sometimes ruthless monarch and prime minister.
First
crowned king in 1941, he stepped down in 1953 to pursue a political
career. He became head of state, and during the Cold War tried to steer
his country on a neutralist course.
Eventually, however, his
country became enmeshed in the conflict in neighboring Vietnam, leading
to his first fall from power and culminating in the murderous rule of
the communist Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s, during which about 1.7
million of his countrymen perished.
His legacy became tainted
because in an effort to regain his political influence, he made common
cause with Khmer Rouge, though the regime never yielded power to him and
killed five of his children.
After the Khmer Rouge were ousted
and Sihanouk regained the throne in 1993, he rebuilt his reputation as
the conscience of his country. But Hun Sen, a tough and canny politician
who had defected from the Khmer Rouge, undercut his influence, and a
discouraged Sihanouk gave up the throne eight years ago. Sihanouk spent
much of the rest of his life in China.
The passage of time and
Sihanouk’s retreat into quiet retirement in China made the once-dynamic
monarch more of a historical figure than a contemporary statesman, but
his passing was noted internationally.
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