A Change of Guard

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Wednesday 17 October 2012

Plane carrying body of Cambodia’s late King Norodom Sihanouk brings monarch home from China

Photo by DAP-NEWS
Photo by DAP-NEWS
Photo by DAP-NEWS
Photo by DAP-News
By Associated Press,  
Updated: Wednesday, October 17, 2012

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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