The election campaign sweeping the country has not made it to Neang
Sorn’s home, nor to any of her neighbors, in this floating village
tethered to the banks of the Tonle Sap river on the edge of Phnom Penh.
“The CPP has never come to give us rice or kramas or anything. No CPP
working group has come to talk to us. No one from the Cambodia National
Rescue Party [CNRP] has come either,” she said.
But for Ms. Sorn, and probably many other members of Cambodia’s
ethnic Vietnamese community, the choice of who to vote for on July 28 is
an easy one.
“Most Vietnamese support the CPP because we see that they have made it easy for us to live here,” she said.
While the CPP has historic ties to Vietnam for providing the army
that toppled the Khmer Rouge in 1979, opposition politicians have long
used anti-Vietnamese sentiment among ethnic Khmer voters to rally
support against the ruling party.
The opposition also has long accused the government of a lax
immigration policy that has made the country inviting to immigrants from
its larger neighbor.
Estimates on the actual number of ethnic Vietnamese citizens vary
widely. According to a 2010 Ministry of Planning commune survey, ethnic
Vietnamese number about 90,000, while the U.S. CIA’s World Fact Book,
which is not an authoritative source, estimates the figure to be about 5
percent of the country’s 15.2 million population, or more than 700,000
people, making them the single largest ethnic group.
While the CNRP has promised to tone down its campaign rhetoric
against the presence of Vietnamese in Cambodia, the harsh
anti-Vietnamese platform previously taken by opposition leaders Sam
Rainsy and Kem Sokha have the country’s ethnic Vietnamese firmly in the
ruling party’s corner.
Som Sophat, 58, whose Vietnamese name is Nguyen Van Hung, was born in
Cambodia, fled during the Lon Nol regime and returned in 1988. He said
he was granted official citizenship in 1993, just in time to vote in the
country’s first democratic elections.
As the owner of an air-conditioner repair shop near Monivong Bridge,
he has been a staunch supporter of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who he refers
to simply by his honorific “Samdech,” and is a longtime member of the
ruling CPP.
“Samdech allows Vietnamese people to make a good living. Samdech has a
good policy because he does not force the deportation of Vietnamese,”
he said, adding that this was in stark contrast to what he believed to
be the opposition party’s policies.
“The CNRP doesn’t care about the Vietnamese because if they win the
election, they will deport Vietnamese people and make our lives
difficult,” he said, sitting in his small cement home, which is
surrounded by cafes, motorepair shops and lumber depots, all with signs
written in both Vietnamese and Khmer.
Son Chhay, a National Assembly candidate for the CNRP in Phnom Penh,
said that a concerted effort has been made by the opposition party this
year to stress the implementation of existing immigration laws, rather
than singling out Vietnamese immigrants, illegal or otherwise.
“As the opposition, we are careful that when we mention illegal
migrants, we take our language more responsibly,” he said, adding “I
think even in the past there has been misunderstanding about our policy,
which is for respecting the law of the country, rather than being a
racist stance.”
However, Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese voters are justifiably wary of
the opposition party’s intentions if they are voted into power.
In past campaigns, Mr. Rainsy and Mr. Sokha repeatedly promised to
rid the country of what they said was the menacing influence of the
“yuon”—a term considered derogatory by some when referring to Vietnamese
people—at all levels of society.
“If I win this election, I will send the yuon immigrants back,” Mr.
Rainsy told an audience at Wat Phnom while on the campaign trail in
1998. “The government works for the yuon…. If the Sam Rainsy Party wins,
there will be no more yuon puppets,” he added.
During that same campaign Mr. Sokha, then the secretary-general of the now-defunct Son Sann party, sent out a similar message.
“If we win, we will send all the yuons to Vietnam,” he told a crowd of hundreds in Takeo province.
The opposition’s tendency to play to fears born from Cambodia’s
history of conflict with Vietnam has in many ways undermined its effort
to lead a truly democratic movement in the country, said an NGO worker
who has been working with Vietnamese and Khmer communities along the
border for the past decade and asked not be named so his organization
would not be seen as taking sides on such a sensitive issue.
“It is a shame that Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha have used
anti-Vietnamese feelings to promote their political interests because
they also say they want to be a democratic alternative,” he said.
Mr. Chhay has himself been outspoken about the threat of too many
Vietnamese immigrants in the country. In a 2002 interview, he said:
“Without serious action by the government, Cambodia will soon move
closer to a deeper problem: We [Cambodians] will be a minority in our
own land,” a statement that he said he still stands by today.
“I think it is the government’s responsibility to protect the border
against so many illegal migrants. The Vietnamese seem to receive a
privileged [immigration] policy, from the Vietnamese government in 1980s
until the present time,” he said Tuesday, referring to the
Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea, which first promoted
Mr. Hun Sen to prime minister in 1985.
But while the opposition insists that ethnic Vietnamese who are
already naturalized Cambodian citizens have nothing to fear from a
CNRP-led government, Quoc Thai, 31, who has lived in Cambodia for 10
years, says that he knows how the opposition leaders really feel about
ethnic Vietnamese citizens like him.
“Sam Rainsy has made it clear that he hates Vietnamese, so how can we
vote for the opposition party,” Mr. Thai said at a coffee shop across
from a bus station where he sells tickets.
“We support the CPP because if the CPP are elected, we can continue
to live in Cambodia,” he said, adding that his own family’s integration
into Cambodian society—his mother is a rice wholesaler at O’Russei
market—has been smooth under the administration of Mr. Hun Sen.
And while widespread resentment toward ethnic Vietnamese persists in
Cambodia today, violent manifestations of such feelings have eased
significantly since the 1990s, when Vietnamese were the target of
attacks and mob killings during times of political tension.
In the early 1970s, the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime implemented
pogroms aimed at ridding Phnom Penh of Vietnamese influence, killing
hundreds of ethnic Vietnamese and forcing thousands more to flee back to
Vietnam.
Those ethnic Vietnamese who remained in Cambodia were targeted for
mass extermination once the Khmer Rouge took full control of the
country; charges that the Khmer Rouge executed a full-fledged genocide
against ethnic Vietnamese is among the charges yet to be heard in Case
002 at the Khmer Rouge tribunal. The Khmer Rouge continued to pillage
what it said were Vietnamese villages up until the early 1990s.
In separate incidents in September 1998, mobs killed four ethnic
Vietnamese in what were believed to be racially motivated attacks.
Officials with the U.N. and the Vietnamese Embassy said the violence was
related to anti-Vietnamese rhetoric being used by opposition
politicians during protests of the previous month’s election results.
But while violence against ethnic Vietnamese is not currently a
pressing concern, and the opposition party has now toned down its
anti-Vietnamese rhetoric, the thinly veiled threats of a “foreign”
influence on society continue to be part of Mr. Sokha’s stump speeches
in this year’s campaign.
Kim Sophal, 62, who was sitting quietly on a bench listening to a
hand-held radio along a narrow concrete street in Prek Pnov commune’s
Kandal village, with the floating village just a few hundred meters
away, said he too is worried about the influx of Vietnamese into the
country.
“I am worried about more Vietnamese coming in because it will affect
the economy. There won’t be jobs for Cambodians. Also, when more of them
have citizenship they can control the mandate and vote for someone who
supports only their interests,” Mr. Sophal said.
Village chief Chhim Phally said that there were 57 ethnic Vietnamese
families in his village with citizenship, and dozens of others who had
received permission to “temporarily” live on the banks of the river
below his stilted wooden home.
“It’s not a problem because they just come here peacefully,” he said,
noting that the main occupation of the ethnic Vietnamese villagers has
shifted from fishing to construction work as fish stocks in the Tonle
Sap have been steadily depleted.
“For life, [the presence of Vietnamese immigrants] is not difficult. But for business, it presents a challenge,” he said.
6 comments:
The united of Ken Sokha & Sam Rainsey will everlastingly save Cambodia, our homeland, from disappearing from the world map. However, the success of CNRP requires the dedication and support from all Cambodians to vote for CNRP (7).
All Khmers wake up and see the reality surround you. Ho Chi Minh vision of Vietnamization of Cambodia has been in pregress and if we don't stop, there will be no more Cambodia in 20 years.
Please VOTE CNRP (7) for our children future.
LOVE to all Khmers,
Most of them are illegal, and being illegal means they can't vote. We should stop being racist and calling the Vietnamese the "N"igger word, can't we? Good grief.
There is nothing wrong calling the Youn, as Youn. How can we Khmer be racist toward the Youn when they illegally live in Cambodia breaking the law by illegally destroying the forest, the Khmer resources (fishery, Minning, sea) and even illegally steal the Khmer territory such as Koh Tral having had signed land treaties with CPP to allow more Youn to move inside the Khmer border?
4:18 am, yes they are illegal but the CPP issued them with voting IDs so they can vote because these Vietnamese usually voted for the ruling CPP.
ពិតប្រាកដណាស់ បើមិនដូរ អាលេខ៤ ចេញនោះទេ ពូជយួនវា
កាន់តែចូលកើនឡើងពេញស្រុក ខ្មែរ ថែមទៀតពុំខាន
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3JlcVIGl2k
លេខ ៤ នាំយួនចូលស្រុកជា រឿងពិត
It is easy to tell the different between Youn and Cambodian women. As you can see the lady on her canoe, Youn lady seat down with their legs wide open and ready to attack you. So, be careful. On the 7-28-13, all Khmer authority must do a good job to protect Khmer interest.
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