By Professor Naranhkiri Tith

SAIS, The Johns Hopkins University

Washington, DC

July 2000

Introduction:

The purpose of this paper is to explore the causes and sources of the continued suffering of the majority of the Cambodian people and the continued hold of power in Cambodia by the criminal regime of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). At the same time, the international community appears to also capitulate to Hun Sen' s threats and manipulations. Cambodians are now in these death traps that are built by both the Vietnamese and our own people, and it will not be easy to get out of them.

It is hoped that by looking squarely into the causes and sources of this tragedy, future generations of Cambodians inside and outside Cambodia might be able to come up with new ideas in order to allow the Cambodian people to get out safely from these death traps.

Most Cambodians still blame the Vietnamese for all the disaster that befell on Cambodia since the  18th century. It is true that Vietnam has been trying to colonize Cambodia for almost three centuries. It is true that this colonialist policy of Vietnam continues until today. The invasion of Cambodia in 1978 was the most obvious and recent manifestation of that imperialist policy.

Despite the fact that the invasion of Cambodia was acknowledged by the international community as an act of aggression and Vietnam was overwhelmingly condemned for that action at the United Nations, Vietnam succeeded in installing a subservient government, the CPP before withdrawing.

More importantly, it has succeeded to turn the table around in its favor by judiciously playing the Khmer Rouge card, and by using and enhancing its own image as victim of foreign aggressions. Although, Cambodia has also been a victim of one of the worst holocausts in modem history, the Cambodian people are not viewed as victims of a foreign aggression but rather of their own making.

For instance, Vietnam fought against France, China and the United States and very successfully. While in Cambodia, Sihanouk gave permission to the US to carpet bombing the Eastern part of Cambodia without informing those who lived in that area, and while the CPP allowed the Vietnamese army to invade Cambodia in order to save their own skin. These events showed that Cambodians are insensitive to the well-being of their own people, and therefore, from the international community's point of view, they are not victims of any foreign aggressions. On the contrary, Vietnam has become not the invader of Cambodia, but its liberator.

At this point, it is interesting to ask the following questions

1.  Why did the international community remain almost indifferent to this Vietnamese imperialist policy?

2.  Why did the international community continue to bend backward to support the criminal regime of Hun Sen and the CPP, despite its continued gross violation of human rights and naked abuses of democratic principles and civil society?

3.  Why are Cambodians not able to behave more like victims rather than victimizers? Are cultural isolation and intellectual disconnection the main causes of this bad image of Cambodians?

4.  And if Cambodians have such a bad image, how are they going to do to changing it?

(See the appendix entitled: The Vietnamese Issues)

There is little doubt that Vietnam continues to consolidate its imperialist grip on Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam has been building the death trap for Cambodians for the last three centuries.

Let us now examine the reasons why Vietnam has been successful in its colonialist policy. Contrary to the majority of Cambodians, this writer believes that the Vietnamese are not the only ones to be blamed for the demise of the Cambodian people. The blame must also be borne by the Cambodian people or at least by some of them, especially the Khmer Rouge, the Royalists, and the CPP. By sheer ignorance or callousness, these three groups of Cambodians also contributed to the building of the death trap for their own people.

Vietnam continued to maintain a closed relationship proclaimed in 1979 as irreversible" with its wartime partners and friends, the Pathet Lao and the CPP. A most recent meeting which took place last October, in Vientiane between the former three wartime partners testified to that ongoing and still strong alliance between these three countries under Vietnam leadership. This meeting took place despite the fact that members of ASEAN are not supposed to have a sub-block within it.

The recent security problem created by some Loa resistance and anti communist movement prompted the government of Laos to request for Vietnam help. The visit to Vietnam by Hun Sen just Three days before the 1997 Hun Sen' s coup against FUNCINPEC, was also another manifestation of that irreversible policy and alliance, and of Vietnam's continued strong hold on its smaller former Indochina partners.

At this point it is important to warn  those misguided group of Cambodians (the so-called Cambodian Freedom Fighters or CFF) who are advocating the use of armed resistance to fight against Hun Sen and the CPP. First of all, there will be no support for such an armed insurrection from any countries in the world including the United States, and especially the much-needed base in Thailand.

Let' s suppose that even if this group succeeds in having sufficient number of followers to be able to harass Hun Sen army; the international community would not tolerate this kind of armed insurrection against an "elected government" recognized by the UN in the 1998 elections.

On the contrary, the UN will allow Vietnam to re-enter Cambodia at the request of Hun Sen to eradicate this kind of armed resistance. This is so, because Sihanouk and Ranariddh are now fully supporting Hun Sen. Based on these premises, the international community (UN) would now be prepared to officially recognize Vietnam's right to intervene into Cambodian affairs. And this will be the end of Cambodia.

Since, there are so many other places in the troubled world that the UN is already involved in; there is not the slightest chance that it will again return to Cambodia to do the cleaning job as it did in 1991-93. Cambodia had its chance then. It lost it, it is almost certain that Cambodia won't have that opportunity again because the financial and human resources are just not there for the UN to do it again, anytime soon.

(For the background reading on this section, please refer to the appendix entitled: History and other Aspects of Cambodian problems)

II.  The Khmer Rouge Built Death Trap

The Khmer Rouge not only killed two million individual Cambodians; but more tragically, they murdered the soul and the spirit of the Cambodian people, by destroying every aspect of the social, cultural, and institutional set up of Cambodia. Why did the Khmer rouge behave so differently from other totalitarian groups from the left or the right? According to Bruce Sharp (The Unique Revolution, 1997), a keen Cambodian observer of the Khmer Rouge movement, the following answer was given:

" The Cambodian revolution stands apart from other upheavals because the Khmer Rouge ombined astonishing brutality with astonishing stupidity. "

They were so brutal that no rationale can be brought to explain why they had to kill their own kind with such inhumane manner. For instance, they emptied the cities in 48 hours including hospitals, and did not allow any time for the evacuees to bring any medicine or food with them. There were no places that were prepared to receive these masses of people from the cities.

The purpose for such sadistic and cruel way of treating people was to break down any kind of resistance against them. They were suspicious of anybody, including their own cadre. The Khmer Rouge enjoyed torturing people before killing them. The mass killings by the Khmer rouge were done in the most barbaric way by using axes or clubs to bludgeon to death innocent children, men and women, old and young, to spare using bullets. They were most of all very xenophobic. They are the ones who provide the lowest common denominator to judge any future Cambodian political and social behavior. It is because of this singular and brutal political and ideological background, that Hun Sen appears now to the international community as the lesser of the two evils. That is why the apparent insensitivity of the international community to Hun Sen' s constant abuses of democratic and civil society principles has become more understandable, although not acceptable. And that is why the Vietnamese encroachment into Cambodian affairs becomes benign when compared to the Khmer Rouge excesses.

Their stupidity resides in the fact that normally a country like Cambodia which never have a strong social and political organization to start with, particularly compared to Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge went ahead with the mass killing to weaken Cambodia further. They believed in the utopian world of scientific communism, where no money is needed, and where everybody wears the kind of same cloth and eats the same kind of food, and where big bother (Angkar) will watch over every act and gesture of each individual day and night. All individuality was erased and to be replaced by collective behavior and discipline.

There was no parallel of such demented behavior in the modem history of mankind; even during the harshest days of Leninism in Russia during the early 1920's. Is this a Khmer Rouge aberration or more dangerously a Cambodian trait of character? Some Cambodian Americans, especially those who are participants in the Soc. culture.com, web site, constantly blame the Vietnamese for all these bad things that have been taken place in Cambodia, since the 1993 elections. Similar ultra nationalistic behavior pushed these people to talk about eliminating all Vietnamese in Cambodia (Chau Bury). The same xenophobic behavior still prevails among these same Cambodian Americans, despite the fact that they are living in this great country does not have room for such bigotry.

III.  The Royalty built death trap

By tradition, the Cambodian identity is associated with the royal family or the cult of god-king, since the Angkor Era. Until today, the only alternative to communist ideology is the monarchy. And this is an old trap. During the last two elections (1993 and 1998), the only alternative to Hun Sen CPP was FUNCIINPEC, while SAM RAINSY Party was a poor third choice. It was clear that most Cambodians did not want to vote for Hun Sen CPP. In 1993, they clearly showed their displeasure of the CPP track records by overwhelmingly voting for FUNCINPEC. Again, in 1998, most people still continued to vote for FUNICINPEC, despite the fact that they knew full well that FUNCINPEC became as corrupt and as unlawful as the CPP.

What most people did not know, was the fact that Sihanouk, and especially his wife Monique had already formed a tacit alliance with Hun Sen since 1987. This is now clear to this writer, because soon after the meeting around Paris in 1987 between Sihanouk and Hun Sen, two of Sihanouk' s children, Chakrapong and Bopha Devi became vice premier and minister of Culture, respectively, in the then Hun Sen Government of the State of Cambodia (SOC). Knowing these royal family members, it was not possible to see two of Sihanouk children in the Hun Sen government without the tacit blessing of their royal father.

As usual, Sihanouk was able to hide his sordid and evil scheme very well by playing the patriotic card. In doing so, he was able to fool his own son, Norodom Ranariddh, and use him to advance his cooperation with Hun Sen, in the hope that Hun Sen would favor Monique to be queen after his death.

This maneuvering became even more clear after the 1997 coup, when Sihanouk immediately endorsed Hun Sen' s coup, against his own son. This kind of behavior is nothing surprising among royal family members since the Angkor time. Betrayal is the order of the day in the royal circle. And this in turn has been one of the main causes for the downfall of Cambodia.

When viewed from this royal deceitful behavior, it is clear that the international community did not have any choice but to support Hun Sen. Because, Sihanouk still has a tremendous prestige among foreigners. This fact must be taken seriously if one is to understand the real dilemma of today's Cambodia.

(Please, see the Rise and Fall of the Khmer Rouge by Armando Manalo)

Conclusion:

I have been trying to analyze the different causes and source of the current social and political problems in Cambodia (see: In the Years of Dying). I have shown that the Vietnamese are not the only cause for the decay of Cambodian society see: Exploring Cambodia's Evolution of Corruption, and also: Cambodia Plagued by Torture: Report). The Cambodian people must also share the blame. That Hun Sen is subservient to the Vietnamese should be no surprise to anybody. But, the hidden alliance between Hun Sen and Sihanouk is probably more understood by the international community than by most Cambodians (see Stephen Moffis: Covering up the Killing Fields). There will be no possible Cambodian solution until Sihanouk disappears from the Cambodian political scene. But, time is not on the Cambodian side because of the influx of illegal Vietnamese immigrants, as there is practically no borders between Vietnam and Cambodia due to the existence of systemic and pervasive corruption in Cambodia.

But the main source of all the ills that the Cambodian people are enduring silently but very painfully, stems from the legacy of stupidity and brutality which was left behind by the Khmer Rouge. This legacy allows the international community to accept more easily Hun Sen as the lesser of the two evils, especially with Sihanouk' s endorsement (see the interview of Ambassador Kent Wiederman on the Khmer Rouge trial). This policy was facilitated by the ineptitude of FLJNCINPEC under the leadership of Norodom Ranariddh. He had the chance to pull Cambodia out of the disaster. He failed miserably because of his corrupt personality and of his well-known incompetence.

Where do we go from here? There are signs of hope inside Cambodia, because the civil society has started to take roots. Also, the world has evolved to a more open society, including China and Vietnam. The main problem for Cambodia is to find the right kind of leaders when that time will have arrived. This is where WCC can play a significant role, by sticking to our basic ethical and moral principles and respect for democracy and civil society, and to have the courage of speaking up on these vital issues concerning the Cambodian society. I do hope that this presentation will help to motivate younger Cambodian Americans toward this eventual possibility of seeing the light at the end of this long and suffocating tunnel.  

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Appendix

1.  The Vietnamese Issues

2.  The Khmer Rouge Trial Issues

3.  WCC and the Cambodian Community

4.  History and other aspects of Cambodian Problems

See also

1.  Views of the Clinton Administration and the  U.S. Congress

2.  Letter to Ambassador Abramowitz, by Naranhkiri Tith

3.  Hanoi's Role in the Cambodian Coup, by Free Vietnam Alliance (FVA)

4.  Sam Rainsy Condemned Cambodian Revenge Attacks on Vietnamese

5. A Cambodian View of Sam Rainsy