A Change of Guard

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Thursday 14 August 2014

Kampuchea Krom Protests Speak to Larger Fears [Will Vietnam ever apologize?]

BY  | the cambodia daily, AUGUST 14, 2014
It started on Radio Free Asia’s morning political affairs program on June 6. A diplomat at the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh denied that Cambodia’s historical claim over today’s Southern Vietnam had extended up to colonial France’s departure in June 1949.
“There is no basis for that, and no evidence—South Vietnam has belonged to Vietnam for a very long time,” said Tran Van Thong, the Vietnamese Embassy’s first counselor and spokesman, speaking in the Khmer language.
–News Analysis
Monks lead a Buddhist blessing ceremony in front of the Vietnamese Embassy yesterday, where protesters have spent three days demanding an apology from a Vietnamese diplomat over comments he made about Kampuchea Krom. (Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily)
Monks lead a Buddhist blessing ceremony in front of the Vietnamese Embassy yesterday, where protesters have spent three days demanding an apology from a Vietnamese diplomat over comments he made about Kampuchea Krom. (Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily)
The remark sparked protests at the embassy two days later, with nationalists and Cambodians from the southern Mekong Delta region of today’s Vietnam calling on Mr. Thong to either prove his claims or issue a retraction and apology.
The racially charged protests sputtered along for two months until coming to a head this week with a public burning of Vietnam’s flag in front of the embassy, whose diplomats stubbornly refused to even take a petition from the protesters.
“This is not about the history of Kampuchea Krom, it’s about the history of Cambodia,” said Thach Setha, a protest organizer, using the Khmer-language designation for the Mekong Delta, which literally means “Lower Cambodia.”
“All of the Khmer Krom, the kings of Cambodia and the Cambodian government [have] never made an agreement, they never gave the land to Vietnam, and we always struggled to take Kampuchea Krom back until 1949,” Mr. Setha said Wednesday.

Mr. Setha, the executive director of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Community and a senior member of the opposition CNRP, said he recognized Vietnam’s present sovereignty over the territory but that its obfuscation of the transfer from Cambodian control was cruel.
Sovereign under the Khmer court for centuries, escalating immigration of ethnic Vietnamese to the delta had, by the 17th century, sparked an unending battle over the territory as the Vietnamese capitalized on a divided Cambodia.
“The arrival of the French, however, radically transformed the contest,” wrote Shawn McHale in his history of the dispute in the Journal of Asian Studies last year.
“The French declared Cochinchina a directly ruled colony, and the [Vietnamese] Nguyen dynasty signed a treaty ceding this region to France. All Vietnamese sovereignty claims over the area were RENDERED null and void.”
The decision was criticized by the court of Cambodia, Mr. McHale noted, which argued that the Vietnamese leader had no right to cede sovereignty that was not theirs.
Yet with the arrival of the French, who soon took Cambodia under their multinational Indochina colony, Mr. McHale wrote, conflicts over the territory ebbed.
“Left unsettled until 1949 was the resolution of Cambodian sovereignty claims over parts of the lower Mekong Delta,” he wrote.
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy said there is little dispute over who today controls the former Kampuchea Krom provinces, which includes Ho Chi Minh City—a city whose population of 8 million is more than half of Cambodia’s.
But Mr. Rainsy said Mr. Thong’s comments had led to such emotional and often tense protests due to a collective national memory of Vietnamese abuse of Cambodia as the two nations struggled to assert their claims of sovereignty.
“When you deny historical facts, you hurt a lot of people because a lot of people have suffered from political persecution by the Vietnamese,” Mr. Rainsy said.
“It was very severe persecution when the Vietnamese took control of this part of Cambodia, and Cambodians resent [Mr. Thong’s account of the transfer] because the Vietnamese were the invaders, they took our land, they persecuted us, and then they claim this land has always been theirs.”
Official figures place the ethnic Khmer population in Vietnam at a bit more than 1 million today but activists claim a population almost 10 times the size exists. They also claim continued human rights abuses and policies of cultural assimilation, including the repression of Khmer language literacy.
Since his remarks, Mr. Thong, who could not be reached for comment for this article, has steadfastly maintained that he has no reason to apologize and that Cambodian sovereignty had been lost to Vietnamese administrators long before the French arrived.
Son Soubert, a former member of the Constitutional Council who comes from one of the country’s most prominent Khmer Krom families, said the issue of historical sovereignty over the delta is so vexed because of the mix of power in the area before colonialism.
“There were no Asian states, it was kingdoms, and the territory changed from one to another upon whether you were successful in warfare or not. It was the Europeans who introduced legal administrative borders and so on,” he said.
“Sometimes Cambodia was even invaded by the Vietnamese and controlled, and then there were outbursts of the population and they were forced back,” he continued.
“It was changing all the time and there was no definitive control of the borders. When they say it was under their control, in which way? Did they even have borders?”
Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said the Cambodian government does not support the protests against the Vietnamese Embassy and suggested that both sides should study the disastrous history of provocations and recriminations between Cambodian and Vietnamese regimes during the 1960s and 1970s.
“The most important priority is good relations. We are not against any nation, and that group does not have a government position,” he said, referring to the nationalist demonstrators. “We wish that both sides would learn from history, the protesters as well as the spokesman.”
However, Kem Ley, a political analyst, said the protests were about more than a historical dispute.
“There are also concerns about Cambodian land in the present time, with the land concessions going to Vietnamese companies, most of which belong to the Vietnamese government, while all the plantation workers are Vietnamese,” Mr. Ley said.
“The history of Kampuchea Krom is [a] small part. We want to protect and maintain our land, that is the present issue.”
Mr. Setha, the protest organizer, said concerns about more incursions are indeed central to his cause and that he doubted that Mr. Thong would come around to his version of history.
“All along the border, they push into Cambodia, and so I don’t think he will apologize, because he wants to take the land from Cambodia more and more,” Mr. Setha said.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes they said we're crazy because we can't get back any way but i will support all of this action 1000% because YUON They took and YUON trash to all khmer like dirt. If we didn't stand up together than YUON will push khmer to the ground for ever. now YUON make us have no choice យួនវាបានស៊ីឆ្អែតហើយ វាច្រាស់ឆ្អេះឱ្យខ្មែរទៀត ហ្នឹងហើយដែលវាថាជួយខ្មែរនោះឬ?

Anonymous said...


Khmer people need to continue their protest until that neocolonialist Vietnam recognizes that it did steal Khmer land in Kampuchea Krom.

If we stop without getting any result, this Vietnam thief will laugh at Khmer people and consider Khmer people as wimp.

Anonymous said...

Thank you ALEX WILLEMYNS of Cambodia Daily for writing up this news article to clarify things up. To the damned Yuon/YiekCong/Kinh/ or Viet spokeperson Tran Van Thong, you better read this article by Alex Willemyns. You better apologize now, you yucky face! The Khmer Krom do not want the delta region back because of what the French did, but remember it was never of "Vietnam" because it was not exisited yet. The delta region was of Cambodia. Also remember that in 1949, Cambodia registered a right to take the issue of Kampuchea Krom to the United Nations. How much more dismemberment do you yucky faced YiekCongs want Cambodia to suffer? You illegally occupy the disputed island of Koh Tral. Now you want to manipulate the history of the Kampuchea Krom. Remember, the ancestors of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom fought the Vietnamese invaders long before the French came to the scene. It is similar to the 1980's when the Khmer resistance forces fought the Vietnamese invaders of Cambodia. It is similar to when the Thais fought off the Vietnamese invaders of part of Thailand in the 1980's. There are various Vietnamese enclaves around the world, so do those places part of Vietnam too? Why don't the Vietnamese around the world pollute their host countries' lakes, and why do the Vietnamese immigrants choose to live and pollute only Cambodia's lakes??????

Anonymous said...

Wait, so the Viet spokeperson Tran Van Thong can speak Khmer???? Isn't the name "Tran" a Khmer Krom name?? If this Tran Van Thong is a Khmer Krom, then he is a sellout big time. Can someone find out if this spokeperson a Khmer Krom or a Viet.

Anonymous said...

Oh my god!!! not that parrot Phay siph*ck again. He is once again off topic and what he has to say is purely rubbish. Hey Phay Siph*ck, you can't speak English, can't speak neither Khmer nor French, let alone Vietnamese. You are just a born parrot speaking only from script. This is not about the hatred for any ethnic groups, but about the Vietnamese distortion of history of the delta region. Don't forget that the Khmer will always let the Vietnamese be Vietnamese, but in the Vietnamese-occupied Kampuchea Krom, the Khmer Krom people are forced to be assimilate and become "Vietnamese". In various host countries outside Vietnam, the foreign host governments grant the Vietnamese settlers a Vietnamese language program and translation services within the mainstream educational system and social services. In addition, those foreign host governments even grant parts of the city territory to be distinctively marked as the Vietnamese enclaves with Vietnamese street sings and names. When it comes to deal with the Khmer people the original inhabitants of the delta, the Viets choose forced assimilation instead. No Khmer representatives at all in any of the fields dominated by the Vietnamese. How sad! Even the Chams are better than the Khmer Krom people. Pham Van Dong the Cham was the prime minister of North Vietnam. Nguyen Van Thieu the Cham was the president of the former state of South Vietnam. The Vietnamese spokeperson for the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia can speak Khmer, but he chooses to use the Khmer language to lie and cause troubles instead. How come Phay siph*ck does not say anything about that? Clearly, the fist one to throw the first stone was that trouble-making low-ranking Vietnamese spokesperson Tran Van Thong. Just like in history, the Vietnamese were the first ones to bury the Khmers in the ground up to their heads and then burn the Khmer heads. Didn't the Vietnamese started out as mere refugees in the Khmer territory, so why do they have to act so ungrateful for? Why can't the Vietnamese be like the Japanese by building skyscrapers instead of expanding into Cambodia's territory for?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...
Wait, so the Viet spokeperson Tran Van Thong can speak Khmer???? Isn't the name "Tran" a Khmer Krom name?? If this Tran Van Thong is a Khmer Krom, then he is a sellout big time. Can someone find out if this spokeperson a Khmer Krom or a Viet.

15 August 2014 8:02 am
-----------------
Recently Vietnam appointed a Khmer Vietnamese from the Mekong Delta to be be a staffer at the embassy in Phnom Penh.

Years ago, I read some posts from the Khmer Vietnamese in South Vietnam. They did not want to have anything to do with you the Khmer in Cambodia. They were aware of your murderous and killer attitude, wanting to control and kill other Khmers in Vietnam. Basically, they know you would kill them if they disagree with you.

These good Khmer Vietnamese also knew about the Khmer Rouges' genocidal regime and they were happy to live under the protection of the Vietnamese.

-Drgunzet-

Anonymous said...

Oh My, look at -Drgunzet-'s face.

Anonymous said...

To Khmer men,

Look at Gunzet's picture with this link given by John.
Are you sure that Vietnamese women are sexy?
Look at Ms Gunzet's face, you will have a second opinion.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/photo-contest/2011/entries/108981/view/

RealKhmer said...

Fuck the apology by the Yuon. We need to get Yuon out of Khmer's land now...