Former POW, Mike Benge, in "Tiger Cage" on the Mall, Veterans Day, Washington D.C., 1998 raising funds for POW/MIA FOIA Litigation Fund. (Photo: Northwest Veterans Newsletter)Vietnam’s Tay Tién expansion into Laos and Cambodia
By Michael Benge
Paper (with attached “Final Act of the Paris Conference on Cambodia”) presented at the National Conference 2007 to commemorate and assess “The Paris Peace Agreement” of October 23rd, 1991
It is common belief that the Vietnam War was a civil war when in fact it wasn’t; it was a war of conquest of Southeast Asia, for Ho Chi Minh was not a Vietnamese nationalist rather he was an international communist. Ho Chi Minh, cofounder of the French communist party, held a position of leadership in the international communist movement – the Comintern. Ho was sent by the Comintern to Siam (Thailand), Malaya and Singapore to preside over the creation of communist parties in these countries. Moscow also put him in charge of creating communist parties in Cambodia and Laos. All were encouraged to contribute to the international proletarian revolution, and all of them reported to the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau headed by Ho.1
As part of the “Communist Internationale funded by the Soviet Union, Ho Chi Minh founded the "Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. Aping his mentor — the butcher Joseph Stalin – Ho’s ultimate plan was to establish a greater Vietnam by gobbling up his neighbors, Laos, Vietnam, and later other S.E. Asian countries as Stalin and Russia did to it's neighbors in establishing the Soviet Union.
After the Geneva Agreements in 1954, Ho Chi Minh saw to it that several hundred young Cambodians were taken north, indoctrinated in communism and given military training. They were later armed and sent back, where they became the basis of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia’s Eastern Zone. Knowing of Ho’s close ties to Moscow and his intent to emulate his hero, the butcher Joseph Stalin, by creating a Soviet-style Union of South East Asia, China began training and arming the Pol Pot faction of the Khmer Rouge as a counterbalance to Soviet influence. China believed that revolution should come from within. North Vietnam enabled the Khmer Rouge to take over Phnom Penh in 1975 by providing logistics, ammunition, artillery and backup by Vietnamese troops making them complicit in the genocide of at least one and one half million Cambodians.
Viewing the U.S. as a paper tiger after its abandonment of South Vietnam, the Vietnamese communist party sent its mighty military force into Cambodia, not to liberate it from Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, but to colonize that country to fulfill Ho Chi Minh’s dream of hegemony over Indochina. They never dreamed that the U.S. would ally with communist China to drive them out. Unfortunately, the Hanoi’s Khmer Rouge remained intact and now controls Cambodia.
From the onset of the Indochina communist party, Ho Chi Minh began neo-colonizing Laos. He, as the majority of the Vietnamese, considered the Laotians, and even more so the Hmong, who had not been cultured by China as being Nha que qua [very backward], therefore they were not to be trusted. That attitude persists among the Vietnamese communists leaders today.
Since the Vietnamese had better access to French education, the French colonial government used Vietnamese as lower-echelon civil servants throughout the region, thus playing right into the hands of Ho Chi Minh. Ho began implementing his plan to dominate Indochina by infiltrating educated communist Vietnamese agents into Lao villages with money to set themselves up as scribes, and moneylenders. Acting as liaisons with the French colonial government through the lower-echelon Vietnamese civil servants, they gained considerable influence throughout the countryside. To cement their stature and gain total trust of the villagers, the Vietnamese communist agents took Lao wives and raised families. Now the sons and a few daughters of these Vietnamese make up a fair portion of the Lao communist party leadership.
In Laos, the U.S. waged a "secret war" against Hanoi to interdict communist North Vietnamese troops infiltrating into South Vietnam. The backbone of this secret war was the Hmong ethnic minorities who lost over 40,000 killed while fighting for the United States. It has been over 30 years since the Vietnam War ended; yet a second "secret war" continues in Laos. However, this secrete war is being waged jointly by Vietnamese and Laotian communist forces, this time without American involvement. The war is against the Laotian people, especially the Hmong and other ethnic minorities, such as the Khmu, Mien and Chao Fa..
Hanoi maintains large numbers of troops in Laos to assist the communist Pathet Lao in hunting down and exterminating their joint enemy -- the Hmong. In 1988, the Lao Communist Party proclaimed it would hunt down the “American collaborators” and their families, “to the last root.” They will be “butchered like wild animals. Those they are hunting are mostly the children, grand children and great-grandchildren of the fighters who sided with the U.S.
Although Ho Chi Minh is dead, the repressive and genocidal regime in Hanoi continues to implement Ho’s 1930 Indochinese Communist Party’s strategy by neo-colonizing Laos and Cambodia; a strategy reaffirmed in successive Vietnamese communist party congresses.2 Today, the Vietnamese communists have extended their hegemony over Laos and Cambodia and have de facto annexed Laos, which in many ways is now a province of North Vietnam. The Lao party leaders are anointed by Hanoi and receive their marching orders in a Sub Rosa fashion through a Vietnamese shadow government.
In Cambodia, Hanoi maintains a contingent of 3,000 troops, a mixture of special-forces and intelligence agents, with tanks and helicopters, in a huge compound 2½ kilometers outside Phnom Penh right next to Hun Sen's Tuol Krassaing fortress near Takhmau. They are there to ensure that Hanoi's puppet, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, doesn't stray far from Hanoi's policy of neo-colonization of Cambodia. The Vietnamese compound bristles with electronic surveillance equipment that would make any group’s electronic ease-dropping outstation proud. When Vietnamese troops were forced to withdraw from Vietnam, as a compromise, Vietnam installed its Hanoi trained Khmer Rouge marionette Hun Sen as Prime Minister.
Amoeba-like, communist Vietnam began neo-colonizing Laos and Cambodia by the traditional Vietnamese expansionism termed "Don Dien", first by occupying territory with troops, then having their families come in to settle the new territory, then putting the troops into civilian clothes to become "ready reservists" and replacing them with new troops for further expansion. After their defeat in Cambodia, in order to quell a budding revolt within the Vietnamese army, Hanoi compelled their willing partner, Hun Sen, to grant land in Eastern Cambodia and citizenship to over 500,000 Vietnamese army personnel. Thus, the “Vietnamization” of Cambodia began, forcing the puppet regime in Phnom Penh to issue Circular No. 240 SR/MC/HH and successive decree-laws appealing to all Cambodians to consider the expansion of solidarity with the fraternal Vietnamese peoples their duty by helping Vietnamese nationals to settle in Cambodia. By 1989, the number of Vietnamese “settlers” in Vietnam had reached 1,250,000. Simultaneously, Vietnam developed new maps depicting their new borders expanding up to 40 kilometers inside Laos and Cambodia. Hun Sen formally conceded these borders to Hanoi in violation of international law through a series of treaties, the latest in October 10, 2005.
Today, the communist party of Vietnam is faced with a burgeoning population, a lack natural resources to fuel its economy and enough fertile land on which to grow food to adequately feed its people. In a desperate move to keep its grasp on power and in an attempt to pacify a restless young population, Hanoi is exporting “guest workers” and by further excursion into neighboring countries in order to expand its control over those territories. In 2005, the communist regime exported 500,000 Vietnamese workers overseas to countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, and now they are being exported to Cambodia and Laos.
Vietnamese communists continue their policy of neocolonization, nibbling away at Cambodia by annexing sizable portions of its borders, coastlines and islands through illegitimate treaties with their puppet regime in Phnom Penh. Their latest sceme is involves flooding three northeastern provinces of Cambodia and the three southeastern provinces of Laos with Vietnamese settlers and exploiting the natural resources there.
In November 2004, Vietnam cajoled the puppet communist regimes of Laos and Cambodia into signing the “Development Triangle agreement.”3 This agreement allows the Vietnamese to now formalize their expansion through what is historically termed Tay Tién (Westward movement) into the three North Eastern provinces of Stung Trèng, Ratanakiri and Mondolkiri in Cambodia, and into the three South Eastern provinces of Attapeu, Sékong and Saravan in Laos.
The “Development Triangle” is a vast area of high plateaus and virgin forests covering approximately 120,400 square kilometers. With the exception of the provinces in Vietnam where the communist regime have already confiscated the ancestral lands of the Montagnards in the Central Highlands, deforested the area, and relocated several million people there; those provinces in Laos and Cambodia are sparsely populated, mainly with ethnic minorities, but were occupied by the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.
This “so called development” of these provinces starts with building a “security” road network with the intent of depriving Montagnards fleeing repression in the Central Highlands of Vietnam of sanctuary among their distant relatives in Laos and Cambodia and in the UNHCR camps in Phnom Penh. Although claiming that the roads would increase tourism and commerce in these areas, the real reason is to create easy access for the growing Vietnamese population to migrate to and neo-colonize these provinces in Laos and Cambodia. Already, Vietnamese settlers are flooding Mondulkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces in Cambodia occupying lands belonging to the local populations.
The Triangle occupies “an eminently strategic position on the political, economical, social, environmental and ecological levels” for the control of Laos, Cambodia by Hanoi. Japan and China are leading supporters of Vietnam’s expansionism.
Already in Laos, the Vietnamese army’s Military Corps No. 15 has completed an irrigation complex in Sekong for plantation crops , established a coffee plantation in Salavan, and developed plans for setting up coffee, rubber and cashew plantaions, and building a 10,000 tonne-per-year rubber proessing plant in Attopeu. Atopeu’s new rubber plantion covers and area of over 7,000 hectares (NHAN DAN, June 30, 2007). The Triangle area is only one of many places that the Vietnamese expansionists have moved into in order to the natural resources of Laos; e.g., there are six hydroelectric dams that were constructed and are owned and operated by the Vietnamese to power Vietnam’s booming economy.
In Cambodia, China is competing with Vietnam and constructing roads in Stung Treng, exploiting forests in Mondulkiri, and developing mining exploration units in Ratanakkiri. Vietnam views the Triangle area for its potential for growing cash crops and establishing vast plantations fast-growing trees, coffee, tea and rubber to earn export dollars. Both the Vietnamese and Laotian regimes have voiced policies of using ethnic minorities in these regions for cheap labor for plantations established on their ancestral lands.
Vietnam’s parastatal company EVN (Electricity of Viet Nam) is planning to build five hydroelectric dams on the Sesan River in Stung Treng Province. The dams will have a total production capacity of 818 megawatts. The estimated production capacities and costs of the five dams are: 1) 420 MW, costing $611 million; 2) 180 MW, costing $387 million; 3) 90 MW at $164 million; and 4&5) 64 MW each, costing $114 million each.
Construction on these dams is expected to begin in 2012 upon the completion of the Japanese-funded highway connecting the port of Da Nang in Vietnam with the northeastern provinces of Cambodia, and the southeastern provinces of Laos (AKP, Phnom Penh, 07/09/06).
Corruption and a lack of progress in combating it remain a major blight on Asia's restructuring efforts following the 1997 crisis. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam also lost ground in 2007, according to Transparency International. The strong correlation between corruption and poverty means that the benefits of growth are concentrated among the politically connected and bypass many who most need it.4
Given the level of corruption among officials in Vietnam and Cambodia, it is expected that several Cambodian and Vietnamese officials will become very, very wealthy from these projects. The dams would be constructed, owned and operated by Vietnamese, and the electricity generated from these hydroelectric plants will be forwarded and sold to Vietnamese power plants. Purportedly, electricity would be resold to Cambodia at a “cheap price.” One has to be very naive to believe that Vietnam will sell any electricity to Cambodia at a cheaper price than in Vietnam, given that county’s level of corruption, rate of economic growth and the need for cheap energy to fuel its economy; its needs are increasing by 10-15% annually.
Another reason for its expansion in Laos and Cambodia is Vietnam’s conflict between food production, industrialization and building dams to power its economic growth. In the last five years, Vietnam has lost 300,000 hectares of irrigated rice due to industrial development, including a vast amount lost through the construction of dams. This is creating a looming shortage of rice needed to feed it burgeoning population.
The construction of dams results in the displacement of large numbers of indigenous populations that farm the fertile soils in the river basins. These people are then either relocated to marginally productive lands, or receive no land at all; thus they fall victim to abject poverty. Vietnam has a history of doing this as well as corrupt officials absconding with relocation funds, leaving the victims with little or nothing; e.g., the Muong Lay Dam in North Vietnam.5 Those who choose to remain behind to farm the basins below the dams find that two or three times a year,uncontrolled spillage from the dams will flood their fields, destroy their crops and drown their livestock.
Cambodia is presently ruled by Hanoi’s marionette Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Vietnamese communist-backed corrupt cabal. In terms of “real politick”, Hun Sen’s Premiership -- albeit obtained illegally, first by a coup d'etat in 1997 and then appointed by bought-and-paid-for National Assemblies in 1998 and 2003 -- continues to receive de facto international recognition as the “legitimate” representative government of Cambodia. Therefore, the Paris Peace Agreement of October 23rd, 1991, or any other accord/agreement, is at present moot. Thus, nothing can be done at this time about violations of Cambodia’s territorial integrity until a democratic or another form of government representing the true aspirations of the Cambodian people is elected. At that time, the new Cambodian government can take these matters to the international court for abrogation of these unfair and illegal treaties and agreements made by the illegitimate, corrupt and immoral regime of Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP).
1 Hoang Van Hoan. as cited by Moyar, Mark. “Triumph Forsaken”. Cambridge University Press. 2006.
2 RSAMH, Fund 89, list 54, document 10. About VWP policy in determination of Indochinese problems and our goals implying from the decisions of the ??IV Congress of the C.P.S.U. (political letter) May 21, 1971, p. 14. as cited in “The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists.” http://www.wccpd.org/news/news69.html
3 Dy Kareth, “The expansionist ‘Development Triangle’”, Published by CFC-CBC, Paris, August 22, 2005.
4 http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Vietnam_Dam_Project_Dooms_Remote_Mountain_Town_999.html
5 William Pesek. “Corruption in Asia keeps poor from rising.” International Herald Tribune. 30/10/07.
6 http://www.ngoforum.org.kh/Environment/Docs/mekong/Abandoned%20Village%20Report%20August%202007.pdf
7 http://www.irn.org/programs/vietnam/index.php?id=yalifalls.html
________
Paper (with attached “Final Act of the Paris Conference on Cambodia”) presented at the National Conference 2007 to commemorate and assess “The Paris Peace Agreement” of October 23rd, 1991, by Michael Benge is a retired Foreign Service Officer who spent over 16 years in South East Asia, 11 years in Viet Nam, and five years as a Prisoner of the North Vietnamese -- ‘68-73 – in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. Mr. Benge is a student of South East Asian politics, is very active in advocating for human rights and religious freedom for the people there, and has written extensively on these subjects. He resides in Falls Church, VA, and can be contacted through email at: Bengemike@aol.com.
As part of the “Communist Internationale funded by the Soviet Union, Ho Chi Minh founded the "Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. Aping his mentor — the butcher Joseph Stalin – Ho’s ultimate plan was to establish a greater Vietnam by gobbling up his neighbors, Laos, Vietnam, and later other S.E. Asian countries as Stalin and Russia did to it's neighbors in establishing the Soviet Union.
After the Geneva Agreements in 1954, Ho Chi Minh saw to it that several hundred young Cambodians were taken north, indoctrinated in communism and given military training. They were later armed and sent back, where they became the basis of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia’s Eastern Zone. Knowing of Ho’s close ties to Moscow and his intent to emulate his hero, the butcher Joseph Stalin, by creating a Soviet-style Union of South East Asia, China began training and arming the Pol Pot faction of the Khmer Rouge as a counterbalance to Soviet influence. China believed that revolution should come from within. North Vietnam enabled the Khmer Rouge to take over Phnom Penh in 1975 by providing logistics, ammunition, artillery and backup by Vietnamese troops making them complicit in the genocide of at least one and one half million Cambodians.
Viewing the U.S. as a paper tiger after its abandonment of South Vietnam, the Vietnamese communist party sent its mighty military force into Cambodia, not to liberate it from Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, but to colonize that country to fulfill Ho Chi Minh’s dream of hegemony over Indochina. They never dreamed that the U.S. would ally with communist China to drive them out. Unfortunately, the Hanoi’s Khmer Rouge remained intact and now controls Cambodia.
From the onset of the Indochina communist party, Ho Chi Minh began neo-colonizing Laos. He, as the majority of the Vietnamese, considered the Laotians, and even more so the Hmong, who had not been cultured by China as being Nha que qua [very backward], therefore they were not to be trusted. That attitude persists among the Vietnamese communists leaders today.
Since the Vietnamese had better access to French education, the French colonial government used Vietnamese as lower-echelon civil servants throughout the region, thus playing right into the hands of Ho Chi Minh. Ho began implementing his plan to dominate Indochina by infiltrating educated communist Vietnamese agents into Lao villages with money to set themselves up as scribes, and moneylenders. Acting as liaisons with the French colonial government through the lower-echelon Vietnamese civil servants, they gained considerable influence throughout the countryside. To cement their stature and gain total trust of the villagers, the Vietnamese communist agents took Lao wives and raised families. Now the sons and a few daughters of these Vietnamese make up a fair portion of the Lao communist party leadership.
In Laos, the U.S. waged a "secret war" against Hanoi to interdict communist North Vietnamese troops infiltrating into South Vietnam. The backbone of this secret war was the Hmong ethnic minorities who lost over 40,000 killed while fighting for the United States. It has been over 30 years since the Vietnam War ended; yet a second "secret war" continues in Laos. However, this secrete war is being waged jointly by Vietnamese and Laotian communist forces, this time without American involvement. The war is against the Laotian people, especially the Hmong and other ethnic minorities, such as the Khmu, Mien and Chao Fa..
Hanoi maintains large numbers of troops in Laos to assist the communist Pathet Lao in hunting down and exterminating their joint enemy -- the Hmong. In 1988, the Lao Communist Party proclaimed it would hunt down the “American collaborators” and their families, “to the last root.” They will be “butchered like wild animals. Those they are hunting are mostly the children, grand children and great-grandchildren of the fighters who sided with the U.S.
Although Ho Chi Minh is dead, the repressive and genocidal regime in Hanoi continues to implement Ho’s 1930 Indochinese Communist Party’s strategy by neo-colonizing Laos and Cambodia; a strategy reaffirmed in successive Vietnamese communist party congresses.2 Today, the Vietnamese communists have extended their hegemony over Laos and Cambodia and have de facto annexed Laos, which in many ways is now a province of North Vietnam. The Lao party leaders are anointed by Hanoi and receive their marching orders in a Sub Rosa fashion through a Vietnamese shadow government.
In Cambodia, Hanoi maintains a contingent of 3,000 troops, a mixture of special-forces and intelligence agents, with tanks and helicopters, in a huge compound 2½ kilometers outside Phnom Penh right next to Hun Sen's Tuol Krassaing fortress near Takhmau. They are there to ensure that Hanoi's puppet, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, doesn't stray far from Hanoi's policy of neo-colonization of Cambodia. The Vietnamese compound bristles with electronic surveillance equipment that would make any group’s electronic ease-dropping outstation proud. When Vietnamese troops were forced to withdraw from Vietnam, as a compromise, Vietnam installed its Hanoi trained Khmer Rouge marionette Hun Sen as Prime Minister.
Amoeba-like, communist Vietnam began neo-colonizing Laos and Cambodia by the traditional Vietnamese expansionism termed "Don Dien", first by occupying territory with troops, then having their families come in to settle the new territory, then putting the troops into civilian clothes to become "ready reservists" and replacing them with new troops for further expansion. After their defeat in Cambodia, in order to quell a budding revolt within the Vietnamese army, Hanoi compelled their willing partner, Hun Sen, to grant land in Eastern Cambodia and citizenship to over 500,000 Vietnamese army personnel. Thus, the “Vietnamization” of Cambodia began, forcing the puppet regime in Phnom Penh to issue Circular No. 240 SR/MC/HH and successive decree-laws appealing to all Cambodians to consider the expansion of solidarity with the fraternal Vietnamese peoples their duty by helping Vietnamese nationals to settle in Cambodia. By 1989, the number of Vietnamese “settlers” in Vietnam had reached 1,250,000. Simultaneously, Vietnam developed new maps depicting their new borders expanding up to 40 kilometers inside Laos and Cambodia. Hun Sen formally conceded these borders to Hanoi in violation of international law through a series of treaties, the latest in October 10, 2005.
Today, the communist party of Vietnam is faced with a burgeoning population, a lack natural resources to fuel its economy and enough fertile land on which to grow food to adequately feed its people. In a desperate move to keep its grasp on power and in an attempt to pacify a restless young population, Hanoi is exporting “guest workers” and by further excursion into neighboring countries in order to expand its control over those territories. In 2005, the communist regime exported 500,000 Vietnamese workers overseas to countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, and now they are being exported to Cambodia and Laos.
Vietnamese communists continue their policy of neocolonization, nibbling away at Cambodia by annexing sizable portions of its borders, coastlines and islands through illegitimate treaties with their puppet regime in Phnom Penh. Their latest sceme is involves flooding three northeastern provinces of Cambodia and the three southeastern provinces of Laos with Vietnamese settlers and exploiting the natural resources there.
In November 2004, Vietnam cajoled the puppet communist regimes of Laos and Cambodia into signing the “Development Triangle agreement.”3 This agreement allows the Vietnamese to now formalize their expansion through what is historically termed Tay Tién (Westward movement) into the three North Eastern provinces of Stung Trèng, Ratanakiri and Mondolkiri in Cambodia, and into the three South Eastern provinces of Attapeu, Sékong and Saravan in Laos.
The “Development Triangle” is a vast area of high plateaus and virgin forests covering approximately 120,400 square kilometers. With the exception of the provinces in Vietnam where the communist regime have already confiscated the ancestral lands of the Montagnards in the Central Highlands, deforested the area, and relocated several million people there; those provinces in Laos and Cambodia are sparsely populated, mainly with ethnic minorities, but were occupied by the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.
This “so called development” of these provinces starts with building a “security” road network with the intent of depriving Montagnards fleeing repression in the Central Highlands of Vietnam of sanctuary among their distant relatives in Laos and Cambodia and in the UNHCR camps in Phnom Penh. Although claiming that the roads would increase tourism and commerce in these areas, the real reason is to create easy access for the growing Vietnamese population to migrate to and neo-colonize these provinces in Laos and Cambodia. Already, Vietnamese settlers are flooding Mondulkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces in Cambodia occupying lands belonging to the local populations.
The Triangle occupies “an eminently strategic position on the political, economical, social, environmental and ecological levels” for the control of Laos, Cambodia by Hanoi. Japan and China are leading supporters of Vietnam’s expansionism.
Already in Laos, the Vietnamese army’s Military Corps No. 15 has completed an irrigation complex in Sekong for plantation crops , established a coffee plantation in Salavan, and developed plans for setting up coffee, rubber and cashew plantaions, and building a 10,000 tonne-per-year rubber proessing plant in Attopeu. Atopeu’s new rubber plantion covers and area of over 7,000 hectares (NHAN DAN, June 30, 2007). The Triangle area is only one of many places that the Vietnamese expansionists have moved into in order to the natural resources of Laos; e.g., there are six hydroelectric dams that were constructed and are owned and operated by the Vietnamese to power Vietnam’s booming economy.
In Cambodia, China is competing with Vietnam and constructing roads in Stung Treng, exploiting forests in Mondulkiri, and developing mining exploration units in Ratanakkiri. Vietnam views the Triangle area for its potential for growing cash crops and establishing vast plantations fast-growing trees, coffee, tea and rubber to earn export dollars. Both the Vietnamese and Laotian regimes have voiced policies of using ethnic minorities in these regions for cheap labor for plantations established on their ancestral lands.
Vietnam’s parastatal company EVN (Electricity of Viet Nam) is planning to build five hydroelectric dams on the Sesan River in Stung Treng Province. The dams will have a total production capacity of 818 megawatts. The estimated production capacities and costs of the five dams are: 1) 420 MW, costing $611 million; 2) 180 MW, costing $387 million; 3) 90 MW at $164 million; and 4&5) 64 MW each, costing $114 million each.
Construction on these dams is expected to begin in 2012 upon the completion of the Japanese-funded highway connecting the port of Da Nang in Vietnam with the northeastern provinces of Cambodia, and the southeastern provinces of Laos (AKP, Phnom Penh, 07/09/06).
Corruption and a lack of progress in combating it remain a major blight on Asia's restructuring efforts following the 1997 crisis. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam also lost ground in 2007, according to Transparency International. The strong correlation between corruption and poverty means that the benefits of growth are concentrated among the politically connected and bypass many who most need it.4
Given the level of corruption among officials in Vietnam and Cambodia, it is expected that several Cambodian and Vietnamese officials will become very, very wealthy from these projects. The dams would be constructed, owned and operated by Vietnamese, and the electricity generated from these hydroelectric plants will be forwarded and sold to Vietnamese power plants. Purportedly, electricity would be resold to Cambodia at a “cheap price.” One has to be very naive to believe that Vietnam will sell any electricity to Cambodia at a cheaper price than in Vietnam, given that county’s level of corruption, rate of economic growth and the need for cheap energy to fuel its economy; its needs are increasing by 10-15% annually.
Another reason for its expansion in Laos and Cambodia is Vietnam’s conflict between food production, industrialization and building dams to power its economic growth. In the last five years, Vietnam has lost 300,000 hectares of irrigated rice due to industrial development, including a vast amount lost through the construction of dams. This is creating a looming shortage of rice needed to feed it burgeoning population.
The construction of dams results in the displacement of large numbers of indigenous populations that farm the fertile soils in the river basins. These people are then either relocated to marginally productive lands, or receive no land at all; thus they fall victim to abject poverty. Vietnam has a history of doing this as well as corrupt officials absconding with relocation funds, leaving the victims with little or nothing; e.g., the Muong Lay Dam in North Vietnam.5 Those who choose to remain behind to farm the basins below the dams find that two or three times a year,uncontrolled spillage from the dams will flood their fields, destroy their crops and drown their livestock.
The Se San River originates in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and flows into Cambodia where it meets the Mekong River. In 1993, the Vietnamese government started construction on the first dam on the river -- Yali Falls Dam -- which was completed in 2000.Although he’s dead, Hanoi is well on its way in the implementation of Ho Chi Minh’s 1930 aspirations of creating a Soviet-style Indochina.
While the dam was under construction from 1996-2000, erratic releases of water resulted in flash flooding downstream, causing deaths to people and livestock and destruction of rice fields and vegetable gardens. Since 2000, operation of the dam has resulted in rapid and daily fluctuations in the river’s flow downstream in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri and Stung Treng provinces. It is estimated that at least 36 people have drowned due to erratic releases of water from the dam, and at least 55,000 people have been adversely affected (3,500 people relocated),6 suffering millions of dollars in damages due to lost rice production, drowned livestock, lost fishing income, and damages to rice reserves, boats, fishing gear and houses
In addition, more than 6,700 people were resettled to make way for Yali Falls Dam (in Vietnam, ed.). According to a 2001 study by Vietnam’s Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, people displaced by the dam have suffered from severe shortages of food and other hardships since the dam flooded their homes and land in 1999.
Affected communities (in Vietnam, ed.) have not received compensation for their losses, and there are no plans to provide them with compensation for past or future impacts. In Cambodia, communities have formed the Se San Protection Network to press for compensation and changes to the dam’s operating regime to minimize downstream damages. Despite the unresolved issues, the government of Vietnam has embarked on an ambitious plan to build up to five more dams on the Sesan River. The International Rivers Network is working to support the Se San Protection Network in their request for reparations and a halt to future dam construction on the Se San River.7
Cambodia is presently ruled by Hanoi’s marionette Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Vietnamese communist-backed corrupt cabal. In terms of “real politick”, Hun Sen’s Premiership -- albeit obtained illegally, first by a coup d'etat in 1997 and then appointed by bought-and-paid-for National Assemblies in 1998 and 2003 -- continues to receive de facto international recognition as the “legitimate” representative government of Cambodia. Therefore, the Paris Peace Agreement of October 23rd, 1991, or any other accord/agreement, is at present moot. Thus, nothing can be done at this time about violations of Cambodia’s territorial integrity until a democratic or another form of government representing the true aspirations of the Cambodian people is elected. At that time, the new Cambodian government can take these matters to the international court for abrogation of these unfair and illegal treaties and agreements made by the illegitimate, corrupt and immoral regime of Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP).
Literature cited
1 Hoang Van Hoan. as cited by Moyar, Mark. “Triumph Forsaken”. Cambridge University Press. 2006.
2 RSAMH, Fund 89, list 54, document 10. About VWP policy in determination of Indochinese problems and our goals implying from the decisions of the ??IV Congress of the C.P.S.U. (political letter) May 21, 1971, p. 14. as cited in “The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists.” http://www.wccpd.org/news/news69.html
3 Dy Kareth, “The expansionist ‘Development Triangle’”, Published by CFC-CBC, Paris, August 22, 2005.
4 http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Vietnam_Dam_Project_Dooms_Remote_Mountain_Town_999.html
5 William Pesek. “Corruption in Asia keeps poor from rising.” International Herald Tribune. 30/10/07.
6 http://www.ngoforum.org.kh/Environment/Docs/mekong/Abandoned%20Village%20Report%20August%202007.pdf
7 http://www.irn.org/programs/vietnam/index.php?id=yalifalls.html
________
Paper (with attached “Final Act of the Paris Conference on Cambodia”) presented at the National Conference 2007 to commemorate and assess “The Paris Peace Agreement” of October 23rd, 1991, by Michael Benge is a retired Foreign Service Officer who spent over 16 years in South East Asia, 11 years in Viet Nam, and five years as a Prisoner of the North Vietnamese -- ‘68-73 – in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. Mr. Benge is a student of South East Asian politics, is very active in advocating for human rights and religious freedom for the people there, and has written extensively on these subjects. He resides in Falls Church, VA, and can be contacted through email at: Bengemike@aol.com.
39 comments:
Salute, Mike and brothers....
Camobodia,
During the Yuon Hanoi invaded Cambodia on January 7th 1979, Yuon Hanoi had sent their occupied forces of over one million Yuon along with: combat and support troops, Advisors, Specialists, Technicians, cadres, and most priority the Yuon” Administrators” to settlers and
colonizers. They have been brutally used their power to repressed cambodia as neo-conqueror of the Yuon Hanoi leaders and imperialists to concretize their old dream of creating an Indochinese Federation of Cambodia, Laos under The Yuon Haoi’s RULE.
Most Khmer are serving their Master “Ideology and Mentor”. They serve without shameful, as long as they can please their Hanoi’s Master. Many of the Yuon Hanoi occupiers have died and left their aggressors bones on Cambodia soil, which has been made the Cambodian’s history of the old enemy Yuon Hanoi Conqueror and Their servants of the 20th century.
I wonderd, how many Yuon Hanoi’s aggressor soldiers killed or wounded on Cambodian Soil by OUR Khmer compatriot? We know the war is ugly, many write and say, pointing to the dead, the maimed, the wounded, to the sufferings of the many, and to the destructions and
the devastation war has caused. But many have not lived in war, the type of war that goes on in Cambodia today. All Khmer inside and abroad “Do not put your faith in what Yuon and its servants say untill we have carefully considered what they do not say”.
The present article intends to expose to readers the growing mood and feeling of the Yuon Hanoi occupation and concretize “Vietnamization” in Cambodia today.
Minreah
To: Michael Benge
One in awhile to have a person like come along is like the breath of fresh air! You can unmask the Vietcong dirty politic for the world to see and for that I want to thank you!
One day the Vietcong will answer to God!
VOTE NO TO HUN SEN the rest is yes
It s very interesting to hearing this story!
Please share with me to promote the cambodian news in Cambodia through this :http://cnagency.blogspot.com/
Thanks
Nice Hollywood story by Michael Benge et al (KKF as usual).
Anyway, if the Vietnamese wanted Khmer land so badly as emphasized in the propaganda, They are doing it the hard way, that is invading and installing a puppet regime and get them to sign treaties ... . It would be a lot easier to get Pol Pot to sign all those treaties since people Pol Pot is already their slave, and Pol Pot was also a legitimate government. However, that was not the case. We all know Pol Pot would never cooperated with Vietnam and to sign away Khmer land to them. Thus, the story doesn't make sense. Vietnamese aint no dummy as implicated by the propaganda.
Hey 11:36, YOU are just a blood sucker communist agent to monitor this blog. You just pretend to be Khmer or if you are a real Khmer, you are just a Khmer looser who work like slave for your YOUN boss. It is ashamed for your mother if she is Khmer to deliver birth to a betrayer like you.
What Mike said is exactly that is what it is happening in Cambodia now. He is an American, but he still feels sorry for our Cambodian. If you are a real Cambodian and you still think that what Mike wrote is a propagenda, I should call you a dog, not a human being.
Oh just because Ah Chkout Mike is an American, that means he can't lied. Is that what are you telling us, 11:54?
FYI, Ah Chkout is a racist just like Ah Toothless Khmer-Yuon, and he is still haven't got over from being POW in the Vietnam war, alright?
Please view documentary below:
1. Who will be the Champa II. Champa II which is Cambodia is being invaded by Youn and Siem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zouiveJ0zLc
2. Watch Vietname & Thailand are taking Khmer land by Khmer-Viet Illegal Treaties. It is a painful experience for our new khmer generation to see that this is happening as we speak.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coLolWfMFsQ
12:53, we are not denying that Vietnam was one of conquerers, but they are done with that now, just like France, UK, Portugal, ... or what have you. Therefore, What is the sense of watching more ancient history on video?
The Vietcong government suppressed 10 million Khmer Krom and the Vietcong refuse to label themselves as racist! The Vietcong have so much righteousness that anybody beside the Vietcong is all racist!
Every word of Mike Benge is backed with documentations and can be verified by the real events that are happening right now in Loa and Cambodia!
So what if Mike Benge is a former POW of the Vietcong War and he fought for the free world to contain communism from spreading through out Southeast Asia and ASEAN thank him for it! The Vietcong didn't get far with their communistic ideology and they were bogged down in Cambodia by guerriella warfare for another 10 years and with constant military harassment from all direction from China and a crippling economic embargo by Uncle SAM force the Vietcong to withdrew their troop from Cambodia!
Uncle SAM never forgets what Mike Benge fought for in Vietname and Uncle SAM make sure that the Vietcong must pay the price for their stupidity!
In the past the Vietcong government committed political prostitution to get economic aid and military aid from China and Russia and soon after the Vietcong betray China and begin to hang on to Russia! Russia found out that they can no longer support the classy expensive Vietcong hooker and began to terminate all their aid! Now it is time for the Vietcong to commit political prostitution all over again and this time will be with Uncle SAM and let see if Uncle SAM is not too picky about choosing his Vietcong hookers! Ahahhahahha!
1:51, Ah Toothless Khmer-Yuon is lucky to be just suppressed for what they've done to Vietnam. Frankly, if Vietnam were Pol Pot, there won't be a single Ah Toothless Khmer-Yuon around in South Vietnam today, okay?
As for Ah Chkout Mike, his propaganda don't connect all dots; thus, it can't be the truth.
And in regard to Vietnam political alliances, it is not uncommon to see everyone flipfloping, and it wont be the last time either. Thus, you are not scoring any point here.
Dear Mike Benge,
Your article and analysis is invaluable for Cambodia. Your article is not to be called ideology or propaganda, but it reality and for the survival of Cambodia.
1. The philosophy of Don Dien used by Vietnam has been gradually successful: Annam, Tonkin, Cochin-china, Lao and Cambodia.
2. Comintern: extending communist ideology through South Asian Country, but now Indochina first...
3. Invading and create civil military with Vietnamese population
4. Use new style of neo-colonizing through economic development..
5. Their puppet is still in power...
Ho's dream is gradually successful
Thanks Mike
Mike Beng's article is essential for Cambodians:
Read more from mine:
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Indochinese Confederation and Its Changes to Hold Its Original Attempt
The origin of the war and killing field in Cambodia is somehow just the by-product of Vietcong war, especially the perpetuated attempt of Indochina Confederation maneuvered by Vietnam.
Indochinese Confederation primarily found and recognized by French colony or it was called French Union. In that time, French recognized Vietnam leadership to guide this union (read Vietnam Join the World for more detailed).
After that, when the war fought against America which were tremendously backed by China and Russia; Indochinese Community Party is created and it is officially recognized by China. Ho Chi Minh is the founder and also the leader of ICP to lead Lao and Cambodia. But when Lao and Cambodia felt not comfortable with this union/federation, Vietnam allowed to have Lao communist party and Cambodian communist party. However, Vietnam suggested to have mix committees within each party.
The Federation has been investigated and interrogated by international watchers, so that Vietnam changed it to be "Association" that stand on ideology of "mutual relationship". The objectives are "to preserve the special relationship between the Vietnamese people and the people of Laos and Cambodia; and to strengthen military solidarity, mutual trust, long term corporation and mutual assistance in all fields..."
Vietnam has no problem with Lao because Lao has never had any international agreement to recognize its border sovereignty. But Vietnam has some obstacles with Cambodia. Those obstacles happened with Cambodia during the signature of Geneva Agreement led by Somdach Ta N.Sihanouk and especially the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991.
However, the continuity of Association and Vietnam affiliation or interference inside Cambodia is still smoothly continuing in with an unopen manner. This manner is lighter than if we compare with Lao.
Influences of Vietnam inside Cambodia is being altered during Songkum Reastr Niyum of Somdach Ta N.Sihanouk, Lon Nol and Pol Pot. But Vietnam still had influences and organizing Cambodian insurgents such as Khmer Issarak who fought against N.Sihanouk, Pol Pot who once joined Vietnam to fight against America; and finally Khmer Vietminh group that once led by Achar Mien and their younger generation is present CPP's leaders.
Clearly, the federation that changed to association is still alive and operational inside Cambodia. It is dead during the Khmer Rouge, but re-survive again during the Vietnamese invasion in January 7, 1979. And it is nearly dead during the UNTAC in Cambodia, but it is re-survive again by the supplemental border treaty in 2005.
Legally, it has full status as mutual relationship with Cambodia and secretly it is potentially and possibly spreading spies and staffs inside Cambodia.
We need to study more about this, but the influence of Indochinese Association is still tight inside CPP. Only CPP who knows this better than us.
KY
My article is not about correct or incorrect, it is about the survival of Cambodia. And it is not about anybody's propaganda; but it is about truth that CPP has to clarify in front of Cambodian populace that through the help of installing to power in January 7, 1997; how CPP can escape from such huge gratitude/repayment and what is CPP's future vision to free Cambodia from such Vietnam's trap?
CPP would have better vision for future of Cambodia; not to keep such rotten association with Vietnam, but they must keep modern legal diplomatic relation with every nation under the international standard of law, in order to survive the nation and build bright future of younger Cambodians.
Interesting Links:
Link I
Link II
KY
The Viet's true color!
The Viet's true color!
The Viet's true color!
The world will at last see what the VIET is all about...
I truly believe all Cambodian people don't want to go through what our brothers and sisters of Kampuchea Krom go through. Living as slave of Vietnamese is very painful experiences for Khmer Krom people who as of today are crying for help from the world community and all Khmer. When can Khmer people wake up before their children and next generation seeing Hell ? Come on people, kill the yumabals and their disciples, send them to Hell before they send all of you. Be brave!
THIS IS A FACT THAT NEED TO BE PUT INTO A MOVIE OR DUCEMENTARY.
ONLY UNTIL THEN OR A NEW GOVT AS MENTIONED. THERE WILL BE NO JUSTICE. NO JUSTICE WILL ONLY LEAD TO WORLD WARS.
CAN'T WAIT TO SEE VIETCONG GET THEIR PAY BACK CENTS FOR CENTS.
THANK YOU MIKE BENGI WILL ALL THE RESPECT AND HONOR TO YOU.
truth is hard to see even if the dots are connected right in front of you.
Some people thinks greatly of Vietnam and denies the truth. They just can't accept their great government of power and military might my do something as covert as this when they had a chance to a long time ago.
Pol Pot weren't Vietnam, though it was trained by Vn, like true Khmers, they knew Vietnam were never to be trusted, a liar at coure, a hungry tiger.
Now Vietnam, does things better and more effectively through economic control. Once you control ecomomic and power supply of a country, you will have it at its when you want to.
Simple, we already know Lao is a vassal of Vietnam, Lao people knows this and Khmer people knows this. And Cambodia is also a vassal but not as sorely directly as Lao at the movement, and the chance to revert to an independent and self-suffficient country with smart ecomomic and legal deals are still not impossible for Cambodia to turn to.
All Cambodians know the truth, though some Congs try to hide it. The truth is such an eyesore.
For some people it just too ugly and they look beyond it. Some people accepts the truth and try to heal reconcile with it.
Of course people who inflict the wound is natural to say " I DIDN'T DO IT!" and later, they can say, "IF I DONE IT, HERE'S HOW IT WILL GO" to diffuse the blame on them. Anyone know OJ?
Guys, We are talking about Vietnam Expansion, are we not? if so, let me quote a paragraph from the propaganda below:
"After the Geneva Agreements in 1954, Ho Chi Minh saw to it that several hundred young Cambodians were taken north, indoctrinated in communism and given military training. They were later armed and sent back, where they became the basis of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia’s Eastern Zone. Knowing of Ho’s close ties to Moscow and his intent to emulate his hero, the butcher Joseph Stalin, by creating a Soviet-style Union of South East Asia, China began training and arming the Pol Pot faction of the Khmer Rouge as a counterbalance to Soviet influence. China believed that revolution should come from within. North Vietnam enabled the Khmer Rouge to take over Phnom Penh in 1975 by providing logistics, ammunition, artillery and backup by Vietnamese troops making them complicit in the genocide of at least one and one half million Cambodians."
Now tell me: doesn't the above paragraph clearly suggested that Vietnam is the boss and they are in full control of the Khmer Rouge? If so, and they want to expand, why don't the Viet just make the Khmer Rouge sign over or sell whatever lands they wanted to them? The Khmer Rouge was a legitimate government, and they can well make all sale and treaties final, legal and binding. Can someone tell me why Vietnamese are so retarded?
To 12:18AM!
I don't understand you question?
Can you be more specific so I can nail on the head!
By the way what period are you talking about anyway? Give me some time frame!
The fact is the Vietcong were in Cambodia back then and the Vietcong were in Cambodia now too! If you fool want more proof just look at the Vietcong supplement border treaty and the million and million of illegal Vietcong who are living in Cambodia today!
Well,12:18AM....
You have to provide the period of Khmer Rouge, and define Khmer Rouge FUNK and Khmer Rouge GRUNK.
Then we will see the Real Expansionism is.
1:02, I am talking about after the Khmer Rouge toke over Cambodia in 1975 to present.
And what is the illegal immigrants has anything to do with border treaty? Stop changing the subject. Just answer the simple question: Why didn't Vietnam made the Khmer Rouge sign any treaty to give Khmer's land to Vietnam?
3:04, there is only one legitimate Khmer Rouge government. And there is no war between Khmer Rouges in Cambodia between 1975-1979, okay?
As for expansionism, If the Viet have planed it since the 30's and inplemented it in the 40's, and they accomplish nothing in 2007. Then, they are doing a very poor job over the 70 years, wouldn't you say?
03:19AM this is 3:04AM,
Your question there is not just a million dollar question, but the value of that, I can say equal to Cambodian herself. And I will answer to that, by allow me to write and detail to the point that most Cambodian's Politicians, Educators, and other never understand the situation of Cambodia as whole. Please allow me.
5:04, we don't need to understand anything. We just want to see fact. first, tell us what are you concern with, Vietnamese population expansion, or Vietnamese territory expansion, or both? Once you decided, just give us some facts: for instance if you are concerned with territory expansion, tell us how big Vietnam territory is in the 50's, 60's, 70's,... and allowed us to decide. We don't need no explanation. we just need maps and facts. get it?.
Animal Viet troller pretending to be Khmer on KI-Media must be castrated then euthanized...
It doesn't matter, fool, but you aint gonna spread no propaganda to no Khmer people, you got that, you toothless, stinky, hairy, smelly, crooked, racist motherfucker?
Well, it's only fair that animal Viet troller pretending to be Khmer on KI-Media @8:10 AM like you be revealed/divulged to the world that you are here for one thing and one thing only and that is to sabotage, to divide Khmer: you must be stopped because Khmer will not let you.
Wrong, Ah Khmer-Yuon will never lived to see the day that Khmer and Viet ever divided.
11:40AM is very sick man after his mother got fuck by Viet cong the sick man 11:40AM comes out so all Cambodian people be-careful,with this sick man has program from Vietnam so ,the virus will cause Cambodian vomit and sick please stop reading this animal yiekcong 's comment ,like me my self after I have read all it comments I've been through up for months,remember this son of the dog eater always write the same and the same every time,please stay out!
Khmer and Viet=water and oil
I better taking westerners advise better than dog eaters
I better taking westerners advise better than dog eaters
Vietnam can't find the food for the Vietnamese enough to eat and want to control Cambodia he he he he I can't hold my laughing!!!!
Don't mind Ah Toothless Khmer-Yuons, 3:54. They are just fooling themselves with their own smoke bombs (or propaganda), hehehe!!!
Animal Viet troller pretending to be Khmer on KI-Media @4:40PM here must be castrated then euthanized...
Hahaha We got on your sensitive point now,your Vietcong ,yuon trollers are broke ,you viet come to destroy Cambodia even dogs and cat you kill and eat them all,so the dream that you gonna have Cam -bodia as Your slave or stupid friendships fake do not work ,let go back to Hanoi and tell your people Cambodian people won't let you destroy them any more .
Vietnam go home
LOL, there is no sign of destruction anywhere in the region, but don't let me interrupted you. Keep on dreaming.
Viet eat dog and dog eat Viet.
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