"As has been the case many times in history, Cambodians have connived with the Vietnamese to accomplish Vietnam's goals: Khmer King Chey Chettha II in 1620, King Ang Chan II in the 1800s, Prince Sihanouk in the Vietnam War, Pol Pot and Paris-trained Khmer Marxists, Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party, supported by the King Father and his son, the current king."
January 13, 2010By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS (Guam)
Last week I wrote about Vietnam's military invasion of Cambodia and characterized Jan. 7, 1979, as a day of infamy, the precipitant of a dark era in the country.
More than 100,000 Vietnamese troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, crossed the border into Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1978 in a swift military invasion that sent Pol Pot and his gang running for their lives. The Vietnamese captured Phnom Penh 14 days later, installed a puppet regime and stayed in control for the next 10 years.
Also last week, Cambodian Premier Hun Sen blasted as "beasts" those who do not regard Jan. 7 as the anniversary of Vietnam's "liberation" of Cambodia.
Hanoi, like the rest of the world, knew that Pol Pot's agents had perpetrated brutalities against the Khmer people since April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge forced the evacuation of the entire Cambodian population from homes, villages, towns and cities, to perform forced labor.
Suffering, death and destruction were the order of the day.
The widely reported burning of homes and massacres of civilians in Vietnam's An Giang and Chau Doc provinces in 1977 by Pol Pot's guerrilla units offered an incitement to Vietnam, which was then busy strategizing and plotting Ho Chi Minh's grand design of a greater Vietnam, to put in play a takeover plan that would advance its goal of a federation of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
It was no coincidence that the Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia on the same day Brezhnev's Soviet 40th Army entered Afghanistan, Dec. 24, 1979. The Soviet Union was Vietnam's chief ally and financial supporter at the time.
Following the regime change in Moscow, in May 1988, one month after Gorbachev announced the Soviets would leave Afghanistan, the Soviets began to exit that country.
Vietnam observed the rapid changes under way in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where communism was in retreat; the rise of rival China; the warming of U.S.-China relations and their support for the anti-Vietnamese Khmer Resistance. While it began to hint at its eventual withdrawal from Cambodia -- which was accomplished in December 1989, 11 years after the initial invasion -- Vietnam took offensive action against the Cambodian resistance, maneuvered to weaken the anti-Vietnam U.S.-China alliance by encouraging talks between the Vietnam-created regime in Cambodia and the resistance factions in order to improve the puppet government's legitimacy, and presented itself as a reliable and attractive future partner of the U.S. in the region.
At the same time, Vietnam ensured that members of the Khmer Viet Minh were positioned in Cambodia's administrative and governmental organizations. The KVM was largely made up of those several thousand Cambodians, mostly children, who had been taken to Vietnam in 1954 after the signing of the Geneva Accords, and raised and acculturated there. They were later trained at the Son Tay Military Academy and the Nguyen Ai Quoc school.
As history reveals, Vietnam's labors yielded great results.
The Paris Peace Accords on Cambodia were signed in October 1991 and Vietnam's Cambodian proxies, now legitimized by the world community, sat in positions of power. Important stipulations in the accords were not implemented, allowing Vietnam's surrogate, Hun Sen, who lost the 1993 general elections, to elbow himself to become a co-prime minister. In 1997, Sen unleashed a coup d'etat, in which hundreds were killed, and seized power.
The journey toward a greater Vietnam has not ended. It began in 939, when Nam Viet freed itself from a thousand-year bondage to China, and moved southward, taking over and integrating what stood in the way. In 2010, that journey has put the Vietnamese in a position to have an impact on Thailand's political stability.
The current Cambodian-Thai conflict has been inflamed by Sen's continuing provocations, intended to destabilize Thailand and provide opportunities for Vietnam to influence events there. Hun Sen's success at diverting his countrymen's attention from their own meager lots to the possibility of a conflict with their historical adversary has had the side benefit of increasing support for his regime.
As has been the case many times in history, Cambodians have connived with the Vietnamese to accomplish Vietnam's goals: Khmer King Chey Chettha II in 1620, King Ang Chan II in the 1800s, Prince Sihanouk in the Vietnam War, Pol Pot and Paris-trained Khmer Marxists, Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party, supported by the King Father and his son, the current king.
The institution of the Khmer monarchy has tumbled to its lowest ebb as it now has acquiesced to become a political instrument of the Sen regime. Sen has extracted a royal decree from the king to appoint a fugitive former premier of Thailand as Sen's personal and economic adviser and another royal decree to pardon a Thai engineer who was imprisoned as a "spy" for a foreign power.
Cambodians are being manipulated by Sen to respond to Thailand based on historical animosities not relevant to today's political realities. It would be preferable if lessons could be taken from history so that it is not repeated.
Hurling racial slurs and insults only makes one angrier. It's time to unlearn and relearn, adopt what's useful, discard what's not. As fear is conditioned and learned, so it can be unconditioned and unlearned. The general inclination to conform, and not to ask questions, needs to change. Progress requires it.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
More than 100,000 Vietnamese troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, crossed the border into Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1978 in a swift military invasion that sent Pol Pot and his gang running for their lives. The Vietnamese captured Phnom Penh 14 days later, installed a puppet regime and stayed in control for the next 10 years.
Also last week, Cambodian Premier Hun Sen blasted as "beasts" those who do not regard Jan. 7 as the anniversary of Vietnam's "liberation" of Cambodia.
Hanoi, like the rest of the world, knew that Pol Pot's agents had perpetrated brutalities against the Khmer people since April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge forced the evacuation of the entire Cambodian population from homes, villages, towns and cities, to perform forced labor.
Suffering, death and destruction were the order of the day.
The widely reported burning of homes and massacres of civilians in Vietnam's An Giang and Chau Doc provinces in 1977 by Pol Pot's guerrilla units offered an incitement to Vietnam, which was then busy strategizing and plotting Ho Chi Minh's grand design of a greater Vietnam, to put in play a takeover plan that would advance its goal of a federation of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
It was no coincidence that the Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia on the same day Brezhnev's Soviet 40th Army entered Afghanistan, Dec. 24, 1979. The Soviet Union was Vietnam's chief ally and financial supporter at the time.
Following the regime change in Moscow, in May 1988, one month after Gorbachev announced the Soviets would leave Afghanistan, the Soviets began to exit that country.
Vietnam observed the rapid changes under way in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where communism was in retreat; the rise of rival China; the warming of U.S.-China relations and their support for the anti-Vietnamese Khmer Resistance. While it began to hint at its eventual withdrawal from Cambodia -- which was accomplished in December 1989, 11 years after the initial invasion -- Vietnam took offensive action against the Cambodian resistance, maneuvered to weaken the anti-Vietnam U.S.-China alliance by encouraging talks between the Vietnam-created regime in Cambodia and the resistance factions in order to improve the puppet government's legitimacy, and presented itself as a reliable and attractive future partner of the U.S. in the region.
At the same time, Vietnam ensured that members of the Khmer Viet Minh were positioned in Cambodia's administrative and governmental organizations. The KVM was largely made up of those several thousand Cambodians, mostly children, who had been taken to Vietnam in 1954 after the signing of the Geneva Accords, and raised and acculturated there. They were later trained at the Son Tay Military Academy and the Nguyen Ai Quoc school.
As history reveals, Vietnam's labors yielded great results.
The Paris Peace Accords on Cambodia were signed in October 1991 and Vietnam's Cambodian proxies, now legitimized by the world community, sat in positions of power. Important stipulations in the accords were not implemented, allowing Vietnam's surrogate, Hun Sen, who lost the 1993 general elections, to elbow himself to become a co-prime minister. In 1997, Sen unleashed a coup d'etat, in which hundreds were killed, and seized power.
The journey toward a greater Vietnam has not ended. It began in 939, when Nam Viet freed itself from a thousand-year bondage to China, and moved southward, taking over and integrating what stood in the way. In 2010, that journey has put the Vietnamese in a position to have an impact on Thailand's political stability.
The current Cambodian-Thai conflict has been inflamed by Sen's continuing provocations, intended to destabilize Thailand and provide opportunities for Vietnam to influence events there. Hun Sen's success at diverting his countrymen's attention from their own meager lots to the possibility of a conflict with their historical adversary has had the side benefit of increasing support for his regime.
As has been the case many times in history, Cambodians have connived with the Vietnamese to accomplish Vietnam's goals: Khmer King Chey Chettha II in 1620, King Ang Chan II in the 1800s, Prince Sihanouk in the Vietnam War, Pol Pot and Paris-trained Khmer Marxists, Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party, supported by the King Father and his son, the current king.
The institution of the Khmer monarchy has tumbled to its lowest ebb as it now has acquiesced to become a political instrument of the Sen regime. Sen has extracted a royal decree from the king to appoint a fugitive former premier of Thailand as Sen's personal and economic adviser and another royal decree to pardon a Thai engineer who was imprisoned as a "spy" for a foreign power.
Cambodians are being manipulated by Sen to respond to Thailand based on historical animosities not relevant to today's political realities. It would be preferable if lessons could be taken from history so that it is not repeated.
Hurling racial slurs and insults only makes one angrier. It's time to unlearn and relearn, adopt what's useful, discard what's not. As fear is conditioned and learned, so it can be unconditioned and unlearned. The general inclination to conform, and not to ask questions, needs to change. Progress requires it.
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.
29 comments:
Those are all the gangsters and the mafia in our homeland!!!!
Hun Sen must be a beast to say that January 7 1979 Vietnameses came in Cambodia to liberate Cambodians from Khmers rouges.
The Vietnameses goal was not that at all.
They came to transform Cambodia to a province of Vietnam.
They don't care about Cambodians.
We see the proofs now.
Vietnameses steal Khmers lands.
Vietnameses steal Angkorwat.
Vietnameses steal Tonlesap.
Vietnameses steal Jam-Kar-Kao-Soo.
Lok Gaffar,
You have a good point!
Ly Diep
Another great article, thank you and keep up the good work. Hopefully our current leaders in goverment share some of your thoughts.
Very good facts.
May Lord Buddha bless you Doctor
Excellent article
Hanoi orchestrats and supports the killing in Cambodia from 1975-1991 because it is part of their plan to control Cambodia. Only dummy, stuppid leaders such as Sihanouk and Hun Sen who never realize this.
first i'd like to thank to your posting M. A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, to let khmer all over the wordl know the dark khmer past history and the history keeps repeating from generation to an other with our corrupted leaders. but all these at least we could avoid during sihanoul's governement. if he's stayed along side battlefields with united states, like thai and philipine, we might be safe of pol pot' horror regime. during the sihaknouk's power, i don't believe cambodia is a democracy country, that why they kicked him out of his country for new voice of freedom. the sad thing is we've lost war to communist. since it was time where the communism is so popular in east european and spread out to china, corea, birma and then viet. no doubt sihanouk was too greedy and brainwashed by those communist leadears. i'm so happy that today the khmer kingdUmp is just symbolic and powerless.
Your comments has been great knowledge and very well informed for younger generation to learn from our past history.
Thank you Dr Gaffar.
This is the truth and this is the reality what the Vietcong had done to Cambodia! And ultimately this is generational curse on Cambodia and Cambodan people!
Nobody know how to undo this generational curse without sacrifice themself!
Cambodia is a dying nation!
No super power in the globe can save Cambodia more, the Viet kill Khmer softly, look to the Khme communist king helping crocadile Viet and the Viet you and send more into Khmer land, now is already 6 millions and in 10 years will increase 10-12 millions Viet.
Chhay you Sdech communist and khmer disappear.
Up to this date (2010) our country have been ripped in half already. Tonle Sap been taken also. In 2020 our Srok Khmer could be Nambodia or Hunnam whatever Yuon prefer.
Thanks Dr. Gaffer! I wish Hun Sen hear your message.
It's King Bhimobol and PM Abhisit's nightmare as much as Cambodian people.
Well written article, I just wish we could get rid of Hun Sen and put in a leader who cares and understands and is ready to guide our country towards real progression for it's people!
Hun Sen is a True Traitor!
He does not have a conscience or a patriotic bone in his body.
Bravo retiree Gaffar,
It's take you 13 years to figure this out. Very smart individual you are! Bravo Bravo.
Did you thought of this in the 70's, when Khmer people were killed?
Very smart indeed.
9.37am, you just be a yuon , hundick supporter to have said this. Yes, Peang meth knew all along, that is why he went to join the resistance back then to fight the yuon and yiour puppets.
you feel itchy because he states the truth, it hurts your dick ?
I get lost. Let me go back and reread for Dr. Gaffar's main points again.
Dr. Peang Meth.
I am scanning the old history wrote by the French historian in regard to King Chey Chetha II until this current monarchy. I disagree with Dr. Peang saying Khmers have cannived with Vietnamese. Did they have choices or they had to do to survive because the Vietnamese're among Cambodians? I'm still reading and scanning from this old history book I borrowed from the French Library. Dr. Peang cut off the Vietnamese helped by Japanese and Thais to take Indochina.
I can assure Dr. Peang that if he were King Sihanouk, he wouldn't know how to start when he country is small and poor, not just poor but weak. I'll get back and share with everyone. There was one King after Chey Chetha II defeated the Vetnamese and took him for 6 years to defeat the Vietnamese.
"L'Homme qui met l'obscurité en lumière!"
C'est pas mal Bang Dr. Gaffar. Eh voilà comme si les dirigeants ne sont pas remplaçables; ils ont bien remplacé PHAN Van Dong, le frère des "milliards d'année du Cambodge". Et selon Samdech EUV ainsi que le GRC actuel, cette amitiée vietnamo-khmère ne feraient nullement déssécher les rivières qui prend sa source au Nord: c'est bien actuellement. Le Cambodge se trouve ainsi complètement désséché et les moissons sont envolées vers d'autres horizons (Vietnam d'abord!) tandis que les khmers --PEUPLE ELECTEUR-- seraient en train de se transformer peu à peu en "précurseurs de primates" de l'ère des Glaciers (The Great Divide). Ainsi Phan Van Dong est mort mais l'objectif vietnamien a atteint et tend vers un summum, globalisation aidant.
Où est donc les khmers d'ici 15-20 ans? Au moins leur territoire comme irréfutable habitat! Pékin, Pyong Yang ou encore Vun Tao?
Google translation:
"The man who put darkness to light!"
Not bad Bang Dr. Gaffar. Well this is as if the leaders are not replaceable and have replaced many Phan Van Dong, the brother of "billions of years of Cambodia". And by Samdech EUV and the RCMP today, the Vietnamese-Khmer amitiée would not only dry the rivers that originates in the North: it is now. Cambodia is thus completely dried up and crops soared to other horizons (Vietnam first!) While the Khmer - PEOPLE voters - are now being gradually transformed into "primate precursors" of era Glacier (The Great Divide). So Phan Van Dong died but the goal was reached and Vietnam tends toward a climax, helping globalization.
Where is the Khmer by 15-20 years? At least their home territory as irrefutable! Beijing, Pyongyang or Vun Tao?
3:40 PM, good observation and for you not to swallow every word that someone puts out. When it comes to historical facts, Dr. Peang Meth has been found to bend them to his own believes and agenda.
It is good to see people are brightened and speaking up. Good luck to your research and please come back and share it with us.
3.40PM, it is youn that revised history. The truth Cheychetha 2 swapped the land for the yuon wife. that was how it started. later kings treid to recover it, but too late. it was cheychetta2 stupidity that later the trouble rolling. he bore a big responsibilty for it.
6:28am,
The european entered South Asia for many and many hundred years ago, what they wrote were what they witnessed. Like Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish came before French colony as traders and missionaries before Yuon took Chmpa.
I agreed that Chey Chetha was an idiot to take Youn woman to be his wife, but I don't agree with you to say the history stored in European old libraries wrote by Yuon.
Let 3;40pm share with us when he is done with his reading and scanning.
yes, fear is not absolute. remember what president kennedy said: "there's no fear but fear itself. everyone can overcome fear if we think about it. fear is not physical, it's just a thought, an abstract, really, meaning it is not concrete and can't hurt you, however, maybe it can influence people's reaction, though. we have to keep on telling ourselves that it's not real, not physical being, that is! fear in one of the driving forces, but it's not everything, though. therefore, don't allow it to take over your thought or your life, really. please think about it.
9.04AM, when I said yuon , in fact I meant to say YOU, due to my spelling. I agree with you.
I didn't mean to say yuon revise history. In fact I meant to say anyone who tries to revise history, attempting to slavage Cheychettha2's blunder and stupidity is a stupid revisionist.
I thought the guy 3.40pm is going to scan and post it to share with us. How come he is lebeled as he tried to revise the history?
Why don't you post the history of Chey Chetha II to share with us 2;05pm?I won't read or believe if from Yuon from Khmer, from Siam, but if from others I may.
Another Indochina War will be imminent Lok Dr. Peang Meth.
Sithan Hin
Dr. Peang.Meth.
I'm back. My post is@ 3.40pm
"All the truthfullness is not good to be said."
Yuon were too aggressive since before Chinese took their independent in 939AD. Marching toward South (Champa) and (KKK) and now marching toward west Cambodia & Laos.
Yuon are the cruellest humans, no humans are too cruel as Yuon. From reading the history I am having too much hate for Yuon.
I disagree with Theary Seng for telling us Khmers to say "Thanks" to Yuon. Yuon didn't come to liberate but to invade Cambodia. I also disagree with Dr. Peang.Meth for saying Khmers have cannived with Yuon. I don't blame any Khmer in the past and in the present, but I want every Khmer including Hun Sen to know, because Hun Sen has no education and he does not know the real history. I want every Khmer to know and I want us all to unite. Blaming won't solve the problems.
The more I know about Yuon from the history wrote by the west the more I hate them.
I scanned the history and am translating it into to English. I keep saying I will share with all, but give me times. You all will soon see it.
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