Secret Deals, Free Coffins and The Price of Stability

Cartoon by Sacrava

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

Vietnam knows full well from history that it is easier to occupy Khmer lands than to permanently subjugate the Khmer people to foreign will. Hence, the rush to take what it can now while its position in Cambodia is still favourable, and its influence is at its strongest.

The CPP leadership, if it still feels that the blood cursing through its veins is Khmer at all, must face up to this national humiliation and one-sided relationship with Hanoi and start working to protect Khmer interest now.

The world stage is not what it was in the 19th century or even as recent as the seventies when Pol Pot sent troops to Koh Tral. With unity and clarity in purpose Cambodia can still forge friendly relations with Vietnam on just terms without compromising either country's territorial integrity through secretive deals. As neighbours we owe each other the duty to look out for mutual well being, but not to the point of master-slave reciprocation.

No need either to talk of 'free coffins', in the first place, because Cambodia no longer has enough trees to make them. These in thousands of tons of cubic metres were logged and transported to Vietnam by land through convoys and by water as floating rafts down the currents of the Mekong manned by Vietnamese soldiers throughout the 1980s and beyond. For those not fully acquainted with recent history, the idea of ‘free coffins’ may be traced back to those selective tours in early 1980s to Vietnamese military arsenal on which a handful of Cambodian army commanders and other high profile individuals were invited.

No point either in talking about the intervention and sacrifice Vietnam contributed to the salvation of Khmer lives and culture for without mastery over their own ancestral lands, islands and waters, without knowledge of a once known, familiar habitat of well balanced climate and rain forests, without the knowledge that their nation exists of its own accord and possesses a will of its own, then the Khmer nation is as good as dead.

Increasingly, a traditionally proud and dignified people are being coerced into a brave new world of unfamiliar, alien life style by being chained to the sweat shops of the factory floors, the endless stretches of commercial plantations that are in effect monuments to corporate greed, but graveyards of a bygone culture and community.

No matter if climatic variations had its hand in speeding up the demise of the Khmer Empire. What we have before us is no force of nature, no unavoidable act of Providence; rather this is what it is: manmade disaster and ill-thought human engineering on a par with any catastrophe witnessed in Khmer history.

There is nothing wrong with the Khmers as a nation or people - temperate, intelligent, ethical, compassionate and wise even, evidence of which can still be seen through living arts, literature and stone monuments etc. These qualities are the key to national survival and prosperity of any people and are by no means confined to the Khmer race alone. And when such a nation with all its endowed true character and instinct is empowered and allowed to step forward in defence of its own fate and destiny, there is no doubt that it would do so.

That explains the role foreign neighbours have had throughout history in suppression and denial of any sign of an emergence of Khmer nationalist consciousness and revival. This they have successfully accomplished through liquidation of intellectuals and restriction of intellectual activities by one means or another; manipulation of political representation so that a few clans are allowed the freedom to pursue and promote their own personal interests, which owing to being egotistical and limited in vision, they often easily confuse with the much larger, deeply rooted interests of the rest of their compatriots.

Consider the Cult of Personality pervading mass communication and social life as embodied by compulsory insertion of references to “Samdach Euv” (Prince/King Father) or “Samdach Decho” etc. In such a state of confusion and personalisation the public have little say in their own affairs - what has been pronounced good and proper by this body of small elite is also good and proper for them too as citizens, whereas what is being dangled before them both i.e. the elite and citizens, are a mere image and mirage of the real, vast iceberg beneath. The present fact, and extent, of Vietnam’s domination over Cambodia can thus be viewed as a function of its (Vietnam’s) fear of what may follow were the Khmer people to have a real say in their own affairs.

Let’s have a plebiscite to determine what the Khmer people want, what was wrongfully taken from them and therefore should be rightfully reclaimed including coastal waters and islands such as Koh Tral and other legitimate parts of Cambodian sovereignty.

MP