Of Generation Lost

Hun Xen and Nguyen Tan Dung, one of his Viet bosses

Friday, September 24, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

THE longer Cambodia remains under the yoke of Hanoi, the more difficult it will be to free her from that yoke, the less chance and scope for Khmers to help Khmers out.

Thailand will continue to pose a threat to Cambodia with tacit impunity knowing how dependent Cambodia is upon Hanoi's military-political support, just as Vietnam tacitly approves of Bangkok's belligerence towards Cambodia knowing that this would increase Cambodia's sense of insecurity and thereby her dependence upon and leaning towards Hanoi. It is, in principle, the same situation that Cambodia found herself in prior to the advent of French colonisation of Indochina in the 19th century.

The real issue - as Mr Hun Sen himself is probably aware of - is how to dislodge Vietnamese presence and influence within his regime’s structure. It is not going to be easy doing this - even if he were to make a sudden U-turn or have the political will to go ahead with it – especially, if one wishes to avoid, that is, the brutality and clinical efficiency on the scale that Indonesia dealt with the communists in the 1960s.

There are Vietnamese- 'Cambodians' who had even survived the KR years and had probably been born and raised in the country with all the characteristics of many a Khmer person - including dark-brown complexion - yet still retain sub-conscious loyalty and allegiance to mother Vietnam? Many such ethnic Vietnamese can be found now in every segment and sphere of Cambodian society, and in addition, enjoying the privilege and status of a socially, politically subsidised, favoured and elevated minority. Whether within the rank of the military or police, the administrative or judiciary, the legislative and even the executive, they have not found it particularly hard to rise to positions of prominence and growing power or influence. Just as strong is their predominance and voice within the country’s business and commercial sphere where they have been decisively blessed and advantaged by over 3 decades of Vietnam’s proxy rule over the country.

I'm not calling for all ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia to be repatriated or anything, but those political elements implanted within Cambodian society for the sole purpose of subjugating the Cambodian nation to Hanoi's hegemony is presenting the most formidable barrier to the country achieving its complete and genuine political self-determination and must therefore be given real attention to.

As for ‘Khmers helping Khmers’, there isn't any real difficulty with that, provided their contributions work out to the long term benefit of the Khmer people and nation rather than serving to further strengthen foreign interest and legitimise their imposed dictatorship. Without genuine pluralism and real democracy, it would be difficult even to sow the seeds for future growth and blooms among the young who are the nation's future. We have seen how restricted freedom of speech and expression is in Cambodia - a student may attend classes in politics, but the teacher or lecturer will not be at liberty to expound his ideas/knowledge and or the subject matter at will. The same applies with the press and freedom of assembly or association where the spectre of censorship, and death threats even, would often be enough to debilitate or discourage effort at civic or political participation, ensuring in the end that Khmers would always be frustrated in their attempt or determination to help their country and compatriots.

We may not have the kind of outright anti-intellectualism of the previous regime who liquidated anyone wearing glasses, yet the range of controlling and straight-jacketing measures described above are just as effective a fashion of keeping the population and the country in the dark over what the country is or has been experiencing and the likely direction it is or will be taking.

The masses or that ‘herd’ of humanity can become an overpowering, tower of force avalanching historical change, but this phenomenon rarely (if at all) springs forth out of its own volition without the guiding hand and or the gentle, prodding whip of a devoted, dedicated shepherd who is both committed to their cause, and self-less of his own person and regard. This body of humanity, in particular, are moreover, a people of exceptional grace and simplicity, given to sensual-temporal pleasures and the enjoyment of the moment where future cares are postponed for another day, and where fate is better managed, better revealed at the feet of a fortune teller. Like their ancient forebears, they are by nature and temperament, ‘children of Paradise’, and this tendency or characteristic, be it admired as their salient virtue or indeed condemned as their most enduring vice, has been - for good or ill – further revitalised, rather than subdued, by experiences of traumas and adversities of recent times. How can we blame them, after all, they have been to hell and back? Their surviving parents have learned through the hardship of the Pol Pot years to affect a posture of the deaf and mute; a habit these parents have not been able to part with, partly out of habit, but mainly out of necessity or instinct for self-preservation.

The generation born after the Pol Pot era too, have no reasons to internalise values vastly different from those held by their elders, partly, because they have not discovered any that could pragmatically supplant the prevailing ones or, at least, alternative values that would not compromise their social standing or the prospect for social advancement in society at large and within a regimented social context. This new generation of post war, post genocide era are then the new ‘herd’ of humanity that we can safely, and with deep anguish in our hearts, describe as the lost generation because of their spiritual and physical confinements as well as their engineered estrangement from their deserved and true ‘shepherd’ in the forms of all-rounded education rather than indoctrination and half-hearted, half-baked, impoverished schooling, in a parental governing process that treats the welfare of its national citizens as its natural and most supreme task, rather than subordinating it to external priorities; in a climate that tolerates or facilitates cultural revival within the context of an open political environment rather than using such revival to sugar coat doses of social repression or to confine them to pre-determined cultural time warp.

So whether Mr Hun Sen is operating under duress or his Vietnamese bosses are calling all the shots, is not really a factor that should be extenuated upon in favour of either him or them: both are serving or working in fulfillment of the same political agenda, and both are definitely standing in the way of Khmer people's long term survival as an entity and a people on this planet.

Have a good week-end!