The US’s Complicity in Cambodia

Cartoons by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Saturday, September 24, 2011
Op-Ed by MP

So to the Cambodian people, the US, through its blatant complicity with this repressive, unscrupulous regime, and being no stranger to sleeping with political mistresses it chooses to keep itself amused overseas (in a manner morally noted in a recent Wiki leak embassy cable that ‘adultery’ is rife among Cambodia’s CPP elite) is simply saying: ‘We have done all we could for you. We even spent a vast sum of money to enable the UN to oversee the election in 1993. So take the annual aid money and move on!’

And how familiar this line of reasoning must sound to Shukaku Inc.’s victims, and to all victims of land ‘concessions’ and forced evictions throughout the Kingdom of Injustice and unceasing human suffering . . .

As a casual observer and not being anti-American in anyway, the news that the US Ambassador to Cambodia (Carol Rodley) is about to vacate her eminent diplomatic post in the country fails to engender in me any sentiment worthy of description that otherwise comes with political or career obituary for one as humble as this writer to pen in her honour, except, perhaps, a feeling of ambivalence or ‘indifference’ that her government has over the years been responsible for inspiring. Of this latter sentiment I can, perhaps, write about in a few words. Not that I know a great deal about what she practices or has done during her sojourn in Cambodia. Of this fact, I also profess ignorance.

Judging by her public and confidential utterances, Ms Rodley is well informed and personally conscientious about the tasks before her as far as the Cambodian situation is concerned. At times she had been outspoken against governmental corruption, for example, which even today constitutes one of the most entrenched and formidable barricades to social progress. Yet whilst it is generally accepted that such defects as official corruption and civil rights violation may take some time to ameliorate or eradicate through piece-meal reforms, it is less hopeful and apparent when one asks where or how such reforms will ultimately come about when most (if not all) conceivable mechanisms or channels that could transmute social ideas into concrete progress or improvement in pursuit of pubic betterment are being consistently obstructed or blocked off altogether. Take the reported International Peace Day March planned to take place along some of the main streets of the capital recently. In theory, organisers can apply for municipal authorisation to stage such an event, and there is nothing written down in the national Constitution that limits or questions it as civil right or democratic prerogative. Like opposition parliamentarians’ previous organised trips to visit the controversial posts along the border with Vietnam, the peace marchers would be told on the day why their planned activities would need to be halted; in this case traffic chaos and congestion had been cited as the pretext for forcing the marchers to stage their marching within the vicinity of Wat Phnom! And how many times have we seen the capital’s main boulevards cordoned off without warning to lend pomp and ceremony to foreign and self-important domestic dignitaries alike, so that they can survey the scenery through their limousines’ tinted windows unobstructed by the pitiful sight of the down-trodden masses?

US embassy compound in Phnom Penh (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

Wat Phnom is, of course, literally a stone’s throw away from the US Embassy, and so is Boeung Kak Lake, which is a short stroll to the west of the Embassy’s compound and currently being turned into a grave yard for civil and human rights in Cambodia. The lake’s residents had been told to take their arbitrarily offered financial compensation and leave. Many, under duress and or threat of being evicted without the token compensation had little choice but to leave despite having settled in the area in excess of the qualifying residency period (about five years or more); some residents had been born there to parents who had lived by or on the lake since 1979; about the same time that Messieurs Hun Sen, Heng Samrin, Chea Sim et al came to squat on the political throne with the blessing of Hanoi. Not meaning to be cruel in any way, because the real cruelty is mostly being done to the Khmer people by these gentlemen consciously or unconsciously, who otherwise claim to have risked and devoted their lives to the salvation of the Khmer nation, 1979 was also probably the first time in their lives that they could afford to overlook the indignity of having to seek out temporary shelter from an abbot at one of the capital’s pagodas.

Whilst Ms Rodley dines and wines and gets feted by the Cambodian regime, or occasionally lends her ears to opposition figures pleading for intervention in their favour, or mulls over intricate issues facing her tenure, a young school girl was seen weeping over her home being fed to the excavators; her thoughts being fixed on matters of a far more mundane nature. Still thinking (heart-breaking to witness) of her future, she pleaded tearfully: “They are taking away my home . . . how can I attend school now?”

“They are taking away my home . . . how can I attend school now?” - Teenager evicted from Boeung Kak Lake on 16 September 2011

Too bad for this young lady, along with millions of her compatriots, whose only crime is that she falls outside of the country’s ruling political economic strata. Had she been instead an offspring of this obnoxious elite she would have been inducted into one of America’s re-known educational institutions without too much of a fuss; she could even have pursued her study in national defence at generous expense of America’s hard-earned public tax money! The thing is she simply lacks the right sort of connections that the US State Department, with the recommendation of the US embassy in Phnom Penh, has in mind. After all, with her non-ruling CPP backgrounds, any chance she will have of breaking into the strictly nepotism-oriented leadership ranks of these elites is extremely remote indeed.

On the other hand, by recruiting and nurturing the next generation of Cambodia’s ruling class from its existing stock, the US government clearly views political change in the country as something that could only be mediated by way of dynastic succession rather than through electoral outcomes, which can easily be engineered anyway; an acknowledgement, perhaps, of an inevitable fait accompli that the Khmer people themselves are powerless to affect or, a washing-of-hands realism that allows the US to achieve its geo-political agenda unhindered by its professed commitment to human rights and political freedom? At any rate, the US has ensured that future American diplomats could walk into a meeting room knowing that they will likely be speaking to someone whose outlook and response will be patterned by a common, shared American accent.

As sad or cynical as this may sound it is no worse than the US government’s overall position on Cambodia since the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1991. The Accords, like the Cambodian Constitution, have not been permitted to fashion or influence realities being experienced by, or affecting the lives of, several millions; the like of which, we are witnessing daily in the country. The much hyped democratic ‘experiment’ the country had briefly been allowed to flirt with had not been carefully thought through or given necessary fuel to go anywhere beyond its experimental stage. Not only the Accords’ major players or signatories had failed to hold the ruling party to account for its violent rejection of democratic will through the bloody 1997 coup, they have directly or indirectly themselves dismissed the relevance of democracy and validated its irrelevance by positioning themselves in their cop-out rationalisation that: “In Cambodia, there are no black and white; just shades of grey”! Try telling that to Boeung Kak Lake’s residents!

Whilst the US government sees strategic wisdom in forging political-military alliance with Vietnam in an effort to contain China’s threat, it could be forgiven for committing political adultery with those seedy fellows most liberal America would otherwise regard as enemies of freedom and democracy, and hence, the adultery committed in her name is clearly ‘un-American’.

So to the Cambodian people, the US, through its blatant complicity with this repressive, unscrupulous regime, and being no stranger to sleeping with political mistresses it chooses to keep itself amused overseas (in a manner morally noted in a recent Wiki leak embassy cable that ‘adultery’ is rife among Cambodia’s CPP elite) is simply saying: ‘We have done all we could for you. We even spent a vast sum of money to enable the UN to oversee the election in 1993. So take the annual aid money and move on!’

And how familiar this line of reasoning must sound to Shukaku Inc.’s victims, and to all victims of land ‘concessions’ and forced evictions throughout the Kingdom of Injustice and unceasing human suffering . . .

Otherwise, enjoy the weekend!

MP