“Peace” in Our Time?

Cambodian police chased and beat Buddhist monks who had gathered at the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh on December 17 (2007) to deliver a petition asking for the release of monks imprisoned in Vietnam (The Buddhist Channel).

By School of Vice

My plan for a restful weekend, free from contention and discord has been thrown into the wind by some of the (shall I say ‘mildly’ disturbing?) comments posted in this forum under an article otherwise carrying a reader’s appeal for reprieve in exactly that: discord among Khmers, so that critical attention could be diverted to helping so many people still being at the mercy of, perhaps, the worst floods I have seen in my life time. So to that reader and others, I offer my sincere apologies!

Of course, some form of discord may not be necessarily a bad thing. Men argue with one another; with ghosts, the gods, spirits, etc. They even argue with themselves, but even this is not a bad sign either! It’s when they cease to argue or communicate that there is a real cause for concern! That said; let me go over some of the points raised.

Japan may have been predominantly governed by one main political party since World War II, but she has never been during that period, ruled by a single one-party state.

Japan's freedom and liberal democracy arose out of the ashes of WWII in which countless thousands of Allied and Japanese lives were lost, and the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still being felt today by many innocent Japanese.

What political system does Cambodia possess? How has she been ruled since 1991? Constitutional monarchy? Liberal democracy? Or a mixture of feudalism and military rule, maybe?

How many incumbent Japanese Prime Ministers had resigned or been forced to resign from office within the last 8 years alone by public pressure and criticism? How many Cambodian PMs have left office within the last 27 years or so despite countless disasters and tragedies? 

How had South Korea achieved her political freedom from authoritarian rule in the late eighties? Waves of workers' strikes and demonstrations, plus plenty of violent clashes with the Korean riot police!

The current flooding that is crippling the populace today is perhaps the worst in living memory and not entirely unexpected given the wholesale destruction of the country's natural defence against such "natural" occurrences once provided by abundant rainforest cover.

There is an open war being waged against the Khmer people today on both political and economic fronts, and this war is corroding and killing the body and soul of the Khmer people who - as can be seen from images often posted here - are paying with their lives and limbs.

Peace is all that any rational human being really desires. But what kind of legacy does this present "peace" create for Cambodia's next generation and the one after that? The passed down habit of fear, mistrust, alienation from authority and neighbours, abusive power over others as a certain means to forging personal security for oneself and one's clans only? Do Khmer people have any say in how they like to be governed at all?

To avoid violent change, why not simply listen to the will of the people? Who really destabilised and overthrew those past Cambodian regimes? Who really conspired to exterminate the Khmer 'intelligentsia' without whose support a regime could not last?

While I appreciate the need for 'peace', I appreciate even more and firmly the necessity for secure and lasting peace. I don't know where you live or your standard of living and well-being, but the state that millions of people in Cambodia find themselves in today is barely better than the ones they found themselves in along the Khmer-Thai border of the 1980s. Travelling in the country and talking to ordinary people in Cambodia one senses their deep-seated insecurity and psychological vulnerability that lurk behind their gentle veneers. It's not uncommon for them to weep abruptly or unexpectedly before strangers and each others.

Is this the state of things that deserve to remain as it is, hoping somehow that the very people who have been content to keep them there so far will have a sudden change of heart and lead them off to some sort of Promised Land instead?

Please be more responsible with selecting specific facts to endorse certain points; unless, one deliberately sets out to mislead and misinform others through well-honed eloquence.

And no, there’s no need to go the way of Pol Pot either. There are better options and alternatives beside xenophobia and genocide on the one hand, and living under foreign yoke, on the other. Cambodia does not have to wage a total war with Vietnam or Thailand to defend her sovereignty; there are other means and peaceful venues to consider. There are plenty of small states around the world living next to larger ones who do not compromise their independence or sovereignty in the manner the Cambodian regime is compromising. I can neither grasp nor accept as valid this line of argument that you must chop off your legs in order to walk again, or compromise your freedom so as to preserve it!

When one sees those violent cops beating Khmer Krom monks on the streets of Phnom Penh, who does one think benefit from such coercive measures? The Khmer cops? The Cambodian nation? Or the ones who control and influence their actions? And if a handful of peaceful protesters such as these monks called for such stern measures, does this fact not indicate just how much trepidation this regime and its foreign patron have in store for themselves were 15 million Cambodians, or even half that number, to rise up or simply refuse to accept their rule?