A Great Leader Without Borders [to defend]!

by School of Vice

Reference: Hun Sen dismisses opposition party accusations [vowing to send anyone who dares to protect the border to jail]

“They say it would be better to die and live as ghosts serving Khmers rather than dogs serving Vietnam. They say this as if I am serving Vietnam” (!)

Hun Sen

If it's just a question of following "old maps", and the borderline with Vietnam has been set properly on the basis of those maps, then there's no reason to keep this demarcation off limit to independent verifiers.

Whenever the leader of the country warns of Vietnam's attack or threatens to imprison anyone [which he had done in the past] should they interfere with the demarcation process or remove the border markers, he merely reinforces instead of invalidating the charge that he is “working for Vietnam”.

Nobody in their right mind would want Cambodia to go to war with Vietnam [and I don't believe Vietnam really wants to go to war with Cambodia either, especially if it's to do with a bunch of unarmed protesters or independent border inspectors insisting that the markers are put in places that do not result in either country's territorial integrity being violated]. By refusing to set up an independent committee to oversee this demarcation business, Mr Hun Sen is clearly ducking it as a public and national issue of vital repercussions to the nation just as he has done over the Bavet shooting incident, the Chea Vichea case, the Chut Vutty murder, and so forth. If, however, he were to be consistent with his own line of logic, he should never have to send troops to defend Preah Vihear in the first place because Thailand poses the same scale of physical threat to Cambodia as does Vietnam in strategic terms, and Bangkok would be mad [just as would be Hanoi] if it seriously believes that an all-out invasion offers viable long-term political solution over territorial issues with Cambodia.

As long as border delimitation with any neighbouring country - particularly, one with historical tendency to annex Cambodian territory -  remains off-limit to public scrutiny, then people are right to conclude that something is or has been going awry and not quite adding up. But assuming the country has to use military force to defend all its frontiers, even if it means having to defend two fronts at the same time, so be it! Any other responsible nationalist leadership may not like the idea of having to send troops to two or more fronts at the same time, but if it comes to that, I believe it would have no option but to do so whist awaiting diplomatic settlement through due international procedures. What is beyond amusement is that this despicable regime has not even raised an eye brow in over 30 years of its existence whenever Vietnam forced Khmer farmers off their ancestral lands and farms [see places like Memot in Kompong Cham, villages in Svay Rieng etc], or pollutes the Sesan river through a hydraulic-dam upstream in Vietnam].

So a small "shrinking" nation continues to be gobbled up by its neighbour, and the leader of the nation remains acquiescent over all the known infringements without condition whatsoever. But, as if that is not enough, he threatens and persecutes all who refuse to live out their lives in slavish subservience to his patrons in the East as he himself has sheepishly done. He should at least have the decency to admit that he, as a person, possesses neither the courage to question his masters’ unreasonable demands nor the credentials to lead a critically endangered people and nation towards safety and security.