A Spectacle of Mourning for a King in Cambodia

Officials with portraits of the late King Sihanouk in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Friday. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

A fainting Xok An was carried away by bodyguards

February 1, 2013
By THOMAS FULLER
The New York Times

“Hun Sen wants to be seen as the protector of the monarchy.”

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The sound of artillery shells thundered across this city on Friday as part of the final, elaborate salute to the late King Sihanouk, whose reign spanned the euphoria of independence from France in 1953 and the terror of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

The flourishes included military bands, attendants in traditional dress banging large gongs and rows of officials wearing white shirts and black armbands. Some 15,000 civil servants took part.

Tens of thousands of onlookers knelt on the roadside with their hands clasped as a funeral procession looped through the city, pausing for an incantation from monks and ending at the site next to the royal palace where the king’s body will be cremated Monday.

Several people fainted in the tropical heat, including the powerful deputy prime minister, Sok An, who was carried away by aides.

The former king died in October at age 89, having ceded what had become a ceremonial throne to his son, Norodom Sihamoni, in 2004. The current king watched the procession from the gate of the royal palace with his mother, Norodom Monineath.

Hun Sen, the authoritarian prime minister who has been in power for nearly three decades and now dominates Cambodian politics, played a relatively low-key role, sitting with other officials in a float shaped like a mythical bird.

But analysts said that the spectacle was his way of drawing on the popular legacy of the late king as the father of the modern nation who led the campaign for independence from France.

“The policy of the government is to promote his memory,” said Pung Kek, president of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. “Hun Sen wants to be seen as the protector of the monarchy.”

The monarchy, especially among older Cambodians, is a defining institution, Ms. Pung said.

“Some Cambodians in the countryside like to say, ‘You cannot have a country without a king,’ ” she said.

There was little reference to the darker side of the late king’s leadership: lending his prestige to the Khmer Rouge and helping them come to power. The group’s rule left 1.7 million people dead.

Government announcers eulogized him as a leader who built national character along with factories, schools, roads and hospitals.

“He is the father of integrity and the father of national unity,” said one announcer, whose comments were carried on loudspeakers around the city and on national television, which broadcast the procession.

“He is the best king ever,” the announcer said.

The government has declared a week of mourning. Civil servants were given two days off and businesses along the procession route were ordered to close.

“All entertainment centers and broadcasters must refrain from displaying excessive happiness,” a government statement said.

Mourners praised the king for many virtues, including generosity.

Keo Sina, 56, who owns a cake shop on the outskirts of Phnom Penh and walked with nine other members of her family to see the procession, said she remembered the king delivering aid to her village when she was a child.

“Today is the last day that we can see the king,” Ms. Keo said. “He sacrificed his life to the country. I hope his soul rests in peace.”

Cannons, lined in formation along the banks of the Mekong River and loaded with shells provided by Vietnam, fired as the chariot carrying the king’s gilded coffin rolled past at a mournful pace.

“It reminded me of the battlefield,” said Mey Thorn, a bicycle rickshaw driver here in Phnom Penh watching the procession. “Things are better now, getting better and better.”

This is a time of relative stability for Cambodia and of rising prosperity in Phnom Penh and a few other urban centers. The procession in Phnom Penh on Friday passed near the signposts of urban affluence, including a towering skyscraper under construction.

But the economic growth has been uneven, leaving the countryside, where the majority of the population lives, dirt poor.

Vietnam, another war-torn nation, has surged ahead of Cambodia over the past decade in gross domestic product per capita, a measure of average wealth, according to World Bank figures.

Only one quarter of the Cambodian population has access to electricity, compared with nearly full coverage in Vietnam and Thailand.

About one-third of the Cambodian population does not have running water at home.

“The wealth that we get from economic growth does not benefit people over all — just a handful of people,” said Son Chhay, a senior member of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, the main opposition party in Parliament, which was formed by the merger of two parties last year.

“We have just rich and poor. We don’t have a middle class.”

Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting.