We should heed Roosevelt's advice -- "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are" not later, now!

https://www.box.com/s/850ec57c2c9499e1b34e

Boun's description of the Khmer propensity toward destroying an adversary is vivid: In civilized countries political competition is a sport -- the winner and loser move on -- but in the Khmer culture, "though an adversary is knocked down in a fight, the one with advantage does not stop but rushes to kick the downed adversary until the latter loses consciousness or even dies. This is no sport. Winning means the adversary must fall unconscious or die; it's not winning if the adversary is still breathing. This is Charet Khmer (Khmer more or Khmer trait)."

June 1, 2012

An article by Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth published by the Asian Human Rights Commission

Driving through America's southern countryside of green fields and wild flowers, a flurry of thoughts overwhelm me as the words of a song reach my ears: "The banker man grows fatter, the working man grows thin; It's all happened before and it'll happen again; It'll happen again, they'll bet your life; I'm a Jack of all trades and, darling, we'll be alright…"

That's my 12-year-old grandson's favorite song from a new Bruce Springsteen CD. "So you use what you've got, and learn to make do," the song goes, "You take the old, you make it new."

The words remind me, oddly, of America's youngest president (1901-1909), Theodore Roosevelt, who said, "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." They are words about creativity: To imagine something that never exists and create it.

Martin Luther King, Jr., sees as a function of education, "to teach one to think intensively and to think critically."

There are two inseparable processes of excellence of thought: Creativity -- to produce something out of nothing; and criticality -- to evaluate whether what's produced leads one closer to a goal. This is quality thinking -- which determines the future of anything we do and the quality of our future.

The following morning, my grandson, his digital video camera running, interviewed me for his school project. One of his questions: Why do Cambodian opposition parties fight among themselves and why do members of the same party also fight among themselves? Oh, boy…

Charet Khmer - By Bun Chan Mol - ចរិតខ្មែរ ដោយ ប៊ុណ្ណច័ន្ទម៉ុល

http://www.box.com/s/850ec57c2c9499e1b34e

A Self-destructive Trait

Alternatives Watch – 20viii09

A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TRAIT

Cambodia clings to a trait that has proved to be arguably self-destructive. For whatever reason, Khmers fight it out among themselves to the end; yet, when facing foreign challengers they become submissive, if not passive.

There seems to be a need for prime minister Hun Sen to display his undisputed power by bashing his critics. His latest boast is that his army can take full control of Phnom Penh in just two hours, leaving his opponents no room to hide. The court he controls has sent them into hiding, exile, or forced dissembling apologies. His security forces are mainly for cracking down demonstrations and evicting the poor from their land targeted for redevelopment.

Conversely, he displays enormous tolerance to foreign adversaries. He agrees with Thailand that the border dispute is to be resolved bilaterally and peacefully, allowing it to drag on, if not inconspicuously escalating. On the eastern front, the border demarcation has been left to Vietnam who is willing to provide cartographical and global positioning system technologies, softwares, and installation of border posts. As a majority shareholder in a new joint commercial venture, Cambodia Angkor Air, Hun Sen has left the whole business operation to Vietnam who appoints all Vietnamese to the entire board of directors. Even the Khmer language is missing from the airline’s website, which contains only Vietnamese and English.

The mass murder of the Khmer people was so undemanding that it must have made Pol Pot feel invincible to the extent that he would treat his arch-enemy Vietnam with contempt. Perhaps the snap Vietnamese military campaign that ousted the whole Khmer Rouge regime within weeks serves as reminder to Khmer leaders to keep their brutality for their own citizens.

The internal hostilities in the Lon Nol republican regime signify the urge within the elite to defeat each other, even when facing external threats. Their continuous conflicts marginalised their effort to fight two fronts in the country: the North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge troops, which made their downfall predictable.

Sihanouk also exerted his unequivocal power onto his people. He orchestrated the national congress – legally it represented no one and had no judicial power – to summarily convict and sentence his opponents to death. The image of the opponents being shot by firing squads was filmed and shown in movie houses throughout the country. While the persecution of his Khmer opponents was definite and decisive, Sihanouk’s vital foreign policies were essentially based on hope. He backed and actively assisted Hanoi in the Vietnam War only with a hope that, upon their victory in South Vietnam, the communists would respect Cambodia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. He had no ground plan to ensure Hanoi would honour its promise to respect and leave Cambodia out of its control.

This self-destructive trait is not limited to the above cases; the urge to beat their own kind at any price has been overwhelming for centuries. If there were some tolerance for Khmers and less blind submission to foreign adversaries, Cambodia could be pleasantly different.

Ung Bun Ang

Quotable Quote:

“Foreigners fooling about in others' civil wars are a menace. They excite baseless hope of a fair, lasting peace.” - Woodrow Wyatt (1918–1997), British journalist and writer. News of the World.

Vindictive Behavior

Thursday, April 30, 2009
Op-Ed by Justin Sok

In HIS letter of April 19, 2009, the former King Norodom Sihanouk had offered to the general public his proposal. HE stated that the general public has continued to criticize HIM for spending more time living abroad than in HIS own homeland. Former King Norodom Sihanouk explained that HIS medical problems are HIS only legitimate reason for HIS continuing to stay abroad. Former King Norodom Sihanouk would return to Cambodia and live there, but not without challenging Khmer people living abroad to do the same. HE wrote in his letter, “. . . . . but I never ceased to serve my Homeland and the Khmer People. To conclude, allow me to ask these Khmer people from Canada, France, etc… why they are not returning to Cambodia to live there and to serve her, and serve her People[?]” (KI Media).

In retrospect, there were series of political event, which ended tragically.

1. March 1970, King Norodom Sihanouk appealed from Peking over the radio. "Brothers and sisters," he said, "go to the jungles and join the guerrillas." The scarves/handkerchiefs, with the local “Sankum Reastr Niyum” were distributed to the local “small” Khmer people. They were scrambling in the fields to get their hands on those scarves. The scarves were part of a political propaganda campaign and made the “small” Khmer people believe they were a special gift from their “God King”. Unfortunately, none of them had any knowledge that those scarves were later used to wrap their own corpses. At the same time, King Norodom Sihanouk appealed for the formation of the Khmer National United Front, to join with the Khmer Rouge to fight the Lon Nol government. What happened to them?
2. April 1975 – the Communist Party of Kampuchea herded hundreds of Lon Nol’s soldiers and they were taken in trucks to receive King Norodom Sihanouk in the jungle. What happened to them?
3. September 1975 – the Communist Party of Kampuchea invited Khmer intellectuals (nearly two thousand of them) that were living abroad to return to Cambodia to help rebuild the country. A co-worker of mine, who knew that her great aunt was still living in France before the collapse of Phnom Penh, but had lost contact with her since that time, went to Cambodia in the early 2000’s to search for her aunt. Tragically, she found her auntie’s picture hanging on the wall among thousands of other victims at the Tuol Sleng Museum. What happened to them?

In general consent, Khmer people, whether they are living abroad or inside Cambodia have gotten tired of the same old political shenanigans. They would want to see Khmer leaders come together and work on solutions for Cambodia’s problems and for her people. Historically, when it comes to working on to improve our country; Khmer leaders would often prefer to choose divisiveness over cooperation. They have, during the course of their “political” lives, made so much noise and filled the air with so much political rhetoric and authoritative banality that they have had no time to form an original thought, nor have they given themselves the opportunity to hear and learn anything from listening to anyone else. They would reject any idea and/or proposal, which did not come from their own party. “You lost the election; so you have no right to tell me what to do.”

As a practical matter, arguments are not the process by which we help each other. Cooperation is a tool with which we can achieve an end, satisfy a want, and fulfill a desire. Cooperation is the mechanism by which we reveal how we can help each other. It is the incomparable art by which we connect and interact successful with the other. Quite the opposite, Khmer leaders would love to strut about and say what each one has and how they could destroy the other. We continue to repeat with the same stupid mistakes that we have made since the 1600’s.

The ability to listen and to see must be more important than the ability to speak, else why would the “Higher Being” have given us two eyes and two ears and only one mouth? Khmer leaders had never taken any time to listen and value another’s point of view. It is always all about mine, not yours, which is more superior. Have you ever seen two dogs standing nose to nose, hair bristling on their backs, tails wagging in those short, stiff wags? Then someone pokes the larger of the dogs with a stick, and the larger dog attacks, not the person who poked him, but the smaller dog. Khmer leaders are like that. Both sides search for scapegoats. They each finger pointing at one another. They each continue to label and/or show each other negative in a bad light: Khmer Rouge; Khmer Viet Minh; Khmer Serei; Khmer Issarac; Khmer Lon Nol; Sihanoukist; Khmer Hun Sen; Khmer Sam Rainsy; and Khmer living abroad versus Khmer living inside Cambodia. When is this going to end?

It is with great honor to be invited by our former King Norodom Sihanouk to return to Cambodia and to serve her people. The bait is in the water, and the fish is watching and contemplating it to see whether it is a real bait or fake. But one may have to give it serious consideration, what would be the price for taking the bait? No, it is not about the position and/or rank. It is about the security and safety issues of those who would like to contribute to the cause of rebuilding Cambodia. It is not about greed, power, and control. It is not about being the puppet master. It is not about making people do what you want and seeing how many balls you can keep in the air at once. It is all about our beloved Cambodia and our beloved Khmer people.

We are still able to treat each other with a modest dose of civility. We ought to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. The judge cannot obtain justice without the skill of lawyers who present him with the facts; the parent cannot form the successful child without the love of the child; and the boss is powerless to achieve production without the respect and aid of his employees. Likewise, the leader cannot lead the country and her people to peace, freedom, and prosperity without the will of the people. Quality people – conservative, business oriented, temperate, highly moral, intelligent, and ambition – change the political landscape of the country – and if we can do that, then we can have our Constitution in place, protect the rights of our people, reform our education institutions, honor the scholars, keep our children in school, restrict the cultural garbage that exploit us by foreigners, which is consumed by our children, reform our judicial systems; improve our infrastructure; provide access and affordable health care services for women, children, and the poor; seal our borders, and protect the true Cambodian way of life. Remember, nothing worthwhile is without sacrifice. But we have to sacrifice together as one!

To the Khmer leaders, when you get to the end of the your road, you have to look at the community woodpile and decide if you added to it while you were here or whether you just took from it. No, it is not about stripping the flesh off the bones, like our recent Khmer history has taught us, “Bones piled up at the Tuol Sleng Museum.” It is about the accomplishments, achievements, and the legacy that you would leave behind for future generations. In fact, it is about adding to the woodpile. Indeed, it is always an honor thing to serve your country.

*I would like to take this opportunity to say to each and every Khmer people living abroad and inside Cambodia, “Hello!” and “Sur Sdey!”

Justin C. Sok
April 29, 2009