Youth born before Pol Pot era are more combative than current youths: Expert

អ្នកជំនាញ ៖យុវជន​កើត​មុន​ជំនាន់​ប៉ុលពត​តស៊ូ​ខ្លាំង​ជាង​យុវជន​សម័យ​បច្ចុប្បន្ន

អាទិត្យ 12 សីហា 2012
ដោយ គី សុខលីម
Radio France Internationale

យុវជន​កើត​មុន​ជំនាន់​ប៉ុលពត​​តស៊ូ​ខ្លាំង​ជាង​យុវជន​សម័យ​បច្ចុប្បន្ន។ តើ​អ្វីខ្លះ​ជា​គុណសម្បត្តិ​និង​គុណវិបត្តិ​របស់​យុវជន​កើតមុន​ ​និង​​កើត​ក្រោយសម័យប៉ុលពត? ដើម្បីជ្រាបព័ត៌មាននេះច្បាស់​ សូមអញ្ជើញស្តាប់​បទសម្ភាសន៍រវាង គី សុខលីម​និង​លោក កែម ឡី អ្នកវិភាគ​ឯករាជ្យ​ផ្នែកសង្គម​សេដ្ឋកិច្ច​​នៅ​ក្នុងប្រទេសកម្ពុជា។
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12 August 2012
By Ky Soklim
Radio France Internationale

People who are born before the Pol Pot regime are more combative than the current youths. What are the quality and the default of youths who were born before and after the Pol Pot regime? In order to understand this issue, please listen to Ky Soklim's interview with Mr. Kem Ley, an independent social and economic analyst in Cambodia.

Click on the control below to listen to the interview:

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Boeung Kak Tears - Comment by Ta An Srok Khmer

STARVATION under the Pol Pot regime,

LANDLESS farmers under the Hun Xen regime

Arts Festival Review: O Cambodia

Singer Him Savy (centre) and the Tre So Band are core figures in O Cambodia, a response to the brutality of Pol Pot's regime. Photo / Supplied

Saturday Mar 19, 2011
By William Dart
NZHerald.co.nz (New Zealand)

Music
What: O Cambodia
Where: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber

There was no questioning the sincerity of this project, a response by two Cambodian and two New Zealand composers to the appalling abuses of the Pol Pot regime. Alas, the deeply moving message of O Cambodia fell upon far fewer ears in Thursday's concert than it should have.

The programme, played without the interruption of applause, opened with Chinary Ung's In Memoriam for vocalising piano trio.

It was technically testing for NZTrio, but cellist Ashley Brown was totally at ease with singing and playing simultaneously.

The strenuousness and utter concentration conveyed by the musicians assisted a certain sense of catharsis, with momentum provided by Ung's textural and harmonic ingenuities.

Viet Nam ends stateless limbo for 2,300 former Cambodians

Some of the former Cambodian refugees at Friday's ceremony in Ho Chi Minh City proudly hold their citizenship certificates. (Photo: UNHCR/S.Vu Anh)

HO CHI MINH CITY, Viet Nam, July 19 (UNHCR) – In a joyous citizenship ceremony, Viet Nam took a ground-breaking step towards closing the last chapter in a 35-year-long statelessness saga for some 2,300 former Cambodians.

"I'm so happy," said a beaming Luong Ve, 77, the oldest among 287 former refugees to receive a Vietnamese naturalization certificate last Friday, a valuable document that will now entitle him to a huge number of rights others take for granted.

It is the culmination of UNHCR's efforts, together with the Vietnamese government, to resolve one of the lingering legacies of Cambodia's bloody 1970-75 Pol Pot regime. The 2,357 former Cambodians who will receive citizenship had fled in 1975 to Viet Nam, where they learned the language and fully integrated into their new country.

The 287 naturalized on Friday in the southern Vietnamese city formerly known as Saigon, live in what used to be two refugee camps set up by UNHCR in 1980. The rest are on track to get their papers by the end of this year.

"This sets an excellent example in the region for resolving statelessness and is a great way to start commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness," said Thomas Vargas, UNHCR's regional protection adviser, who attended the ceremony. He encouraged other Asian countries to take a lead from Viet Nam in finding solutions for statelessness.

Last year, Viet Nam also enacted a new law to plug gaps that had left thousands of women stateless after they married and divorced foreign men.

The valuable new citizenship documents – handed out on a flag-draped stage at Ho Chi Minh City's Department of Justice – will confer the all-important family registration book and ID card that will open the door to health and social insurance, buying a house, higher education and better jobs.

Ho Manh Cong, whose family came to Viet Nam in 1975, was born in Ho Chi Minh City 28 years ago but has never even been able to own a motorbike because he is not a citizen.

"Not having Vietnamese citizenship has created a lot of troubles in my daily life," he said. "I've been working for a company for more than five years but still cannot enjoy social insurance."

For Vu Anh Son, head of UNHCR's operations in Viet Nam, the ceremony was nearly as emotional as for the 287 receiving their certificates.

"I have known most of these people for 10 years," he said. "All they wanted was for UNHCR to help them obtain legal status so that they could live in Viet Nam permanently because there was no other solution that would give them a good future."

"This is what I have been working on with the government of Viet Nam for five years. I'm so thrilled to share the happiness with all the people with citizen certificates in their hands."

Remembering 'Year Zero' when Beijing-backed regime rammed socialism through

Monday, April 26, 2010
John Metzler
Special to World Tribune (Washington, USA)

UNITED NATIONS — Thirty-five years ago this week, the guns fell silent in Cambodia. The capital city Phnom Penh was captured by the Khmer Rouge communists and the war was finally over. Then an unfathomable reign of terror commenced pulling Cambodia into yet lower levels of the Indochinese inferno. Now a generation later, an UN-backed tribunal is trying key Khmer Rouge leaders “accused of mass killings and other crimes during the country’s genocide.”

During the rule of the Beijing-backed Pol Pot regime between 1975-1979, nearly two million Cambodians were killed by their own people in the name of communist utopianism. The Year Zero as it was called, was to forcibly transform Cambodia into a socialist state, which rivaled the radicalism even of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in Mainland China.

Neighboring Vietnam’s invasion of its old ethnic rival, Cambodia and the instillation of a puppet regime in 1979, interrupted the sanguinary rule of Democratic Kampuchea. Despite the illegality of the invasion and the dubious legitimacy of the rulers, (many of them former Khmer Rouge defectors), from a human rights perspective, and for the average Cambodian, the situation improved.

Yet Democratic Kampuchea was still the UN-recognized representative holding the seat of Cambodia. An annual political General Assembly debate brought together representatives of the Pol Pot regime, genuine nationalists, and the mercurial if bizarre Prince Sihanouk. The People’s Republic of China backed the Khmer Rouge, the U.S. Administration of Jimmy Carter had just recognized Beijing and thus was playing the China Card, and most developing countries opposed Hanoi’s invasion too. Thus there existed the political clout to produce resounding majorities contemning Vietnam’s illegal occupation of Cambodia.

In light of the condemnations of Vietnam, it almost became an afterthought that the Khmer Rouge had presided over the infamous Killing Fields, an indisputable genocide which tore the once gentle heart from this Indochina land, making the very name Cambodia synonymous with forced starvation, torture and death.

Given massive international political pressures, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia and allowed a UN peacekeeping and political process with led to free and fair elections in the early 1990’s. Not surprisingly the old Kingdom of Cambodia was reestablished. By 2003 the UN and Cambodia agreed to a joint judicial Tribunal, tasked with trying leading Khmer Rouge figures. The Tribunal is composed of both Cambodian and foreign judges.

Recently the UN’s Chief Legal Counsel, Patricia O’Brien, visited the Phnom Penh-based Tribunal, officially called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, (ECCC). After holding discussions with Cambodian officials, she stressed the continuing importance of the Tribunal, but called on donor countries to provide funding to support the ongoing judicial process.

The ECCC budget for 2010 stands at $45 million and is paid by both the Cambodian government and foreign donors. The Tribunal provides a full and proper legal frame- work with Trial and Appeals Chambers.

A trial of the notorious leader Kiang Guek Eav also known as “Duch” has finished and he is awaiting sentence. He was charged with crimes of torture and premeditated murder at the infamous S-21 camp. There will be at least a few more trials before the Tribunal winds down its mandate in 2015.

According to a statement, “The ECCC has confirmed its ability to conduct complex international criminal trials to international standards.” Yet the obvious question arises; with so many of the perpetuators of the Khmer Rouge genocide still alive, and many living openly in Cambodia, why is the Tribunal’s mandate so narrow?

Clearly there are large numbers in Cambodian society who are willing to turn the page on the past, or who more likely, fear returning to that past. Confronting the living ghosts of the Pol Pot regime raises fears and a specter of a Cambodia which existed before probably most of the current population was even born. The fragile peace, fractious democracy, and fluctuating economic development have moved forward but could quickly wilt in the hot-light of recriminations or perhaps worse. Revenge for the crimes of the genocidal regime is not the issue, but justice should be the indisputable goal.
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John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for WorldTribune.com.

Sihanouk thanks Hun Sen for “providing justice to him” [-Scratch my back, I scratch yours?]

Click on the letter in Khmer to zoom in

22 March 2009
By Ung Chamroeun
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Luc Sâr
Click here to read the article in French

During the 18 March 1970 anniversary, Hun Sen paid tribute to the [Sihanouk’s] Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime.

Norodom Sihanouk wrote a thank you letter to Hun Sen. The letter dated 20 March said: “I deeply thank you, Samdach Hun Sen, for providing justice to me and to our history. I wish you a large success in your long term mission as head of the kingdom’s government,” King-Father wrote from his residence in Beijing.

Reminiscing about the 18 March 1970 coup d’état, Hun Sen expressed his admiration toward to the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime while then-Prince Sihanouk was leading Cambodia between 1954 and 1970.

During a travel to the province of Pursat on Saturday 21 March, Hun Sen again evoked the date of 18 March 1970 and the troubled period that followed: “If there were no such wars, Cambodia would have continued to be developed under the continuity of that era where the country was being led [by Norodom Sihanouk],” he indicated.

Hun Sen took opportunity to criticize “some foreigners” who “create obstacles to peace in Cambodia.” “Dear foreigners, if you do not wish to help the Khmer people, do not push us to make war either. It was the war that led us to the Pol Pot regime,” he added.

Russia is still proud of its Vietnamese client-state

Vietnam still proud of Chinese skulls in the jungle

05.03.2009
Sergei Balmasov
Source: Pravda.Ru

"Not so long ago, each Vietnamese student studying at local medical schools was supposed to fetch a couple of Chinese skulls from the jungle for practical classes." [KI-Media note: This is a hint for Cambodian medical school students. Numerous dead Bo-dois are still lying inside Cambodian jungle.]

Vietnam heroically repulsed China’s attack 30 years ago. The enmity between the two states continued for over 2,000 years. Vietnam’s territory was spreading to the Yangtze River 2,500 years ago. The Vietnamese proved 30 years ago that they could still wage war.

The war broke out in 1979 because of the tense relations between the USSR and China. The two communist regimes were fighting for the influence on the countries of the socialist camp. Beijing could not boast of any success: the sphere of its influence included only Albania and Kampuchea.

Pol Pot attacked Vietnam’s border territories in 1978. Hanoi responded with deploying its troops in Kampuchea in December 1978. China obtained a reason to interfere on Pol Pot’s side and occupy Vietnam in order to weaken the Soviet influence in the world.

The United States stood behind the conflict: the country was struggling against communism. The USA was setting China against the USSR’s allies promising its support to Beijing.

The 600,000-strong Chinese army attacked Vietnam along its entire 1,460-kilometer border. Vietnam had only two divisions to oppose China’s 44. About 85 percent of Vietnam’s troops were stationed in Cambodia, thousands of kilometers away. However, China failed to have a blitzkrieg: Vietnam did very well without the basic part of its regular forces.

Border guards and local militia men showed fierce resistance to the aggressor. The Chinese troops moved only 15 kilometers inside Vietnam during the first three days of the war. Only several thousands of Vietnamese border guards deterred a whole army.

The Vietnamese militia joined the war on the third day only. The Chinese troops were moving along narrow paths in the jungle - the surroundings were very convenient for entrapments. The Vietnamese soldiers eventually dismembered the enemy’s army into several parts.

A group of Soviet counselors arrived in Vietnam on February 19. Moscow set its Eastern troops on high alert and threatened to invade China. The USSR’s Pacific Fleet was approaching China’s coast. Soviet warplanes transported a group of the Vietnamese army from Kampuchea, which made it possible to organize a 100,000-strong group of Vietnamese military men.

China began to pull back its troops on March 5. The country declared its victory but never explained why it had failed to defend Pol Pot, its bloody ally. Vietnam pulled back from Kampuchea only ten years afterwards, having defeated the Khmer Rouge.

The Vietnamese troops were following China’s retreat for two weeks and killed 62,500 Chinese soldiers. They also destroyed over 50 percent of China’s military hardware that was involved in the aggression.

The vestiges of that war still echo today. Not so long ago, each Vietnamese student studying at local medical schools was supposed to fetch a couple of Chinese skulls from the jungle for practical classes. The incursion of 1979 proved that Vietnam has one of the best soldiers in the world, who definitely know how to defend their native land.

Burma's 'new life' camps evoke memories of Pol Pot

Burmese monk killed during the recent uprising

20 October 2007
By Kim Sengupta The Independent (UK)

Burma is a "land of prisons" with thousands of human rights activists being sent off to brutal "new life" camps after being arrested during night raids and convicted in secret trials, a senior British diplomatic source has said.

Monks who led the pro-democracy campaign are among the disappeared. Some are believed to have been beaten close to death in custody, while the fate of many others remain unknown. Roads to the monasteries have been cut and very few monks are now seen in public.

The account of retribution which has followed last month's violence came from the official who is closely acquainted with the unfolding situation in Burma. The "new life" camps, echoes of "re-education centres" set up by Pol Pot in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, are away from the capital, Rangoon, and surrounded by tales of savage punishment, he said.

Those considered by the regime to be leaders of the protest are believed to have received sentences of up to 20 years imprisonment.

And tales have begun to emerge of mistreatment in the jails and "new life" camps, with the monks in particular being targeted for severe abuse. They are being held in rooms where there are no toilets and where the walls are covered in excrement. They have been routinely beaten and soaked in ice cold water, with the interrogators often stripping robes from the clerics because this supposedly expiates them of any sins over what they had done.

The diplomat said yesterday that the regime is trying to portray a scene of normality, but "very serious abuses" are going on behind the scenes. "There are huge night-time sweeps. They have scooped up hundreds of people. There is heavy security in the parts of town where many of the dissidents come from. A hundred activists have been tried this week in closed courts in Mandalay, while another thousand have been brought before special courts in Rangoon."

Figures released by the regime regarding the number of dead and incarcerated cannot be believed, the official said. According to official numbers, of the 3,000 people arrested during the protests only 500 remain in custody, but the real total of those in detention was likely to be up to 2,500. The official death toll is 10; the real figure, was "many, many multiples" of that, the diplomat added.

Living conditions for the population continue to be dire in a part of Asia which is going through an economic boom. Fifty per cent of children do not have access to primary school education, while 30 per cent live below the poverty line. Communication with the outside world has been curtailed by closing down of internet services and sheer practical difficulties in a country where a mobile phone costs $2,000 (£975).

While British officials do not believe there is any immediate prospect of a repeat of last month's mass protests, the diplomat said signs of unrest have continued. There have been reports of rocks and bricks being thrown at police, while in Rangoon there has been booing at what was supposed to be a pro-government rally, even though the crowd had been surrounded by armed police.

There was deep outrage, said the diplomat, at the way the monks had been treated, which even extended to parts of the army and the government.

"The population is traumatised and for the moment, they are licking their wounds, but they are determined to carry on showing their resistance," the official said.

THE EROSION OF PRIVACY: Big Brother is Watching

Phnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 12, June 15 - 28, 200

The current government has been known to monitor and record individuals' phone conversations in order to discredit or imprison political opponents ... We cannot allow Cambodia to retreat back into the time of Pol Pot

Each one of us occasionally has been under the scrutiny and judging gaze of another; we feel uneasy, uncomfortable, inhibited, stifled, and drained of energy, unable to be much else but awkwardly self-conscious.

Now, imagine a society where you could be monitored and watched at every second of the day or night, every day of the week, every week of the year - possibly all the time. Imagine a society in which those with power theoretically can always listen in, watch, monitor your every move, no matter how private and intimate the occasion, and then use the exchange as evidence against you legally and publicly.

Imagine no private space, no private conversation, because everything could eventually be made known - when you talk politics with your friends; when you speak intimately with a lover; when you go to work; when you take a shower. Such intrusion and surveillance by the State has devastating effects on the self and the nation. Under the relentless chilling gaze of the State, people live in fear of being judged and even persecuted for mistakes, which would otherwise be lessons in growth and self-development. When individuals are no longer afforded the private space to try and make mistakes, and learn from their mistakes under the shade of trust and confidence and away from outside scrutiny, personal development is stunted.

Self censorship takes hold and individuals become increasingly afraid to share their opinions. They live in constant fear of slipping up; they become suffocated by the continuous pressure of maintaining this façade.

Distrust and suspicion become widespread as individuals wonder who may be helping to monitor them. Is it their neighbor? Their boss? Their best friend? Their spouse? Their child? They learn to see others only as potential enemies, not as fellow human beings. They themselves cease to be fully human. Eventually they grow so accustomed to smothering their own characteristics and opinions that their individuality is extinguished. Rather, they become mechanical, automated, slavish, unable to truly live as vibrant and free individuals. It is as if they cannot even breathe by their own will; they are only robotic extensions of the State.

A monitored life is an imprisoned, inhibited life that stifles all creativity, imagination, growth, genuineness, trust, everything that is of any worth and meaning in daily life. Unfortunately, the society described above is a reality in some places in the world, and is nearing reality here in present-day Cambodia as the right to privacy is increasingly diminished. Under the newly-adopted Criminal Procedure Code and the envisioned draft law against terrorism, broad measures of intrusion into private lives are permitted in the pursuit of combating crimes and terrorism.

The Right to Privacy under the Khmer Rouge

The erosion of privacy in Cambodia takes on a more sinister implication in light of our current history when the Khmer Rouge completely abolished all privacy, individual rights where we lived in constant fear and distrust, and where even children eavesdropped and reported on their own parents.

The Right to Privacy Today: Danger Zone

Thirty years later, the kind of Orwellian society that Cambodians witnessed in the late 1970s threatens to return. The current government has been known to monitor and record individuals' phone conversations in order to discredit or imprison political opponents. Indeed, Prince Norodom Sirivudh was stripped of his political immunity in 1995 based on a phone conversation that was secretly recorded. Police searches of private homes without a warrant are a routine occurrence. These problems will be exacerbated under the new Criminal Procedure Code which allows for phone tapping, and the envisioned Anti-Terrorism bill, which allows for nearly limitless governmental surveillance of individuals in the name of national and international security. Even if it could be argued that privacy rights must be occasionally infringed upon in the name of security, such invasions must be infrequent, and only in the most extreme cases, and the secretly tapped exchange should not be used as evidence, but only a lead to other more substantive evidence. We must not become a society in which, as Herbert Packer put it, "all are safe but none are free".

We cannot allow Cambodia to retreat back into the time of Pol Pot, in which the threat of constant surveillance forced us to literally shut our mouths and stand by while corruption and human rights abuses abound. Tragically, the world described in the beginning of this column is all too easy to imagine because we have already lived through these circumstances once, and the residue of fear is still a reality.

Though privacy rights are currently under attack all over the world, Cambodia is particularly vulnerable. While many other nations have institutions and concrete statutory protections that can counter a government's overzealous monitoring of its population, Cambodia still lacks many such measures. For example, in Canada, a federal Privacy Commissioner exists to investigate complaints around and challenge excessive intrusions into the privacy of individuals. Japan passed the Interception Law in 1999, authorizing wiretapping in the investigation but restricting its use to prosecutors and police officers of a certain rank. Additionally, these officials are required to obtain a warrant before monitoring, and to notify those monitored after the investigation.

In countries like Canada, Japan and the United States, an extremely high threshold exists before an intrusive measure is even raised for debate. Moreover, these countries have counter-balancing power of strong institutions and sophisticated technology to test and challenge the legitimacy and genuineness of wiretapping, computer tampering etc. to prevent potential abuse. These protective measures are lacking in Cambodia.

Unfortunately, while the right to privacy is more difficult to protect in Cambodia, there is also a much greater need for it. Cambodia remains a very fragile society which is still rebuilding itself. We, Khmers, remain distrustful of each other, of foreigners; we lack confidence in our ability to control the happenings in our lives. Such distrust and lack of confidence will only be worsened by the constant pressure that comes with extensive governmental surveillance. Without the ability to feel comfortable taking risks, making mistakes, and asking questions, we Khmers will find it more difficult to develop the insight and vision required to undertake the re-building our individual selves and society.

Privacy Rights are Universal and Must Be Realized

To be human is to be free. We are not free and it is mental imprisonment when we live under the constant, eerie gaze of the State. Hence, the right to privacy is so sacred to human existence. The intrusions strip us of our individuality, examining and prodding at our thoughts until such thoughts are "acceptable" in the eyes of those in power. Freedom of religion means little if we cannot pray in solitude or gather in private for religious worship. Freedom to marry the person of one's choice is diminished if partners cannot share intimate moments and expressions of their feelings away from prying eyes. A right to actively participate in political life does not truly exist when individuals are forced to fall silent and not debate. Privacy is not a privilege, it is a right, universally desired and recognized.

This right to privacy is the very heart of human dignity. It is the foundation upon which we build our personality and aspirations, make relationships, and think creatively and critically. Who, being watched, can give in to their emotions with abandon, can jump for joy or howl in sorrow? Who, being listened in on, can express their deepest desire or their greatest fear, can share their most intimate secret, or can challenge injustices perpetrated by the powers-that-be? Who, under the threat of constant public scrutiny, can cast convention aside and "think outside the box"?

Intrusions into our privacy force the creative, the wise, the dreamers, and the critics to fall in line out of fear. Without privacy there can be no true passion, intimacy, or uniqueness - thus without privacy there is no self.

The new Criminal Procedure Code which allows for phone tapping, and the draft Anti-Terrorism Law which permits broad intrusive measures dangerously restrict our constitutional right to personal freedom. These are insidious developments for our fragile society and people who are already traumatized by the fears instilled by the Khmer Rouge and who continue to live within a culture of fear.

We must preserve our privacy and thus preserve our ability to think, to be, to act, to breathe freely.

Erin Pulaski
Legal Intern, UC Berkeley

Theary C. Seng
Executive Director