Cambodia’s Ethnic Vietnamese Seek Tribunal Justice [-Will the Xmers have precedence over the Khmers?]

A handout photograph shows former Khmer Rouge Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea Nuon Chea, in the courtroom during a public hearing at the (ECCC), in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Monday. (EPA Photo/Mark Peters)

Does the Vietnamese Sacombank-Cambodia discriminates against ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia?

Xmer citizen Xok Kong controls the economy in Cambodia. His company, Sokimex, is accused of siphoning funds from tourist entrance visit to the Angkor Park. Did he buy his Xmer citizenship? If so, where did the proceed go?

Thu, March 15, 2012
Daniel Phan
Jakarta Globe

Unable to own land, vote, or open a bank account, and subjected to regular discrimination (sic!), Ly Sokphhoung is an outsider in her own country.

Like most Yuon floating villagers living on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake, Ly, whose grandparents arrived from Vietnam during the French colonial era, leads an uncertain life and struggles daily with the realities of a stateless existence.

Still her hope of the United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal hearing the Maoist regime’s genocidal crimes against ethnic Vietnamese has not waned, in spite of the age of the three elderly defendants: Nuon Chea, 85, Ieng Sary, 87, and Khieu Samphan, 80.

“We’ve had it tough for so long and while there’s relative peace now, some things haven’t changed. Local authorities still discriminate and make things like obtaining nationality harder for ethnic Vietnamese (sic!),” said Ly, who lost 36 members of her family under the Khmer Rouge regime.

ស្នុកទ្រូ - ស្រុកស្មែរ! ចយឌឹកអឺយ!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtPoW9aVesI

"Perpetually temporary: citizenship and ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia" - by Stefan Ehrentraut

Perpetually Temporary Ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia (2)
http://www.scribd.com/full/53210017?access_key=key-1dy5qkd83xhf3gv71osa

Cambodia: Christmas of solidarity, just as the Gospel teaches

Thi (Photo: Fr. Luca Bolelli)

12/30/2010
By Fr. Luca Bolelli
AsiaNews.it

Thi wanted to go home for Christmas, but neither she nor her family could afford the cost of the trip. So her friend Srey On decided to gift her the ticket, despite the fact her salary is barely enough to feed her and her family. The Gospel in the midst of daily poverty, a story told by a PIME missionary.

Kdol Leu (AsiaNews) - Fr Luca Bolelli, 35, from Bologna, Italy, is a PIME missionary who has been in Cambodia for 3 years. At Christmas, he wrote to AsiaNews.

I returned to Cambodia after passing the summer in Italy, intense days where I was able to see so many of you, unfortunately it was not possible to see many others, and for this I am sincerely sorry. I resumed my life Kdol Leu, on the banks of the Mekong River, along with Father Ivan and the people of these lands.

The last few weeks have seen us busy preparing for Christmas. There is a tradition in Leu Kdol of staging the Nativity in front of the church. Villagers from surrounding villages come in large numbers, curious to see the play, though not Christians. Each year the young people prepare some plays and traditional dances for the occasion. It is truly a special feast. Those from our village who left to look for work or study far away try to be present, although 25 December is not a public holiday in Cambodia.

Thi is also among them. Thi is a young Vietnamese girl who has worked for two years here with us at church, helping in household chores and preparing the "bobo" rice for the nursery school children. Then last summer she crowned a dream, when it became possible for her to resume her studies that she had to leave at first grade. Being the eldest of seven children from a very poor family, even as a child, she had to think of them first of all. Now that their situation is a bit 'more stable, here brothers and sisters have all grown, and her parents have allowed her to study for two years with the Salesian Sisters in Battambang, a large city practically on the other side of Cambodia.

A few days before Christmas, Thi called me all happy, "Father, I will be home for Christmas”. I called her mother and together we phoned Thi, but then came the disappointment. Her parents did not have the money to pay for her ticket home from Battambang, plus the rice season has just begun and there are very few riel to spare. "Patience," said Thi "it doesn’t matter." That same evening at dinner and I spoke of what happened to Srey On and Darong [pictured], who know Thi well. Darong also has a very difficult family situation, we helping him as much as possible and it is deeply moving to see the effort he puts into study, especially English, with which he struggles greatly. Srey On took Thi’s job here at the mission. They are very similar: she could not study and so reads and writes with difficulty, but she is a girl of immense sensitivity and her concern for others is truly astonishing. A few weeks ago we decided to increase her salary because she works twice as much as had been originally established, and at home her mother is very ill (her father abandoned them when the children were still small).

Srey On asked me: "How much is a ticket from Battambang?". "About 30 thousand riel (ie, little more than 6 euro)" I replied. She thinks for a moment and then says, "I’ll give Thi money to come home for Christmas." I was amazed. 30 thousand riel is a lot of money, especially here in the countryside. Srey On never spends more than 5 thousand a day on food for herself and her mother, more than half of the raise we had given her. She could have spent it in a thousand other ways, or put it away for a rainy day, but ...

So I called Thi to give her the good news, she thanks us but does not want to come, having thought about it, she feels its too much money. So I pass her to Srey On, they speak together for a few minutes, and in the end Thi tells me: "Father, I’ll come and see you at Christmas." I'm overjoyed, her brothers and sisters can’t wait to see her, none of us can. I remember the act of Srey On, small and insignificant like the widow in the Gospel story, who offers two small coins for the Temple and no one notices except Jesus: "She put more than all the others because she gave everything she has to live on" . She could have kept them, she is poor, she had every right. Instead, she choose to give her money anyway.

Finally Christmas Eve arrived, the young people were ready to stage the Nativity and dances prepared in recent months. A lot of people came this year. Every so often I would scan the crowd to see if Thi had already arrived. But it was already dark, the ferry must have stopped service by now. Where was Thi? Her mother asks me too. I guessed that the bus from Battambang arrived late and she was forced to find shelter for the night, perhaps in Kompong Cham, the capital of our province. Not even Ciuri, one of her sisters who studies with the Salesians in Phnom Penh, is unable to return in time for the celebration. A bad infection in her hand meant she had to remain in Kompong Cham, a "short walk" from home. The evening of the 24, she had to undergo a small emergency operation.

Christmas morning and still no news yet of Thi, strange because transport from Kompong Cham had already been running for some time. After Mass I phone for news of her sister, and who does she pass me? Only Thi! She met Ciuri Christmas Eve in Kompong Cham and decided to stay to keep her company. What a girl Thi, I think to myself, you have not changed. You gave up something that you deeply desired for your sister.

I alert her father and mother who immediately search for a bike to borrow to visit their daughters. Just before sunset the father returns with Thi, her mother has decided to relieve her to take over. The embrace between Thi and Srey On made me think of what I imagine Mary and Elizabeth felt when they were pregnant with Jesus and John the Baptist.

Dung thanks Xen for creating favorable conditions for overseas Viets to live and do business in Cambodia, but Xen must go further!

Cambodian and Vietnamese PMs hold talks

11/15/2010
VOV News (Hanoi)

PM Dung highly appreciated that Cambodia’s role in creating favorable conditions for overseas Vietnamese to live and do business in the country and asked Cambodia to further facilitate the activities of overseas Vietnamese. [KI-Media Note: Did the coward Hoon Xen ever dare ask the same thing to Nguyen Tan Dung on Khmer Krom's behalf?]

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and his entourage began an official visit to Cambodia on November 15 to attend the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) summits at the invitation of Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Both PMs held talks to strengthen and develop the friendship and cooperation between the two nations after the welcoming ceremony.

PM Hun Sen highlighted the visit by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and his entourage and expressed his belief that the visit will give a fresh impetus to promoting the traditional friendship and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries. PM Dung said he was very glad to be re-visiting Cambodia and highly appreciated Cambodia’s prestige and status in the regional and international arena.

PM Hun Sen also highlighted Vietnam’s role as ASEAN 2010 President and its successful organization of the 17th ASEAN Summit and related summits. He also gave congratulations for the 11th Vietnam’s Communist Party Congress which will be completed by early 2011. He said Vietnamese investors have boosted direct investment in Cambodia while other nations met difficulties in overseas investment due to the impact of the global financial crisis.

Both PMs expressed delight at the fine development in the relationship between the two nations in recent years, and determined to bring the friendship and comprehensive cooperative relations to a new height. They also agreed to promote exchange of delegations at all levels, devise effective measures to promote cooperation in such fields as trade, investment, banking, energy, power, oil and gas, and transportation. Both PMs also encouraged service and trade activities among localities, especially localities at border areas.

The two leaders also agreed to closely cooperate in the fields of security, national defense and anti-terrorism and trans-national crime, human trafficking, and drug smuggling. They affirmed that none hostile forces are allowed to destroy the friendly relations between the two nations and showed determination to complete the border demarcation and marker planting by 2012. PM Dung highly appreciated that Cambodia’s role in creating favorable conditions for overseas Vietnamese to live and do business in the country and asked Cambodia to further facilitate the activities of overseas Vietnamese.

At the talk, both PMs also discussed issues on strengthening cooperation within ASEAN as well as the sub-regional cooperation mechanism. After the talk, both PMs witnessed the signing ceremony of a payment agreement between the State Bank of Vietnam and the Cambodia Royal Bank.

CAMBODIA: Khmer Rouge genocide charge marks milestone for minorities

Nguyen said the genocide charge would allow her clients to formally pursue the truth about why they were targeted and, in the process, “reconstitute their identity” as a distinct group in Cambodia whose rights need to be respected.

PHNOM PENH, 24 May 2010 (IRIN) - As judges at Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge tribunal decide whether to include genocide as a charge in the closing order, advocates say prosecuting the crime would represent a milestone for official recognition of the rights of the country's Vietnamese and Muslim minorities.

“There is still discrimination against the Cham, so this sends an important message that Muslims in Cambodia are part of the country,” Lor Chunty, a lawyer representing more than 200 Cham Muslim civil parties in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), told IRIN.

Estimates suggest there are more than 300,000 Cham Muslims living in Cambodia and put the number of ethnic Vietnamese much higher than the government figure of 100,000 – although the vast majority of Cambodia’s 14.7 million people are Buddhist ethnic Khmers.

Most of the 1.7 million Cambodians who died from overwork, starvation and murder during the ultra-Maoist regime’s 1975-1979 reign of terror were Khmers.

However, in 1999, UN experts concluded that Khmer Rouge leaders should face charges for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes on strong evidence – including Khmer Rouge statements, eyewitness accounts and the nature and number of victims of each group – pointing to genocide against the Cham and Vietnamese as ethnic groups and against the Buddhist monkhood as a religious group.

The ECCC has been trying five former top officials of the regime for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In December, the tribunal added genocide as a charge against the four remaining defendants for their alleged role in the slaughter of ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslims living in Cambodia.

The charge still needs to be finalized in the court’s closing order, but it is expected to be sustained.

Members of the Vietnamese and Muslim minorities who are participating in the court say it is necessary if the court’s justice is to be thorough and help ensure they stand beside Khmers as first-class citizens in today’s Cambodia.

The tribunal, said Deputy Prosecutor Anees Ahmed, “has to provide, to the extent possible, a true and complete historical account of the [the] crimes in all their manifestations, egregiousness and breadth”.

Respecting rights

Lyma Nguyen, a lawyer representing ethnic Vietnamese who lived through the Khmer Rouge era, and are now applying to be civil parties, said ethnic Vietnamese are still struggling to consolidate their place in Cambodian society.

“Even though most of the victims I represent have been living in Cambodia for many generations, many face discrimination to this day,” she said.

Nguyen said the genocide charge would allow her clients to formally pursue the truth about why they were targeted and, in the process, “reconstitute their identity” as a distinct group in Cambodia whose rights need to be respected.

Antagonism towards ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia is compounded by centuries of conflict between Cambodia and its more powerful neighbour.

Vietnamese communities say they receive less government funding for schools and hospitals than Khmer communities.

They also point to the common use by Cambodians of the pejorative term yuon – which roughly translates as “barbarian” – to refer to Vietnamese, even those who are Cambodian citizens.

Muslim communities, too, complain of being overlooked.

“I’m a survivor and I want the court to know our suffering and our history,” said one ethnic Vietnamese man who cannot be named for safety reasons. “We suffered and lost our relatives, so we want to see a fair trial for our ethnicity because we are human beings too.”

Though he was born and lived his entire life in Cambodia, local authorities refuse to give him a citizen ID card, he claimed.

Focusing on the plight of Cambodia’s ethnic groups under the Khmer Rouge, he believed, could translate into greater attention for the prejudices they face today.

“The genocide charge makes us feel that our particular issues are being given attention,” he said.

Cambodia's Fortunes Ebb And Flow Along The Mekong

The residents of this floating village on Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake, south of Siem Reap, are mostly ethnic Vietnamese. Their lives and livelihoods are intimately connected to the waters of the lake and the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. (Christopher Brown for NPR)
Mekong In Cambodia (Credit: Nelson Hsu/NPR)
Hundreds of boat crews celebrate the annual water festival on the river in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, in early November. The festival marks the day when the Tonle Sap River's current changes direction. (Christopher Brown for NPR)

The Mekong River, one of the world's longest waterways, has a long and turbulent history. From its source in China's central highlands, it passes through six countries as it makes its way to the South China Sea — a journey of nearly 3,000 miles. In a five-part series, NPR's Southeast Asia correspondent Michael Sullivan journeys the length of the river and tells the story of the people who live along its banks.

In Part 4, he reports from Cambodia, where the river has been central to the lives and livelihoods of many in a country that has seen its share of conflict.

February 18, 2010
By Michael Sullivan
National Public Radio (USA)
All Things Considered

Click here to listen to the audio program (MP3)

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia. But it hasn't always been that way. The Khmer once ruled a vast kingdom that covered not just Cambodia but parts of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, too.

The empire had its capital at Angkor, near the present-day city of Siem Reap in northwest Cambodia. At its peak, nearly 1 million people lived in the city of Angkor — at a time when London was still a town of 20,000 or so.

The empire's crowning architectural achievement was the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat, one of several dozen temples built by the Angkorian kings, the ruins of which now draw tourists from all over the globe.

Water was key to the Khmer kingdom's prosperity: for irrigation, for drinking and for food from the fish that swam up the Mekong into the Tonle Sap River and the lake of the same name.

"No river, no life. No water, no life in Cambodia," says Pyyoak, my guide.

Invading armies also came up the Mekong in an effort to conquer the Khmer kingdom in the 12th century, a story told in the bas reliefs at Angkor's Bayon temple.

Pyyoak says the Champa, or Cham, came up the Mekong from the south, from what is now Vietnam, and occupied Angkor for four years, from 1177 until 1181.

The stone carvings depict the battle in vivid detail, right down to the uniforms worn by the competing armies.

Pyyoak points to another set of carvings on the wall that depict better times in the kingdom: floating villages, bountiful harvests and an abundance of fish in the river and the lake.

"From here, you can see the daily life of the people; they live on the Mekong River. You can see the floating village and some business people, they are selling on the Mekong River," he explains.

"And life was very good for the people of Angkor then — better than for Cambodians today?" I ask Pyyoak.

"Yes, I think that is right," he replies.

Floating Worlds Under Threat

The floating villages still exist today — the closest on the Tonle Sap Lake, just 20 minutes south of the Angkor ruins by car, then a half-hour more by boat. The Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and, scientists say, the key to the biodiversity of the entire Mekong basin, thanks to the seasonal flooding of the Mekong and the lake.

Many of the floating villages are populated by ethnic Vietnamese, who just might be distant relatives of the Cham warriors who came up the Mekong to fight more than 800 years ago.

These villages are almost completely self-contained — with floating sawmills, metal shops and grocery boats — a water world where children are born, raised and sometimes die without ever having set foot on land. Batteries power their houseboats, complete with TVs, DVD players and karaoke machines. There are even floating bars to help slake the thirst of day-tripping tourists from nearby Angkor Wat.

But it's a hard life, says fisherman Do Van Thanh, 47, one made even more difficult by a dwindling catch — half what it used to be just a few years ago, he says.

His friend, Tran Van Loi, also 47, is no biologist, but he understands very well the relationship between the river, the lake and the fish, and he smells trouble.

There are more people fishing, he says, and that means fewer fish.

In the past, adult fish would lay their eggs in the Mekong. After hatching, the small fish would find their way to the Tonle Sap, grow up here, and then return to the Mekong, he says. But with so many people fishing, more fish are being caught younger, before they can lay their eggs, he says, and he knows that's not good.

Tran says if he could quit fishing now, he would — but there's no other way to make money.

Making enough money to survive is still a challenge for the majority in Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in Asia. It's a country that would probably be far better off had its recent history not included the four-year-long terror of the Maoist Khmer Rouge. From 1975 to 1979, the regime led by Pol Pot controlled the country, a time when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians — a quarter of the country's population — died.

Dark Chapter

More than 30 years later, the country experienced a reckoning of sorts last November at the joint U.N. Cambodian Tribunal in the capital, Phnom Penh, where the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers converge. The man on trial was Kaing Guek Eav, known by the alias Comrade Duch, an aging Khmer Rouge commander who ran the infamous S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng.

The first senior Khmer Rouge leader to be tried, Duch was charged with crimes against humanity — which included savage beatings, extraction of fingernails and toenails with pliers, and electrocution. The torture ended for almost all of the prisoners at the killing field of Choeung Ek. An estimated 16,000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng; fewer than a dozen are known to have survived.

In court, Duch admitted his guilt and begged for forgiveness.

"I still and forever wish to most respectfully and humbly apologize to the dead souls," he said through an interpreter. "To the survivors, I stand by my acknowledgment of all crimes inflicted on you at S-21. I acknowledge them in both the moral and legal context."

It was an extraordinary moment for many who have waited more than 30 years for some sort of justice and closure. Duch has yet to be sentenced. He claimed, just a few days after this dramatic testimony, that he was a "cog in the machine" who was "just following orders."

Living In And For The Present

But many Cambodians haven't paid much attention to the tribunal, the majority of the population having been born after that dark period in the country's history.

And Phnom Penh — the city the Khmer Rouge leaders once emptied of people in their bid to create an agrarian, utopian state — now has more people than ever.

The capital is attracting more foreign investment and more rural Cambodians looking for work, most of it in construction. The streets of the city are now choked with motorcycles and the Lexuses and Cadillac Escalades of the nouveau riche. The vehicles jockey for position as they pass the construction site of the Gold Tower 42, soon to be the city's newest and tallest skyscraper.

On the riverfront, giant vacuums suck sand from the bottom of the Mekong, which will be used to fill the city's famous Boeung Kak Lake, the site of a new high-end business and residential complex.

It is a controversial project, and a sensitive one, too, which explains why hard men with guns object to my visit to the site. Land grabs such as this one are the scourge of Southeast Asia, not just Cambodia: ordinary citizens displaced by rapacious developers and corrupt government officials.

"Last year was better. The big fish would come down from the Tonle Sap and we could catch enough, and sell enough, to pay for fuel with a little left over for food. But every year it seems to get a little worse." - Nguyen Quynh Thi, who fishes the Mekong in Cambodia

Too Many People, Too Few Fish

Heading downriver from Phnom Penh, the scenery changes quickly. The new skyscrapers and casinos of the capital quickly give way to banana trees, rice and corn. The vast majority of Cambodia's 15 million people live in the countryside, where there is not much choice when it comes to earning a living: farming or fishing.

On this stretch of the Mekong, about 20 miles south of the capital, those who fish have the same complaints as the fishermen on the Tonle Sap.

Nguyen Quynh Thi and her husband haul in their second set of nets for the day, and it's the same as the first: nothing. It's nearly noon, but they will stay out a bit longer, they say, though Nguyen isn't quite sure why.

"Last year was better. The big fish would come down from the Tonle Sap and we could catch enough, and sell enough, to pay for fuel with a little left over for food. But every year it seems to get a little worse," she says.

Too many people chasing too few fish. Farther downstream, just short of where the Mekong flows into neighboring Vietnam, I stop to talk to one last fisherman.

Kong Hout, 48, says he and his family eat fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He catches it himself and says there is still enough to go around — for now, if you know where to look.

But what would happen, I ask, if there are no more fish. He doesn't hesitate.

"It would be an age of darkness," he says, with no trace of irony. Then, he thinks about it some more and comes up with something that, for him, is an even more horrible thought:

"Maybe, we'll have to start eating fish from cans."

Next, the journey down the Mekong ends in Vietnam.

Overseas Vietnamese in Cambodia welcomes traditional Tet

Friday, Feb 12,2010
Saigon Giai Phong (Viet communist party)

Tet atmosphere is overwhelming everywhere in the country. The most important national holidays is also come to overseas Vietnamese in Cambodia.

The Leuk Daek Distric in Kandal province, Cambodia near the Khanh Binh Border gate of Vietnam is home of the largest number of overseas Vietnamese.

Vietnamese Cambodian Le Van La, 65, said his family has been here 21 years. The lunar New Year is an occasion for the family reunions.

“We usually get together to make Banh tet (Cylindrical glutinous rice cake) on the 27th day of the twelfth lunar month. My wife and daughters-in-law buy flowers and fruits from the homeland to worship the ancestors” he said.

Bus driver Pham Van Tien and his family have been lived in Cambodia for 40 years. He usually holds many trips bringing overseas Vietnamese to the homeland for Tet.

“I am Vietnamese. I always remember the national habits and custom. My family will return the Mekong Delta province of An Giang on the 2nd day of lunar New Year (February 15) and come back on Tet Thanh Minh (the grave-visiting festival falls on the 100th from Lichun" (the first solar term in the East Asia Calendar), he said.

Overseas Vietnamese in Cambodia often visit and wish each other prosperity and luck on Vietnamese traditional Tet occasion. They reminisce memories of the homeland, Vietnamese Cambodian Le Xuan Tung added.

By Dinh Tuyen – Translated by Kim Khanh

The odd and not so odd things you'll see in Chong Khneas: Can you tell which is which?

One of the smaller houseboats of Chong Khneas.
A palatial two-storey stilt mansion in Lake Tonle Sap. — GRAHAM SIMMONS

Excerpt from Sprung from the water

Saturday January 30, 2010
Graham Simmons
Malaysia Star

Chong Khneas, Lake Tonlé Sap, Cambodia

They are like immigrants anywhere. The mainly Vietnamese inhabitants of Chong Khneas, a unique floating village in Cambodia’s Lake Tonlé Sap, have to struggle just to survive. And their task is made more difficult by the extraordinary seasonal changes in one of Asia’s biggest lakes.

The area of Lake Tonlé Sap increases at least fourfold in the wet season, its depth rising by more than 8m. Then, during the dry season, the 1,100 families have to move several kilometres out towards the centre of the lake, taking with them all their amenities, including a floating school, fish processing factories, floating churches and mosques, and even a floating basketball court. This doesn’t exactly make life easy.

Chong Khneas is just one of around 170 floating villages in Lake Tonlé Sap. It’s also the easiest to get to from Phnom Penh, which accounts for its popularity as a day-trip escape from Siem Reap. In the wet season, Chong Khneas is about 11km from Siem Reap via Highway 63; the distance increases to anything between 12km and 15km in the dry season.

We set out on a boat cruise of Chong Khneas, picking a modest-looking covered boat parked at a floating jetty. A cruise of around 60-90 minutes costs US$11 (RM38) for a small boat (holding up to ten people) or US$22 for a larger boat. Individual passengers may be charged up to US$10 a head.

Fishing is the main source of livelihood, and it’s uncanny to see a full-scale fish processing production line out in the lake. Some of the fish caught are tiny riel, used to make the Vietnamese fish sauce nuoc nam. The villagers even have a crocodile farm, where baby crocs are raised in pretty miserable conditions to maturity, then skinned for the export market.

With Chong Kneas now seeing so many day-trippers, a few tour operators are offering trips to other floating villages.

The province of Kompong Chhnang has a couple of floating villages — Phoum Kandal and Chong Kos — not far from the town of Kompong Chhnang, while Pursat province boasts the biggest ethnic Vietnamese village of them all — Kompong Luong, complete with cafés, shops and even an ice-making plant.

Nearer to Siem Reap, the villages of Kampong Phluk and the much larger Kampong Khleang are easily accessible by public transport along Route 6, via the villages of Roluos and Domdek respectively. It’s surprising that no-one has yet come up with the idea of a floating hotel. This would enable an extended stay including trips to outlying floating villages.

Maybe that’s a project for an enterprising reader.

Viet catholics urged to integrate the Cambodian culture

Khmer literacy program offers ethnic Vietnamese a way forward

September 08 2009
IndianCatholic.in

PHNOM PENH : Sok Srey Ngai is 15 but can read and write the Khmer language only at a second-grade level. She needs to learn more if she is to have a chance at realizing her modest ambition to work in a beauty salon.

The Catholic parish in Kor Norear, her Vietnamese community about eight kilometers east of Phnom Penh along the Mekong river, is giving her that chance. She has taken Khmer lessons in the church compound for the past three years.

Another student, Chin Chantha, is only 10 but eager to read and write Khmer well enough to fulfill this dream of owning a construction company when he grows up, to support his family.

When UCA News visited recently, the sound of children pronouncing the many letters in the Khmer alphabet in their distinctive Vietnamese accent filled the classroom. They were divided into two groups within the one room, owing to lack of space and teachers.

According to their teacher, Ly Rattha, 44 children aged 6 to 12 are in grade one, and 10 aged 13-16 are in grade two.

Rattha, 25, says it is hard to teach two classes at the same time. When she starts teaching one grade, she gives exercises to the other.

Ly Sothear, coordinator of the literacy program for Vietnamese communities in Phnom Penh apostolic vicariate, says the Church runs Khmer literacy classes in 15 Vietnamese Catholic communities. The program in Kor Norear started in 1995.

"Our program is of basic Khmer lessons for Vietnamese children before we send them to public schools," he explained. "But many manage to study only until grade six in school, and then drop out. They then come back to our classes because they find it hard to cope."

Poverty among the Vietnamese communities, most of whose members earn their livelihood by fishing or work as construction workers, garbage collectors, cobblers and petty traders, is a major challenge, according to Sothear. Children have to help earn for the family, and sometimes the Church "loses" its students, especially during the fishing season.

Sothear stressed that the ability to read and write Khmer is a basic requirement to enter a technical school or get a decent job in the country. Moreover, the local Church has a policy of using Khmer in its liturgy.

Father Peter Le Van Tinh, in charge of ministry to Vietnamese communities in Cambodia, told UCA News the local Church encourages Vietnamese Catholics to integrate into the national culture.

"It is difficult for me to speak Khmer," admitted the priest, who was born in Vietnam. "But I always try to learn and say Mass in Khmer with them."

About 70 percent of the more than 26,000 Catholics in the country are ethnic Vietnamese.

Floating village threatened

Young residents of Kampong Luong village in Pursat enjoy the boating life on Monday. Pursat Province (Photo by: RICK VALENZUELA)

Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Written by May Titthara and Eleanor Ainge Roy
The Phnom Penh Post

Local officials are trying to get rid of Pursat's floating community, but residents say they will simply float further out onto the lake to avoid eviction

KAMPONG Luong Village is different from other places. It has no fixed address, it is prone to rapid fluctuations in altitude and it floats upon water. Here the daily sounds are of splashing oars and the smells are a distinct mix of water weed, wet wood and family life - all played out on the surface of the great Tonle Sap.

But this unique commune of 1,000 residents, located just 42km from Pursat town, is steadily moving further from land as it seeks to escape a government decree ordering its closure and forced eviction.

"I would rather die than move," said Ros Sareum, 43, a life-long inhabitant of Kampong Luong.

"We have no businesses to run elsewhere so how can we move? Here ... at least we have fish to feed ourselves," she said.

"If the plan goes through and the authorities come to force me, I will move out to the centre of the lake."

Ros Sareum is not alone in her rebellious plans, and many in the village are preparing to oppose the forced eviction.

"Fishing sustains our life," said 31-year-old Song Lisro. "If we are forced to move, our lives will deteriorate because we don't know how else to earn money other than by fishing."

If the plan goes through... I will move out to the centre of the lake.

Krakor district Governor Ly Ponn was unclear as to why the village needed to be dismantled, but said not all of those living there will be moved. Only those living closest to the road during the rainy season, their houses half in and out of the water, needed to leave.

"For the people who live on the lake, we will still allow them to live there. People who live along both sides of the road we will move; we don't know when," he said, adding that only about 250 people will be subject to eviction.

"Their houses are too small, too old and at risk of floods.... Concerning their health, we have provided a clean water tank, but if they choose not to use it, that is their decision," he said.

Despite their reluctance to leave, life is hard for the families at Kampong Luong.

While the village boasts facilities such as a medical center, restaurants, schools, karaoke bars and three places of worship, there is no high school in the area and children are only educated to the fifth grade, leaving class at 11 years old.

Residents - particularly children - regularly fall sick with cold, flu and diarrhoea, as well as more severe illnesses such as dysentery from contaminated water. Not all families boil the water they collect from the lake, which is used by everyone for cooking, washing and going to the toilet.

Koe Sovanareth, chief of Kampong Luong commune, said the mixed population of 50 percent Vietnamese and 50 percent Cambodian has lived peacefully together for years and is united in opposing possible eviction.

"We don't know the details of the government's plan, but if they want them to move, they should provide them business options and farm land," he said.

"I don't know why they are moving them. Maybe they want to protect fish stocks."

The Case of the Illegal Vietnamese Settlers in Cambodia ‘Versus’ The Persecuted Khmers Krom Living in Vietnam

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Op-Ed by Khmerization
Originally posted at http://khmerization.blogspot.com

"The Khmers Krom are the original inhabitants and the rightful owners of the lands they are living in now. But they have always been maltreated by the occupiers, the Vietnamese. On the contrary, the Viet settlers are illegal aliens who have come to take Khmer resources which would have gone to the Cambodians who are getting poorer and poorer."

The report (click here) about the Vietnamese delegation given free access to illegal Vietnamese settlers living in Cambodia has raised my eyebrows, not because I’m against it, but because of the hypocrisy and the unequal treatment from the Vietnamese authorities toward the Cambodian delegation visiting Khmers Krom a few months back. The delegation, which was led by MP Son Chhay, was not given free access to visit any temples, places or groups of Khmers Krom. The movement of the delegation was restricted and it was only given access to a few chosen temples and certain groups of Khmers Krom. All Cambodians should be outraged by this unequal treatment.

But this unequal treatment happened because the present Khmer government allowed it to happen. If the Khmer government takes a firm stance Vietnam would not have treated the Khmer delegation in such an insulting fashion.

The sensitive issue of the Vietnamese settlers in Cambodia has been a forbidden subject for any Cambodians to talk about. The subject has been a taboo and many Cambodians, in particular at the leadership level, are afraid to talk about it for fearing of international condemnation and afraid of being accused as a racist Viet-basher. Every time a Cambodian talk about the issue of the Vietnamese illegal immigrants in Cambodia he/she is accused of being engaged in racial incitement.

On the contrary, the long, deep sufferings of the Khmers Krom have received no public or international attention. The complaints and the cries of the Khmers Krom for international help have met with silence and gone unheard. Their sufferings and maltreatments, often at the hands the Vietnamese authorities, have gone unheeded and met with silence and inaction from the international human right protectors.

The analogy above has been made because of the hypocrisy of the international human rights organisations. While the illegal Vietnamese settlers in Cambodia have always received attention and protection from these rights groups, the sufferings of the Khmers Krom, who were and are maltreated at the hands of the Vietnamese authorities, have not. The difference between these two groups is a stark contrast. The Khmers Krom are the original inhabitants and the rightful owners of the lands they are living in now. But they have always been maltreated by the occupiers, the Vietnamese. On the contrary, the Viet settlers are illegal aliens who have come to take Khmer resources which would have gone to the Cambodians who are getting poorer and poorer. These settlers have always been treated better by the Cambodian authorities and the Cambodian population. And on top of that they receive the protection of the rights groups.

Having said all of the above, do I sound like a racist and a Viet-basher? No. I am only speaking my mind about the status quo and the reality. I advocate a peaceful co-existence between the Cambodians and our neighbours, particularly the Vietnamese. But co-existence must be based on mutual respect that lead to mutual benefits to both. Exploitation and taking advantage by any side from the other will cause irreversible mistrusts, as was the case with the Vietnamese.

What I want is for Vietnam to accord the same treatments, if not better, to our Khmer Krom brothers and sisters as Cambodia has accorded the Vietnamese settlers. They must be allowed to practise Khmer culture and learn Khmer language without fearing persecution. Land confiscations must be stopped and Khmer parliamentary delegations must be allowed to visit them, from time to time, without restrictions. I am of the opinion that if mutual respect can be restored, the mistrusts and the centuries-old hatred will be reversed and mutual trusts can be re-established. Then peaceful co-existence will naturally follow.

Having said all of the above, I am not a racist.

The Big Picture

12/15/2007
Op-Ed by K. Saron
Posted at: http://www.myp1t.com/blog/view/id_268/

Please post your comments at the author's blog page by clicking the link below:
http://www.myp1t.com/blog/view/id_268/

Although the economy is skyrocketing and the tourists are flooding the gate of Angkor Wat, many have failed to see the real future of srok Khmer. Yes, Cambodia is at peace. Yes, Cambodia is booming with foreign aid. Billion of dollars have been pouring in and we now have high rises and casinos. Cambodia is the Las Vegas of SE Asia and what happen in Vegas stay in Cambodia.

People are mesmerized by the glitter of the night life of PP. Twenty dollar can get you 2 or 3 Heineken’s girls and a night of ecstasy for old hungry men. Come to PP and live your fantasy. Come to PP and leave your worries behind because there is absolutely nothing wrong here. Pay no attention to the land because it is not your job. Don’t worry about in influx of Vietnamese flowing in, what Vietnamese?

The big picture that I am talking about is the painting above. While we are so amazed and so happy to just be alive the neighbor is silently eating us up. While we are celebrating the small achievement our friendly neighbor is strategizing our faith. The glitters are nothing more then a mere deflection of the real problems which the government and/or people have failed to see. The growth is nothing more then a set up to divert the attention from Vietnam’s goal of housing its 80 million plus people. This is the big picture. The silent migration and Vietnam imperialism movement.

I would be really surprise if no one called me CRAZY for painting such a picture because only crazy people would see in such way.

Vietnamese criminals robbing Vietnamese merchant in Vietnamese village ... in Prey Veng, Cambodia

The three Vietnamese suspects in police custody (Photo: Rithy, Koh Santepheap)

One the arrested Vietnamese robbers (Photo: Neak Loeung, Koh Santepheap)

Vietnamese robbers arrested in robbery in Vietnamese village

Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Koh Santepheap newspaper
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

Prey Veng Province – On 20 December, at about 11:45 PM, in village No. 5, Prek Ksay B commune, Peamro district, a robbery incident took place at the home of a widow who sells spices. The robbers took off with a loot of 370,000 riels (~$92.50). This incident involves suspects and victim who are all Vietnamese.

Regarding this robbery, a report indicated that 3 Vietnamese men broke the fence into the widow’s house, and they went to shake down violently the door to her house, the three shouted and threatened the victim, forcing her to open the door. At that time, the son of the widow woke up and went to block the door to prevent it from being opened because he was afraid that the robbers would enter the house. You Han, the 46-year-old Vietnamese widow, panicked and kept on yelling for people to come and help her, and she ran all over the house. Meanwhile, the three robbers kept on screaming and threatening to force the owner to open the door, but because the door was locked from the inside, it could not be opened.

Upon learning about the robbery, Sin Seng Horn, the police chief of the Prek Ksay B commune, brought in the police force in the middle of the night, unfortunately, by the time the cops arrived, the robbers had already fled the scene. In the morning of 21 December, Sin Seng Horn arrested Ho Phan Meo, and brought him in for questioning. The suspect confessed that about his two other robbery accomplices: Kong Rithy (the Cambodian name adopted by the Vietnamese robber), a 21-year-old Vietnamese citizen living in village No. 6, Prek Ksay B commune, and Nguyen Van Thanh, an 18-year-old Vietnamese citizen also living in village No. 6. Sin Seng Horn added that the robber did not beat up the owners of the house, they only threatened and robbed them of beers and food for drinking and eating only. Chan Sophal, the criminal police chief of Peamro district, indicated that Ho Phan Meo is also the suspect in a motorcycle robbery which took place 2 days before the robbery in the spice store.