Thursday, January 08, 2009

Cambodia Should Abandon January 7th As Liberation Day

Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Op-Ed by Jayakhmer
On the web at http://www.modernprogressivekhmer.blogspot.com

It is quite intriguing to see Samdech Prime Minister reacted to those who did not see January 7th as a day of liberation. He said, "If you ignorant persons and extremists do not dare acknowledge the truth [of January 7, 1979], you are not humans, you are truly animals."

That includes your truly here. I see January 7th as a day of invasion.

I am sure that Samdech Prime Minister is entitled to his opinion. Like all of us, he is free to opine on any matter. On this particular issue, I simply want to offer a different opinion.

Before getting into the substance of the matter, I want to acknowledge all Cambodians who were members of the United Front for National Salvation of Kampuchea (UFNSK) who participate in the invasion. I am grateful for their efforts for doing their very best under the circumstance to dismantle the Khmer Rouge regime. That was a noble deed.

January 7th did in fact stop the killing, but Cambodia was not free. Vietnam occupied Cambodia; therefore, by definition Cambodia was not liberated. This is why the word "liberation" has a major semantic problem. One cannot call oneself a liberated being if one is not free to determine one's destiny. Liberation could not be further from the truth. The world knows that Cambodia was under Vietnam's control from the day it invaded Cambodia until it was pressured to withdraw.

To form a more perfect union with all Cambodians and all political factions, Cambodia should abandon January 7th as "liberation" day.

I am quite sure that every Cambodian can embrace January 7th as a major turning point. It was pivotal in a sense that January 7th allowed Cambodia to temporarily escape from the yoke of the Khmer Rouge regime; it was also the day Cambodia went into another bondage of foreign occupation.

I wish that Samdech Prime Minister views those of us who hold a different opinion another patriots who love the country as much as he does. Imagine if everyone agrees with Pol Pot, we would not have January 7th.

Jayakhmer

32 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have read and watched many interview clips of the Vietnamese leaders and their view on the invasion of Cambodia and none of them said anything about having to do with humanitarian mission such as to save Cambodia and Cambodian people. What the Vietnamese leaders really want is to set up a puppet government that is friendly to Hanoi.

It seems that it is only the stupid AH HUN SEN officials who said this and said that of how the Vietnamese leaders want to save Cambodian people from the Khmer Rouge but the fact is the Vietnamese leaders never said anything!

Don't twist Cambodian history!

Anonymous said...

It is true that the fucking Youn always exporting their fucking problems to Cambodia!

It is the fucking Vietnam War that starts everything which destabilizes the whole Cambodia down into the fucking black hole!

Anonymous said...

Let us celebrate 10/23/1991 is the REAL PEACK OF CAMBODIA.

We all know that 1/7/1991 is a FAKE peace for Cambodia. This fake peace installed by Viets.

Red-Ant

Anonymous said...

Come on guy! If you have ONE eye you may see thing, twiting too!







Do ma Ah Kwack!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Mr. Sourn Serey Ratha gives you clea about 07 Jan 1979, just listen RFA at http://streamer1.rfa.org/audio/KHM/KHM-2009-0106-1730.mp3

Mr. Sourn Serey Ratha does not chiken like Sam Rainsy & Kem Sokha.

Sam Neang, From Canada

Anonymous said...

I am up and support for not celebrating Jan. 7th. We don't want to commemorate this day.

Chea Sim
Heng Samrin
Hun Sen

These three monkeys are stupid seeing black to white.

Khmer PP,

Anonymous said...

THIS 7th January IS FACK PEACE.

Anonymous said...

THIS 7th January IS FACK PEACE.
Fack peace for Cambodia and for its people.

Fake peace, Fake peace, Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peaceFake peace,Fake peace, Fake peace, Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peaceFake peace,Fake peace, Fake peace, Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peace,Fake peaceFake peace

Anonymous said...

They have killed and continue doing it, and we are thankful for that! What have become of Khmer! THINK! Do not just look at face value! Khmer Krom is alway Khmer, and they are begging for live just to stay alive on their homeland. Big Island, Koh Trol, they took just like that, and changed the name just like every others land, islands they took. The monk who worked and helping his people, got disrobed, smuggled out, and charged for entering other country ilegally, oppostion members got killed left and right, union leader shot in the middle of city, in the middle of the day...What I mean is that even middle (Khmer Kandal) Cambodia today is under the mercy of them who decide which Khmer can live or who will die and no one can stop it. All Khmer are heading to 1000 meters deep cliff, and we are still thankful for those who desinged it! THINK and Act Accordingly!

Anonymous said...

Beware of the loco of current party in control. It was not created by Khmer, and it is a sick joke. She is look like a good angel, as all Khmer familiar with, but boy! She can kill that put Satan in shame! The only things is Satan is a told story but this angel has been proved that she is about to finish Khmer as a people, culture, country... for good. For those who still have a few breath to intake air for your last one, take a good look at her face, she is not Khmer angel, and she is the one who will finish you off!

Anonymous said...

I don’t blame ordinary people who celebrate 7 jan because their brain capacity are limited to look beyond what their see can see or what the criminals want them to see or understand about it but of course I blame those criminals who killed and then held Khmer people as slaves of its crimes (mentally and physically) and those who have capacity to see yuon tricks but did nothing to help these people from yuon hell and darkness for whatever reasons

Anonymous said...

Beware of the loco of current party in control. It was not created by Khmer, and it is a sick joke. She is look like a good angel, as all Khmer familiar with, but boy! She can kill that put Satan in shame! The only things is Satan is a told story but this angel has been proved that she is about to finish Khmer as a people, culture, country... for good. For those who still have a few breath to intake air for your last one, take a good look at her face, she is not Khmer angel, and she is the one who will finish you off!

Anonymous said...

The Untold Truth of Jan 07, 1979.

The event of Jan 07, 1979 continues to generate protracted debates in our country at different levels and classes of society. Whether at political or academic institutions, professional or business communities, or casual web blogs, these debates have polarized the nation into two camps – the increasing majority who view Jan 07, 1979 as a full scale invasion with the intent-to-occupy; and the few who, for a matter of convenience, chooses to portray it as a genuine humanitarian intervention from Hanoi to save Khmer people from the KR killing machine.

At the center of these debates, the very same question has been raised repeatedly. What was the real motive(s) leading to the Jan 07, 1979 event? To these days, the answers to that question not only remain unsettled, but also continue to predominantly influence the nation affairs because of its far-reaching historical, socio-political and economical dimensions.

In this editorial, the author will endeavour to present an impartial view of the Jan 07 event based on personal experience, available historical and researched data, and genuine and verifiable information from credible sources; and hope to set the record straight.

In order to correctly understand the real motive(s) behind the Jan 07 event, it is important to revisit a series of key events starting from the Indochina anti-colonial war era.

During the struggle against the French colonialism (1946 -1954), a small number of Khmer nationals joint the Indochina Communist Party (ICP) which was created and controlled by the Vietnamese communists. However, many Khmer nationalists and intellectuals who also sought the independence from France at that time refused to joint the ICP movement because it was evident to them that the military defeat or rapid withdrawal of French colonialism would open the door for Vietnam to annex Cambodia.

In 1951, the Khmer section of the ICP was given the name of Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) under the leadership of Son Ngoc Minh, Sieu Heng and Tou Samut. Although they had their own party name, the KPRP leaders were nothing more than obedient executors of all plans drafted by the Vietnamese communists.

The Vietnamese communists betrayed their KPRP comrades when they signed the 1954 Geneva Agreements and withdrew their combat units from Cambodia. That betrayal allowed the Sihanouk armed forces to reclaim the zones occupied by the ICP and consequently liquidate many KPRP members. On the verge of collapsing, the KPRP went underground and largely disappeared from Hanoi vision for many years.

As the Vietnamese communists started the unification war in the South, they made an alliance with Sihanouk in order to use Khmer territory to create rear bases and deliver ammunitions and weapons to the South. In exchange, the Vietnamese communists would again betray their Khmer communist comrades by scrapping all plans for the Khmer communists to fight the Sihanouk regime.

With no outsider help and little hope to win, Sieu Heng, the second-in-command leader of KPRP, betrayed his comrades and secretly informed Sihanouk regime of Khmer communist activities in the country. In 1962, Sihanouk secret police found and killed Tou Samut at a hide-out in Phnom Penh.

In the middle of the KPRP chaos and absence of firm control from Hanoi, Pol Pot managed to get himself elected to the post of the General Secretary during the party congress in 1963. Completely caught Hanoi off-guard, Pol Pot quickly renamed the KPRP to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Pol Pot later explained that the reason for changing the party name from KPRP to CPK was that the ICP and its by-product KPRP were created by Vietnam to occupy Cambodia and Laos lands.

By mid sixties, Hanoi realised that Sihanouk’s support for its armed struggle against American imperialism was weakening as Lon Nol and Sirik Matak increasingly opposed such support. Hanoi suddenly remembered its old allies – the KPRP, which had been renamed to CPK. However, Hanoi found out that due to its oversight or negligence, it had to confront many unexpected problems with the new CPK leadership.

People in Pol Pot’s clan who were nominated to occupy highest posts were largely unknown and suspicious to Hanoi because they were educated in France and were not checked for allegiance to the Vietnamese communists. Furthermore, unlike his elder comrades or predecessors from the 1950’s era, Pol Pot openly and vigorously promoted and defended a policy that Khmer communists should act in accordance with their own purposes and interests independent of all (i.e. independent of interests of Vietnamese brothers).

Recognizing the threat that Pol Pot’s clan was setting aside its interests, Hanoi considered two options – creating a new communist party in Cambodia with Khmers trained in Vietnam, or infiltrating agents inside Pol Pot’s structure. The Vietnamese communist leaders picked the second option which allowed Pol Pot to temporarily preserve the power, but hoped their infiltrating agents would be able to gradually remove him from the leadership position.

A few days after the Sihanouk regime was disposed by the military coup d’etat of Mar 18, 1970, the Vietnamese communists entered Cambodia arguably in response to Nuon Chea’s request. The Vietnamese occupied almost a quarter of Cambodia territory and transferred the control of the “liberated” regions to CPK. During that time, the Vietnamese leadership aroused obvious hostility and mistrust among Khmer communist leadership when it openly declared that the Cambodian communist party was given a subordinate role and obliged to follow all directions set by the Vietnamese Workers Party (VWP).

Under the 1973 Peace Agreement signed in Paris, Hanoi agreed to fully withdraw its forces from Cambodia. That agreement represented a unique opportunity for Pol Pot’s clan to break the Vietnamese influence and control within the Khmer communist structure. In the same year, Vietnamese communist leadership publicly admitted that the initiatives taken by the Khmer communists were out of its hands. In 1974, Pol Pot made it known to Le Duan that the relationship between the two communist parties was based on mutual respect and non-interference.

With the communist victories in Phnom Penh and Saigon in 1975, Hanoi had successfully accomplished one of the two Ho Chi Minh’s sacred dreams – unify North and South Vietnams, but failed the other dream – creation of Indochina Socialist Federation under the Vietnamese domination. Pol Pot continued to defy Hanoi by declaring that the KR had won a definitive and clean victory without foreign assistance, meaning the KR did not owe anything to Vietnam.

But that was not how Hanoi saw it. Hanoi was hoping that their infiltrating agents were working to gradually strengthening its influence in Cambodia. By September 1976, under the pressure from various factions, Pol Pot temporarily resigned his post of Prime Minister and made statements to fool his enemies that he was willing to soften his stance toward Vietnam.

The news of Pol Pot’s resignation was seen by Hanoi that its infiltrating agents were gaining the upper hand. In that same year, Le Duan indirectly told the Soviet Ambassador that Cambodia would become sooner or later part of Vietnam.

It turned out the news about Pol Pot’s resignation was totally misunderstood or misinterpreted by Hanoi. Hundreds if not thousands of KR pro-Vietnamese cadres trained and “introduced” by Hanoi into Pol Pot ‘s structure were arrested and tortured while Le Duan was telling his Soviet allies that Pol Pot’s clan was weakening.




For all these years, Hanoi incorrectly thought that people like So Phim, Ta Mok and Nuon Chea were loyal and sympathetic to the Indochina federation idea. Soa Phim may have opposed the Pol Pot’s killing regime, but by no way he was a pro-Vietnamese as Hanoi had sought. In fact, Soa Phim was a bitterly anti-Vietnamese.

Hanoi finally recognized its obvious and repeated failures to remove Pol Pot from power through internal uprising, and lost patient with the endless border fighting started by the KR since Spring 1977. It also realized that the Beijing was training, arming KR soldiers, building roads and military bases, including the Air Force base in Kampong Chhnang, which made it possible for a fighter jet to take off and reach Saigon with less than half an hour. Such possibility posed an unacceptable threat to Vietnam national security, and Hanoi was compelled to plot a new strategy to get rid of Pol Pot by staging a coup d’etat through the mutiny of the Eastern zone military forces. Since that option ended with a complete disaster and suicide of Soa Phim, Hanoi finally decided to overthrow Pol Pot regime by a massive military invasion, which were secretly and meticulously prepared since Summer 1977.

All of these preceding events undeniably suggest that the real motive of January 07, 1979 event was for Vietnam to re-conquer Cambodia and reassert its control and domination in a preparation for the eventual creation of Indochina Federation state. The presence of millions of Vietnamese illegal settlers on Cambodian soil today strongly supports that argument.

If many Khmer people lives were saved from the KR systematic executions by the January 07 event, it was simply an unexpected or accidental coincidence. For that reason, Khmer people celebrates the January 07, 1979 event only as the end of the KR killing regime, but never as a recognition of the Vietnamese intervention.

As it happened with other events in history, Vietnam through its agents and sympathizers can present the event of Jan 07, 1979 in the way that fits its expansionist agenda, but it can never fool the understanding and gain the trust of the Khmer nation.


Khmer Academy

Anonymous said...

I said before and I say it again: all these low life rustics have made this story again and again to fool the younger Khmer generations. The fact that Yuons invaded Cambodia is clear; in spring 1978 Pol Pot sent his troops to massacre hundreds of Youn villagers at Ha Tien, and as folks know the Yuons will never let anyone harming them go unpunished, that's why they launched an invasion that accomplished on Jan 7th. The smart Yuons disguised their invasion to be looking like a liberation movement, that's why these monkeys got the credit of being Khmer saviors, which actually the decent people have seen it as a fake claim. Because most folks do not honor their 7-Makara, Hun Sen resort to anger and calls them animals. Actually he's the one worst than an animal. A human being can be respected because he has moral qualities; without them, a humen being like Hun Sen is just little bit better than a beast. Go to hell son of the devil; you have committed so many crimes!!!

Anonymous said...

We do not need to celebrate 7th January. Cambodia has hurt enought from Vietname that invated for more then 10 years.Till today there are alots of Vietnamese agents in Cambodia who speak Cambodia well and work as a special agent to its government.

Poor Khmer!

We all need to stand up, and united for one Khmer including Kampuchea Krom.

Khmer for all time.

Anonymous said...

Ah pleur undersea never stop begging for help...always crying and begging for more..like the one from SVY PAK BROTHEL..his mother is a whore working on the street in SVY PAK! Pouk Ah Thork tiep begger!!

Anonymous said...

well, now 99.99% opposed this january 7 date. soon that date will be gone forever b/c now khmer starting to understand about ah yuon hun slave or ah slave yuon CPP. bravo, let kick ah yuon out of srok khmer and ah yuon slave!

Anonymous said...

Actually, when VN can convince all Cambodians to follow them (Ho's path), that time they will kill Hun Sen, Chea Sim, and Heng Samrin first...

But now VN is using these three guys to humiliate Khmers...

Anonymous said...

If there were no vietnam war. There would not be khmer rouge or the killing field.

Alot of evidences that vietnam is involved setting up khmer rouge and also the one that take rouge down.

Khmer rouge was fortunated that vietnam came and stop khmer rouge because pol pot is not traitor like hun sen. But to be called vietnam as the liberator. NO way. If so, why vietnam agent still in cambodia and why so many millions youn are illegally in cambodia?


To be accepted as liberation day is only to be fooled by the CPP and youns all over again.

Anonymous said...

with the Yuons'help or not, the Khmer Rouge group could still manage to establish their revolution movement, because they bitterly hated the monarch, the bourgeois, and the elite class so much. I personally blame the KR than the Yuons in killing Khmers.
One can easily see the hate the KR have against Khmer by looking at the way they killed them.

Anonymous said...

The winner writes history to suit themselves.

Anonymous said...

Pouk Ah begger undersea will be YOUN SLAVE..the rest of their life! Ah Lop undersea begger..never stop begging for help!

Anonymous said...

viets are the ones who created the khmer rouge, armed them and helped them with the genocides of the cambodian people. how can they save us from the genocides because they were the perpetrators of those crimes themselves? if they have saved us, it means they've saved us from their crimes.

Anonymous said...

Don't listen to Ah Potato Picker (JayaKhmer)! He's just a racist.

Happy Freedom day (Jan 7) to all!

Thanks to Vietnam!

Thanks to PM Hun Sen!

Anonymous said...

There should be no day of celebration for the Vietnamese invaion to Cambodia and no SAMAKI Khmer-Vietnam. If one wants to celebrate that, Khmer encestors will comdemn them.

Khmer from Vietnam

Anonymous said...

11:19 AM

If you are Khmer, you will be soon destroyed just like HOK LUNDY by Khmer Angkor spirits.

Anonymous said...

Why such a grief-stricken situation has happened in Khmer? hmm. I really thank Khmer Academy trying to raise a good argument to abandon 7 Jan. I am one of Khmer ppl supporting this idea also.

However, ONLY ONE action that can remove this 7 Jan is a new Khmer Revolution against Hun Xen and VN invasion, but many khmer citizens will dedicate their lives (Bloody Revolution). And if we wait until the 3-cow died, esp, Hun Xen is long times. During this long times VN will have ample of opportunities to SEIZE or CONTROL Khmer territory. VN will not wait until the 3-cow die before his khmer-land ambition.

So, this is maybe a good idea and i hope it will happen.

AUS khmer student.

Anonymous said...

Please Remember, No 7 January, Pol Pot will kill all their own poeple.

Phnom Penh

Anonymous said...

Yes, we should abandon that day!!

Jan. 7th is truely the day of invasion. I am one of the HUN SEN's soldiers in the early 80s. The YOUN robbed, pillaged and looted everything. You name them, everything!!

They I escape to the border and join the resistance fighter. Like Pen Sovann said, he try to stop YOUN from stealing thing from Phnom Penh. They put what they looted on the trucks, ships and boats etc down to Ho Chi Minh city.

Mr. Pen Sovann said, you can come in to liberate but not to control (invade). They don't listen that's why they send him to jail in Hanoi.

True Khmer,

Anonymous said...

naturally speaking, of course, when you have a foreign invader like the vietnamese for example, there is no doubt that they robbed, pillaged, looted, etc of everything they need and want from cambodia. how can khmer people, in our right frame of mind not upset and resented about this fact? if i invaded vietnam and robbed, pillaged and looted from them, i'm sure, they, too, will have the same feeling toward us. go figure!

Anonymous said...

11:19,
Remembered your mother is a whore fucking on the street in SVY PAK..and Ah thork tiep Mok Krass undersea never stop begging for help from tomatoes...haha! Pouk Ah Pleur Mok Krass undersea thork tiep!!


your mother is a whore on the street...ha!ha!

Anonymous said...

The chess game not over yet!..and don't think you known everything.