Birds forsaking their nests

7th January Hochimonks, from left to right: Comrade Tep Vong, Comrade Long Kim Leang and Comrade Sao Chanthol

Beaten up Khmer Krom monk
Former abbot Tim Sakhorn during his sham trial in Vietnam

24 August 2009
By Thach Chantrea
Prey Nokor News Editorial
Vol. 2, No. 86
Click here to read the article in Khmer
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

In the struggle for life, everybody in the world strives to obtain peace and happiness in their family and society at all time. In particular, we all wish for a refuge or a nice home to live in comfort and we struggle to fight any obstacle in order to defend and preserve our homes and belongings, and preventing them from being destroyed.

Human wishes are boundless, but we should not allow our greed to take the better of ourselves. Lord Buddha taught us that, individuals who are filled with unfortunate karma – greed, hatred and violence – in their heart, they tend to have an agitated mindset, and they lose their consciousness and their moral conduct – the most important factors protecting our dignity and the honor of our family, society and humanity. Such individuals only think about their personal interest rather than that of the entire society, and they are willing to forsake everything in exchange for fortune and titles. Some are even willing to destroy their own nation, their own culture, their own customs, their national literature, and in particular, they are willing to betray their own heritage by selling out their lands, their cultural artifacts and their conscience to foreigners.

Such was the case of Phuchhuoy (Governor) Kong who betrayed his own nation to serve the Yuon interest, at the end, this man faced his own death under the hands of the Yuon’s army chief. King Chey Chetha II was attracted to the beauty of a Yuon woman and he forgot all his royal duties, his action led to the suffering of our entire nation. Yuons from all eras never have good intentions toward our Khmer people, they tend to poison our political goals throughout history. The cases of genocide perpetrated by the colonialist Yuon regime on the indigenous Khmer Krom people living in Kampuchea Krom are innumerable: the Yuons arrested Khmer Krom people and sent them to jail before killing them, they confiscated Khmer Krom lands to distribute to their people, etc…

Lessons from the tyranny and the territorial aggressions on Khmer lands perpetrated by the Yuons never preoccupied some of the Khmer leaders who are too busy with power, fortune and the unconscious killing of their own people. These are indeed the cases of a group of Khmer officials by the names of Tep Vong, Long Kim Leang, Noy Chreuk, Am Lim Heng and Sao Chan Thol. Using tactics of a wolf disguised under the cover of a sheep skin, these individuals sold themselves to the Yuons, they destroy Buddhism, they trample our national culture, they beat up Khmer Krom monks, they force-defrocked Venerable Tim Sakhorn, the former abbot of the Phnom Den North pagoda. They sent him to their masters to be jailed in Motr Chrouk province by accusing the abbot of disrupting the tens of thousands years old friendship between Cambodia and Vietnam, in full violation of national and international laws. This is the vile tactics used by those who are greedy with power and who forsake their own people. How we wish these birds still remember how to protect and preserve their nest!

A peaceful society that is poisoned by traitors tends to disappear, therefore, we must think and find all means to remain alert and to stop the tricks brought in by these leeches with the intention of undermining our society and destroying Buddhism.

National union and lack of greed temptation for power and titles granted by the foreigners are our most efficient weapons to protect our nation, our honor and our perpetual progress, just as Buddha taught us: “Union brings in peace and happiness.”

The Destiny of the Indigenous Khmer-Krom People

The Destiny of the Indigenous Khmer-Krom People

By Preynokor News Team
On the web at http://www.preynokornews.blogspot.com

The Khmer-Krom people living abroad, especially in the United States, have their own reason to celebrate both the Fourth of July 2009—the American National Independence Day—and the Freedom Day of Tim Sakhorn. By the way, who is he?

Venerable Tim Sakhorn, prior to his capture by the Vietnamese Government in June 2007, was “Nobody”—an ordinary local Buddhist monk, not well known at all, at his temple in North Phnom Denh Village, Kirivong District, Takeo Province, Cambodia. During the past two years of his survival through extremely severe hardship in the Vietnamese prison, including physical and mental tortures, as well as his dangerous journey to escape from Vietnam to Cambodia and Thailand before being accepted for a special resettlement in Sweden under the political asylum program, Tim Sakhorn has become “Somebody”—the kind of “Khmer-Krom’s Dalai Lama” who is symbolizing as one of our Khmer-Krom’s national heroes in this modern time.

His name has been recognized in the international spotlights, from the Internet search engine websites, such as the Google.com and Yahoo.com, to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Congress, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the European Parliament, and the Transnational Radical Party (TRP) in Italy.

The international press/news media, and other major radio broadcasting programs have been constantly keeping the world informed about the current situation of Tim Sakhorn during his hardship, among them the Radio Free Asia/Khmer Services (RFA), Voice of America/Khmer Program (VOA), the Voice of Khmer-Krom (VOKK), the Radio France International (RFI), the radio broadcasting service in Australia, the Beehive Radio Program of Mr. Mam Sonando, and the Asia Times Magazine. The documentary film produced by Ms. Rebecca Sommer, entitled “Eliminated Without Bleeding”, was clearly illustrated about the atrocity committed by the Vietnamese Communist Government against the Khmer-Krom people.

The Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) which advocate for the respects for human rights and religious freedom have also been very helpful to the Khmer-Krom’s causes, among them the Human Rights Watch (HRW)--a well-admired Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)—which recently published a book about Khmer-Kroms entitled “Vietnam on the Margins: Rights Abuses of Ethnic Khmer in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta”.

Two other important individuals who are in charge of the Cambodian NGOs in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, who have been working tirelessly to advocate the human rights for the Khmer-Kroms are greatly appreciated. They are Dr. Kek Galabru who is the president of the Cambodia League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and Mr. Ang Chanrith, presently serving as the executive director of the Khmer Kampuchea-Krom Human Rights Defense Association. Why Venerable Tim Sakhorn has gained a lot of sympathy from the world community?

It was the Vietnamese government’s secret services agents with a full collaboration from a small group of top ranking Cambodian Buddhist monks under an order from the Hanoi-backed Great Patriarch Tep Vong to arrest Venerable Tim Sakhorn, defrocked him, and deported him to imprison in Vietnam.

One of Tep Vong’s top monk cadres, who engineered this arrest, was Venerable Long Kim Leang. According to Tim Sakhorn who already arrived at Sweden on July 4th 2009, Long Kim Leang was the one who directly stripped off his frock when he refused to be defrocked injustice. Tep Vong and his band accused Venerable Tim Sakhorn of undermining to the Cambodia-Vietnam’s relations. The Vietnamese judge, on the other hand, sentenced Tim Sakhorn for one year of imprisonment. Both of Tep Vong and the Vietnamese Communist government were lying to their teeth regarding Venerable Tim Sakhorn’s matter.

As a matter of fact, Abbot Tim Sakhorn was just a Good Samaritan with a true compassion to help the poor and needy Khmer-Krom refugees who escaped from the Communist repressions in Vietnam. As an Abbot of his temple, Venerable Tim Sakhorn provided his pagoda as a sanctuary place for these refugees to stay temporarily and gave them foods as well as other necessary assistance before these people could find other means to live on their own.

His monastery is located just less than a few miles from the border of Vietnam at the province of An Giang and this monk had never crossed the boundary into that country at all. Tim Sakhorn is a former Khmer-Krom refugee who fled to Takeo Province, Cambodia in 1978 from the Vietnamese government’s oppression in his hometown in Svay Tong District (Huyen Tri Ton), Mot Chrouk Province (used to be Chau Doc and is presently changed to An Giang Province in Vietnamese). Who are these Khmer-Krom people?

Khmer-Krom people are the Indigenous Peoples who have been living on their ancestral lands in Kampuchea-Krom which is now known as southern Vietnam for thousands of years. Presently, this most fertile region is the major rice basket of Vietnam, making this country to become the second biggest rice exporter in the world, next to Thailand.

During nearly a century of occupation in Indochina from 1863 to 1954, the French colonial power ceded Kampuchea-Krom to Vietnam on the 4th of June 1949 without any prior consultation with the Cambodian government or a permission from the Khmer-Krom populations at all. There were countless atrocities committed by the Vietnamese governments of all regimes through their secret ethnic cleansing policies against the Khmer-Krom.

Map of Kampuchea-Krom

During the American involvement in the Vietnam War, so many Khmer-Krom people were severely suffered by the atrocity and ethnic cleansing policy committed against them by the Vietnamese Communist insurgency and the Ngo Dinh Diem regime as well as other subsequent Saigon Governments. Being caught between the rocks and the hard places, so many Khmer-Krom people voluntarily served in the U.S. Army Special Forces to fight against the Communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Armies (VC/NVA).

Like the Montagnard Hill Tribes in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and the Hmong Hill Tribes in Laos, significant numbers of Khmer-Krom people were specially selected to operate in top secret missions behind the enemy’s lines along the infamous Ho-Chi-Minh Trails in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. These Khmer-Krom people fought bravely, courageously, daringly, and loyally side by side with their American commanding officers of the elite U.S. Green Berets against the out-numbered, out-gunned, and well-trained VC/NVA in the most inhospitable environment in the triple canopy jungles of those Ho-Chi-Minh Trails.

After the complete withdrawal of the American troops from South Vietnam and the subsequent fall of that country into the Communist occupation in April 1975, the situation regarding the Khmer-Krom holocaust became worst. The Hanoi regime began to intensify their oppression to eliminate the Khmer-Krom race, especially to seek revenges against these poor indigenous populations for their collaborations and loyalties with the U.S. Special Forces during the war.

At the present time, even after nearly two decades of U.S.-Vietnam normalized relationship, Hanoi still continues to oppress the Khmer-Krom through their tremendous human rights violations, religious persecutions, confiscations of their ancestral lands, and other socio-economic deprivations. The Khmer-Krom indigenous peoples are not allowed to learn their own language and history in public schools or to freely practice their Theravada Buddhism without the interference and strict control of the Vietnamese government.

When Khmer-Krom people stood up for their rights, the Vietnamese Communist authorities arrested these poor people, imprisoned, tortured, and executed them. Many tactics and strategies employed by the Hanoi government through their ethnic cleansing policies against the Khmer-Krom.

The UNHCR should do more to protect the Khmer-Krom refugees in Bangkok from being arrested and deported back to Cambodia by the Thai government. What was the major reason of the Khmer-Krom’s recent escape to Thailand?

On 8 February 2007, approximately two hundred Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks in Soc Trang province of Vietnam organized a peaceful demonstration to demand religious freedom. Instead of solving this problem non-violently, the Vietnamese government cracked down on these Khmer-Krom protesters. The police arrested, defrocked, and imprisoned some of the monks whom they considered of leading this peaceful demonstration. Other Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks who were fearful for their safety regarding this repression escaped to Cambodia.

Unfortunately, there is a double discrepancy in Cambodia by the Ministry of Interior regarding their handling of the Khmer-Krom refugee situation. First, the UNHCR refused to grant the refugee status for these Khmer-Krom people, claiming that according to the Cambodian constitution, any Khmer-Krom who escaped from Vietnam to Cambodia will be automatically given the full Cambodian citizenship. So, the UNHCR could not accept the Khmer refugees in their Cambodian homeland.

But the Cambodian Ministry of Interior which oversees many important aspects of the Cambodian domestic affairs including the immigration, local administration, and internal securities has never issued the official document recognizing the legitimacy of these Khmer-Krom people as the Cambodian citizenship, such as the birth certificate, national identification card, the rights to attend public school, to work and to vote. As a result these Khmer-Krom people became illegal aliens in Cambodia resulting in their inability to find employment, enrolling in schools, have the rights to vote, or to obtain the Cambodian passport. In contrast, the same Cambodian Ministry of Interior secretly granted the full Cambodian citizenship to almost all of the Vietnamese who are able to migrate freely into Cambodia by issuing them the above mentioned government document to legitimize their status.

Subsequently, to express their support and sympathy for the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks who were arrested and imprisoned in Vietnam, the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks in Cambodia organized a peaceful protest in front of the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh to demand the release their fellow Buddhist monks. Unfortunately, the Cambodian Ministry of Interior ordered the Police and even the Cambodian Buddhist monks to violently attack these peaceful protesters. Again, Venerable Long Kim Leang, was among the Cambodian high ranking Buddhist monks receiving order from the Hanoi puppet monk—the Great Patriarch Tep Vong-- who ordered other monks under his command to crack down on these Khmer-Krom monks, making this violent chaos look like the fighting between the monks and the monks.

Left image: Cambodia police chased Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks
Right image: Long Kim Leang was leading his “pro-Communist Vietnamese” monks to oppress the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks

On May 30, 2009, Mr. Huynh Ba who is a Khmer-Krom activist for the land rights was also arrested by the Vietnamese authority. Since then, the Vietnamese government has rejected the request of Mr. Huynh Ba’s family to visit him inside a prison as well as not to give him a fair trial. His family, from the day of his arrest until the present time, has been kept in the dark by the Vietnamese Communist authority from learning about the health condition and the well being of Mr. Huynh Ba.

By stealing the ancestral lands of the Indigenous Khmer-Krom Peoples in Kampuchea-Krom, which is Vietnam’s main rice basket, making this country to become the world’s second biggest rice exporter, millions of our populations are starving and are living in poverty. Besides that, while Vietnam is receiving billions of dollars from digging crude oils on the Khmer-Krom’s ancestral sea near O-Cap (Vung Tau) province, the Indigenous Khmer-Krom Peoples are getting nothing from that benefit.


Since the Khmer Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF), which represents the voice of our Khmer-Krom people in the international arena, became an official member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) in 2001, this KKF organization has organized our people to actively participate in the global diplomatic mainstream through the peaceful human rights movement based on the international laws. When the Indigenous Khmer-Krom Peoples know their rights, they would stand up for these rights, especially the rights for self-determination so that they could live freely on their ancestral land. By realizing this dream, they would not need to flee their beloved homeland any more in order to seek refuge in another country. “When There is a Will, There will be a Way”.

After arrests, Khmer Krom activist waits on asylum bid

Friday, 19 June 2009
Written by Neth Pheaktra
The Phnom Penh Post

BUDDHIST monk Tim Sakhorn met with officials from the Bangkok office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Wednesday, following roundups of Khmer Krom refugees by Thai authorities last week.

Ang Chanrith, executive director of the Khmer Krom Human Rights Association, said that due to the UNHCR's special protection protocols, tightened after the arrests of 61 Khmer Krom in Bangkok last Saturday, it was not possible to reach Tim Sakhorn for comment Thursday.

But he said the Khmer Krom activist, who fled from Cambodia in April, expects his application for political asylum in the US to be finalised on Saturday.

Ang Chanrith added he was working with Thai authorities to prevent the deportation of the arrested Khmer Krom, who had been either recognised as refugees by UNHCR were under consideration or otherwise receiving support from the office.

"We have requested the Thai authorities not to send the Khmer Krom back to either Cambodia or Vietnam.... We are working with [the Thai government] to make sure these ethnic Khmer are safe while waiting for their asylum to be processed," he said.

"With the protection of the UNHCR and the Thai authorities, they wouldn't face the threat of deportation, even if they are arrested."

A report issued by Human Rights Watch in January 2009 documented human rights abuses and the "severe and often shrouded" methods used to stifle dissent amongst the ethnic Khmer minority in southern Vietnam.

Khmer Krom hero rises from the delta

Jun 6, 2009
By Craig Guthrie
Asia Times (Hong Kong)

BANGKOK - As he secretly slipped away from his mother's funeral, donned his familiar saffron robes and fled by motorbike along a potholed road from southeast Cambodia into neighboring Thailand, Tim Sakhorn's status as a Khmer Krom hero was assured. On Thursday, as his ethnic group marked the 60th anniversary of the loss of its lands, the little-known movement for self-determination and improved human rights was desperately in need of one.

The ongoing saga of Sakhorn, a 41-year-old Buddhist monk who in 2007 was defrocked, deported and detained by Vietnamese authorities for alleged separatist activities, has brought the cause of the Khmer Krom - a million-strong community of ethnic Khmer who live in parts of Vietnam's Mekong Delta that was once part of an ancient Cambodian empire - some much-needed global attention.

Khmer Krom leaders say the Vietnamese government has suppressed their religious and cultural identity for decades. They say the government of Cambodia, their motherland, has disowned them for political reasons. Sakhorn's story, they believe, is indicative of both.

Soft spoken and diminutive, Sakhorn is an unlikely successor to Son Kuy, the swashbuckling Khmer Krom soldier who led guerilla warfare against imperial Vietnam in the early 19th century before being beheaded at the royal court at Hue. Sakhorn says he is no hero. He told Asia Times Online at a hidden location in Bangkok on May 25 that he is merely happy his story can show the world that "the oppression is real".

The pictures of both men adorned banners as Khmer Krom marched in the streets of Phnom Penh on Thursday to commemorate colonial France's June 4, 1949, ceding of what was then known as western Cochinchina to Vietnam. The demonstration was kept low key - an earlier incarnation of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) was put in place by Hanoi in 1979, and its party leaders remain sensitive to any events critical of its important ally.

"Venerable Tim Sakhorn, is, by definition and through the examples of other great heroes in history, a true Cambodian hero," Washington-based economist and historian Naranhkiri Tith said by e-mail. He said Sakhorn deserves appreciation for "trying to defend Cambodia and her people against an unrelenting 'Vietnamization' of Cambodia".

Alien in your homeland
Khmer Krom leaders say the Vietnamese government targets their ethnic group in three ways: education, culture and economy. "Specifically, the Vietnamese government limits the teaching of the Khmer language, restricts the practice of Theravada Buddhism, and deprives the Khmer Krom of their lands," said Thach N Thach, the president of the Khmer Krom Federation.

The majority of Vietnam's Buddhists practice Mahayana Buddhism as opposed to the Khmer Krom's Theravada Buddhism. Hanoi's Minister of Culture and Information said in 2007 that Theravada enforces "backward" customs and habits that limit the group's development. The communist nation has restrictions on religious practices and all Theravada wats (temples) are overseen by the government-controlled Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha.

Perpetuating their life on the margins of Vietnamese society, large number of ethnic-Khmer students drop out of school at an early age. Many Khmer families are too poor to take their children out of wage labor. If they can, their children are only taught in Vietnamese. Khmer classes remain only available in small wats that girls, by custom, cannot attend.

"When I started first grade in public school I had to learn everything in Vietnamese, but I couldn't speak Vietnamese at all. The Vietnamese students, even teachers, made fun of us [Khmer Krom] and made us feel that we were not welcome," said Serey Chau, president of the Khmer Krom Federation's Youth Council.

In March 2008, the state-run VietnamNet news site reported that Khmer students were "dropping like flies" out of school. "Most of the students with bad learning capacity are of Khmer minority; they cannot speak Vietnamese well and cannot follow the study curriculum," a local teacher told them. The report said 56% of drop-outs are from the Khmer minority, with 30% of this figure leaving due to their "inability to learn".

Vietnam insists it has introduced wide-reaching housing, poverty reduction and education programs in an attempt to bring the Khmer Krom into mainstream society and join in the nation's economic progress. It claims some 358,000 new jobs were created for Khmer Krom in 2007, and that the average gross domestic product per capita in the region is 14.8 million dong (US$890).

'Eliminate without bleeding'
Khmer Krom leaders insist that poverty is rife in the area despite the delta being Vietnam's most fertile rice-growing region - Vietnam is the world's second-largest rice exporter. They claim the farmlands of ethnic-Khmer families have been confiscated by the authorities.

The World Bank found in a 2006-2010 socio-economic study that less than half of the Khmer households it surveyed (46%) had enough food to eat all year round, while poverty rates in Khmer Krom villages in 2005 reached between 50-70%. Of the main causes of poverty, 100% of village households surveyed said it was partly due to landlessness.

Thach says that after 1975, when the Khmer Rouge came into power in Phnom Penh, all Khmer Krom lands in the Delta were placed under state ownership. The government implemented collective land reform policies "with their eyes on the farmlands of Khmer Krom people", said Thach. "So far, this land-grabbing has succeeded and the majority of Khmer Krom are landless." He calls the aim of the program "to eliminate without bleeding".

An Oxfam Australia study in late 2008 found that the loss of culture is a primary cause of the poverty of the Khmer Krom in the Mekong Delta, "as cultural upheaval creates a sense of deep hopelessness and despondency".

This despondency has led to Khmer Krom activism. The case of Sakhorn suggests that the Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities are willing to collude to silence it.

A report by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) in February listed memos from Vietnamese government officials outlining their strategies to monitor and infiltrate ethnic-Khmer activist groups. In one, dated July 2007, General Luu Phuoc Luong, deputy commander of Vietnam's southwest region, accused "reactionary groups of the [Khmer] Krom" of "destabilizing us [Vietnam] politically ... Close cooperation with the Cambodian government is needed in order to nip these anti-government activities in the bud."

Hanoi dismissed the HRW report and Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dzung described it as a "total fabrication" in the state-controlled Viet Nam News Agency. "There is completely no repression or restrictions of freedom to religion and speech for Khmer ethnic people in the Mekong Delta region," Dung said.

Spirited away
When reports of Sakhorn's defrocking first made headlines in July 2007, the first statement from local authorities said he had been found guilty of "improper behavior" with a woman. Later, a witness from local human-rights group Adhoc said he had been bundled into a Toyota by unidentified men from Prime Minister Hun Sen's elite Brigade 70 bodyguard unit. Local newspapers then reported that he had been charged with "entering Vietnam illegally".

His whereabouts were unknown for weeks. Only in August 2007 was it confirmed he had been quietly shuttled to Vietnam by car to face charges of "undermining relations" between Vietnam and Cambodia by organizing Khmer Krom demonstrations and distributing propaganda leaflets while abbot of Phnom Den pagoda in Cambodia's southwestern Takeo province.

The defrocking order was signed by Great Supreme Patriach Tep Vong, Cambodia's highest religious figure. Vong has strong links to the ruling government and once served as deputy president of Cambodia's National Assembly when it was controlled by an earlier version of the CPP.

Human-rights groups said this was proof the structure of Buddhism in Cambodia was aligned so that religion was "politically entwined" with the government. "It is clear that the Ministry of Cults and Religions has an unhealthy degree of control over the Great Supreme Patriarch, and the structure of the Buddhism in Cambodia in general," said the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

The outcry over his disappearance led Hun Sen to write to King Norodom Sihamoni justifying his defrocking - Cambodia's royal family has traditionally displayed more sympathy for the Khmer Krom than the government. Princess Norodom Arunrasmy presided over Thursday's ceremony. "Monk Tim Sakhorn was stubborn," he wrote in the leaked letter, adding that while the government knew Vietnam had detained him, "the exact cause of the imprisonment, we do not know yet".

Underweight and shackled, Tim Sakhorn finally surfaced at a People's Tribunal in Vietnam's southeastern An Giang province in November, 2007. He was initially sentenced to 15 years, but after a signing a confession - which he says was already written and translated into Khmer - this was reduced to just one.

After his detention ended, he says he was still kept under surveillance by Vietnamese agents, but he was allowed a brief visit to Takeo in April to visit 100-day funeral rights for his mother. Grasping the opportunity, he fled to Thailand on a motodop (motorbike taxi). He donned his saffron robes and was secretly re-ordained en route - enabling him to escape the attention of border police.

Sakhorn is staying in a safe house in Bangkok where he met with Asia Times Online. He said he is currently awaiting a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees decision on his status and hopes to go to the United States. "But even in a third country I will be afraid, Vietnamese agents have shadowed me and threatened me since I was released. It doesn't matter where I go, they can find you," said Sakhorn.

The Cambodian government has said it is safe for him to return and live there, but he does not believe them. "I had lived in Cambodia for years, from 1978 [until 2007], and Vietnamese authorities were still able to come and take me to their prison where I was mistreated, forced to confess and earth and grass mixed in with my daily rice. [Prime Minister] Hun Sen says he wants to help the Khmer Krom, but I have not seen anything happen."

For historian Tith, the Cambodian premier has no option but to support any demands from the Vietnam. "If the Vietnamese tell Hun Sen to turn right, he will turn right. If the Vietnamese tell him to turn left, he will turn left. Hun Sen is very scared of Vietnam because he was propped up by Vietnam."

Written out of history
Sakhorn's arrest and deportation sparked a wave of Khmer Krom demonstrations in Cambodia, with clashes in Phnom Penh between Khmer Krom monks and monks loyal to Tep Vong. Hun Sen warned after the street fights in a speech broadcast on national television in February 2008 that he would provide "free coffins" to anyone who attempted to reclaim Khmer Krom lands and "help bury their corpses".

The Khmer Krom maintain their cause is about human rights, not independence or the return of their lands to Cambodia. They claim to only want some say in their future, and for Vietnam to stop falsifying their history. In 2007, the Vietnamese Communist Party disseminated a freshly written history of southern Vietnam that asserted that the Khmer were not its indigenous inhabitants.

Shawn McHale, an Asia studies professor at George Washington University, says the fundamental problem in the historical dispute over the Khmer Krom's lands is using modern notions of sovereignty for pre-colonial situations that were ambiguous. He said a Khmer prince ceded Khmer Krom to Vietnam in 1757, but that not all branches of the royal families agreed.

In 1864, France made Cochinchina a colony, but Cambodia was merely a protectorate. When Hanoi and Phnom Penh both claimed the area in 1945, the French ultimately sided with the Vietnamese in 1949.

"So the Khmer Krom today are an ethnic minority greatly outnumbered in their land, they insist that their territory was seized by an enemy, and that this enemy does not have a legitimate claim to the area, but most of the world simply can't believe that such an account is true," McHale told Asia Times Online by e-mail. "Over time, the world has come to recognize the claims of the party that came later and used brute force to establish its claim."

Craig Guthrie is a correspondent for Asia Times Online based in Thailand. He has covered Cambodian affairs since 2004.

Hochimonk Non Nget with the approval of Hochimonk Tep Vong defrock a Khmer Krom monk ... just like their Vietnamese masters

Click on the letter to zoom in

Khmer Krom Monk Tim Sakhorn

Translation from Khmer by Heng Soy

Phnom Penh 16 June 2007

To Highly revered Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong

Subject: Request to defrock Monk (Bikkhu) Tim Sakhorn, Abbott of North Phnom Den pagoda, Phnom Den commune, Kirivong District, Takeo province

Based on the subject indicated above, please Supreme Patriarch know that Bikkhu Tim Sakhorn conducted his behavior opposite to the Buddhist rule by breaking the national-international unity, in particular among two countries: Cambodia-Vietnam. He used the pagoda as the headquarters for propaganda and affected the rule and the honor of Buddhism.

Therefore, please Supreme Patriarch authorize as requested.

Signed: Non Nget, Patriarch

Seen and Agreed, (Sign) Tep Vong, 17-06-2007