The Khmer Rouge Trial (KRT) and the Destiny of the Cambodian People.

Recent News and Analysis -  2011 part I

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2. Cambodia shrugs off aid curb
By Brian McCartan

Asia Times: August 23, 2011

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MH23Ae02.html

Cambodian leaders have shrugged off a World Bank move this month to suspend new lending due to state-sponsored, large-scale evictions to clear land for development projects. While rising access to private Asian capital, particularly from China, has helped Cambodia weather previous Western donor pressure for reform, the socio-economic costs of the latest sanction could be much higher.

The World Bank had come under pressure from local and foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to take a tough stance against Cambodia's government in response to well-documented forced evictions of communities. The issue centered on a large-scale urban development project planned for central Phnom Penh at Boeung Kak lake where many of the residents are involved in catering to a growing tourist industry

The pressure increased late last year after an internal investigation found that the World Bank had violated its own social and environmental policies in supporting the project. It is being led by the privately-held Cambodian Shukaku company, which signed a 99-year lease with the government in 2007 to develop Boeung Kak and the surrounding area into a district of luxury apartments and high-end shops.

The company is chaired by Lao Meng Khin, a powerful senator affiliated with the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and a close associate of Prime Minister Hun Sen. Shukaku is partnered with the Inner Mongolia Erdos Hongjun Investment Co Ltd of China, which has pledged broadly to spend US$3 billion in Cambodia on property development, metal processing and power generation.

However, the joint venture has raised some eyebrows due to the unlisted Chinese company's murky background and ownership. Critics say that the company has no proven expertise in any of the areas in which it has pledged to invest, and there is an unusual lack of publicity around a company that has promised to commit such a large amount of capital outside China.

The developers began pumping sand into the lake in 2008, flooding homes and virtually wiping out the once tranquil lake's ecology. Land holders have had no say in the process and have been accused by the government as illegal squatters on state-owned land. These accusations, NGOs say, run counter to Cambodia's land law, which provides protections against evictions to long-time land holders. Many of the residents at Boeung Kak have lived there for decades.

However, the lake's residents were excluded from a process organized by the World Bank to adjudicate property claims. Over 2,000 have already been forced from their homes and another 10,000 now face eviction. The international lender has since called on the Cambodian government to halt the evictions and agree to fair compensation for land holders. After failing to reach an agreement, the World Bank stated on August 9, "Until an agreement is reached with the residents of Boeung Kak lake we do not expect to provide new lending to Cambodia."

The World Bank has lent Cambodia between US$50 million and $70 million annually for the past few years with the last disbursement made in December 2010. Most of the loans have been committed to health and education projects. Despite these capital commitments, Cambodian leaders have so far shrugged off the World Bank's statement about withholding future loans.

Analysts say they can afford to, given the billions of dollars of aid and investment the government now receives from China without strings attached. Cambodia's foreign donors pledged $1.1 billion in aid last year, with China committing the most of any country. China has also become Cambodia's largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI), with stated plans to spend $8 billion on 360 different projects during the first seven months of 2011.

It is difficult to separate Chinese foreign aid from investment since they are often intertwined. Chinese companies receive government subsidies to participate in projects that by Western standards would often be considered as development related. During a 2010 visit by Hun Sen to Beijing, China promised to provide a $300 million loan to construct two national highways and irrigation projects. Other deals concluded during the visit, mostly related to infrastructure, were worth around $293 million.

Hun Sen has made it clear in several speeches that he prefers Chinese to Western aid due to the lack of attached conditions. Western donors often predicate their aid packages on democratic reforms and improvements in human rights and counter-corruption. Hun Sen is apparently not alone in this opinion: the opaque regimes in Laos and Myanmar have also shown a preference for Chinese aid and investment for similar reasons.

Sphere of interest

Together with Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos are often considered Beijing's "sphere of interest" in Southeast Asia.

China became Laos' largest foreign investor in 2010 with total investments amounting $2.9 billion since 2000. Much of China's investment there is in mining, hydropower projects, agribusiness and services. It has also secured a prominent place as an aid donor through large-scale infrastructure projects such as the construction of Route 3 connecting southwestern China with northern Thailand through Laos.

Some of these projects have aimed more at securing goodwill, such as the widening of the Central Avenue in downtown Vientiane and the construction of the National Cultural Hall, than making money. That's evidenced in the fact that many loans are dispensed interest-free.

Last year, largely Western aid agencies and donors cautioned Laos about racing ahead with a development plan based too heavily on natural resource exploitation without enough emphasis on health, education and capacity development among the local population.

The Lao government has stated some of its own concerns over investment, especially in terms of long-term and concessions, such as those granted to Chinese investors to build casino complexes. However, the government has made it clear it intends to reduce its high dependency on official development assistance in favor of increased access to Asian private capital, especially from China.

In Myanmar, where the country ostensibly made a transition from direct military rule to a democratic system earlier this year, there is increasing Chinese investment as the country's leaders continue to look to Beijing for economic as well as diplomatic support. Much of China's investment is in natural resource extraction, hydropower projects, and infrastructure, but there is a growing interest in acquiring agricultural land, especially for rubber.

Myanmar's rulers have long relied on Chinese investment and aid to make up for a lack of development assistance from the West. Sanctions and concern over human-rights issues have prevented Western donors from providing funding at levels similar to that donated to Laos and Cambodia. Human-rights and political opposition groups have long argued that Chinese aid has allowed the military to stay in power and continue to repress the population.

China plans in coming years to further expand its trade with the region and is making moves to develop more extensive physical trade arteries. Beijing has announced plans to pour money into road and rail projects in coming years, linking its landlocked southwestern region with ports in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. It is hoped this will increase trade, promote regional investment and tourism, as well as strengthen ties with the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

This may be music to the ears of Southeast Asian policymakers who are interested in developing their countries' economic potential as well as improving their own financial situations given the high levels of corruption in the region. However, growing Chinese influence, especially in the economic sphere, is becoming increasingly worrisome to the average farmer and shopkeeper in these countries.

For instance, there is growing discontent in Laos over what some see as too much Chinese influence in the country. Laos are especially concerned by the growing number of Chinese migrating to work in the country on Chinese projects. This became especially acute in Vientiane when plans for an urban development project near the iconic That Luang monastery came to light.

The project, which was widely perceived as building a "Chinese city" in the heart of the capital, has stirred nationalistic responses from the city's growing middle class. In addition to a penchant by Chinese companies to import Chinese workers to work on their projects, Laos are worried those workers will not return home after the projects are finished, as has been the case on certain roadway projects in remote northern areas.

Land concessions are also an issue, especially in the north where Chinese companies have been able to acquire large tracts of land for plantation agriculture. While many villagers have been able to arrange contracting agreements to provide rubber to Chinese companies, others say they have been forced to convert their land to rubber cultivation. The north is also the location of two Chinese casino, hotel and shopping complexes at Boten and Huay Xai, where sovereignty has seemingly been handed over to Chinese developers.

There is also a longstanding, but largely quiet, animosity towards Chinese influence in Myanmar. Growing Chinese economic influence in recent years has heightened a perception of Chinese as untrustworthy businessmen bent on taking over the country.

As evidence, many Burmese point to the large areas of Mandalay and other cities which have become crowded with shops with store signs only in Chinese and catering to the growing number of Chinese moving into them. This perception apparently extends to the upper echelons of government, where some leaders are reportedly alarmed by China's growing economic clout vis-à-vis the local population.

For the average Myanmar farmer, especially in the country's northern region where there is an increase in China-linked agribusiness projects, there is concern over being evicted from their lands in favor of commercial plantations. Human rights groups have documented this practice throughout the country in a process often carried out by military units.

Others are worried their land will be taken for infrastructure and other projects. Environmental groups have documented the confiscation of land to build a deep sea port in Myanmar's south that will ship oil and gas through pipelines being constructed by Chinese companies to China's land-locked southwestern region.

While not solely the work of Chinese companies, rising evictions in Cambodia are creating a huge number of landless displaced people across the country. Some analysts speculate that the sheer number of people displaced could lead to social stability problems in the future as Cambodians forced off their land and without other viable economic options become increasingly desperate.

Unless Cambodian government policymakers make a shift from their headlong rush for development and reckless policies to supply China's demand for natural resources, agricultural products and diplomatic allies, the risk will rise that their development projects cause more social problems than they resolve.

It's a message the World Bank has delivered belatedly with its suspension of new lending and advice Cambodia's leaders would be wise to heed if they are to maintain social stability amid rapid economic growth and rising Chinese influence.

Brian McCartan is a freelance journalist. He may be reached at brianpm@comcast.net.

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

3. Scope of land evictions revealed

The Phnom Penh Post; Tuesday, 16 August 2011 15:01

John Anthony

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(Comments: this article show how the Hun Sen regime supported by Sihanouk has been taking away lands from the poor Cambodian people to give or sell to the rich and the Vietnamese.

Thanks to the courageous voices of people like Ou Virak, chairman of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR), and the reverend Loun Savath, the voices of these victims of Hun Sen’s inhuman and pervasive oppression are being heard. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. August 16, 2011)

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Land stats 2007-11 · Worst provinces

1. Phnom Penh - 22 conflicts

2.Banteay Meanchey - 17

3.Rattanakkiri - 17

· Families: An estimated 47,342 families have been affected or could be in the future.

· Resolution: About 90% of land conflict cases are unresolved.
Victims of land disputes nationwide are being encouraged to unite, as figures released yesterday highlighted the magnitude of what is often referred to as an “epidemic of land grabbing”.

4. What Happened to Obama?

By DREW WESTEN

Opinion

The New York Times: Published: August 6, 2011

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Drew Westen is a professor of psychology at Emory University and the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.”

Atlanta

IT was a blustery day in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009, as it often seems to be on the day of a presidential inauguration. As I stood with my 8-year-old daughter, watching the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come. It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him.

The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought. Our species existed for more than 100,000 years before the earliest signs of literacy, and another 5,000 years would pass before the majority of humans would know how to read and write.

Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”

When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. Three-quarters of a million people lost their jobs that month. Many had lost their homes, and with them the only nest eggs they had. Even the usually impervious upper middle class had seen a decade of stagnant or declining investment, with the stock market dropping in value with no end in sight. Hope was as scarce as credit.

In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety. What they were waiting for, in broad strokes, was a story something like this:

“I know you’re scared and angry. Many of you have lost your jobs, your homes, your hope. This was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. It was made by Wall Street gamblers who speculated with your lives and futures. It was made by conservative extremists who told us that if we just eliminated regulations and rewarded greed and recklessness, it would all work out. But it didn’t work out. And it didn’t work out 80 years ago, when the same people sold our grandparents the same bill of goods, with the same results. But we learned something from our grandparents about how to fix it, and we will draw on their wisdom. We will restore business confidence the old-fashioned way: by putting money back in the pockets of working Americans by putting them back to work, and by restoring integrity to our financial markets and demanding it of those who want to run them. I can’t promise that we won’t make mistakes along the way. But I can promise you that they will be honest mistakes, and that your government has your back again.” A story isn’t a policy. But that simple narrative — and the policies that would naturally have flowed from it — would have inoculated against much of what was to come in the intervening two and a half years of failed government, idled factories and idled hands. That story would have made clear that the president understood that the American people had given Democrats the presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress to fix the mess the Republicans and Wall Street had made of the country, and that this would not be a power-sharing arrangement. It would have made clear that the problem wasn’t tax-and-spend liberalism or the deficit — a deficit that didn’t exist until George W. Bush gave nearly $2 trillion in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and squandered $1 trillion in two wars.

And perhaps most important, it would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story — and there has been none since.

In similar circumstances, Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That’s what we saw in 1928, and that’s what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues — and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation’s food supply, and protect America’s land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.

Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.

IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

The truly decisive move that broke the arc of history was his handling of the stimulus. The public was desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led. Yet instead of indicting the economic policies and principles that had just eliminated eight million jobs, in the most damaging of the tic-like gestures of compromise that have become the hallmark of his presidency — and against the advice of multiple Nobel-Prize-winning economists — he backed away from his advisers who proposed a big stimulus, and then diluted it with tax cuts that had already been shown to be inert. The result, as predicted in advance, was a half-stimulus that half-stimulated the economy. That, in turn, led the White House to feel rightly unappreciated for having saved the country from another Great Depression but in the unenviable position of having to argue a counterfactual — that something terrible might have happened had it not half-acted.

To the average American, who was still staring into the abyss, the half-stimulus did nothing but prove that Ronald Reagan was right, that government is the problem. In fact, the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, “stick.” Nor did anyone explain what health care reform was supposed to accomplish (other than the unbelievable and even more uninspiring claim that it would “bend the cost curve”), or why “credit card reform” had led to an increase in the interest rates they were already struggling to pay. Nor did anyone explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be. All Americans knew, and all they know today, is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job. And now the Republicans are chipping away at unemployment insurance, and the president is making his usual impotent verbal exhortations after bargaining it away.

What makes the “deficit debate” we just experienced seem so surreal is how divorced the conversation in Washington has been from conversations around the kitchen table everywhere else in America. Although I am a scientist by training, over the last several years, as a messaging consultant to nonprofit groups and Democratic leaders, I have studied the way voters think and feel, talking to them in plain language. At this point, I have interacted in person or virtually with more than 50,000 Americans on a range of issues, from taxes and deficits to abortion and immigration.

The average voter is far more worried about jobs than about the deficit, which few were talking about while Bush and the Republican Congress were running it up. The conventional wisdom is that Americans hate government, and if you ask the question in the abstract, people will certainly give you an earful about what government does wrong. But if you give them the choice between cutting the deficit and putting Americans back to work, it isn’t even close. But it’s not just jobs. Americans don’t share the priorities of either party on taxes, budgets or any of the things Congress and the president have just agreed to slash — or failed to slash, like subsidies to oil companies. When it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, Americans are united across the political spectrum, supporting a message that says, “In times like these, millionaires ought to be giving to charity, not getting it.”

When pitted against a tough budget-cutting message straight from the mouth of its strongest advocates, swing voters vastly preferred a message that began, “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work.” This statement is far more consistent with what many economists are saying publicly — and what investors apparently believe, as evident in the nosedive the stock market took after the president and Congress “saved” the economy.

So where does that leave us?

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting around 800,000 immigrants in two years, a pace faster than nearly any other period in American history.

THE real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.

As a practicing psychologist with more than 25 years of experience, I will resist the temptation to diagnose at a distance, but as a scientist and strategic consultant I will venture some hypotheses.

The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.

A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election. Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.

Or perhaps, like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been consciously or unconsciously corrupted by a system that tests the souls even of people of tremendous integrity, by forcing them to dial for dollars — in the case of the modern presidency, for hundreds of millions of dollars. When he wants to be, the president is a brilliant and moving speaker, but his stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others’ misery has no agency and hence no culpability. Whether that reflects his aversion to conflict, an aversion to conflict with potential campaign donors that today cripples both parties’ ability to govern and threatens our democracy, or both, is unclear.

A final explanation is that he ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue. He has pursued the one with which he is most comfortable given the constraints of his character, consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.

But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 8, 2011

An earlier version of this essay referred incorrectly to the number of deportations of immigrants during President Obama’s term. Around 800,000 immigrants were deported during his first two years in office; it is not the case that a million immigrants were deported in 2010, the year Mr. Obama gave a speech on immigration reform. Also, a larger number of deportations occurred during the two terms of Mr. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush; Mr. Obama has not overseen more deportations than any other president.

5. Anti-government group imprisoned

The Phnom Penh POst; Friday, 05 August 2011 15:02

Buth Reaksmey Kongkea

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(Comments: This article shows the tragedy of Cambodia at its lowest point, and how Cambodia is really the country of the absurd. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge a cruel, corrupt, ignoramus and a traitor, with the full support of the cameleon-like Sihanouk, who pretends to be the hero of Cambodia. 

But, the real heroes of Cambodia are these brave and daring young Cambodian people who dared to challenge Hun Sen and his deadly regime. That is why Cambodia is known as the country of the absurd, because everything about Cambodia is irrational and abnormal in the eyes of who follow closely the Cambodian political events and issues. 

Where is the “great leader” Sam Rainsy? In Tunisia. Why is he in Tunisia when these brave young Cambodian men are now in jail? He is not what a real leader is. He is not Aung San Suu Kyi, nor Nelson Mandela, both of whom were in jails for daring to challenge their oppressors. Rainsy is simply a plain coward in showing by going to Tunisia, instead of coming back to Cambodia to face Hun Sen like these young Cambodians are admirably doing. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. August 6, 2011)

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Five men who distributed hundreds of leaflets critical of Prime Minister Hun Sen between the years 2008 and 2011 were sentenced to jail time yesterday by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

The leaflets accused the prime minister of selling Cambodian land to foreign countries, calling him a “traitor” and a “puppet of Vietnam”, municipal court judge Sem Sak Kola said.

She added that the leaflet referred to the ousting of the Khmer Rouge on January 7, 1979, as “the day Vietnam occupied Cambodia”.

The verdict, announced yesterday, found all five dissenters guilty of “inciting the people to commit serious crimes against Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Royal Government of Cambodia”.

6. Opposition highs and lows

The Phnom Penh Post; Thursday, 14 July 2011 15:02

James O’Toole and Thomas Miller

Photo by: Heng Chivoan

Sam Rainsy speaks to reporters in Phnom Penh in 2009.

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(Comments: this article which is a leak from the US Embassy in Cambodia on the role and the status of the opposition parties in Cambodia. It is interesting for all of us who have been following this political situation to read this article, especially what the US Ambassadors to Cambodia thoughts on Sam Rainsy on various issues facing Cambodia. 

One particular issue which I have been pointing out about Sam Rainsy as an opposition leader, to the effect that he is not an inspirer but rather an inciter, was revealed by a comment on him by US Ambassador to Cambodia, as follows:

The problems culminated later that year, when charges were filed against Sam Rainsy in relation to a protest he staged in October against alleged Vietnamese encroachment in Svay Rieng province. US ambassador Carol Rodley noted in a November cable: “The Sam Rainsy Party has taken a disruptive approach to a major problem and added toxic.” 

That is why Sam Rainsy has lost all credibility in the USA and other major democratic countries in the world.

Yet, because of their lack of a critical mind and the habit of having the mentality of “Chhen Chhay” or “compromise”, so many Cambodians still blindly follow Sam Rainsy leadership. That is the main problem for the Cambodian people to extricate themselves from the road to oblivion. Naranhkri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. August 2, 2011)

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As one-time Funcinpec leader and National Assembly President Norodom Ranariddh was forced from the parliamentary leadership in 2006, US embassy officials cast a worried eye over the state of political pluralism in the Kingdom, according to newly released diplomatic cables.

“What is disturbing is that the [Sam Rainsy Party] is on the sidelines, cheering on FUNCINPEC’s problems, just as FUNCINPEC did nothing to assist the SRP when Hun Sen was attacking the opposition during 2005,” a March 2006 cable states. “Both parties believe they would be beneficiaries of the other’s demise; unfortunately, neither party leader trusts the other enough to overcome past differences and work together to achieve the reforms needed within the Cambodian government.”

The American diplomatic cables released on Tuesday detail the struggles of the Royalist movement through the middle of the past decade, from the perceived frustrations of Ranariddh in being passed over for the kingship to the corruption allegations that dogged the party as Hun Sen sought to oust them from the coalition government. At the same time, the halting reform efforts of the SRP are depicted in the on-again, off-again relations between Sam Rainsy and Hun Sen.

With the 2004 coronation of King Norodom Sihamoni, who drew praise in the cables from American diplomats for his graceful and unassuming style, Ranariddh is said to have displayed “petulance” and alienated fellow Funcinpec members in his apparent frustration at being passed over. Eating dinner with US diplomats in October 2004, three senior Funcinpec officials reportedly “expressed grave doubt in Ranariddh’s leadership ability, suggesting that, rather than raising his stature, he is increasingly making himself a laughing stock”.

As years pass, American diplomats see the once-powerful party undone. “Because of corruption and nepotism, the party is losing support from the people and talented officials, such as the SRP’s Mu Sochua, have left the party,” a Funcinpec party member tells American diplomats, later saying most of the royalist party’s officials were “weak and interested only in womanizing and money”.

Cambodian People’s Party official Prum Sokha, meanwhile, reportedly complained that Funcinpec officials “have bloated the staffing of ministries with relatives and party members without consideration of qualifications or interest in the jobs”.

A former Funcinpec secretary general reportedly complains in a May 2006 cable that party leader Nhek Bun Chhay and the rest of the party have been almost totally co-opted by the ruling party; Sirivudh thus terms the party “HUNSENPEC”. Deputy Prime Minister Nhek Bun Chhay said yesterday that allegations that he had sold out the party to the CPP were “for political interest”, and defended cooperation with the ruling CPP since 1993. Norodom Ranariddh party spokesman Pen Sangha could not be reached.

As Ranariddh’s star fell, Sam Rainsy reportedly enjoyed a period of rapprochement with Hun Sen upon returning to the Kingdom in 2006, having fled in relation to a defamation case the previous year. A cable signed by Ambassador Mussomeli from February 2006 recounts a meeting in which Sam Rainsy outlined his strategy for “reconciliation” with Hun Sen. Sam Rainsy was allowed to return to the Kingdom that month following his pardon for a defamation conviction.

“Hun Sen decides everything in Cambodia, and the government institutions, e.g., the courts, the parliament, are just a ‘facade,’ complained Rainsy,” Mussomeli stated. “If Cambodia is ruled by one man, then in order to get anything done, one must begin by talking to that man, said the opposition leader, who added it had been a difficult choice.”

7. Cambodian awarded ‘Nobel prize’ of Asia

Te Phnom Penh Post: Friday, 29 July 2011 15:01

Daniel Sherrell

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(Comments: this article shows the true image  of those Cambodians who are really courageous by daring to challenge Hun Sen and his CPP deadly regime in Cambodia and not from Paris, as Sam Rainsy is doing. The award of the Ramon Magsaysay prize, which is the equivalence of the Nobel Prize in Asia, to Mr. Koul Panha (Please, read his bio in a companionarticle psoted below titled  "Activist long road to find peace" ) is really a great tribute to him and to all freedom-loving Cambodians in Cambodia and in the world (Please, read his bio in .  

I want to wholeheartedly congratulate Mr. Koul Panha on this honourable occasion for his bravery and sacrifice on behalf of all those Cambodians who are not afraid to challenge Hun Sen dictatorial power and corrupt practice. He is, by definition, a real hero for the Cambodian people who still want to remain free of Vietnamese colonization supported by Hun Sen and Sihanouk. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC.  August 01, 2011)

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Cambodian citizen Koul Panha has been awarded the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, often referred to as Asia’s Nobel peace prize, for his work with the Committee for Free and Fair Elections.

He is one of six people to receive this year’s award, which will be presented to them at a ceremony in Manila on August 31.

7. a. Activist’s long road to find peace

The Phnom Penh Post: Monday, 08 August 2011 15:00

Ou Mom

Cambodian Koul Panha has been awarded one of six prestigious Ramon Magsaysay 2011 awards for his unremitting work in fighting for a free and fair democratic system in the Kingdom. The awards,
often referred to as the

“Nobel peace prizes of Asia”, are “given to persons – regardless of race, nationality, creed or gender – who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity, and in doing so have made contributions which have transformed their societies for the better”, according to the foundation’s website.

Koul Panha’s journey to reach this point in his work and career has been a long and often traumatic, albeit history changing one.

8. Khmers Helping Khmers and how they are doing it

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(Comments: this set of emails provided a poignant eyewitness account of the tragic current situation in Cambodia, especially the condition of the poor Cambodians, and it shows how spontaneously, Khmers can help Khmers and how they do it. It is both hart-warming and hart-breaking. No further comments are needed. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D.  Washington DC. July 29, 2011)

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From Ou Ritthy:

In a message dated 7/27/2011 4:09:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ouritthy87@gmail.com writes:

Dear Lok Om,

I hope you and your family are fine there.

Lok om, I want to inform you that I have successfully completed my BA Political Science in India. I reached Cambodia on 13^th July. When reaching Phnom Penh International Airport, I directly traveled to my home in Pursat Province.

Because this time is raining season, I have to help my parents planting rice in the rice field and in my village needless to talk about internet connection, there is even no electricity. As a result, I am very late to inform you that I reached home safely.

Lok om, This is my first observation in my village. Most of the people are indebted to Micro finance institutions. They sell their lands, cows and buffalos to Vietnamese people and those villagers use their money for gambling, and alcoholics and buy new phone and motorbike. Farming now is very hopeless. Villagers cannot do farming without chemical fertilizers. Sadly enough, fertilizer is increasingly expensive as I know it is produced by Vietnamese Company. It is now extremely hard to believe in such remote areas even vegetable like ginger, onion, sweet chilly…are from Thailand. There is almost no home-grown product except rice. Maybe because of being poor financially and educationally, morality of teenagers and adults in the village are very poor and selfish.

Many old people in villages have been still working in the field and many of teenagers and adults have gone to Thailand and for female to Malaysia to find jobs there. So I reached home, I could not find my parents and my grandmother at home as they were planting rice in the fields. I was very painful to see my 74-year old grandmother spending whole day planting rice.

Anyway, Lok om, now I am staying at Saravoan Pagoda in Phnom Penh. I am now applying for job. But as a fresh graduate, I find it very hard to be employed. So many graduates are fighting for few jobs.

Lastly, I am very appreciated and grateful to you that you have put tirelessly your knowledge and wisdom into writings and send it me. I wish you and your family best of health.

With my deepest respect,

Ou Ritthy

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 8:39 PM, <Naranhkiritith@aol.com> wrote:

July 28, 2011

Dear Ritthy:

Thank you for keeping me informed about your where about. I am glad that you have completed your BA. and now back in Cambodia. I am also very sad to hear all the bad things that you have written about the Cambodian people, and about your own family.

I can promise you that I will always do whatever I can to help you. What about your application for a scholarship to Germany? You should approach the American Embassy for a scholarship to come and study here in the USA.

Please, keep me informed on your plan, and I am prepared to help you anyway I can so that you can continue to study for an advanced degree here in the USA. You have great potential for graduate studies.

Best regards.

Dr. Naranhkiri Tith

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From Ou Ritthy

Dear Lok om,

Thank you so much for your kind, supportive and encouraged words to me. I am truly lucky to know you who always advices and educates me.

It is very hard to tell the story in detail about people in my village. But I would say shortly that I do not see any positive and bright future for my villagers.

Regarding German Scholarship, I already applied for MA Public Policy through DAAD scholarship at German Embassy in Phnom Penh. However, the chance seems to be slim as they told me that the previous few successful candidates are only those who have work experience at two years. Even worse, I do not have IELTS or TOEFL certificate when applying.

Regarding the Fulbright scholarship, it requires a 4-year Bachelor's degree education. However, my BA is only three-year education. Plus, I have never tried applying as I graduated lately after the closing date.

Anyway, I am responding your mail with great please and honor when reading your kind and supportive words. My dream is to go for postgraduate studies abroad. I am stuck with this dream no mater whenever chance is given. I am very hard to access to internet, good newspaper, good books, other sources of information in Cambodia. It is not as easy as what I had been doing in India.

Once again, thank you so much for your care, help, encouragement and support given to me so far. My parents are extremely happy when hearing that I have known you and other highly intellectual Khmer  people abroad.

I wish you and your family best of health.

With my deepest respect,

Ou Ritthy


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From Chou Ngeth; Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Dear Ritthy:

I appreciate your brilliancy! And welcome back to our home country. Going through your email below, I think it is a ditto message from my own view as well. And they become my big concerns. Most of our new generations are playing with risky game and are moving in wrong direction. For labor migration and supply of agricultural produces from Vietnam and Thailand, they are completely true.

Regarding over-indebtedness with micro fiance, as a microfinance consultant of USAID-funded project, I am not really sure there are too many cases against total borrowers of the country. One proxy evidence is Portfolio At Risk (PAR) of the whole industry is some 0.8% only. Anyway, experts agree that financial education/literacy becomes a key to reduce over-indebtedness. I am working with those MFI operators and stakeholders to improve access to formal finance at a sustainable way.

I have lot of experience regarding employment and acceleration of professional growth. For brilliant guy like you, you should apply for high end internship or management trainee programs with leading companies or organizations such UN agencies, US embassy, IRI, BAT, Mobitel, ANZ, etc. Having an opportunity to do internship or engage in management trainee program with one of these organization are a lot better than getting most of full-time job with any other organizations or companies. You will get good hand-on management and leadership skills as well as better pay compared to normal employment as a fresh graduate. I am more than happy to share with you about lessons I have learned as a poor student from rural and how I become success in my career. I can be contact via 012 786 800 and you can learn more about me via:

http://choungeth.blogspot.com/
Facebook: Chou Ngeth

If you have a chance to pursue your study abroad, please commit to come back and work for our nation. We really need brilliant young generation like you.

Best regards,

Ngeth Chou

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From Buntha Eakim; Paris, France

Dear Kmouy Rithy,

Hope that you are fine and happy to go back home.

I read all-comment exchanges between you and Lok Om Tith. Many thanks to Lok Pou to put me in his Copy-email. I met him and his wife Pat in Washington DC, in December 2010.

I will be in Phnom Penh from 11 august to 1 September. I would like to meet you there. Please let me know via my email, if it is possible.

Some websites to you:

Our lovely country of birth:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj_3oLBuQ6Y

The Global Campaign for Education in Cambodia 2011 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ib968jLXk&feature=youtu.be

Philip Day - City of the God Kings

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

And this below site can be helpful for Cambodian farmers :

The SYSTEM of RICE INTENSIFICATION

http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/countries/cambodia/index.html

Best regards

Ming Buntha

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From Tipanna Tith; Long Beach, California

Dear Lok Bang Kiri

A very sad and touchy issue of Phaon Ou Rithy from Pursat. This is the true Khmer story and all Khmer abroad must understand very well about, we could become minority in our own place of birth and become slave of their own country. Thank you Bang kiri for continue informing and empowering us for the sake of our country of birth.

Respectfully your

Tippana Tith

9. Khmer spy blog

http://kh-spy.blogspot.com/p/about-us.html

I am surprised to see my name mentioned as a supporter of Kem Sokha. I am an American since 1960 by choice, how can I support Kem Sokha? I congratulate him and other when they are doing good things , and I criticized him as much as I did to Sam Rainsy, even Sihanouk, not to mention Hun Sen and his traitor colleagues.

As a free person but responsible, I can criticize anybody whom I think is not performing according to what they preach.

What disturbed me the most about your group is the fact that you do not dare to show your face. Hiding behind a wall is not what I call real courage.

I have a web site in which I post all the information about my background, I have nothing to hide. So, don't pretend to inform other when you are cowardly talk about people without showing your real identity. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC July 23, 2011

10. TOP 10 TYCOONS

(Please, “Control-Click” on the title to see the photos of these Tycoons)

The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 13 July 2011 11:47

Post Staff

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(Comments: this article and the pictures of the top 10 tycoons in Cambodia says all about who really owns  the wealth and the power in Cambodia . While the vast majority of Common Cambodian have only one dollar to survive and to feed their starving family members, the tycoons live in vast and luxurious mansions, and drive super luxury cars, such as; BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, even Rols Royce.  

All their wealth has been accumulated thanks to their close connection with Hun Sen and his corrupt CPP.  Among these tycoons, two, namely, Sok Kong and Yeay Phu, are Vietnamese nationals and close friends of Hun Sen. Sok kong is the owner of SOKIMEX, a vast empire of businesses including monopoly in tourism, petroleum production and distribution network of oil and gas products along with other several major industries. 

That is why Hun Sen has been able to be re-elected again and again since 1997 and remain in power. 

Without Sihanouk’s total support, Hun Sen could not have remained in power all this time.  Yet, so many Cambodians still venerate Sihanouk as the god-king. It won’t be easy to get out of this tragic situation unless Cambodians would dare to confront Sihanouk, and stop considering him as the only one leader who can save Cambodia. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 21, 2011))

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9. America’s Nuclear Vietnam

August 11, 2010 4:00 A.M

Henry Sokolski

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/243652/americas-nuclear-vietnam-henry-sokolski

(Comments: this article written by Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, D.C. vindicates me that I was right to have raised the question to a former State Department official, why did Secretary of state Hillary Clinton recently signed an agreement to transfer America’s nuclear technology to Vietnam. She was not happy with my question, and it had said that this nuclear technology is only for peaceful purposes. However, this is not a very responsible act by the Obama Administration as this article pointed that;

“The Obama administration has botched its atomic negotiations with Hanoi.

In Washington, government officials rarely (if ever) admit to making policy mistakes, even when they’ve clearly botched things up. Take Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent decision to bless a formal civilian nuclear-cooperation agreement with Vietnam.

Secretary Clinton endorsed the deal in Hanoi without demanding — as Washington recently did with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — that Vietnam forswear making nuclear fuel, a process that can bring states within days or weeks of acquiring nuclear weapons.”

That is why Cambodian-Americans should not vote anymore for Barack Obama. He has been surrendering all the principles that he so loudly proclaimed during the 2008 presidential elections. We should not forget that Hillary Clinton has been a v strong anti-Vietnam war, (nothing wrong with that) and very anti-Chinese (That is very wrong). No wonder, the relations between Hun Sen Cambodia has been improving so drastically since Hillary Clinton became secretary of state under the Obama Administration.

This new agreement to transfer nuclear technology to Vietnam is totally in contradiction with the highly-proclaimed policy of  the Obama Administration on denuclearization in the world, as pointed out by Henry Sokoski as follows:

“Meanwhile, Congress, ever eager to promote the UAE conditions, is planning on tightening America’s nonproliferation laws. Some on Capitol Hill are already toying with the idea of cutting off foreign firms that refuse to make the UAE conditions a requirement of the nuclear assistance they offer overseas. The House is expected to take up these matters in the fall, around the time U.S. negotiators are scheduled to meet their Vietnamese counterparts to finalize the proposed nuclear deal.”

Is this stand by Hillary Clinton logical and compatible with the USA as democratic country and promoter of human rights? Vietnam and China are both still communist countries. By tradition China is a believer and is practicing international relations using soft power (diplomatic economic, political) and not hard power (Military), in its international relations with other countries in the world. While Vietnam has been using hard power to conquest its weaker neighbors (Champa, Kampuchea Krom) gious freedom. But, Vietnam is well-known for its suppression of its minorities (Khmer Krom, and Montagnard) and its religious minorities, namely Christians. While historically, the Chinese do tolerate minorities (Manchu, Tibetan, Tai)  within its society, where Vietnam has zero tolerance for minorities.

China can be useful to America in in economic terms, as it can be and already is a large market for American export of goods and services, as well as investment, and bought over one US $trillion worth of US Treasury bonds. Whereas Vietnam cannot play that role, at all.

These are the considerations that Hillary Clinton seems to ignore in her irrational loyalty to Vietnam and  her aggressiveness toward China.

This is the kind of fight that I am fighting in many think-tanks in this capital city of the USA that most Cambodians don’t know and can even imagine that the existence of such problem as this non-proliferation of nuclear weapons policy. Please also read the Appendix ar ticle, titled, "Ros-Lehtinen promises to stop Obama's civilian nuclear deals ."Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 19, 2011)

PS. To read more on tis important topic, please, go to this link:

                                                                                               Is China bad news good for america.docx

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This immediately raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill. Just months before, State Department officials had pitched the UAE agreement as the new “gold standard” for nuclear-cooperation pacts worldwide. After getting briefed on the Vietnam deal, Hill staffers on both sides of aisle feared Foggy Bottom was throwing in the towel on nonproliferation.

asState could have taken its points and sent U.S. diplomats back quietly to get the tougher UAE conditions. Instead, supporters of the Vietnam accord dug in their heels.

First, they claimed that the deal in no way changed U.S. policy. Washington, they argued, never intended to push the UAE conditions outside of the Middle East.

In fact, the U.S. struck the UAE deal in pursuance of a country-neutral approach to sharing civilian nuclear technology that President Bush and Russia’s Vladimir Putin announced back in July 2007. Their joint declaration aimed to promote civilian nuclear cooperation globally while trying to convince states lacking  nuclear weapons to forgo making nuclear fuel.

Throughout 2008, U.S. diplomats offered nuclear-power deals and sought no-nuclear-fuel-making pledges, not only from the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, but also from Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Taking this international approach helped address Arab concerns that the U.S. had one nonproliferation standard for them and another for everyone else.

Which brings us to the second official defense of treating Vietnam differently. “Given . . . the genuine threat of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” a senior State Department official told the Wall Street Journal, “we believe the U.A.E. . . . agreement is a model for the region,” but “these same concerns do not specifically apply in Asia.”

How’s that? Last month, Secretary Clinton blew the whistle on North Korea’s possible assistance to a covert Burmese nuclear-weapons effort. Also, since 1990, the U.S. and its allies have pressed Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-weapons activities, lest those activities goad South Korea or Japan to go nuclear.

Seoul, which U.S. officials have caught covertly attempting to make nuclear weapons at least twice, now wants to produce its own nuclear fuel. Japan already does produce its own fuel and has stockpiled at least 1,000 bombs’ worth of plutonium. Further south, Taiwan tried covertly to acquire nuclear weapons at least once and is now developing a missile than could hit Beijing. As for China, it keeps modernizing its nuclear-weapons forces under a dark cloak of secrecy.

All of this suggests that pushing one nonproliferation policy for the Middle East and another for a “quiescent” Asia is delusional. More important, no one’s buying it: Middle Eastern officials resent the double standard, and the Chinese — who view Vietnam as a potentially hostile vassal state — are taking offense.

That brings us to Foggy Bottom’s final defense of the deal: Washington, our diplomats argue, must work with the world as it is, not as it wishes it to be. Vietnam wants nuclear-power reactors. France, Russia, Japan, and China are vying to build them. If America wants to influence Vietnam and secure reactor sales, it must bend to reality and drop the UAE conditions.

This pitch, however, ignores an embarrassing truth: Vietnam is unlikely to buy American. In fact, to do so, it would have to forswear suing U.S. firms for damages a nuclear accident might inflict off-site — a demand that America’s government-backed nuclear competitors do not make. In any case, the key reason for cutting the deal wasn’t to generate U.S. jobs, but rather to tighten our strategic ties with Hanoi by formally authorizing it to receive sensitive nuclear goods. America’s commercial losses if Washington demanded that Vietnam adhere to the UAE conditions, therefore, would be essentially zero.

As for the contention that the U.S. has no effective leverage over the behavior of its nuclear competitors, just the opposite is the case. That leverage is actually substantial, and it’s also increasing, as foreign companies such as Rosatom, KEPCO, Hitachi, Toshiba, and AREVA seek to expand their business with the U.S. In fact, these government-backed firms are not just trying to sell America more, but (as I have detailed elsewhere) are pleading for billions in U.S.-taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to expand their business in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Congress, ever eager to promote the UAE conditions, is planning on tightening America’s nonproliferation laws. Some on Capitol Hill are already toying with the idea of cutting off foreign firms that refuse to make the UAE conditions a requirement of the nuclear assistance they offer overseas. The House is expected to take up these matters in the fall, around the time U.S. negotiators are scheduled to meet their Vietnamese counterparts to finalize the proposed nuclear deal.

One would like to think that the discussion will focus on more than just minor details, and that Washington will do what it can to avoid any further Vietnam-style blunders in the area of nuclear diplomacy, whether inside or outside of Asia. What this will first require, though, is an admission of the obvious: that someone in the executive branch made a mistake.

– Henry Sokolski is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, D.C., and author of Controlling the Further Spread of Nuclear Weapons.

Appendix: Ros-Lehtinen promises to stop Obama's civilian nuclear deals

Foreign Affair Magazine (FP): Posted By Josh Rogin Friday, January 14, 2011 - 10:07 AM

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/category/topic/development?page=1

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The Obama administration is negotiating civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with a host of countries around the world. But Congress will intervene to try to stop some of those deals, if House Foreign Relations Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen but has anything to say about it.

Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban-American firebrand who took over the committee last week, has promised to fight the administration's foreign policy agenda on a wide range of fronts. On her first day, she pledged to take an axe to the State Department's budget, and last month she single-handedly killed the bill to make opposition to forced child marriages an element of U.S. foreign policy. Her next target is the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), the law that governs civilian nuclear agreements -- commonly known as "123" agreements for the section of the AEA governing them.

Ros-Lehtinen is angry that the U.S. entered into a 123 agreement with Russia this month. The administration submitted the agreement to Congress last May. Ros-Lehtinen introduced a resolution to stop it during the previous congressional session, but the resolution never came up for a vote in the Democratic-led House. The deal consequently went through after the 90-day waiting period expired.

"The U.S.-Russia nuclear cooperation agreement that went into effect this week never got a vote in Congress," Ros-Lehtinen said Thursday. "The Atomic Energy Act must be reformed so that these far-reaching and potentially dangerous agreements are required to receive an up-or-down vote in Congress before going into effect."

She also promised that her bill would require the administration to certify that a country has met a number or requirements before signing a nuclear deal with the United States, and to verify that the deal would advance U.S. interests.

Ros-Lehtinen said that Russia did not deserve that "concession" due to what she calls its ongoing support of Iran's nuclear program. She specifically mentioned its assistance in building and fueling the Bushehr nuclear plant, even though George W. Bush's administration actually supported that project.

She also criticized Russia for continuing "to shield Iran from U.S. and international sanctions and taking other actions that undermine U.S. interests around the world, such as selling weapons to Syria and signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with the Burmese regime, which is a North Korea nuclear partner."

In Ros-Lehtinen's view, the administration has given several "concessions" to Russia already, including the New START nuclear reductions pact, changes in European missile defense plans, and exempting Russian companies from Iranian sanctions.

Others in Congress opposed the Russia 123 agreement, including Ed Markey (D-MA), chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. That loose coalition could create problems for the administration if and when it completes new 123 agreements.

The next countries in line for 123 agreements are Vietnam and Jordan, and their deals promise to face a different criticism than the agreement with Russia. Critics in both parties on Capitol Hill are set to press the administration to include bans on plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment in the deals, and those countries aren't likely to agree.

The administration painted itself into a corner on this issue when it hailed the 2009 123 agreement with the UAE as the "gold standard," because it included the provisions banning enrichment. But team Obama then hit a wall when Vietnam refused to agree to the same prohibitions. Jordan as well has indicated it wants to preserve what it views as its right to produce nuclear fuel sometime in the future.

If the administration insists on the prohibitions now, it risks causing the pending deals with Vietnam and Jordan to unravel in the short term, and perhaps losing out on other potential deals in the longer term. If the administration backs down and signs agreements without nuclear fuel production restrictions, it will cause a bipartisan uproar on Capitol Hill.

Inside the administration, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman has been arguing for months that the administration should just get rid of the enrichment provisions. On the other side of the debate, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg has taken the position that the provisions are important.

In addition to Vietnam and Jordan, the administration is also considering beginning negotiations on a 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia. Ros-Lehtinen has already come out as a critic of the administration's plan to sell $60 billion worth of weapons to the kingdom.

Last August, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote to Obama to demand that the UAE standard be applied to all future civilian nuclear deals. The lawmakers threw Obama's own words from his 2009 speech in Prague back at him, when the president said, "We need a new paradigm for civil nuclear cooperation that allows all countries to enjoy the benefits of nuclear power, while avoiding the spread of nuclear weapons and technologies."

"That new paradigm exists," the lawmakers wrote, referring to the UAE standard.

In November, a group of 16 non-proliferation experts wrote to the administration to demand that the standard in the UAE 123 agreement be extended to U.S. federal energy loan guarantees, federal contracts, or other subsidies or assistance to help foreign government-backed nuclear firms expand their nuclear business in the United States.

The letter was signed by right-leaning experts such as Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, as well as left-leaning experts such as Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

"All of us believe that it makes no sense for our government to help foreign firms expand their nuclear business in the U.S. with federal loan guarantees, government contracts, or Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses unless they are willing to support the very toughest nuclear nonproliferation standards our own government has developed in the U.S.-UAE deal," the experts wrote.

10. WikiLeaks: Sam Rainsy's Strategy: Push Hun Sen, then beat him at the polls

Reference ID: 06PHNOMPENH327
Created: 2006-02-17 09:20
Released: 2011-07-11 00:00
Classification: CONFIDENTIAL
Origin: Embassy Phnom Penh

STATE FOR EAP/MLS; GENEVA FOR RMA
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/17/2016

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TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM PHUM CB
SUBJECT: SAM RAINSY'S POLITICAL STRATEGY: PUSH HUN SEN,
THEN BEAT HIM AT THE POLLS
Classified By: Pol/Econ Chief Margaret McKean, Reason 1.4 (b) and (d)

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(Comments: These two articles one by Wikileaks on Sam Rainsy and the other by Kim Heng,  a Cambodian from France. My only comments is by way of a question. Do you think Sam Rainsy is capable of beating Hun Sen as he seems to imply by doing what he is saying here? That is cooperating with Hun Sen and expecting Hun Sen to just follow what Sam Rainsy is telling him to do, that is adopt democracy? Does Sam Rainsy know that Hun Sen follows only the Vietnamese  order, and so is Sihanouk.  Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 16, 2011)

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¶1. (C) Summary. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy says that reconciliation with Hun Sen was the only way to improve his party's position in upcoming national elections and provide hope for the democratic future of Cambodia. Rainsy hopes that his continued ability to move the government towards desired reforms within important national institutions will solidify democracy in Cambodia -- and his detractors (both here and abroad) will recognize the wisdom of his actions. Rainsy said that Hun Sen is a fact of life and his only hope of helping democracy is to work with the PM to make changes that will benefit Cambodians in the long run. The political landscape is shifting, says Rainsy, and it is unclear which parties will be standing for election in 2008; FUNCINPEC may disappear, CPP could split, and there could be other opposition parties that form between now and elections. The Sam Rainsy Party, however, will continue to work on the side of democracy and the Cambodian people and seek to eventually become the ruling party in the future. End Summary.

Sam Rainsy Explains Himself

---------------------------

¶2. (C) On February 17, opposition leader Sam Rainsy, accompanied by SRP Standing Committee member Mu Sochua, met with the Ambassador, DCM, and Pol/Econ Chief to outline his political thinking that led to the rapprochement with Prime Minister Hun Sen. Rainsy said that he has undertaken a political reconciliation with Hun Sen, and described the process as just beginning and therefore very fragile – and one that could be reversed. At the moment, the continuation of the process depends on the mood of the PM and not on existing democratic institutions. Hun Sen decides everything
in Cambodia, and the government institutions, e.g., the courts, the parliament, are just a "facade,"complained Rainsy. If Cambodia is ruled by one man, then in order to
get anything done, one must begin by talking to that man, said the opposition leader, who added it had been a difficult choice. He noted that he risked the support of many friends inside and outside Cambodia to put some trust into a dialogue with Hun Sen, but hopes that dialogue will yield positive results for Cambodia.

¶3. (C) Rainsy credited the international community's interest and support over the past year, as well as the U.S. Embassy's work on his behalf, as critical to arriving at the situation in Cambodia today. In public, Rainsy said that he uses the Prime Minister's rhetoric of the reconciliation being a Khmer-Khmer solution, but in reality he knows that Hun Sen never would have reached this stage without outside pressure. He acknowledged that he has been criticized by colleagues and friends for having given in, but Rainsy insisted that he made the right choice for the right reasons. In order to reach a democratic state in Cambodia, much needs to happen but it all comes down to building democratic institutions. That can only happen through a more independent and transparent political process and elections where average citizens are free to exercise their right to vote without intimidation.

¶4. (C) Rainsy explained that Cambodians were afraid to be associated with the Sam Rainsy Party because the CPP had told them that Sam Rainsy is an enemy who cannot be allowed into power without civil war breaking out. This strategy of manipulating poor, uneducated peasants who value stability after the 25 years of genocide and civil war hurt the SRP, he stated. If Rainsy is seen to be working with the government
in a constructive way and the PM no longer characterizes Rainsy as an enemy, people will be more willing to vote in accordance with their beliefs. From Hun Sen's perspective, if can he can work with the democrats like Rainsy and human rights leader Kem Sokha, it will be politically advantageous for him as well. Rainsy said Hun Sen wants better relations with the West, particularly the United States, and recognizes Rainsy can help him on that front.

¶5. (C) Rainsy allowed that his year in exile showed that he cannot reform Cambodia's political institutions from the outside as his party would only become more marginalized.
The PM has agreed to SRP representation in the Constitutional Council and the National Election Commission; two crucial institutions for delivering free and fair elections in2008, he noted. By being part of those institutions, the SRP will be in a stronger position to stand for upcoming elections, claimed Rainsy. Rainsy said that it has been helpful to his political future for the Prime Minister to suggest that the
CPP would invite the SRP to join a coalition government with them in 2008. Rainsy said he would also invite the CPP to join him if the SRP wins. In either event, it shows the
populace that the parties are not enemies but constructive partners for the betterment of Cambodia's future. If the SRP can also show results to the population, that will also help
their chances, he said. Hun Sen has complained to Rainsy about the poor governors, ministers and other public officials within the system and asked that Rainsy help him
with necessary reforms. Already, the PM is taking my advice, said Rainsy, referring to the PM's instructions to one of his advisors to resolve a dispute between businessmen in Kampong Thom and provincial authorities. Rainsy appealed to the PM to assist in this matter as an advocate for the businessmen, and the PM agreed. These results help the PM take credit but Rainsy said that people will also see him as the catalyst for
change and credit him as well.

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Subject: Texte de Sam Rainsy dans Libération du 7 Juillet 2011

Chers compatriotes,

A travers le texte de Sam Rainsy dans Libération du 7 Juillet 2011, le roi Norodom a pressenti d’un glissement du régime mis en place vers l’état dictature et fasciste. Que faire nos leaders à l’époque malgré cette mauvaise prémonition ? On avait partagé tranquillement le pouvoir, la richesse, la célébrité, on a essayé de ramasser ce qu’on pouvait, le maximum possible.

 Samdeach Sihanouk a été très satisfait de recevoir l’autorisation de restaurer la monarchie quelque soit l’avenir du pays et pour renforcer sa monarchie à l’avenir, il a même distribué des titres de Samdeach à des gens qu’il pensait d’être fasciste comme Mussolini. Ainsi, il a créé des nouveaux protecteurs de la monarchie, mais pas des protecteurs du peuple et de la nation.

 Hun Sen a distribué des maisons, des terres, des postes de ministres, chefs de départements, de provinces, des capitaux, des étoiles, etc…. à des leaders de partis politiques dans la cohésion. Pourtant, tout le monde savait qu’il s’agissait de cohésion factice. Le parti PPC connaissait bien nos points faibles. Il nous a fait noyé dans un bol d’eau depuis le début.

Tous les gouvernements depuis des accords de Paris avaient distribué au peuple (80%) des misères, des pauvretés, des déracinés en confisquant ses terres, … Dans le cadre de l’administration, ils appliquaient le système favorisant la corruption permettant d’empêcher toute évolution possible de notre nation vers le progrès.

C’est là l’erreur, que nous avons commis permettant de bafouer les accords de Paris. La soif personnelle nous rend aveugles de pouvoir, de confort, de richesse personnelle. C’est cette faiblesse que Hun Sen peut conduire sa politique jusqu’à ce jour. C’est cette soif que notre peuple 80% vit dans la misère et c’est cette soif que nous allons perdre notre nation.

Mais, nous sommes assez intelligents pour reconnaître nos défauts et pour sortir de ce désarroi en débarrassant de cet importune soif afin de reconstituer une base saine ni ambition personnelle, ni rancœur, ni rancune sans faire un croche-pied à nos compatriotes de même idée pour la démocratie, pour la défense de la nation, pour le bonheur de nos compatriotes. Que chacun a sa place, que celui ou celle qui sera désigné (e) leader du parti ou d’un groupe d’individus ne se comporte pas comme un empereur intouchable, incritiquable. Notre nation a besoin de nous tous pour atteindre la lumière d’espoir. Un vrai démocrate n’est pas celui ou celle qui dicte la démocratie dans un meeting, mais c’est celui qui applique la démocratie dans tout environnement familial, relationnel (amis, collègues, voisins,..), politique et gouvernemental. La collectivité doit être placée devant l’intérêt individuel. Que sert à l’homme de gagner l’univers, s’il vient à perdre son âme.

Kim HENG

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Subject:  Text of Sam Rainsy in July 7 Liberation 2011 Dear compatriots,

A breadth the text of Sam Rainsy in July 7 Liberation 2011, king Norodom Sihanouk sensing that there was  a sliding of the governing system  toward dictatorship and Fascism.  What did our leaders do in this situation, despite this bad premonition?  Those in power quietly had divided the power, wealth, fame, and they tried to accumulate wealth, all they could, to the maximum. 

 Samdeach Sihanouk was very satisfied to receive the authorization to restore the monarchy some is the future of the country and to reinforce his monarchy in the future, he even distributed the honorary titles, Samdeach, to people that he knew to behave like a Fascist, like Mussolini.  Thus, he created the new protective framework for the monarchy, but not for the people and nation. 

Hun Sen gave away houses, land, ministers posts, department heads, of provinces, capitals, stars, etc…. to leaders of political parties in this alliance.  Nevertheless, everyone knew that it was an artificial alliance.  The CPP knew well our (Cambodians) weak points.  This knowledge led us to be drowned in a water bowl since the beginning. 

 All the governments since the Paris Agreements had distributed to the people (80%) miseries, poverties, uprooted while confiscating its land,  In the framework of the administration, they applied the system favoring corruption thus preventing any possible evolution of our nation towards progress.

It is an error that we had committed to allow the Paris Agreements to fall apart.  Personal greed that renders us to be able to have comfort, and  personal wealth.  It is this weakness that Hun Sen is able to implement his political agenda until this day.  It is this greed that our people (80%) are mired in the misery and it is this crave that we will lose our nation. 

But, we are sufficiently intelligent to recognize our defects and go out of this confusion while ridding of this inopportune craving in order to restore a healthy basis or personal ambition, without resentment, or grudge, without tripping all our compatriots, and  we should be applying the same approach to democracy, for the sake of defending the nation, and for the happiness of our compatriots. 

Each person must knows where he should stands, that is for the one that will be designated (a) leader or for a group of individuals, they should not be allowed to behave as an irreproachable emperor, uncritically. Our nation needs us all to attain the light of hope. 

A true democrat is not the one who imposes democracy in a meeting, but it is the one who applies democracy in all environment, such as: in family, (friends, colleagues, neighbors, ..), political, and governmental environment.  The group interest must be put ahead of that of the individual.  What is the point for human  being to gain the universe, if in so doing he comes to lose his soul.  Kim HENG

11. Plan to shut down tribunal monitor

The Phnom Penh Post; Wednesday, 13 July 2011 15:48

Post Staff

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(Comments: A few years ago, Ronnie Yimsut, now the darling of Youk Chhang and his friends and sponsors, such as; Ben Kiernan, Alex Hinton, and others who job is to demonize the demons making all Cambodians hard-core racists, had asked me to meet with Hun Sen appointed administrator at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT), Sean Vissoth, and the Australian member of the Australian Communist Party, Helen Jarvis (See an excerpt on Jarvis posted just below), in New York, on the endorsement of the role of the CPP in the KRT.  I did not accept that invitation, knowing that Ronnie Yimsut was only interested in endorsing the Vietnamese as “liberators” of Cambodia. Since then, Jarvis was dismissed from the her job as adviser to the KRT, while Sean Vissoth is apparently no longer employed by that tribunal.

This article vindicates me and my decision not to have anything to do with Youk Chhang and company, and Hun Sen regarding the pursuit of real justice for the Cambodian people resulting from the mass murder by the Khmer Rouge. 

Hun Sen has decided to shut down, the Open Society Justice Initiative,(OSJI),of which I am a member, an NGO whose job is monitor justice implementation in the world, including Cambodia, is a tangible proof that Yimsut and his friends are in the wrong side of justice, and are with and are supporting Hun Sen and his CPP. 

As I have been  saying very often that the main purpose of Hun Sen and his supporters like Youk Chhang, and his friends and sponsors, in the creation of the KRT is not to render real justice but practical justice for the Cambodian people while demonize the Khmer Rouge by making them not only mass murderers, but, also racists.  Now that this goal of demonizing the demons has been achieved, there is not reason, for Hun Sen to allow the KRT to continue its duty to bring all those who are implicated in this mass murder, to justice, especially those who are now in Hun Sen CPP as senior members. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 14, 2011

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The government planned to shut down the Open Society Justice Initiative, an international group monitoring the Khmer Rouge tribunal, after the NGO called for an investigation into alleged court corruption in 2007, according to a United States cable made public yesterday.

Claims that staff on the Cambodian side of the court were forced to pay kickbacks to their supervisors surfaced in 2006, and OSJI called for an investigation in February 2007. Court staff reiterated the claims to The Post in 2009. Court administrator Sean Visoth was allegedly at the centre of the scandal and international donors and the United Nations sought his dismissal.

According to a diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Phnom Penh marked “confidential” and signed by Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, Sean Visoth allegedly revealed the plan to close OSJI during a meeting on March 11, 2007, with the former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes David Scheffer. The scheme was reportedly approved by Prime Minister Hun Sen and Deputy Prime Minister Sok An.

“Vissoth confirmed for Scheffer that he (Vissoth) had been instructed by DPM Sok An to construct a chronology of the OSJI affair that would be used as part of the government’s plan to shut down the office,” Mussomeli said. “The order had been given at a recent wedding ceremony where the PM and other senior officials had discussed the matter.”

Other cables released yesterday recount negotiations between donors, the UN and the government that eventually led to the creation in 2009 of an “independent counselor” at the court designed to allow staff to make complaints about corruption without fear of reprisal.

The cables also show that the Cambodian government was allegedly reluctant during negotiations to sack Sean Visoth in the face of donor pressure.

Piper Campbell US embassy Chargé d’Affairs, reported in a confidential cable sent on November 3, 2008, that Sok An said the concerns over Sean Visoth and corruption “were a distraction from the goals of the court”. Campbell added that Sok An “made several pointed criticisms of the UN, all but asserting that UN meddling was intended to mar Cambodia’s significant contributions to the KRT and to assert UN dominance over it”.

Yesterday, a source at the court, who requested anonymity, said details of Sean Visoth’s position were still “not clear” and the issue remained “sensitive”.

Court spokesman Neth Pheaktra said Sean Visoth had not received any salary from the court since he ceased working there over two years ago.

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11.a. Helen Jarvis involvement in Communism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/10/malcolm-caldwell-pol-pot-murder

In one form or another, this exculpation has been used over and again by the supporters of communist revolutions, from the Russian via the Chinese through to the Cambodian. Each new manifestation commanded the fervent advocacy of a new generation of radicals. Sooner or later the grim reality was revealed, which, paradoxically, only raised the hope that the next version would get it right. As the French philosopher Jean-François Revel has remarked: "Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not."

Somehow the link between Marxist-Leninist ideology and communist terror has never been firmly established in the way, for instance, that we understand Nazi ideology to have led inexorably to Auschwitz. As if to illustrate the point, earlier last year the ECCC announced that Helen Jarvis, its chief of public affairs, was to become head of the victims unit, responsible for dealing with the survivors, and relatives of the dead, of S-21.

Jarvis is an Australian academic with a longterm interest in the region, who was recently awarded Cambodian citizenship. She is also a member of the Leninist Party Faction in Australia. In 2006 she signed a party letter that included this passage: "We too are Marxists and believe that 'the ends justify the means'. But for the means to be justifiable, the ends must also be held to account. In time of revolution and civil war, the most extreme measures will sometimes become necessary and justified. Against the bourgeoisie and their state agencies we don't respect their laws and their fake moral principles."

Jarvis refused to speak to me about these matters. But Knut Rosandhaug, the UN's deputy administrator for the tribunal, said that the administration "fully supports" her. In this sense, although she was never a Pol Potist herself, Jarvis shows that the spirit of Malcolm Caldwell has survived the last century. It lives on in the conviction that the ends justify the means, and in the manner that liberal institutions can house the most illiberal outlooks.

The means, of course, always become the ends. Duch or someone like him is the method and the madness, the process and the final product. At least the man himself claims to grasp what continues to elude too many who should by now know better. In his deposition to the court, he said: "I clearly understand that any theory or ideology which mentions love for the people in a class-based concept is definitely driving us into endless tragedy and misery."

12. Shares Needed as Cambodia Gets a Stock Exchange

By SIMON MARKS

The New York Times; Published: July 10, 2011

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(Comments: Normally, every Cambodian living overseas or in Cambodia, should rejoice at the news has advanced to become one of the sophisticate economic financial countries in Asia.  Having taught international finance for over twenty years at the school of Advanced International studies, (SAIS), at the Johns Hopkipns University, and for having lectured on financial reform and management,for the IMF in almost all formely Communist countries in Asia and Eastern Europe and the former Socist Union, a few words of caution on the stock in Cambodia are necessary.

Even in an advanced country like the USA, with a non=corrupt and a political judicial and legal system, the financial system is still very dangerous place to manage and to invest in, due to either lack of sufficiently open and fair regulatory rules, and agencies, as the current exceptionlist place erronously granted to the largest financial institutions (Too big to fail), and with poor supervision, which led to current protracted and deep economic and financial crisis in this country with a continuing reveberation around the world.  

Cambodia is knnown for its systemic corruption and no rule of law. Cambodia still does have an anti-corruption law, along with a weak legal and a highly politicized judicial system. How on earth, can an open, trusted and honest stock market be operating in that kind of abnormal environment? No wonder, there is hardly companies listed in that stock market. To see Keat Chhon a former economic adviser to Pol Pot standing with the world Bank president is really absurd. The, afterall Cambodia is better known as the country of the absurd. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 13, 2011))

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PHNOM PENH — Having experienced more than a decade of economic growth after years of civil unrest and political disorder, Cambodia is set to open its stock market Monday, a move the government hopes will attract more investors to this country’s small and developing economy.

Enlarge This Image

ti

Chor Sokunthea/Reuters

Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank, left, with Keat Chhon, who will head the commission overseeing the stock market, which is based in a Phnom Penh office tower.

Enlarge This Image

Samrang Pring/Reuters

A Phnom Penh office tower which houses the offices of the Cambodia Securities Exchange.

But there is a stumbling block: Cambodia has no companies that are ready to go public.

And the lack of preparedness among local businesses reflects a broader uncertainty about the country’s capacity to adapt to the challenges of operating financial markets.

The introduction of an exchange would add sophistication to the Cambodian economy and potentially help to wean it off its dependence on the dollar. But in a society where claims of corruption are common and laws often weakly implemented, critics say there are concerns over whether market regulators are capable of enforcing rules on issues like corporate governance and accounting and trading standards.

“Cambodia’s market regulator will have all the necessary laws to tackle crime, ensure good governance and create a decent, law-abiding exchange,” said Lee In-pyo, senior manager of the derivatives market division at the Korea Exchange, which has a 45 percent stake in the Cambodia Securities Exchange, with the government owning the remaining 55 percent. “But given Cambodia’s common practices, culture, and experience, full implementation of the law will be very difficult.”

Korea Exchange signed a venture agreement with the Cambodian government in March 2009 as part of wider plans to expand throughout the region. Keat Chhon, the country’s finance minister, will be the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia.

So far only three state-owned enterprises have announced their intention to list on the Cambodia Securities Exchange: Telecom Cambodia, Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority and Sihanoukville Autonomous Port.

Han Kyung-tae, managing director for Tong Yang Securities, which is preparing the initial public offerings for Telecom Cambodia and Phnom Penh Water, said the two companies still needed work to make sure they were compliant with market regulations. Mr. Han said the two were hoping to be ready to list by the end of the year at the earliest.

SBI Phnom Penh Securities, which is preparing the initial public offering for Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, with the Cambodian economy having rebounded from a 2 percent contraction in 2009 during the global financial crisis to experience growth in gross domestic product of 6.7 percent in 2010, according to the World Bank, economists say the exchange could help bring more capital into the economy.

In a country where the total number of loans in the banking system accounts for 30 percent of gross domestic product, compared with nearly 100 percent in Thailand and Vietnam, there is plenty of room for an influx of funds.

“It’s a very good time for Cambodia to introduce a stock market,” said Hiroshi Suzuki, chief economist for the Business Research Institute of Cambodia.

Cambodia has its own currency, the riel, but the economy essentially functions on the dollar, with 90 percent of deposits and credit in the banking system denominated in dollars. This restricts the tools available to the central bank for cooling or stimulating the economy and inflation.

While all stock quotations on the Cambodian exchange are to be in riel, the dollar can be used to buy shares for the first three years of the bourse.

After that, the central bank, which issues the riel, will have more influence on the money circulating in the domestic financial system, making the Cambodian economy less dependent on the dollar.

Morten Kvammen, founding partner at Cambodia Capital, a corporate advisory and investment firm and one of seven licensed underwriters in Cambodia, said the attractiveness of the market in Cambodia went far beyond that of the Lao Securities Exchange, which after six months of trading has just two state-owned companies trading stock.

“We think volume will build very quickly, and we could have up to or maybe more than 10 companies listed in the first year of trading,” he said.

Mr. Kvammen noted that while Laos had licensed two companies capable of underwriting and brokering, Cambodia had 13 doing the same thing.

Still, Cambodia has ranked near the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions index for years. And some people in Cambodia are all too aware of the risks that could come along with a stock market, saying that it could act as a tool to further benefit the country’s elite.

“We live in a culture where there is no rule of law,” said Tioulong Saumura, a lawmaker for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party and former vice governor of the National Bank of Cambodia. “No doubt it is easy to adopt a good regulation — copy it down yourself and come up with something on paper that looks good.”

Hang Chuon Naron, secretary of state at the Ministry of Finance, said that enforcing high regulatory standards depended upon not only the government, but also issuers and investors.

He said that bringing a stock market to Cambodia would be a “learning process” for everyone involved and that it could take up to five years to ensure all the necessary standards are met.

Analysts often draw cautionary lessons from the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, formerly known as the Ho Chi Minh City Trading Center, when it opened in Vietnam in 2000. Trading was slow to take off and only a handful of companies were listed after five years of trading.

Then in 2005, as the world economy was enjoying a period of sustained growth, speculation brought in a plethora of companies and investors. The Ho Chi Minh index jumped from 100 points in 2000 to about 1,000 points in early 2007.

But by early 2009, the market had dropped to below 300 points as investors pulled out in the wake of the global financial crisis.

“I think it is going to be a steep learning curve, not only for the fund managers but also for the locals,” said Sany Zainudin, a fund manager at MIDF Amanah Asset Management in Kuala Lumpur, who was one of 32 regional fund managers who arrived in Cambodia in November to learn about the country’s legal framework with a view to investing in the market.

Economists also say that many Cambodian companies with the financial clout to be able to list are completely unaccustomed to the financial benefits associated with a stock market, as they are used to a culture of running businesses as family outfits.

“They don’t like to see some part of the stock sold to others,” said Mr. Suzuki, the economist.

Mr. Suzuki said he expected some of Cambodia’s larger telecommunication companies like Mobitel, as well as some of the bigger local banks, to be among the first private companies to list.

As was the case in Vietnam, Mr. Suzuki said, securities firms would probably spend years trying to persuade companies to list. “How to increase the number of these companies will be the hardest job,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 11, 2011, in The International Herald Tribune with the headline: Shares Needed as Cambodia Gets a Stock Exchange,.

13. Govt hails Thai election

The Phnom Penh Post: Tuesday, 05 July 2011 15:02

Cheang Sokha and James O’Toole

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(Comments: when Hor Namhong cheered  the victory of Yingluck Shinawatra, Taksin’s sister in the recent elections in Thailand, it means that Cambodia is again in bigger trouble, as Taksin is a friend of Hun Sen, since Hun Sen gave him the monopoly of cell phone in the mid-1990’s and started to make his first million from it. With this victory, Yingluck would become the first female prime minister in Thailand, and would follow her brother close association with Hun Sen, as shown by Hor Namhong exhilaration about the election victory of Taksin’s sister as follows:

“Speaking to reporters yesterday following the signing of an aid agreement with Japan, Hor Namhong said the Cambodian government “cannot hide” its pleasure at Puea Thai’s victory over the Democrat Party of outgoing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.”  

Please, also note how naïve those Cambodians who commented on this issue of utmost importance to Cambodia. I don’t blame them. But, I am also frightened by their naivety.

What this means for Cambodia, is that Vietnam is more than ever in firm control of Cambodia, as Thailand is no longer a threat to it. Only, time will tell how bad Cambodia future will be under the alliance between Taksin and Hun Sen. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 8, 2011)

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Thai elections Cambodian reaction

Chamroen Pheap, 66, sells drinks by Phnom Penh riverside.

I am so old that I don’t know much about how Thai policy affects Cambodia. I do know that our country needs to stay away from war. My husband and children died during war in 1977 and now I am alone. So, Thailand must not create conflict with Cambodia.

Chan Sokhum, aged 36, works for a private company.

Abhisit wanted to create conflict with Cambodia and now he is feeling the results of the election. I hope that the new Thai government and the Cambodian government will work together peacefully. I have waited for this day for a long time. We want to have peace.

Chhouen Sengheang, 18, is a first year banking student at Norton University

I was surprised when Abhisit lost the election. I think that although this event happened in Thailand it will affect Cambodia. As we know Yingluck is a sister of Thaksin and Thaksin is a friend of our country. So the new leader will follow Thaksin’s policy.

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“I think Puea Thai realise that they have to try to solve this Preah Vihear temple issue,” Puangthong said. “The new minister of foreign affairs needs to have the guts to fight against the misinformation created by the nationalists and be firm on the previous positions taken by Samak Sundaravej – that supporting Cambodia’s World Heritage inscription will not affect Thai territory at all.”

14. As Number One, China to Face Hour of Choice

The Brookings Institution: Tuesday July 5, 2011

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0630_china_bush.aspx:

China, China's Economy, Asia, Northeast Asia, International Relations

Richard C. Bush III, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy StudiesYaleGlobal: June 30, 2011

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(Comments: Please, find this historic and eye-opening article titled "China's Choices" and read it carefully, on the confirmation by the International Monetary fund (IMF, of which I was a senior official for 24 years) that China will soon surpass the USA as the most important economy in the world. It is sent to me by the Brookings Institution, one of the most influential think tanks in this country, located here in Washington DC. , of which I am a member since 1980.

It also shows how mistaken Hillary Clinton is to have misled this country, which has already so many problems and so fiscally broke, to be an ally with Vietnam, and to be able to fight China rising power in Asia and the world.

However, this situation does not mean that Cambodia should gang up against Vietnam and the US. What it means is that Cambodia should remain neutral knowing that China tributary system since 2000 years ago, does not involve territorial conquest. But, Hun Sen has revealed himself to be closer and siding with Vietnam, whose spokesman had recently and publicly said that “Cambodia is close to china but is closer to Vietnam.”

What it means that Vietnam had modified China’s tributary system of no-interest or habit in conquering the territory of its weaker neighbors’ (Champa, Kampuchea Krom, Laos) territories, into a very deadly form of colonialism and imperialism, in which it does not allow any minorities (Chams, Montagards, Khmers Krom) to exist in its cultural, political and social space.

(Please, the Vietnamese modified tributary system compared to that of China in this link;

 http://cambodiana.org/Vietnamtributarysystemwithdeadlytwist.aspx ;)

It is a unique opportunity for Cambodia to get rid of Communist Vietnam's colonialism and imperialism, once and for all, if only we have a real, credible, brave, dignified, honest, and internationally respectable leader (such as Aung San Suu Kuy, or Nelson Mandela), to grasp this unique historical moment for Cambodia to lead the Cambodian people to be free again.  Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 5, 2011)

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Recently the International Monetary Fund confirmed what the average Chinese has long anticipated: China will soon have the world’s largest economy, surpassing the United States. There may be quibbles about measuring sticks and low per capita GDP, so timing is imprecise. But the trend is clear. In terms of gross domestic product, China will become number one in this decade or the next and the United States will become number two. Yet rankings do not automatically confer power and influence. More important is how a major country chooses to use its power, for good or ill.

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Reuters

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That China will have the world’s largest economy is a remarkable achievement. In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China was a very poor country, the result of more than a century of decline. Thirty years later, it was still a poor country, wracked by continual political turmoil. But China’s leaders then abandoned central planning and autarky in favor of export-led growth fueled by external investment and local initiative. They stuck to that strategy while adapting skillfully to changing circumstances. They improved the living standards of hundreds of millions and transformed the face of the country

Discussions of China’s having the largest GDP come with a subtext – that rapid rise of a new power can destabilize the international system and even lead to conflict. Economic power can be translated into military power and political influence.

But as history shows, the path may not have a single destination. According to the conventional narrative, Germany challenged Great Britain’s dominant position in the international system and World War I was the result. Yet this narrative is at odds with the economic rankings at that time, according to estimates of the late Angus Maddison, a prominent economic historian.

In 1913, the year before the outbreak of World War I, the United States had the world’s largest GDP, with just more than $500 billion in 1990 prices. Next, four countries were bunched together, each with $225 to $240 billion. Germany and Great Britain were in this group but so were Russia and, surprisingly, China. France was at $144 billion and Japan only had a GDP of $71 billion.

China’s second-tier economy is not surprising. In 1913, as today, it had the world’s largest population. More people can produce more stuff. But China then was also politically weak: divided internally and vulnerable to external imperialism.

While, of course, the world today is very different from what it was a century ago, the 1913 configuration is instructive.

First of all, the 1913 rankings demonstrate that a large economy itself does not automatically translate into global political influence. In 1913 the United States may have had the world’s largest economy, but was virtually irrelevant in Europe’s gathering storm. Great Britain, on the other hand, “punched above its weight” to preserve stability in the international system.

Second, a large economy does not necessarily result in a robust military. The United States had a comparatively small military establishment in 1913, despite having the largest GDP. Relative to their economic size, Germany and Japan had large armies and navies.

Third, the emergence of a new economic number one doesn’t mean that international conflict is inevitable. By 1913, the United States was the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, but Great Britain accepted this decline in its global influence. Japan, on the other hand, had fought and won wars against two countries three times its economic size: China in 1894-95 and Russia in 1904-05. Despite their commercial and colonial interests, however, Britain and the United States chose to accommodate Japan rather than challenge it.

Fourth, when conflict occurs, it is not necessarily because a rising power is bent on aggression. Germany’s decision to go to war in the summer of 1914 was driven by rigid alliance commitments and anxiety, probably misplaced, that Russia was growing stronger. Berlin opted to strike preemptively to preserve its security. Russia was caught in the same dilemma.

In short, the choices that major powers make are more important than their economic rank. As number one, China may assume that it has the right to extend its influence at the expense of others. Its expansion of its strategic perimeter in the East and South China seas is a case in point. Or it may continue to focus on its economy and create a prosperous life for most of its people, letting the United States continue to bear the burden of international leadership. If so, it will remain a country that has global impact, as Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center, puts it, but is not a global player. Or it may opt to work with other major powers to meet the critical challenges to the international system – that is the Obama administration’s hope. Or it can read the worst into what others do, particularly the United States, and act on its fears. Which choice China makes will have profound consequences for East Asia and the world.

The United States has choices too. It can regard becoming number two as another sign that of permanent decline and retreat from international leadership. It can choose to rebuild the pillars of national power that have been neglected – government finance, education, science and technology, and so on. It can conclude – without justification – that China is sure to become America’s adversary and base policy on that fear, producing a dangerous vicious circle. Or it can forgo the temptation to read the worst into China’s revival and instead seek to influence China’s trajectory in the direction of cooperation rather than conflict.

And for each country, not making conscious choices about future direction is also a choice.

China is going to be number one, but that’s no reason for Americans to head for the hills.

YaleGlobal is the flagship publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, published since 2002.

15. Reflections on Cambodian History

·         14.3 (Fall 1990) Cambodia (use control and click to read more articles on Cambodia)

·         By Chandler, David P.

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/cambodia/reflections-cambodian-history

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(Comments: this article by David Chandler, titled “Reflections on Cambodian History,” and the next one by Charles Keyes, titled “The Legacy of Angkor” are most crucial for all those (Cambodians and non-Cambodians alike) who want to understand the main factors behind Cambodia’s past and current tragedy, and could be used as an important and indispensable lessons for those Cambodians who want to allow Cambodia to continue to live longer, by avoiding or repeating the same mistakes made in the past.  It shows the cultural difference between the two aggressors, the Thai and the Vietnamese, of Cambodia since the fall of Angkor in 1432.

Using (But not accepting his implied thesis of the superiority of the western civilization over others) Professor Samuel Huntington’s book (See book description pasted below) titled “The Clash of Civilizations,” the aggression by the Thai against the Cambodians can be classified as war within the same civilizations; whereas the aggression by the Vietnamese against the Cambodians can be classified as a clash between two different civilizations.  

Of the two articles, that of Chandler is the most negative and biased, although disguised towards the Cambodians, and accepting Vietnamese as no longer having a colonialist and imperialist design on Cambodia. In this context, he appears to give credit to Hun Sen and his CPP the good mark for being realistic in accepting to consider the Vietnamese as a good neighbor and savior, and not as an invader,

In other words, the Cambodians can only survive if they stop resisting the Vietnamese imperialism. I must confess that I have been always distrustful of David Chandler (who worked and cooperates with Ben Kiernan and his protégé Youk Chhang of DCCAM, whose main objective is to “demonize the demons”, so as to make the Khmer Rouge not only mass murderers but also a racists, therefore to make the Vietnamese more acceptable to the international community) real intention towards Cambodia and its people. For that resistance and non-acceptance of his covert friendship for Vietnam, that Cambodia can only survive if it recognizes Vietnam as a friendly neighbor and a savior.

He appeared to have minimized Vietnamese imperialism and colonialism, for the conquest and the total disintegration of Champa, or for the slow, but certain elimination of the Khmers Krom (which is genocide by definition, according to Geneva Convention of Genocide) from their ancestral land of Kampuchea Krom, as something belonging to the past.

He also ignores the estimated four million of illegal immigrants now residing in Cambodia and continuously supporting Hun Sen’s reelection every four years so that he can continue allow Vietnam to be in firm control of Cambodia. Last but not least, Chandler was most deadly  and reveals himself to be part of that group of foreign intellectuals who favors and accept Vietnamese hegemony over Cambodia, as a natural phenomenon, granted that most Cambodians cannot control their innermost emotion and show themselves to be more anti Vietnamese than they really are, thus making Chandler’s claims a reality.

Chandler’s main hypocrisy, as I had described earlier can be captured from his writing as follows:

“Animosity toward Vietnam and fears of encirclement have faded from official pronouncements. Vietnamese ambitions toward Cambodia, whatever they were, seem to have receded. As the demythologizing process works itself out on both sides of the border, cultural differences between Cambodians and Vietnamese, so useful to Cambodian demagogues in the past, are blurring, and the people of both countries find themselves as neighbors in a global village.

Cambodian culture, insofar as it is unique and looks backward to its periods of greatness, will survive, and a more internationalized "Indochinese" culture may develop (anthropologist as it seems to be doing among some Cambodian migrants in the United States).

The Cambodian people and some kind of Cambodian nation will also survive, provided that the fighting stops, political stability reasserts itself, and foreign powers stop using the country as a testing ground for allegedly larger interests, such as punishing Vietnam, pleasing Beijing, or avenging the coup that removed Sihanouk from power 20 years ago.

Perhaps the most preposterous and hypocritical of Chandler is revealed in this sentence as his perception of the so-called future relationship between the Cambodians and Vietnamese people, when he prophesized that:

“Animosity toward Vietnam and fears of encirclement have faded from official pronouncements. Vietnamese ambitions toward Cambodia, whatever they were, seem to have receded. As the demythologizing process works itself out on both sides of the border, cultural differences between Cambodians and Vietnamese, so useful to Cambodian demagogues in the past, are blurring, and the people of both countries find themselves as neighbors in a global village.“

Are Cultural differences between Cambodians and Vietnamese, so useful to Cambodian demagogues in the past are blurring? Is it true that Vietnamese aggression towards Cambodia, seem to have receded, as Chandler suggested?

How could this be when the Vietnamese never allowed any minorities (Cham, Khmer Krom, Montagnard) to exist in its social and political and living space. History had shown and well-respected historians and anthropologist specializing in Cambodian affairs, such as; American military historian Bernard Fall, Australian historian Milton Osborne, and French anthropologist  Marie Alexandrine Martin, had shown how the Vietnamese had committed genocide against its immediate neighbors, namely; Champa, Cambodia, and Laos. And we should not forget that Vietnam is still one of the four remaning self-preserved Communist countries in the world. Communism is not knoiwn for their love of Freedom, but is known for accpeting mass murder a solution for changing society (See the review of Stephane Courtois' book titled  "The black Book of Communism" posted in the home page of this web site). According to an Irish libertarian Mark Humphrey, who characterizes the crime of communism and fascism as follows:

"The evil philosophies of fascism and communism were the two great 20th century mass killers. Of these, communism was the greatest killer. 100 million men, women and children have been murdered by socialism so far, and the killing continues today, notably in North Korea. In terms of body count, socialism is by far the most evil religion, the most evil ideology of any sort, of all time. "

The article by Keyes is more accurate, constructive, and less controversial. It pointed out the realities of Cambodia under the influence of the past and its inability to change. He correctly concluded that:

“Despite the fundamental agreement between the Phnom Penh government and those associated with the noncommunist resistance that Angkorean civilization is the source of a distinctive and valued national identity for Khmers within an international community, these parties and their backers have failed to find a means to effect national reconciliation.”

Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. July 4, 2011)

Happy Fourth of July to all our visitors and friends

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In 1975, a spokesperson for the newly installed communist regime in Phnom Penh claimed proudly that because of the revolution "2,000 years of Cambodian history have ended." By "history" the spokesperson seems to have meant the sum total of Cambodia's past, as well as all the narratives about it prior to 1975.

The abruptness with which the new government embarked on a new era made many Cambodians agree that the old "Cambodia" had to an end. Francois Ponchaud's disquieting title, Cambodia Year Zero, makes this very point. For some Cambodian communists, on the other hand, Cambodian history ended when they were driven from power in 1979. Others still consider that this dispossession was temporary and contingent; they hope to return to power and regain control of the historical process. Still others - most Cambodians, perhaps - have assumed that Cambodia's history, like the society itself, will sooner or later resume its prerevolutionary form.

Against this shifting, post-revolutionary backdrop, I would like to discuss three themes in modern Cambodian history: Cambodia's accessibility, cultural distance from Vietnam, and the grandeur of its medieval past.

Cambodia's Accessibility

Since about 1800 the Mekong River basin, where most Cambodians live, has been accessible to military forces, immigrants, and influences from southern Vietnam and central Thailand. In the mid-nineteenth century, Vietnamese forces occupied Cambodia for several years, and when Thai forces came to the "rescue" of the Cambodians, the kingdom became a battlefield. The hardships of that time, Vietnamese attempts to colonize Cambodia, and popular resistance to their rule all entered popular memory, reemerging when Cambodians began fighting the Vietnamese again in the 1970s. At that point, some Cambodians may have thought that history was repeating itself.

The nineteenth-century struggle ended when France established its protectorate over Cambodia in 1863, separating the combatants. Had France not done so, Cambodia would probably have disappeared as a sovereign state divided into spheres of Vietnamese and Thai control, with a frontier running along the Mekong River or nearby.

"Cambodia" survived by exchanging the hegemony of its neighbors for dependency on France. In some ways, it was a French invention. Under French protection, however, Cambodia became even more entangled with Vietnam.

In the early 1900s, without being consulted, Cambodia became a component of "French Indochina," comprising three segments of Vietnam, Cambodia, and three principalities in Laos. Other entanglements followed. In 1930, a handful of Vietnamese radicals led by Ho Chi Minh founded a Communist Party, and succumbed to the "Indochina" concept, probably on Soviet advice. The consequences of an "Indochinese" communist Party, with no Cambodian members prior to the 1940s, still reverberate in Cambodian politics.

Moreover, because the French educational system in southern Vietnam, or "Cochinchina," was more extensive than its counterpart in Cambodia, many more southern Vietnamese than Cambodians were literate in French. They soon filled up the middle ranks of the supposedly Cambodian civil service. During the colonial era nearly half a million other Vietnamese, mostly farmers, fisherpeople, and artisans, emigrated to Cambodia, encouraged by the French authorities, who considered them more vigorous than the Cambodians as a "race." By 1945, more than half the inhabitants of Phnom Penh were ethnic Vietnamese, and so were nearly all the workers on Cambodia's rubber plantations.

Cambodian nationalists in the 1930s were distressed by these developments. Many educated Cambodians eared that they were being sidetracked by the French and that they would eventually be "swallowed" by Vietnam.

The push against Cambodia from the Vietnamese and later from the French was matched in the nineteenth century by similar pressure from the Thais.

In 1794, Thailand annexed two Cambodian provinces, Battambang and Siem Reap. The former was prosperous agriculturally; the latter housed the "undiscovered" ruins of Angkor. The Thais annexed the provinces in exchange for allowing a Cambodian prince back into his country to be king, and they held onto them until they were forced to give them up by the French in 1907. When France was prostrated by World War II, the Thais took the two provinces back, releasing them in 1946 as part of a deal that enabled them to enter the United Nations.

It is not surprising that when Cambodia gained its independence in 1953, Thai and Vietnamese activities over the past century and Cambodian perceptions of their intentions led the kingdom's leading politician, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, to be wary of these neighbors. In the 1950s, Sihanouk's watchfulness was justified by frequent plots against him undertaken by the pro-US governments in Thailand and South Vietnam. Later on, he had to worry about the clandestine occupation of much of eastern Cambodia by Vietnamese communist troops. Sihanouk agreed to this installation, being unable to resist it, and also to gain credit with the communists if they won the Vietnam War. His own preferences were both Vietnams to leave Cambodia alone.

Sihanouk frequently claimed that Cambodia was "surrounded" by Thailand and Vietnam. In his speeches he indulged in racist rhetoric to assert Cambodia's superiority over the three states, a tendency that kept relations at a fever pitch. Unlike Lon Nol and Pol Pot, who said similar things, Sihanouk had a healthy respect for the military potential of the two powers and a corresponding sense of Cambodia's vulnerability. To counterbalance pressure from his neighbors, he formed an alliance with China. This "pro-communist" behavior infuriated Bangkok and Saigon authorities all the more.

Cambodia's modern history has been entangled with the histories and interests of Thailand and Vietnam, largely because of its accessibility to these two powers. Another reason for the entanglement lies in the cultural differences between Thailand and Cambodia on the one hand and Vietnam on the other.

Cultural Distance

These differences spring from the fact that until very recent times both Thailand and Cambodia were Theravada Buddhist kingdoms with cultural roots stretching back to India, while Vietnam, until 1945 a Mahayana Buddhist empire, derives much of its culture from China. The differences have grown less important over time, but they still form a component of Cambodian, Thai, and Vietnamese cultural baggage, and they deeply influenced Cambodian political behavior in the 1970s.

Traditional attitudes of the nations toward each other also affect many of the choices that Cambodians, Thais, and Vietnamese make in the sphere of foreign relations. The Thais and Cambodians have traditionally perceived the Vietnamese as territorially aggressive, mendacious, and condescending. As non-Theravada Buddhists, the Vietnamese have also been seen as nonbelievers, un-redeemably beyond the pale. Two anecdotes will illustrate this point.

In April 1970, soon after the coup that had removed Sihanouk from power, anti-Vietnamese riots in Phnom Penh got out of hand and thousands of unarmed Vietnamese civilians were massacred by Cambodian troops. No expressions of regret were forthcoming from Lon Nol's government, the press, or the Buddhist monastic order. For Cambodians, there were no "innocent" Vietnamese and no "guilty" Cambodians, either.

Five years later, when the Cambodian communists came to power, one of their first actions was to dismantle the Roman Catholic cathedral in Phnom Penh, which they called "the Vietnamese church." They also tore down other Catholic churches frequented by Vietnamese. Cambodia's own Buddhist temples were not subject to the same abuse, and neither was the former US Embassy, the headquarters of Cambodia's "Enemy Number One."

If Cambodian feelings about Vietnam were traditionally fueled by resentment, those of Vietnamese toward Cambodians, until very recently, have occasionally been tinged with a sense of superiority, often disguised as bafflement. Vietnamese have tended to see Cambodians as a childlike, barbarian people whose kingdoms on the outer reaches of Vietnam cry out for management or stratagems.

These attitudes were submerged in fraternal rhetoric and behavior in the years of Vietnam's protectorate over Cambodia in the 1980s. During that time, many Cambodians at home at abroad began to question some of their mythology. Were the Vietnamese better or worse than Pol Pot? Was there a future for a brand of nationalism based on mistrust and confrontation with Vietnam?

A third theme affecting modern Cambodian politics, related to the other two, is the grandeur of its medieval past.

Cambodia's Medieval Past

When France abandoned Cambodia is the 1950s, it left behind an ambiguous legacy. Starting in the 1870s, French archaeologists, historians, and savants had untangled the chronology of medieval Cambodian

history; recovered the names of Angkorean kings; excavated, named, and dated more than a thousand religious monuments; and deciphered roughly the same number of inscriptions. They had constructed a framework for Cambodia's history. Arguably, this work was France's most enduring contribution to Indochina.

What were the Cambodians to make of this extraordinary gift?

The narrative of Cambodian history bequeathed to them by France involved a period of greatness, culminating in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and followed by a long decline. The period of greatness was marked by strong leadership, monumental art, imperial ambitions, and a highly stratified society. Times of "decline" were characterized by weak leaders, inward-looking policies, foreign interference, and a society that, if not egalitarian, was organized in terms of villages, families, and entourages rather than on a national scale. The French associated what they insisted was Cambodia's decline with the refusal or inability of Cambodians to continue to behave in Angkorean ways. A fondness for grandeur, nourished by a close study of Cambodia's extraordinary art, made some of them disdainful of periods when Cambodia's rulers and ruled seem to have made more realistic assessments of their environment, and perhaps lived on better terms with each other.

At the level of popular belief, Cambodians blamed the abandonment of Angkor in the fifteenth century on supernatural causes and the machinations of the Thais. Here is Lon Nol, talking to US Ambassador Swank in July 1971:

In response to my request for his assessment of the internal political situation he launched into an exposition of his plans to rejuvenate the Khmer nation. Warming to an obviously favorite subject, he spoke of the historical superiority of the Khmer people to their western and eastern neighbors and of the long centuries of their decline... He recounted the legend explaining this decline involving the capture by the Thai of a sacred buffalo impregnated with the creative soul of the Khmer nation, thereafter lost for centuries. The present task, he continued, is to restore to the nation its soul, the formulae (kbbuon) which once made it great.

The idea that Angkorean greatness was purely Khmer and could be reconstituted almost by an act of will preoccupied Pol Pot and his colleagues after 1975. "If we can build Angkor," Pol Pot declared, "we can do anything." Cambodia's grandeur, for example, could be summoned to defeat the Vietnamese.

Cambodia is the only country in the world to display a ruin on its national flag. The gift from the French of a certified "greatness" (as well as a certified "decline") has been a mixed blessing to a country suffering from its accessibility to outsiders, a shortage of saleable resources, and a relatively small population. The tension between its past greatness and its present misfortune has characterized a good deal of Cambodian political thinking in recent times.

Cambodia Today

The People's Republic of Kampuchea (now known as the State of Cambodia) submerged or altered some of these psychological tensions because the PRK, like its Vietnamese patrons, was eager to set itself apart from previous regimes ("feudal" Sihanouk, "puppet" Lon Nol, "fascist" Pol Pot) and disavow the strand of Cambodian nationalism that was based on conflict with Vietnam.

This belated injection of common sense into Cambodian self-perceptions contrasted sharply with the rhetoric of many Cambodian refugees and of opposition groups along the Thai border, who still proclaim that prerevolutionary Cambodia and its privileges can be brought back to life, and that the raison d'être of all Vietnamese has always been to "extinguish" the Cambodian "race."

With the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia, some of these fears and animosities might reemerge, or flare up, in the countryside, where Vietnamese migrants have settled in large numbers.

Prerevolutionary "live and let live" attitudes among Khmers are also likely to revive. At the government level it seems unlikely that policies will ever be based on the military confrontation with Vietnam or on alliances with Vietnam's enemies.

Paradoxically, 10 percent of the pronouncement that opened this article seems to be coming true. Two hundred years of Cambodia's history, rather than two thousand, have ended - or have been modified at least in the last ten year or so. Animosity toward Vietnam and fears of encirclement have faded from official pronouncements. Vietnamese ambitions toward Cambodia, whatever they were, seem to have receded. As the demythologizing process works itself out on both sides of the border, cultural differences between Cambodians and Vietnamese, so useful to Cambodian demagogues in the past, are blurring, and the people of both countries find themselves as neighbors in a global village.

Cambodian culture, insofar as it is unique and looks backward to its periods of greatness, will survive, and a more internationalized "Indochinese" culture may develop (as it seems to be doing among some Cambodian migrants in the United States).

The Cambodian people and some kind of Cambodian nation will also survive, provided that the fighting stops, political stability reasserts itself, and foreign powers stop using the country as a testing ground for allegedly larger interests, such as punishing Vietnam, pleasing Beijing, or avenging the coup that removed Sihanouk from power 20 years ago.

When peace turns, the outside powers that guarantee it will probably not allow Cambodia the luxury of unbridled nationalism, the chance to revert to the status of a hermit nation, or to be swallowed up by one state or another. Instead, what we might see in the 1990s is a more outward-looking, post-revolutionary phase of Cambodian history, dominated by Cambodia's independence guaranteed by the United Nations.

The prospect of Cambodia becoming a small state locked into the rest of Asia, bereft of some of its mythology, does not seem to be too high a price for Cambodians to pay for their survival. They have already paid for more than most of us.

Article copyright Cultural Survival, Inc.

Cultural Survival helps Indigenous Peoples around the world defend their lands, languages, and cultures as they deal with issues like the one you’ve just read about.

16.  The Legacy of Angkor

·         14.3 (Fall 1990) Cambodia

·         Charles Keyes

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/cambodia/legacy-angkor

Angkor, the great medieval city located near the Tonlé Sap (the "Great Lake") in northwestern Cambodia, was abandoned by Khmer rulers in the fifteenth century in an effort to find a capital that could be more easily defended against the expansionistic Thais. In the ensuing centuries - called the first "dark age" of Khmer history (the second being that instituted by the Khmer Rouge under Pol pot) - Angkor become a ruin, destroyed as much by the inexorable expansion of nature as by the destructive acts of humans. Although it was never really lost to Khmers, who recalled the past glories of Angkor in folktales, it ceased to be the cultural center of Khmer civilization after the fifteenth century.

In 1860 the French explorer Henri Mouhot made his way to ancient ruins surrounded by jungle in the vicinity of the Tonlé Sap. Mouhot has sometimes been wrongly credited with having discovered Angkor,

but his description of the ruins in his Le Tour du Monde did awaken the outside world to one of the great architectural wonders of history. Mouhot's "discovery" ushered in a period of interest French interest in Angkor, an interest that led the French government to support, through that Ecole Francaise d'Extrême-Orient, archaeological and historical researches into the character of Angkorean civilization. In the twentieth century, the colonial government of Indochina also contributed considerable funds toward Angkor's reconstruction.

The research and reconstruction undertaken by the colonial government not only contributed significantly to worldwide awareness of the uniqueness of the great civilization that khmers had developed, but also sharped the historical consciousness of the Khmer themselves as a nation. Angkor become, and remains today, the preeminent symbol of Khmer national identity.

Angkorean Civilization

Although myths place the founding of Angkorean civilization in the ancient past, historical records permit the dating of its beginning in the early ninth century A.D. A king known to posterity as Jayavarman II (c. 802-850) erected his capital near the Great Lake, from which he and his court could obtain a regular supply of fish to eat with the rice produced in the fertile fields irrigated by the lake. Jayavarman II gained the support of the populace, apparently because the rituals of his court were seen as essential to ensuring the fertility of the land. He began what is known as the cult of the devaraja (the "god-king") by identifying himself with the Hindu god Siva and representing the potency of both god and king in the from of a phallic image known as a linga. All subsequent kings of Angkor also equated themselves through ritual and the monuments with a sacred power, sometimes Hindu, sometimes Mahayana Buddhist.

Angkor, which is a Khmer version of the Sanskrit term nagara ("city"), was in fact a succession of sacred cities that served as the capital of the rulers of an empire from the ninth o the fifteenth centuries. Each pyramidal-shaped structure or temple that we so associate with Angkor was a re-creation in stone of the cosmology by which the Khmer rulers ordered their lives and that of their subjects. Through such buildings, the rulers of Angkor sought to bring the world of strife and struggle into harmony with ultimate order. The identification of the kind with a Hindu (or Buddhist) deity become complete at the time of the King's death. The shrine he had built during his lifetime become, after his death, his immortal body. Members of the royal family and the aristocracy emulated the ruler by erecting many more shrines in the capital and provincial centers.

The culmination of the pyramid-temple form, which represents in stone and space he sacred center of the universe, Mt. Meru, was realized in the twelfth century with the construction of unquestionably the most well-known monument at Angkor, Angkor Wat. Although the name Angkor Wat means "pagoda of the  capital," it was not, in its original conception, a Buddhist temple (wat), but was, rather, dedicated to god Visnu.

The cult of Visnu did not survive for very long as the exclusive religion of Angkor. King Jayavarman VII (1181 to the early thirteenth century), the best remembered king of the Angkorean period, sought (apparently form his wife's influence)religious inspiration from Mahayana Buddhism rather than from Hinduism. This inspiration did not lead Jayavarman VII to make a radical break with the architectural and iconographic traditions that had preceded his reign. His city, Angkor Thom, still centered on a representation of the sacred Mt. Meru, but he added new Buddhist elements to his shrine. Like Angkor Wat, the Bayon (temple mountain) has bas-reliefs. These are not, however, scenes from the lives of Visnu or Rama; rather they are scenes from the world of humans, the most important of the worlds in the Buddhist realm of feeling and desire, Aside from their religious meaning, these murals tell us much about life in Angkor at the time. The higher elevations of the shrine represent the realm of the gods, a realm dominated by the Bodhisattva, Lokesvara, whose compassion for all humans can assist them in achieving ultimate salvation.

The images of Lokesvara that dominate the Bayon have long captured the attention of visitors. Pierre Loti, in his Pélerin d'Angkor, wrote: "I looked up at the tree-covered towers which dwarfed me, when all of a sudden mu blood curdled as I saw an enormous smile looking down on me, and then another smile on another wall, then three, then five, then ten appearing in every direction." The faces represent not only the Bodhisattva alone; they are also of Jayavarman VII, who has become the Buddharaja, the king who is also a Buddha. The images looking in many directions were indicative of Jayavarman VII's control over a vast domain. While Jayavarman's authority may have been extended over a larger territory than his predecessors, the Angkorean world had long included much of what today is not only Cambodia, but also most of northeastern and much of central Thailand, central and southern Laos, and southern Vietnam.

The account of Chou Ta-kuan, a Chinese envoy to Angkor at the end of the thirteenth century, reveals that much of the populace as well as many in the elite adhered to that form of Buddhism known as the "Way of Elders," Theravada, although the Chinese themselves termed it Hinayana (the "lesser vehicle") in contrast to their own from of Buddhism, Mahayana (the "greater vehicle"). With the adoption of Theravada Buddhism, much of the rational for the monumental architecture of Angkor disappeared since people found greater appeal in the rituals performed in small shrines by Buddhist monks than in those performed by kings and priests in large temples.

As the rational for Angkorean civilization was undermined, so too did the military power of Angkor decline. In the fourteenth century a number of new states were formed by Tai-speaking peoples in what is today Thailand and Laos. Although the Tai from Ayutthaya attacked and defeated Angkor in the fifteenth century, it is more appropriated to see Ayutthaya as one of a number of successor states to Angkor - including also those of Lan Xang (Laos) and Phnom Penh - rather than as an aggressor intent on destroying Khmer culture. The court of these new Tai kingdoms, like that of Phnom Penh, derived most of their ideas about statecraft from Angkor.

The Politics of History

Although Thais and Lao lay some claim to the heritage of Angkor, it is the Khmers for whom Angkor holds the greatest historical significance. The various parties to the conflict that has so torn apart the country of Cambodia in the past two decades disagree about many things, but they have all looked to Angkor as the wellspring of Khmer identity. The national flags of the kingdom of Cambodia under Prince Sihanouk, the Khmer Republic headed by General Lon Nol, Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot and in its reincarnated form as a coalition of the Khmer Rouge, the Khmer Peoples National Liberation front (under Son Sann), and followers of Prince Sihanouk, and the People's republic of Kampuchea (now the State of Cambodia) under Heng Samrin and Hun Sen all display an image of Angkor Wat, albeit somewhat different in each case. Today, the icon most likely to be encountered in an office in Phnom Penh is not a picture of a revolutionary hero but a painting, photo, or carved image of Angkor Wat. Similarly, at events involving Khmer refugees, images of Angkor Wat are likely to be very much in evidence.

The consensus - signified in the images on their flags and in other forms - among of Khmers that Angkor is the preeminent symbol of their civilization has not prevented the extremely destructive fratricide that has taken place in Cambodia since 1970. Beneath the consensus lie fundamentally different interpretations of what aspects of Angkorean civilization should be retained in contemporary Khmer culture.

For Prince Sihanouk - when he was still ruling the country - Angkor represented the triumph of his predecessors, the Angkorean rulers, in creating a great civilization based on the idea that the kings themselves embodied the sacred essence of the state. Angkor Wat, the Bayon, and other great monuments of the Angkorean complex were known to have been at once cult centers and funerary monuments dedicated to the cult of the "god-king" - that is, a king who was also the incarnation of a Hindu god or the Buddha. According to this view of Angkor, the populace supported the Angkorean kings by paying taxes and performing the Angkorean kings by paying taxes and performing the heavy labor needed for constructing and maintaining the large monuments because they believed that the "god-kings" were able to bring order to a chaotic world. Sihanouk also added to this the idea, adopted after the end of the Angkorean period, of the righteous king, the king who is widely acclaimed because he ruled in accord with the teachings of the Buddha. The royal interpretation of Angkor thus sees Khmer civilization as one that achieves its highest development through acts spread to the populace by a just king seeking to be compassionate, in a Buddhist sense, toward his subjects.

The Khmer Rouge also sought to assert a Khmer identity that embodied the glory of Angkor, but its Angkor was not a civilization in which the world was to take pride, but was seen, as the historian Chandler has written , as having been created as "a purely national event." Under the Khmer Rouge almost no outsider visited the famous ruins. The Khmer Rouge also turned the royalist interpretation of Angkor on its head: the rulers of Angkor, like all kings, were the

corrupt products of feudalism. As such, as a monarchy had no place in a revolutionary Cambodia. Angkor still remained relevant, however, as a symbol of what the power of the people working collectively could accomplish. Under the Khmer Rouge the idea of collective labor was raised to the level of the sacred. Angkor was evoked, in Chandler's words, "to demonstrate that ordinary people, when mobilized in vast numbers by the state can do extraordinary things." Although the Angkorean legacy was the only part of the Khmer past to be given any positive value by the Khmer Rouge, this legacy was itself of only limited significance. The new society to be created by the Khmer Rouge was, in the words of the national anthem of Democratic Kampuchea, to be "more glorious than Angkor."

The legacy of Angkor has been reinterpreted anew in the wake of the installation of a Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh and the creation of a coalition of Khmer Rouge, Sihanoukist, and republican factions with support in refugee camps in Thailand and among refugees living elsewhere. In the immediate aftermath of the Vietnamese push into the country, the area containing the Angkorean monuments become a battlefield. There was some damage to  the monuments. Although how much will only be know when all monuments (not just Angkor Wat and those of Angkor Thom) are open to outside inspection. The greatest loss was in the form of the many images, bas-reliefs, and other Angkorean artifacts that were stolen and then sold on the international art market (mainly through Bangkok antique shops). When I visited Angkor in May 1989, I asked our local guide about the theft of Angkorean antiquities. Although be laid the blame on the Khmer Rouge, an official of the Phnom Penh government quickly added that refugees fleeing the country, Vietnamese, and "even our own people" has also been involved. To those who have been left very little in the upheavals of the past 20 years, the temptation to gain what would seem an immense fortune through the sale of Angkorean antiquities must have been, and still must be, extraordinarily difficult to resist.

Following the displacement of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, Heng Samrin's new government established control over most of the Angkorean monuments; this government also reassessed the significance of the legacy of Angkorean civilization. In 1984, on the fifth anniversary of "liberation," Heng Samrin said, "The architectural works of Angkor, While a brilliant proof of the matchless skills and creativeness of Kampuchean working people, intellectuals, and artists (have) cost the people untold misery and countless lives of forced labor and caused the exhaustion and decline of the country for centuries." No longer was Angkor to be taken as a symbol of what the people's labor could create. This rather negative view of Angkor has given way in subsequent years to a pre-Khmer Rouge interpretation of Angkorean civilization as a source of national pride. The Phnom Penh government has sought to reclaim the Angkorean legacy in the form of artistic, musical, and especially dance forms whose antecedents can be seen in the bas-reliefs.

In the past few years, the Phnom Penh government has sponsored renewed restoration efforts - undertaken at Angkor Wat by an Indian team and at the Bayon by a Polish group - and the reopening of Angkor to a limited number of tourists. Both acts resituate the Angkorean legacy as part of world civilization. These efforts within Cambodia find echoes among Khmer refugees in camps in Thailand and among Khmers in the United States and Europe who link themselves to the Angkorean legacy through dance, music, and art. Some, like the owner of a restaurant in Virginia with whom I talked last year, already anticipate a time when they can organize tours from the United States of Angkor.

Despite the fundamental agreement between the Phnom Penh government and those associated with the noncommunist resistance that Angkorean civilization is the source of a distinctive and valued national identity for Khmers within an international community, these parties and their backers have failed to find a means to effect national reconciliation. In the renewed conflict that has occurred since the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces in May 1989, Angkor appears likely to become a battlefield once again. And if the Khmer Rouge should once again emerge triumphant from the new conflict - a distinct possibility unless there is strong international support for excluding it from any new government - Angkor could become a symbol not of national pride but of totalitarian oppression.

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References

Briggs, L.P.

1951 The Ancient Khmer Empire. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society.

Chandler, D.

1983 Seeing Red: Perceptions of Cambodian History in Democratic Kampuchea. In D.P. Chandler and B. Kiernan, eds. Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays. pp. 34-56. New Haven, CT. Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph Series 25.

Ciochon, R.L.

1990 Jungle Monuments of Angkor. Natural History 1:51-58.

Coedes, G.

1963 Angkor: An Introduction. Translated and edited by E.F. Gardiner. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

1968 The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Translate from the French by S.B. Cowing and edited by W.F. Vella. Honolulu: East-West Center Press.

Freison, K.

1988 The Political Natural of Democratic Kampuchea. Pacific Affairs 61 (3): 405-427.

Garrett, W.E.

1982 The Temples of Angkor: Will They Survive? National Geographic 161(4): 548-551.

Kuhike, H.

1978 The Devaraja Cult. Translated by I.W. Mabbett. Ithaca NY: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program, Data Paper No. 108. (Orig. published in German in 1974.)

Myrdal, J. and G. Kessle

1970 Angkor: An Essay on Art and Imperialism. Translated from the Swedish by P.B. Austin. New York: Vintage Books.

Richardson, M.

1984 Letter from Angkor. Far Eastern Economic Review. 19 April. p. 94.

White, P. and W.E. Garrett

1982 Ancient Glory in Stone. National Geographic 161(4):552-589.

Article copyright Cultural Survival, Inc.

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Annex. Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations

by James Graham

Published: May, 2004

Who is Samuel P. Huntington?

Samuel P. Huntington

 Born April 18, 1927.

 Harvard based since 1950.

 Founder and co-editor of the quarterly journal, Foreign Policy.

 Currently Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard

 C.V. reads like a description of the US foreign policy machinery.

 Recieved $US 4,719,832 over 15 years from the John M. Olin Foundation, a right wing think tank that grew out of a chemicals and munitions business. More info here.

 Policy adviser to U.S. Presidents Lynson Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

 Has his own Yahoo category alongside Marx and Aristotle!

Huntington's thesis outlines a future where the "great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural" (Huntington 1993:22). He divides the world's cultures into seven current civilizations, Western, Latin American, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu and Slavic-Orthodox (Huntington 1993:26). In addition he judged Africa only as a possible civilization depending on how far one viewed the development of an African consciousness had developed. These civilizations seem to be defined primarily by religion with a number of ad hoc exceptions. Israel is lumped together with the West, Buddhist states and the whole religion is completely ignored.

Huntington argues that the end of ideological confrontation between liberal democracy and communism will see future conflict occurring along the borders between civilizations at a micro level. At a macro level he predicts conflict occurring between states from different civilizations for control of international institutions and for economic and military power (Huntington 1993:29). He views this mix of conflict as normal by asserting that nation-states are new phenomena in a world dominated for most of its history by conflicts between civilizations. This is a dubious statement as inter-civilizational conflict driven mainly by geo-political factors rather than cultural differences is an equally if not more persuasive way to view much of history.

The theory at least differentiates between non-Western civilizations rather than grouping them together. He also explains how the West presents pro-Western policies as positive for the entire world and that the very idea of a universal culture is a Western idea. This he argues is evidenced by most important Western values like human rights often being the least important values to other civilizations.

His escape from a Eurocentric bias is however only temporary. He completely fails to account for indigenous cultures even though one can argue they collectively comprise a separate civilization (Fox 2002:430). The article also predicts future conflicts will be started by non-Western civilizations reacting to Western power and values ignoring the equally plausible situation where Western states use their military superiority to maintain their superior positions. The policy prescriptions he suggests to counter this perceived threat equate to increasing the power of the West to forestall any loss of the West's pre-eminence. Thus he suggests the Latin American and Orthodox-Slavic civilizations be drawn further into the Western orbit and the maintenance of Western military superiority (Huntington 1993:47).

17. Monk, publisher win awards

The Phnom Penh Post; Monday, 27 June 2011 15:02

Meas Sokchea

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Photo by: Will BaxterThe venerable Luon Savath

Photo by: Heng Chivoan

Publisher Hang Chakra.

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(Comments: these two brave, dignified, and patriotic Cambodians, the Venerable Loun Savath, and newspaper publisher Hang Chakra, totally deserve this Human Rights Watch prize, our group respect and total support. They represent the essence of courage, dignity, selflessness, and commitment to help their fellow countrymen, which is sorely lacking in all current political leaders of Cambodia, ranging from Sihanouk,  to Hun Sen, Sam Rainsy, and Kem Sokha.

Unlike Sam Rainsy who prefers to be hiding in Europe, these two civic leaders, have the genuine courage to face Hun Sen’s savage wrath and jail upfront, rather than surrendering to his thug-like conduct, or hiding. We need more of these kinds of great patriots in order to give Cambodia a better chance to survive.

It is this kind of brave and dignified persons and genuine Cambodian heroes by definition, that I am willingly and totally committed to support them. Naranhkiri Tith Ph.D. Washington DC. 28, 2011)

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A monk who went into hiding in March over fears authorities would arrest him for attending land dispute protests will be awarded Human Right’s Watch’s Hellman/Hammett award next month, along with an anti-government newspaper publisher.

Venerable Loun Savath, who has come out of hiding and is now living in Slaeng pagoda in Siem Reap province, said yesterday that the award – which is granted to those who speak out in the face of intimidation – was for the people.

“Though I received the award I don’t regard it as mine, I regard it as people’s award that are thirsty and hungry for the truth,” he said.

In April, a declaration banished Venerable Loun Savath from all pagodas in the capital. It argued his actions had violated the rules of Buddhism and caused villagers to view the religion negatively.

Khmer Machas Srok newspaper publisher, Hang Chakra, will also receive the prize for his defiant critiques of the Cambodian People’s Party after spending more than nine months in prison for an article alleging government corruption in 2009.

Hang Chakra said yesterday he was “very excited” to receive the award for his vigilance after being pardoned by King Norodom Sihamoni in April 2010.

Phil Roberson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, yesterday slammed the government’s persecution of Loun Savath, saying his case was indicative of disturbing a human rights trend in Cambodia that the international community had failed to combat.

“There is a rapidly escalating level of intimidation and attacks against those like Venerable Loun Savath who challenge the nexus of official corruption, greed and rights abuses that underpin the plague of land grabbing that is happening all over Cambodia,” he said by email.

As a former student of mine from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International studies (SAIS), Phil Robertson, had observed that;

"Phil Roberson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, yesterday slammed the government’s persecution of Loun Savath, saying his case was indicative of disturbing a human rights trend in Cambodia that the international community had failed to combat.

19. China runs gauntlet in South China Seas
By Jian Junbo and Wu Zhong

Asia times; June 24, 2-11

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(Comments: This article authored by two Chinese scholars, shows the Chinese view of the dispute between some Southeast Asian countries (Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam) and China over the ownership of the Spratly Island, and also indirectly with the United States supporting Vietnam, its newly found ally.

Perhaps, this following quote will indicate the level of cautiousness from the part of China in this problem, it also shows the ramification of this issue in China’s internal politics, as follows:

“For Beijing, this is not simply an issue of international relations. It also has great impact on China's strategy for a "peaceful rise" and on domestic stability. This may explain why so far Beijing has exercised self-restraint in the face of what it sees as provocations by Vietnam. These included high-profile war games in disputed territories, issuing toughly-worded statements to condemn……

       To concentrate on China's own economic development with reform and opening up, Deng Xiaoping then set a policy of "shelving disputes for joint cultivation" of the South China Sea.

      
After three decades of reform and opening up, China has grown into the world's second-largest economy. But Beijing is fully aware of emerging problems at home. In this regard, a peaceful international environment is crucial for China. President Hu Jintao is seeking a "peaceful rise" to ease concern that China may seek world hegemony. “

However, this Chinese restraint may not last as Vietnam’s provocation would have an impact on Chinese Communist Party legitimacy in governing china (the Mandate of Heaven), as this authors of this article has pointed out, as follows:

“If there is a danger that the CPP might lose the people's support over a certain policy, then it would have to change it. Needless to say, the "core interest" of all "core interests" for the CCP is to continue its rule of China. Compared with this, other affairs - such as maintaining regional peace and good relations with other countries or acting like a "responsible player" - are all secondary.”

In a previous posting of an article, Hun Sen and Sihanouk have not choice but to blindly following Vietnam path to war. The USA decision to support Vietnam is incomprehensible, as the USA is practically broke at home and have many political and economic problems to solve, at home and abroad. The USA has no other way to support Vietnam but in words more than in deeds.

As former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger has recently pointed out in his recently published book titled “On China,” President Obama should not to treat China as an enemy but a partner, in diplomatic, financial, and economic matter.

Sadly, for Cambodia, the chance to get away from the grip of Vietnam is lost by the betrayal of Sihanouk for his total support for Hun Sen who is in turn under Vietnam total control. Yet so many still think that only the god-king can save Cambodia.

That is why Cambodia is known among other bad names, as the “Country of the Absurd.”

Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D. Washington, June 25, 2011)

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LONDON and HONG KONG - The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will celebrate its 90th birthday on July 1. While the party has withstood tough tests to reach this point, without doubt there are challenges ahead. One immediate issue is the escalating tensions on the South China Sea with neighboring countries, Vietnam in particular.

For Beijing, this is not simply an issue of international relations. It also has great impact on China's strategy for a "peaceful rise" and on domestic stability. This may explain why so far Beijing has exercised self-restraint in the face of what it sees as provocations by Vietnam. These included high-profile war games in disputed territories, issuing toughly-worded statements to condemn.

       "China's invasion" and allowing fierce protests against China.

       Beijing's reaction has been low key. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Li reiterated on June 16 that China would always seek a bilateral solution to disagreements on the South China Sea, and not use or threaten force. He added that China would work together with all parties to effectively implement the Declaration on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and maintain stability in the region.

      
There are ample reasons for China to cool tensions with Vietnam. Firstly, territorial disputes between China and Vietnam in the South China Sea are not a new issue - the dispute largely emerged in the 1970s after the discovery of huge oil and gas reserves there.