Satrey Khmer Online » communism

Commemorating 60th Anniversary, The Loss of Southern Cambodia Territory to Vietnam

Jayavarman — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:02:01 +0000

June 4th marks the 60th Anniversary of Cambodia’s loss territory to Vietnam. The French illegally transferred southern Cambodia (Kampuchea Krom) to north Vietnam. Since 1949 -for fifty nine years – –, many southern Cambodian (Khmer Krom/Kampuchea Krom) have been living in the darkness, suffering, torturing, ethnic cleansing, disease, human right abuse, genocide…under Vietnamese regime. Cambodian were forced to be Vietnamese, speak, dress, and obey their rules. The communist’s media, billboard signs sending fatherly-like message to Kampuchea Krom that Vietnam is one. Play all tricks and lies by all means and erasing the original Cambodian history books and rewritten in Vietnamese text books that southern Cambodia did not exist and that southern Cambodian (Kampuchea Krom) are the Vietnamese "ethnic minority." Cambodian land, street, building, signs that were written in Khmer language were torn and replaced in Vietnamese language and mostly in red and yellow colors. June 4th, 1949, Cambodian southern territory was stolen and became "south" Vietnam. North and south Vietnam joined. Dark history for Cambodia.

Today, "Khmer Krom communities around the world are currently heading to their local temples to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of loss of Kampuchea-Krom to Vietnam. The rich fertile land of the Mekong Delta was transferred to Vietnam by France on 4th June 1949 without the consent of the indigenous Khmer Krom people.

Burden with a heavy hearts and great sadness, this day remains a significant event for the Khmer Krom people. Heroes and nationalists as well as Khmer Krom Buddhist monks are remembered for their bravery and sacrifice to help keep the Khmer culture alive despite Vietnam’s numerous and continuous attempts to implement cultural genocide against the Khmer Krom.

In Kampuchea-Krom such an event remains severely prohibited by the communist Vietnam government."

Source: http://khmerkrom.org/eng/?q=node/18 www.Khmerkrom.net http://www.unpo.org/ http://www.sacrava.blogspot.com/

Propaganda billboard- Ho Chi Minh holding a child as suppose to take over Cambodia and Laos.

Human right abuse-Kampuchea Krom monks was beaten by Vietnamese authority.

Women, men children were caused by disease and human right abuse.

Where is Cambodia’s anti-corruption law?

Jayavarman — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:19:57 +0000

Cambodia desperately needs new government reform. A government who are willing to work with and for the citizens not for it’s own interest group.

By LAO MONG HAY
Column: Rule by Fear
Hong Kong, China May 28, 2008
Source: http://www.upiasiaonline.com

Hong Kong, China — On May 16, 2006, a petition with over 1 million signatures and thumbprints was presented to the National Assembly in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, calling on the assembly to urgently enact an anti-corruption law. The sheer number of people –one out of every 14 Cambodians – who supported the petition campaign with their signature or thumbprint in a period of just over five months, revealed the gravity of corruption in the country and the urgent need for government leaders and lawmakers to take action.
Corruption in Cambodia was already rife, affecting every walk of life, toward the end of the communist regime in the late 1980s. It was and still is prevalent in every public institution everywhere and at every level: in schools, hospitals, fire services, the police, the army, the civil service, the judiciary, the government and the Parliament. It has also ravaged foreign aid given to the country.

In the early 1990s when the communist regime ended, the public called on the government to tackle the problem. In the mid-1990s, civil society began to organize seminars to highlight the issue and urge the government to enact an anti-corruption law. Many national seminars were held, at times presided over by prime ministers or their colleagues, not to mention many smaller meetings.

There were study tours for concerned senior government officials and lawmakers to countries in the region, including Singapore and Hong Kong, both of which are renowned for their effective anti-corruption laws and agencies. In 1998, the newly elected government promised to fight corruption and enact a law against it.

For their part, international donors began to feel the gravity of corruption and its negative impact on the aid they had given to Cambodia, to the tune of some US$500 million a year since the early 1990s. In 2002, together with the Cambodian government, they made the fight against corruption and the enactment of an anti-corruption law one of the benchmarks for the flow of aid.

Under such pressure the government finally submitted to the National Assembly an anti-corruption bill – which had been drafted and redrafted many times, well before the adoption of the U.N. Convention against Corruption in 2003.

Shortly after, this bill was withdrawn, to be redrafted again to bring it up to the convention’s standards. Meanwhile, deadlines set for the enactment of that law have repeatedly passed and the final draft has not yet seen the light of day.

In parallel with the pressure on the government to enact an anti-corruption law, successive studies were undertaken to look into corruption in Cambodia. A 2004 study conducted by the U.S. Agency for International Development in Cambodia showed that corruption cost the government between US$300 million and $500 million in revenue every year, an enormous sum for a poor country.

Another survey conducted two years later by the Economic Institute of Cambodia in Phnom Penh showed that in 2005 the private sector paid “unofficial fees”—that is, bribes – to public officials amounting to US$330 million, an amount it said was “2.5 times higher than that of official payment” and “represented also about 50 percent of the total government budget revenue in 2005.”

A more recent survey conducted by Transparency International showed that 72 percent of Cambodians reported paying a bribe to receive a public service in 2007, a percentage which was then the highest in the Asia-Pacific region and second only to Cameroon (79 percent) internationally. The same survey also showed that the judiciary and the police were viewed as the most corrupt institutions in the country. It should be added that in 2007 Cambodia ranked 162 out 179 countries in the TI Corruption Perceptions Index.

Corruption has affected not only the Cambodian people but also foreign donors on whom Cambodia very much depends. In 1999 there was a corruption scandal at the Cambodian Mine Action Center, an internationally funded government landmine clearance organization. That scandal led to the suspension of foreign aid to CMAC for some time.

In 2003, the World Bank discovered the misuse of funds in a project to demobilize 30,000 soldiers, and forced the Cambodian government to repay the missing money. In 2004, the World Food Program found that US$1.2 million of its aid had gone missing, and forced the Cambodian government to make up for it. In 2006, the World Bank discovered fraud and corruption in three of the projects it was funding. It suspended its funding for these three projects and requested the Cambodian government to make prompt repayment of the missing funds.

In early 2007, within six months after its creation, the internationally funded Khmer Rouge Tribunal encountered allegations of corruption in its human resource management. These allegations led to the introduction of corrective measures for better management.

These are a few of the cases known to the public and acknowledged by the government. Yet in all corruption cases very few, if any, suspected government officials have been brought to justice and made accountable for their corruption. Generally, they have simply been disciplined and removed from office and then, when their cases are no longer in the public mind, they have been reappointed to other, sometimes higher, positions.

Enacting an anti-corruption law and setting up an anti-corruption body may not end what is a common practice in Cambodia. It is nevertheless a significant step toward that end. The Cambodian government must not let its officials indulge in corruption with impunity. It must not continue to break its promises to its people and its foreign donors. It must heed the petition presented to the National Assembly and submit the long promised anti-corruption bill for adoption without further delay.

Communism’s victims today

Jayavarman — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 04:42:53 +0000

Helle Dale, in her March 31 column on the Op-Ed Page, “Lest we forget: Erect Memorial for victims of communism,” said: “We can all take heart when we consider that the Free World did win against the ideology of communism.” One must assume she meant the U.S. won the battle by the breakup of the Soviet Union. But we have yet to win the war on communism. “Lest we forget,” communism still thrives in Cuba, China, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Even though Ho Chi Minh is dead, his policy of expansionism and hegemony over Laos and Cambodia set out when Ho established the “IndoChina Communist Party” in 1933, is alive and being carried out by the fascist Vietnamese communists in Hanoi. Amoeba-like, communist Vietnam is slowly neo-colonizing Laos and Cambodia by the traditional Vietnamese expansionism termed Don Dien, first by occupying territory with troops, then having their families come in to settle the new territory, then putting the troops into civilian clothes to become “ready reservists” and replacing them with new troops for further expansion. “Lest we forget,” Hanoi maintains a contingent of 3,000 troops, a mixture of special forces and intelligence agents, with tanks and helicopters, in a huge compound 2½ kilometers outside Phnom Penh right next to Hun Sen’s Tuol Krassaing fortress near Takhmau. They are there to ensure Hanoi’s puppet, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, doesn’t stray far from Hanoi’s policy of neo-colonization of Cambodia.

Several million Vietnamese have settled in eastern Cambodia and have been given Cambodian citizenship by Hun Sen. “Lest we forget,” the Vietnamese communists have also extended their hegemony over Laos and have de facto annexed Laos, in many ways now a province of North Vietnam. The Lao party leaders are anointed by Hanoi and receive their marching orders in sub rosa through a Vietnamese shadow government. The Vietnamese communists consider the Lao “Nha que qua” — very backward — thus needing to be “guided” by Hanoi. According to recent intelligence reports, Hanoi has three divisions of infantry in the south of Laos along with the 968th Special Division in the north. Their presence ensures adherence to Hanoi’s dictates and helps the Pathet Lao eradicate the Hmong Ethnic Minorities who fought for the Americans during the Vietnam War. The Lao communists proclaimed they would hunt down the “American collaborators” and their families, “to the last root.” They will be “butchered like wild animals.” This, of course, with Hanoi’s help. “Lest we forget,” the communist regime in Vietnam has had a long-term policy of ethnic cleansing against minorities. After the 1954 Geneva Agreements and withdrawal of French forces, more than 50,000 ethnic minorities in North Vietnam were systematically murdered.

“Least we forget,” Ho Chi Minh’s legacy and policy of murder and racist ethnic cleansing continues to this date to be carried out by Hanoi’s remnant communist hard-liners. Last Easter weekend, thousands of Christian Montagnards — allies of the U.S. during the Vietnam War — converged on the provincial capitals in the Central Highlands to hold peaceful prayer vigils for religious freedom and human rights. According to reports, when the Montagnards knelt to pray, the Vietnamese police and soldiers in plain clothes waded in, shooting and clubbing Montagnard men, women and children indiscriminately.
Large numbers of bodies reportedly were tossed on trucks and taken to mass graves for burial. People are prevented from leaving their houses to get food. The Central Highlands have now been totally sealed off with no communications, and although U.S. Embassy representatives have repeatedly tried, they have been denied access. “Lest we forget,” is not an isolated incidence. In 2001, Montagnards tried to hold similar “peaceful” protests over the destruction of their churches and confiscation of their ancestral lands, and thousands were tortured, imprisoned and murdered. Evidence gives weight to ethnic cleansing since the Vietnamese population has tripled since the end of the Vietnam War while the Montagnard population, estimated at 1.5 million in 1975, has now been reduced to about 750,000. “Lest we forget,” presidential hopeful John Kerry has had a long-term love affair with the Vietnamese communists, giving aid and comfort to the enemy during the Vietnam War by marching alongside communists under the Vietnamese communist flag while he was spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Commenting on Vietnam, Kerry stated, “I think that politically, historically … people try … to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with … communism.”

After the House passed the Vietnam Human Rights Act by a vote of 410 to 1 in 2001, Mr. Kerry blocked it from going to the floor of the Senate for a democratic vote, thus ensuring that the Montagnard and the Vietnamese people will continue suffering under communist brutality. Mr. Kerry said passing the Vietnam Human Rights Act would only strengthen the hand of the Vietnamese hard-liners and harm trade. Au contraire, Senator: Your policy of continued support for the Hanoi communists only gives the Vietnamese hard-liners a green light to continue eradicating Montagnards. And trade should never come at the cost of an entire people’s blood. “Lest we forget” President Bush stated, “The war on terrorism must never be an excuse to persecute minorities,” (The Washington Times, Oct. 20, 2001). Mr. President, it is now time for you to act and strongly signal the Vietnamese communists that the United States will not tolerate this treatment of our allies — the Montagnards.

-Article written by Mr. MIKE BENGE:
Mr. Benge spent 11 years in Vietnam as a Foreign Service Officer, and worked closely with the Montagnards during that time. Of those 11 years, 5 were as a Prisoner of War.