Samrin’s hometown technically in Vietnam

Editorial by School of Vice: 

"Technically" and eventually the Royal Palace and Wat Phnom shall be considered as being in Vietnam too! It is somewhat something of a paradox, yet understandable that the Vietnamese refuse to make an exception for even one as complaint and instrumental as Heng Samrin whose name has come to epitomise Vietnam's power-play and silent colonisation of Cambodia. 

Reportedly, Samrin is allowed to cling on to his home village, but only on the condition that Cambodia accede to Vietnam's demand to be compensated with a chunk of a similair-sized Cambodian land on the border. Even this kind of bull-dozed arrangement is no guarantee that Hanoi won't seek to move the border line further into Cambodia beyond Samrin's birth place, however. In fact, much of the border provincial regions such as Svay Rieng, Kg Cham and Prey Veng have already been heavily populated by Vietnamese settlers, encouraged to move in across the border from overcrowded Vietnam since the collapse of the Pol Pot regime. The principal pretext for these settlers is that they have had their "roots" in the country prior to the KR regime in 1975-79. Even so, the grave yard behind almost every Khmer wat [pagoda] reveals glaring and disturbing signs of their demographic presence and invasion. Unlike the Khmers, the Vietnamese follow traditional Chinese customs in laying out their dead to rest at a cemetery. Whereas the Khmers - being Buddhists and minimalists - tend to cremate or bury their loved and departed ones in a dug earthen mount or grave just large enough to accommodate the human body and the coffin, the Vietnamese would generally require a much bigger land plot to erect a resting place often made of concrete structure for the dead. One could say here - without ill-sentiment or spite - that while in life the Vietnamese are acutely confronted with the issue of land shortage [a social reality that necessarily fuels Vietnamese expansion], in death, and where circumstances permit, they accord themselves well with this precious resource. Thus, even in death, the quest for space and expansion remains unchanged!  

On the other hand, a situation akin to the eastern Ukraine could be about to materialise in this part of the world, and no one worth their salt will even want to discuss the issue since it's hardly politically correct to do so, and in any case, those who persist in bringing up the matter must be hell-bent on undermining the hard-forged "solidarity and peace" that the two nations have been enjoying for the best part of the last four decades following centuries of national rivalries and violence?...

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A bulldozer levels land in front of newly built houses last year in Tbong Khmum province as part of a development project by Heng Samrin. Facebook

Mon, 21 August 2017

Meas Sokchea

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National Assembly President Heng Samrin’s native village is, as map lines go, technically inside of Vietnam, the head of Cambodia’s Royal Academy said at a recent press conference.

The comments by Sok Touch, who has been at the forefront of government efforts to examine the Vietnamese border in recent years, follow years of controversy over the positioning of the Tbong Khmum province town where the Cambodian People’s Party stalwart was born.

Speaking at the Royal Academy on Friday, Touch said that according to the French colonial-era Bonne map, which is referred to in the constitution as defining the Kingdom’s territory, the location of Samrin’s home in Thlok Trach is in Vietnam.

Though the issue has been highly sensitive for the CPP, which vehemently rejected claims by opposition members that it had ceded land to Vietnam, spokesman Sok Eysan yesterday backed the academic’s claim.

“The map line runs at the west of Samdech Heng Samrin’s house,” Eysan said by phone.

However, though Eysan – and government spokesman Phay Siphan – agreed that the map shows the house to be on the Vietnamese side of the border, that could change.

Vietnamese and Cambodian experts are still working to demarcate the eastern boundary and, as part of that, have some leeway to shift the borderline.

In 2012, Senior Minister in Charge of Border Affairs Var Kimhong caused a stir when he suggested Cambodia may have to swap two villages to keep Samrin’s home, in Ponhea Krek district’s Kak commune, in Cambodia.

He later denied that would be the case and declined to discuss the villages’ status yesterday.