Editorial by Manekseka Sangkum:
Still playing the "racism" card, eh? Why not blame the phenomenon on global warming instead so that (as with deforestation) these long overlooked issues of colonial Vietnamese settlements and the water pollution caused that now drive the floating settlements downstream can be understood as something entirely apolitical?
It's possible that some among these fishing households are ethnic Chams or even Khmers, but what is their actual combined ratio or percentage in relations to the ethnic Vietnamese? If this is in fact a multi-ethnic problem, why then are onlookers labelled racist for airing their concerns?
The most critical question is why the authorities are still ignoring or refusing to address a problem that had never existed on the same or similar scale prior to the onset of the reign of this Vietnamese installed regime in 1979?
One fears there will be worse consequences to come from this mass migration of Vietnamese to Cambodia - for all involved. For all ethnic groups there will be potential for bloodshed, but for the host nation, further turmoil and loss of sovereignty and cohesion. It doesn't take rocket science...
😱😱😱
Floating homes and boats of ethnic Vietnamese and Cham fishing community members are seen in the Tonle Sap River yesterday in Phnom Penh. Pha Lina
3 May, 2017 Sen David
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Phnom Penh area residents may have noticed an unusual sight this week as they looked out onto the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers – an armada of floating homes anchored near the Chroy Changvar bridge.
According to the boats’ inhabitants, who raise fish underneath their floating homes in Russei Keo district’s Chraing Chamreh I commune, the move was prompted by a mass die-off of fish last weekend due to increasing water temperatures.
But the floating homes, which have set up in what is technically Chroy Changvar district, have drawn widespread anger, sometimes tinged with racism, from Facebook users, who accuse them of dirtying the waters and sullying the view.
“I wonder why the floating homes move to the middle [of the] river near [the] Chroy Changvar bridge . . . did the authorities allow them or not? It looks messy and pollutes the environment,” wrote one Facebook user on Monday. Another commentator, pointing out that the floating homes belong to “yuon”, a sometimes derogatory term for ethnic Vietnamese, asked: “[did] the authorities see or not?”
Inhabitants of the floating homes insist their move is temporary and a matter of economic survival.
“This year it is very hot and I lost 1 tonne of fish,” said Thin Than, 35, who explained that the families expected the deeper waters near the city to be cooler. “Last year, my fish did not die as much as this year and we are very worried.”
Fisherman Sa Kada, 40, said that he only intends to stay in the district for a few days in order to expose his fish to cooler waters.
“Please help us, we do not disturb someone else, we just worry about our fish dying,” he said.
Chroy Changvar Commune Chief Pich Saroeun said that while the fishing families did not request permission to stay in his commune, he expects they will only stay long enough to “change water” for their fish.
Nao Thouk, the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, explained that fishing families move along the Tonle Sap River each year as water temperatures change.
The owners only need verbal permission from local authorities for a temporary stay.
Thouk said his ministry had not yet received an official number of dead fish and would examine their complaints.
4 comments:
The evil Yuon had killed millions of Khmer people during the Pol Pot era through its brainwashed Khmer Vietminh, but Khmer people in general were perceived as racist (against the evil Yuon) by the international community.
The international community should know that Kampuchea Krom used to belong to Cambodia. Vietnam took over Kampuchea Krom by simply pushing its citizens to flow into Kampuchea Krom.
The same trick is now deploying in Cambodia - the mass influx of the Vietnamese migrants into Cambodia since 1979.
Facing the prospect of losing Cambodia to Vietnam, Khmer people have been crying out loudly for help from the international community, but instead they received mostly the words "Khmer people are racist" from them.
Khmer people should find a proper way to persuade the international community that we are the victims of the expansionist Yuon. Whatever we have been complaining against the evil Yuon is not working.
We need to find a better way to expose the evil Yuon's tricks against Khmer people to the international community.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)
@2:24AM, as we all know, every Khmer is corrupt to the bone and ready to sell out Cambodia for a few riels.
8:28 am
When you said EVERY Khmer is corrupt, you must be stupid !!!
Maybe YOU are !!!
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