Khmer Rouge Pol Pot | ហេតុអ្វីបានជាកើតមានខ្មែរក្រហម | Khmer RFI

Editorial by Khmer Circle:


Vietnam can still be above reproach in the educated opinions of some folk despite having swallowed up all of Champa, Kampuchea Krom (about a third of present day Cambodia) and has since its invasion of Cambodia in 1978 been bleeding the latter dry, thanks to a puppet regime it directly installed and has helped to stay in power since.

If the Pol Pot faction ‘jumped out of the frying pan and into the flame’ then this current KR faction that had been forced to break away from Pol Pot out of self-preservation are clearly diving headlong into the frying pan itself! Some still believe “being close to your enemy” is a wiser and safer option, whatever the costs? Actually, the whole country is literally feeling the frying pan effects as we speak and, this is mainly due to the trees being logged and transported to - you guessed it! - Vietnam to be sold on the world market for a tidy profit.

It is true that Cambodia is behind Vietnam in “statecraft” and treachery, however, this fact still does not excuse Vietnam’s own predatory opportunism and hegemony or foul play over smaller nations who after all are just content to live and watch the rice grow! Note that by the time Pol Pot (or Saloth Sar) returned from France as a failed student the Vietnamese had already established rebel bases on Cambodian soil where they initially put Pol Pot himself to work in the kitchen! The eggs had thus already been laid and monsters hatched from them would subsequently return to wreak havoc on a nation still reeling from its colonial past with the help of a handful of misguided French educated Khmer nationalists and crucially the all enabling apprenticeship they received from the Vietnamese.

Likewise, it is simply far-fetched and a myth to suggest that a nation's decline - one as traumatic and tragic as Cambodia's even - vis a vis its dominating and expanding neighbours is attributable to its conjectured inferiority in terms of its 'intelligence', IQ, industry or lack thereof; in short, the biological make-up of a 'race'! This unfortunate myth is pervasive among even the Cambodians themselves, especially, the self-regarded and elected "intellectuals" among them which often means - from Sihanouk and Pol Pot to Hun Sen and his cronies - a propensity to overlook the infinite pool of intellect and wisdom latent within the populace that could otherwise offer a far more realistic and effective bulwark to meeting that decline as mediated through external threat and aggression.

Sihanouk - as had already been remarked previously - had led his country down dismally despite his lengthy reign and ample opportunity to construct this national deterrence by ways of strengthening public institutions and widening democratic space. Instead, he chose to rest all of Cambodia's fortunes or fate on his erratically self-styled populist and autocratic rule. This was in a way, a reversion to absolute monarchy with himself at the helm of national leadership as both Prince and Statesman and, in his view or sentiment, 'Sihanouk is Cambodia and Cambodia is Sihanouk'!

Pol Pot, on the other hand, made sure that this national prowess would never happen by eliminating [physically] anyone known to have possessed any educated profile. In his view and that of his like-minded colleagues, their 'wisdom' and the process launched towards national mobilisation of the Cambodian masses would alone be enough to arrest centuries of national decline and hurt as well as resurrecting Cambodia's great past achievements.

The present CPP regime has been doing the country no favour either in this regard as it consistently denies any actual space for democratic governance or freedom of expression. Even posting comments and views on social media perceived to be critical of the regime is seen as a crime.

What is therefore striking is that the three aforementioned regimes all share one common trait: all have done everything in their power and volition to weaken - rather than strengthen - the country's chances for survival and cohesion in the face of unremitting external onslaught and subversion.

Whether this behaviour is simply misguided and unconsciously driven or merely a result of political self-preservation by any of these sets of elite or a combination of the two factors plus external pressure and manipulation remains, however, open to debate and will likely continue to defy consensus.


^^^