The great Demonstration in Birma

News of Cambodia N° 0729-E

The great demonstrations in Burma and the situation in Cambodia

Khemara Jati
Montreal, Quebec
September 25th, 2007

A group called Mon-Khmer is still living in Burma as minority, the same as those who are living in the North of Thailand and in Cambodia. For a week thousands of monks demonstrate peacefully in the streets of Rangoon, then dozens thousands with the population and now they demonstrate by hundred of thousands. Nevertheless Burma is considered by certain major powers as “dictatorial” country.

In Cambodia, country over-helped, with a multitude of the NGO ruling to defense the “Human Rights”, country qualified as of “democratic” by the same major powers, the recent demonstration of some rare monks ends by bastonnades and by the arrest of the monk Tim Sakhorn, defrocked and was handed back docilely to the vietnamese authorities.

In Cambodia the demonstrations always end by massacres.

§ In December, 1991, the Vietnamese police fires at point-blank range on the crowd, under the eyes of the diplomats and the western journalists. The power settled by the Vietnamese invaders since January, 1979 removes the bodies of the victims and forbids the families of the victims to keep silent. No inquiry was ever led until this day to determine the real number of the victims.

§ March 30th, 1997, demonstration of hundreds of workers led by Rainsy in front of the parliament, four grenades were thrown. Half of the demonstrators are killed and wounded. During this last massacre, an American citizen, Ron Abney was injured. The reports of the FBI inquiry are still not known for the public yet.

§ In July 1997, regular units of the Popular Army of Vietnam (PAV) intervene openly in Cambodia to destroy the Funcinpec army. But the best special units of shock of the PAV come to assault at O Smach front, a fortress was hastily taken up by Cambodians. The Vietnamese send even Cambodian children to be rolled on minefields, after making them drink of alcohol. The soldiers and the vietnamese officers killed at O Smach front are transporting in bags of salt to Vietnam by trucks. In front of the Cambodian defenders determination, the PAV is obliged to raise the seat, after more than a month of hot fights. The Cambodians saved their honor. One day our children will honor the memory and the heroism of the defenders of O Smach. It is this victory at O Smach which obliged the UN to impose of news “elections” even forged in July 1997.

Also let us remind that one month after this murder, Vietnam considering themselves the real boss of Cambodia, then signs in August 1997, a treaty with Thailand, dividing two thirds of our continental shelf. So, according to this treaty, the Vietnamese and Thai have the same continental shelf. Cambodia would have no access to the open sea without crossing territorial waters of one of our neighbor! Is this leonine treaty valid, with a regime which is not recognized by the UN in this time? Always, while basing on this treaty Thailand and Vietnam dispute the membership of our wealth being on and under our continental shelf. We wish to inform our fellow countrymen that in 2009, there will be negotiations at the UN to bound again the limits of the continental shelf of all countries of the world. Is Cambodia prepared for these negotiations?

§ August, 1978, after more than two weeks of demonstrations, with the presence of two American citizens, at the beginning of September the vietnamese police massacres the demonstrators, the others are obliged to dump into the trucks and disappear. Some are thrown alive to feed the crocodiles breeding. To date there is still no any investigations and nobody know the number of victims, among them for the first time monks.

We quote only the most important demonstrations, we leave aside the multiple political murders as that of the respectable Sam Bounthoeun and Chea Vichea, without mentionning that of Piseth Pilika of whom the French weakly review L'Express of October 7th 1999, quoted in a long article, with evidences, accusing in particular Hun Sen's wife of being a sleeping partner. The regime in Phnom Penh did not dare to bring L'Express to the court, accepting then implicitly the charges of the weekly. Until now no killer or murderer was worried. So the " Culture of the Impunity » can continue infinitely with the helps and supports from major powers and the UN.

In Burma, no power dares to dispute either its land borders, or its maritime borders. No power comes to plunder its wealth. In Cambodia, the World Bank finances the construction of the electric lines with high tension of Laos and Vietnam to supply the electricity in our provinces in the northeastern and eastern. Now Vietnam is going to build hydroelectric power plants in our provinces of the Northeastern part. The electricity will be forwarded to feed Phnom Penh. So Cambodia will be dependent in 100 % of the Vietnamese electricity. We are already dependent on our supply and gas by the Vietnamese company Sokimex running monopoly. Can a country be independent, if it depends in 100 % from Vietnam in energy, in particular in electrical energy? Does not Cambodia already move towards a vassal of Vietnam? A colony settling of populating ? Before becoming a Vietnamese province? That is with the complicity of major powers and the UN ?

Although in the light of the events in Burma, we can measure the essential differences between the events of this country with Cambodia. Burma is an independent country and the demonstrations are an affair between Burmese. In Cambodia the regime set up by Hanoi since 1979, is transforming Cambodia into Vietnamese province with the helps and the support of the international community.

During the colloquium on Cambodia and The Khmer Rouge, organized one month ago by France Culture, which lasted one week, there is a Cambodian intellectual coming from Cambodia. He is the only one to evoke the heavy misery of the Cambodian people after about 17 years of the Paris Agreements, that suppose to bring to our people: the "Democracy", the " Respect for the Human Rights », the institution of the " State of Law », the "Economic development" and the National Independence in our Territorial and maritime Integrity ». Evoking the future, this intellectual coming from Cambodia is the only one who says that the unique solution leads to an “Explosion”. The truth comes out of the mouth of a Cambodian from Cambodia.

September 25th, 2007