12.Vietnam-Cambodia

TELL ME WHERE YOU COME FROM, I WILL TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE - SRP Members of Parliament, June 29, 2002[It's always interesting to the dispatches from Cambodian parties. Just remember, the Vietnamese (and sometimes the Chinese) are always trying to take over Cambodia.]Yesterday, June 28, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) celebrated the 51st anniversary of its founding in 1951. It was a pompous ceremony attended by CPP President Chea Sim and Prime Minister (and CPP Vice-President) Hun Sen.How was the situation in Cambodia in 1951? We were a French colony within the French Indochina. We were a weak country and had no real significant force of our own. With the support of communist China and the former Soviet Union, the powerful Vietminh (or Vietnamese communist forces under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh) were waging an intensive independence war against the French and had occupied large portions of Laos and Cambodia under the pretext to help us get rid of the French. The Vietminh claimed they were fulfilling their "internationalist duty" but in fact they were pursuing the Ho Chi Minh dream of an "Indochinese Federation" under the direction of Vietnam led by the Vietnamese-controlled Indochinese Communist Party.For tactical and propaganda reasons, the Indochinese Communist Party and its Vietnamese leaders decided to set up a local branch in Cambodia that could be presented, at least on paper, as a distinct entity from the Vietnamese Communist Party. They gathered a few local puppets and created the Cambodian People's Revolutionary Party (CPRP), which later on dropped the word "Revolutionary" because of its dubious consonance in the ears of more moderate people the communists wanted to attract.The Khmer Rouge (this name was given later on by King Norodom Sihanouk to Cambodian Communists in the 60's) including Pol Pot, Ieng Sary and Nuon Chea very soon joined the CPRP. They were followed by Chea Sim, Hun Sen, Heng Samrin and most of the present CPP leaders in Phnom Penh. All these people fought together the American-backed Lon Nol regime, which they defeated on April 17, 1975 when they triumphal entered Phnom Penh.Following bloody internal purges under the China-backed Pol Pot regime, the Cambodian communist leaders split from mid-1977, with a group led by Chea Sim, Heng Samrin and Hun Sen fleing to Vietnam to ask support from their very first master and protector. Thanks to Vietnamese support this latter group defeated Pot Pol on January 7, 1979 with another triumphal entry to Phnom Penh.All this batch of Communist leaders (some people call them "la creme de la crasse") share a very heavy past marked by two important dates: June 28, 1951 and April 17, 1975. June 28 has been celebrated every year in Phnom Penh under any communist regime from Pot Pot to Hun Sen. April 17 was celebrated in Phnom Penh, of course by Pol Pot when he was in power, but also by Chea Sim, Heng Samrin and Hun Sen until the late 80's because these pro-Vietnamese leaders also claimed April 17, 1975 as the day of their victory over the "imperialist Americans". Only two or three years before the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1991, in order to make their propaganda consistent with the new political situation and because they needed money from the West, especially from their former American foes, the current Phnom Penh leaders gave up any reference to April 17. Fortunately, there is still June 28 that can be preserved because 1951 is a long time ago and few people know what this is about. Never forget your roots, comrades. Long live June 28! -SRP Members of Parliament