Vietnamization: Military Occupation - Present

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Part 7: Third-Party Spokespeople, "Yuon" Racism, ECCC "Genocide" Verdict, Ad Hominem

Third-Party Spokespeople

Ben Kiernan's Yale Genocide Program

I don’t know Ben Kiernan personally but have read two of his books on Cambodia which I have always found off on his forced arguments of racism—now, I know why!—even if I appreciated the details of his research and interviews of the Khmer Rouge regime; I do know and really like his ex-wife Nekbong Chanthou Boua.

Steve Heder, on the other hand, I do know from his on-the-ground work and research and his involvement at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal since I have worked and lived in Cambodia since the mid-1990s. He is THE top expert on the Khmer Rouge. I have always appreciated and learned a lot from his writings and the bit of sporadic conversations I’ve had with him.

This highly academic essay explains for me not only Ben Kiernan’s works but the few disparaging statements by Johns Hopkins professor Stephen Morris (author of Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia) of Kiernan for focusing and pounding on the racism motif.

"...not a detached analysis of the political process but Kiernan’s own engagement in it. This is an engagement that aligns him with certain surviving East Zone cadres who became founding members of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea [the current Hun Sen gov’t], which was established in 1979 under Vietnamese tutelage and later renamed the State of Cambodia. It entangles him in their struggles against other Cambodians for political and historical legitimacy, including the battles over the writing of Cambodian history."

"This review also raises questions about selectivity in Kiernan's use of non-confession documentary evidence, and about the accuracy of his translations. It points the need for readers to be cautious not only with regard to Kiernan's arguments and conclusions, but also the data presented to buttress them."

Click to read the complete essay, part 1 and part 2, on Facebook

But let us not forget that violence does not and cannot exist by itself: It is invariably intertwined with the lie. They are linked in the most intimate, most organic and profound fashion: Violence cannot conceal itself behind anything except lies, and lies have nothing to maintain them save violence. Anyone who has once proclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose the lie as his principle. At birth, violence acts openly and even takes pride in itself. But as soon as it gains strength and becomes firmly established, it begins to sense the air around it growing thinner; it can no longer exist without veiling itself in a mist of lies, without concealing itself behind the sugary words of falsehood. No longer does violence always and necessarily lunge straight for your throat; more often than not it demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood.

The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions!

This is why I believe, my friends, that we are capable of helping the world in its hour of crisis. We should not seek to justify our unwillingness by our lack of weapons, nor should we give ourselves up to a life of comfort. We must come out and join the battle!

The favorite proverbs in Russian are about truth. They forcefully express a long and difficult national experience, sometimes in striking fashion:

One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.

THE WRONG MAN TO INVESTIGATE CAMBODIA

Wall Street Journal / Stephen Morris | 17 April 1995

Today is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of one of the great moral catastrophes of our brutal century — the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge and the subsequent extinction of more than a million souls in the killing fields of Cambodia. As this unhappy observance approached, Congress last year created an Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations under the State Department’s East Asia and Pacific Bureau. Its mission is to fully document Khmer Rouge crimes, and train Cambodians who will work for a tribunal to prosecute Khmer Rouges leaders.

It’s a worthy goal, but in a bizarre exercise of its mandate, The State Department has awarded $500,000 of US taxpayers money for a Yale University project headed by a man who spent most of the years of Khmer Rouge rule defending the regime and denouncing its critics. In considering applications, State had its choice of individuals with impeccable reputations and credentials for this important project. Yet for reasons that are unfathomable, research into Khmer Rouge crimes is to be carried out by Ben Kiernan, an Australian radical activist cum academic known as one of the Khmer Rouge’s most ardent defenders during Pol Pot’s reign of terror. Mr Kiernan eventually changed his line, denouncing the Pol Pot regime. But he still champions another Khmer Rouge faction that is now in the Phnom Penh government.

An Appalling Record

To understand why the choice of Mr. Kiernan as chief documenter of Cambodia’ nightmare is so appalling, let us recall the Khmer Rouge’s record, and Mr. Kiernan’s public statement during the time their crimes were being committed.

After the surrender of the Lon Nol government on April 17, 1975, the victorious Khmer Rouge leaders deported the two million residents of Phnom Penh and hundreds of thousands from other Cambodian towns in the countryside, where they became slave laborers. All former military officers and government officials who the Khmer Rouge could identify, and often their entire families, were slaughtered. Then the Khmer Rouge sought out and killed anyone they could find with an education. Between their victory in 1975 and defeat by invading Vietnamese in 1978, the Khmer Rouge executed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and condemned perhaps a million more to death by starvation and disease.

When all this began, Ben Kiernan was a graduate student in Australia specializing in Cambodia. And soon after the communist victory in April 1975, he published a flattering account of the nominal leader of the Khmer Rouge. In a June 1975 article in the Dyason House Papers titled “Khieu Samphan, Cambodia’s Revolutionary Leader,” Mr. Kiernan wrote that “Khieu Samphan’s personality — particularly his unassuming manner, ready smile and simpler habits — endeared him to Khmer peasants. Himself a peasant by birth, he is said to have been somewhat ascetic in his behavior, but never fanatical and always calm.”

When terrified Cambodians began escaping across the border into Thailand that summer and fall, however, a totally different picture of Khieu Samphan and Cambodia’s revolution emerged. Interviewed by Western reporters, the refugees provided horrifying accounts of barbarity.

But Ben Kiernan was angry with the Western press, not the Khmer Rouge. Writing in 1976 in the Melbourne Journal of Politics, Mr. Kiernan asserted that “there is ample evidence in Cambodia and other sources that the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have recently made it out to be.” M. Kiernan admitted that some terror had been created by what he called “untrained and vengeful” soldiers in Northwest Cambodia. But he explained this a strictly local breach of discipline. “These atrocities were committed against orders from the [central] government,” he wrote, “and there is no evidence that the situation in eastern, southern and central Cambodia resembles that of the north-west.”

Then, as today, Mr. Kiernan drew a distinction between good Khmers Rouge and bad Khmers Rouge. In another 1976 article, “Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia,” published in the foreign-policy journal Australian Outlook, he embellished his apologia for the revolution with a Marxist class analysis of how newly liberated poor peasants were taking revenge against the rich. At the same time as hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were dying of hunger, Mr. Kiernan was confidently predicting a wonderful future for Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. “As a result of the Khmer Rouge irrigation program,” he wrote, “Cambodian agriculture will be modernized and peasant living standards will be increased.”

Mr. Kiernan wrote and spoke tirelessly against most refugee accounts and Western reporting. In 1977, for instance, when harrowing photographs of Khmer Rouge forced labor were published in Western newspapers, Mr. Kiernan wrote to a Melbourne newspaper, the Age, falsely asserting that what he called “photographs of alleged atrocities in Cambodia” had been “exposed as fake”. His conclusion: “The Western press have more of an interest in a bloodbath in Cambodia than the communists do.”

Mr. Kiernan’s conclusion were at variance with those of other interviewers of Cambodian refugees. For example, François Ponchaud, who had interviewed hundreds of Cambodian peasants from all regions, wrote in 1977: “The liquidation of all towns and former authorities was not improvised, nor was it a reprisal or expression of wanton cruelty on the part of local cadres. The scenario for every town and village in the country was the same and followed exact instructions issued by the highest authorities.”

During 1977-78, Mr. Kiernan and his Cambodian-born wife, Chanthou Boua, were part of the editorial collective that produced “News from Kampuchea”, a newsletter extolling life in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. The Kiernans did not know then that the regime they were promoting had killed Ms. Boua’s family. But this subsequent discovery did not shake their faith in communism.

At the beginning of 1978, The Vietnamese communists and the Khmers Rouge, who since 1970 had been allies against “U.S. imperialism”, publicly split. Western leftists were force to choose sides. Mr. Kiernan’s decision was assisted by event in Cambodia.

During 1977-878, Pol Pot, fearing traitors, purged his own Khmer Rouge apparatus, especially in the eastern zone. As the purges spread, many who had willingly obeyed Pol Pot’s orders in 1975-78 fled for their lives to Vietnam. These cadres returned with Vietnam’s invading army in 1979, denouncing the “Pol Pot genocidal clique” but celebrating communism and the Khmer Rouge.

The creation of a Cambodian communist alternative under Vietnamese sponsorship gave Mr. Kiernan a new mission. Since 1979, he has worked tirelessly as the academic world’s de facto defence lawyer for what he considers the good Khmers Rouge of the eastern zone and their Vietnamese patrons. There may have been some differences in the degree of brutality between eastern Cambodia and other zones during the Pol Pot years. But the distinction Mr. Kiernan draws is morally equivalent to praising the relatively milder Nazi policy in France by contrasting it with the more brutal Nazi policy in Russia.

Interestingly, Mr. Kiernan has maintained a long professional with association with the French activist Serge Thion, who was not only France’s leading supporter of the Khmers Rouges from 1972 to 1978 but also a promoter of the view that the Nazis did not murder six million Jews. Equally revealing is Mr. Kiernan editorship of a 1985 book that celebrates the life of Wilfred Burchett, the Australian journalist who entered Chinese-run POW camps during the Korean war and threatened Allied prisoners. The Australian government withdrew Burchett’s passport, while North Korea’s Kim Il Sung personally awarded him a medal.

Many Australians were puzzled in 1991 when Mr. Kiernan was plucked from obscurity at the University of Wollongong for a post at Yale University. Members of Yale’s distinguished history department probably did not know his full record when they offered him a temporary position.

A Puzzling Choice

But how did the State Department, which is paid to know about the politics of foreigners it funds, choose Mr. Kiernan to carry out research into Cambodia’s history? There were eight other applications submitted, many by teams (including one from the founder of Amnesty International USA) [for example, David Hawke, David Chandler] more distinguished than Mr. Kiernan’s.

State Department officials may claim that the Kiernan’s team proposal was more comprehensive and simpler to administer. And they may point to his modified views on Cambodia namely, that he no longer supports Pol Pot. But given his record of scholarship tailored to extremist political views and his current allegiance to potentially guilty politicians in Phnom Penh, Mr. Kiernan cannot be expected to lead a credible investigation.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary Winston Lord can easily rectify this problem by withdrawing the award from Yale and re-opening the grant process. If they refuse to reverse a terrible decision that disgraces American honor and spits upon the graves of more than a million Cambodian, then Congress should take this matter into its own hands.

Mr. Morris, an Australian, is a research associate in Harvard’s department of government

Nayan Chanda: "...the Vietnamese are trying to maintain a client regime under the pretext of saving Cambodian independence. During a trip to Vietnam's Mekong delta in the spring of 1978 along with other foreign journalists I learned that, in order to maintain cordial relations with the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese government had forced back hundreds of Khmer refugees to Cambodia..."

William Shawcross: "Mr. Kiernan strongly suggests that because he did not hear my guide from the Foreign Ministry tell me about the Vietnamese experts' role in setting up the museum at Tuol Sleng, I must have made it up."

William Shawcross: "But what possible reason can there be for this selective and partial release of material? Why protect or conceal any of the Khmer Rouge records? Why not allow academics like Mr. Kiernan or such excellent investigator as David Hawk full access? Surely that would be the appropriate response to the crimes alleged. As I mentioned in the article, Cambodian officials complained to me that they wanted Mr. Hawk to have fuller access to documents--but their Vietnamese "experts" refused. Why and with what right? … Perhaps one should ask why people like Sihanouk, his former Prime Minister Son Sann and many Cambodians of lesser rank are prepared to join even the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese... said he defected to Thailand because of the "intolerable colonialism" being practiced by the Vietnamese in Cambodia. … At that time Mr. Kiernan was one of those academics casting doubt on the refugee stories..."

Click to read complete exchange on Facebook

Vietnamese

"third-party spokespeople"

Through my readings and from experience, I have encountered at least 4 categories of "third-party spokespeople" (TPS); I will list them by degree of contribution to the Vietnamization of Cambodia and sustaining Hun Sen in power. As burns fall in to one of four categories, with first degree burns being the least serious and fourth degree burns being the most acute and potentially life-threatening, so too are the varying degrees of damage the work and writings of these individuals and institutions have on Cambodia, particularly since the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

4th degree TPS are the frontline mercenaries, the likes of Ben Kiernan, Helen Jarvis, Allen Myers, Michael Vickery, Peter Starr, Washington state senator Doug Ericksen, etc.

3rd degree TPS are willfully ignorant authors, researchers, NGO workers with suspicious intention who are more concerned about access and career development than truth and Cambodia's welfare. Re institutions: Yale Genocide Program, Youk Chhang and DC-Cam, ECCC, Tuol Sleng/Choeung Ek.

2nd degree TPS are well-intentioned but misguided and naïve authors, researchers, NGO workers--some I know as friends--the likes of Evan Gottesman, Christopher Sperfeldt, Ou Virak.

1st degree TPS are the well-intentioned non-Cambodian family members and friends who unwittingly propagate the racist narrative. I remember a white American missionary, married to a Cambodian man, jibing at her husband and half-jokingly calling him "racist" for using the word "Yuon" during his conversation with me.

The “third-party spokespeople” for the Vietnamese during occupation, UNTAC, to now include Ben Kiernan (who runs the Yale Genocide Program), Michael Vickery, Helen Jarvis, etc. and less unsuspecting ones of the UNTAC leadership, media, writers to now... They wittingly and unwittingly propagate the racist narrative by almost solely focusing on the word “Yuon” as racist, the only term Cambodians had for the Vietnamese till the occupation and the term that Thais also use for the Vietnamese. However, the term propagated during occupation and given power during Untac is only deemed racist by foreigners only when Cambodians use it. It is only within the past 2-3 years in light of the undeniable advanced Vietnamization visible to some foreigners and in most recent months in light of my posting of published articles about the genocidal occupation period that the costly gross misunderstanding by foreign opinion makers is slowly changing.

- Theary, 9 Dec. 2018

Meanwhile, in the US, lobbyists paid by Chinese-backed institutions are cultivating vocal supporters known as “third-party spokespeople” to deliver Beijing’s message, and working to sway popular perceptions of Chinese rule in Tibet. China is also wooing journalists from around the world with all-expenses-paid tours and, perhaps most ambitiously of all, free graduate degrees in communication, training scores of foreign reporters each year to “tell China’s story well”.

Since 2003, when revisions were made to an official document outlining the political goals of the People’s Liberation Army, so-called “media warfare” has been an explicit part of Beijing’s military strategy. The aim is to influence public opinion overseas in order to nudge foreign governments into making policies favourable towards China’s Communist party. “Their view of national security involves pre-emption in the world of ideas,” says former CIA analyst Peter Mattis, who is now a fellow in the China programme at the Jamestown Foundation, a security-focused Washington thinktank. “The whole point of pushing that kind of propaganda out is to preclude or preempt decisions that would go against the People’s Republic of China.”

Excerpts, Inside China's Audacious Propaganda Machine, The Guardian, Dec. 2018

Helen Jarvis

and her husband Allen Myers

In these positions as ECCC Chief of Public Affiars and ECCC Chief of the Victims Unit, Helen Jarvis is taking up the "Cambodian national" quota -- that is to say, she is the Cambodian ECCC Chief of Public Affars and the Cambodian ECCC Chief of ictims Unit -- as the ECCC being the Extraordinary Chambers "in the Courts of Cambodia", "a special Cambodian court", each unit or chamber is, by law, headed by a Cambodian national with her or his deputy or vice-president reserved for the UN appointed official or judge or prosecutor. As a naturalized Cambodian (thanks for her service to Mr. Hun!), she has the legal right to these positions. But, really? Because there's no better candidate, say a  Cambodia-born Khmer Rouge survivor, who is qualified for the position of Public Affairs? Helen Jarvis is the best Cambodian candidate there is? As THE public face of the Khmer Rouge victims?! As of 9 March 2019, Helen continues to be THE public face of the ECCC Victims Unit. She took over this position after the very successful Bopha who came from the UN Office of Human Rights and the very active engagement of civil society, including my NGO the Center for Social Development. The active, dynamic victims participation caught the attention and won the praise around the world. Then came along Helen to the position. Quality engagement was replaced by statistics and propaganda for the students and villagers they bussed in for the cameras and their glossy print outs be it booklet or posters. The Association of Khmer Rouge Victims was the first to register but because it was associated with me, it was relegated and not included in their publication. However, when the whole victims unit enterprise has already been captured, then recently (as of Nov. 2018), I saw its listed, but it's already defunct.

Helen Jarvis pretty in peach, husband Allen in tiger stripes, share same hairstylist.

Marxist dreaming...

Helen Jarvis is now capturing the once hopeful space of the flourishing arts.

From the arts to religion, nothing is beyond the reach or sacred for Hun Sen's CPP. It is already well-known that the chief monk Tep Vong is a public campaigner for the CPP. With Christianity in the ascendant, the CPP has also targeted and infiltrated Christianity, overtly and subtly, using easy targets and less suspecting third-party people.

Chomsky on U.S. Foreign Policy

Stephen Morris, Harvard International Review, Dec. - Jan. 1981

Click to read 9-page article, on Facebook.

It is Ben Kiernan described as "an Australian scholar" of Cambodia... What Chomsky and Herman don't tell us is that Kiernan is a graduate student at an Australian university, and that his first important, overlooked study was published in the journal of the Melbourne University department of political science's undergraduates. It is a journal specifically designed for student contribution....

...Our valiant crusaders against "distortions at fourth hand" never tell us that Kiernan relied heavily on official regime publications, newspaper reports and mysterious second hand accounts....

...Who is Michael Vickery? That's not at all clear. He is not identified by an institutional affiliation. He is simply described as a "Khmer-speaking westerner who is an academic specialist on Cambodia. He doesn't seem to have published much either. (p. 31)

The Diplomat | 1 February 2019

Third-degree Third-party Spokespeople

THE GATE (by Francois Bizot):

I described how the Viets had attacked a bridge before Battambang.

"You mean the Khmer Rouge," said Jean Lacouture. "I don't think there are many North Vietnamese in Cambodia!..."

"I saw only Vietnamese, North Vietnamese."...

"Don't be fooled," he stressed with the tone of the expert. "It's very hard to tell them apart, you know. And the ambiguity is widely exploited."

I swallowed my words. In Lacouture's eyes, I had fallen prey to the official discourse. I took out my pass and handed it to him.

"Here's a safe-conduct pass issued to me on the spot, in Angkor. It's written in Vietnamese, and it's also very useful when moving about in other parts of the country!"

The paper was passed around the table. Lacouture, still showing his scepticism, looked at it without saying anything; and he apparently drew no conclusion from it, as demonstrated by the articles that he continued to write, several months afterwards, without changing his views.

This lengthy article in the prestigious NYT Magazine with global reach cited only 3 experts, 2 of the 3 are Christoph Sperfeldt and Lyma Nguyen who have been in a long-term relationship together, although not mentioned in the article. I know both of them, Lyma not as well as Christoph. I met Lyma, who is Vietnamese-Australian, only on several occasions when she would periodically parachute in from Australia from her full-time work into Cambodia to represent pro bono ethnic Vietnamese as civil parties at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal; she also represented Olympian Rob Hamill whose brother was killed at Tuol Sleng. I first met Christoph in 2006 when he worked as a German Civil Peace officer and I was the head of CSD, the NGO at forefront of working on victims participation and conducting provincial public forums across the country for victims and perpetrators, inviting ECCC officials and other experts to join us to engage with the provincial participants. We invited Christoph and he often joined us as one of these panelists/experts. Since then, I have seen him here and there at regional conferences; we have many mutual friends in common. I do not know the author of this article. But I find it interesting that this author is based in Berlin and Christoph is also from Berlin, which raises the suspicion for me that this lengthy article is no "reporting" but a favor to a friend on his research topic that is related to the ethnicity of his romantic partner and the focus of her professional, high-profile advocacy.

I critique the article content here.

1. "Christoph Sperfeldt, a researcher on ethnic Vietnamese citizenship in Cambodia"

2. "Lyma Nguyen, an international civil-party counsel at the tribunal, told me she had hoped that one consequence of the trial would be a pathway to a stable legal identity for Vietnamese survivors of the Khmer Rouge. But she encountered insurmountable resistance to the idea. Current plans for reparations include only a watered-down education program for raising awareness about nationality laws. “Many mainstream Cambodians, including some lawyers and academics, actually don’t think the Vietnamese victims of the genocide should have a legitimate claim to having suffered genocide, because they’re Vietnamese,” she said. “They think it’s all a big conspiracy by Vietnam to swallow up Cambodia.”

"Ben Mauk is a writer based in Berlin. He was a finalist for this year’s National Magazine Award in feature writing."

"This article was written with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting." (At the beginning of this lengthy article.)

Second-degree Third-party Spokespeople

Cambodia by Evan Gottesman. The only book in the English language to focus on the decade-plus years of Vietnamese military occupation. By someone I consider a friend, even if we’ve not kept in touch over the years, and a good guy. Unfortunately, it perpetuates the Cambodians-as-racist narrative and takes the documents the Vietnamese-left-behind-to-be-found at face value and rarely leaves room for the sensitive documents that the Vietnamese did take with them. (Excerpts from Preface, 138, and 168). Moreover, the little recounting of the K5 plan is mostly from the perspective of Margaret Slocomb, a Marxist sympathetic to the Vietnamese-installed regime, never mentioning that it targeted Cambodian men, and outright denying it was genocide (will post page where I first read it some years back).

Preface: “Many of the highest-level Party documents, in particular Politburo documents, are still inaccessible. According to one Party official, Vietnamese authorities took many Cambodian Communist Party documents to Vietnam in 1989, when they withdrew from the country.”

(Published by Yale University Press where Ben Kiernan is director of The Yale Genocide Program; copyright 2003, four years after Johns Hopkins Stephen J. Morris’ WHY VIETNAM INVADED CAMBODIA. Interestingly, here’s Prof. Morris’ caution in his Preface: “In the case of Cambodia, some of the important written primary sources are compromised. Most of the documentation left behind by the Khmer’s Rouges when they fled Phnom Penh in 1979 was captured by their Vietnamese communist enemies. Thus the only documents on Cambodia Communist Party decision making made available have not come from free scholarly access to open archives but were released after careful scrutiny by Vietnamese communist leaders, who have a vital interest in the kind of history that will be written.”)

Harmful, False

Accusations of Racism

"Yuon" / "Yuan"

Theary Seng visits the National Library to look up the word "Yuon", 10 Aug. 2013

See Theary Seng's entry on Facebook, 10 Aug. 2013

Two possible etymologies for the word "Yuon" or "Yuan" — meaning "Vietnamese" in Khmer AND in Thai:

According to Son Soubert, a French-trained archaeologist with knowledge of Latin and Sanskrit, having worked for UNESCO, lived and studied in India:

1. One possible explanation: the word Yuon/Yuan has its etymology in the Sanskrit "Yavana" for "foreigners", what the Indians called the Ionians. (Incidentally, the French pronunciation of "Ionien" sounds like "Yunia". French Indochina comprised of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos.) Ionia is one of the 4 tribes of Ancient Greece in Asia Minor.

"After conquering Persia, Alexander the Great went south until the Indus River which flows down to the sea in present-day Pakistan. It is on the banks of the Indus that he fought the Indian, especially the Maurya dynasty of Maurya Chndragupta (?) the father of Ashoka, the Buddhist Emperor. The bulk of Alexander the Great's army was made of the Ionians from the Middle East or Asia Minor. Therefore the Greeks were known to the Indians as Ionians or the Foreigners: Yavana or Ionians are foreigners. Compared to the classic Athenian Greek, Ionian orthography differs a bit."

The Khmer replaced "va" of the Sanskrit Yavana meaning "foreigner" with its vowel "uor", hence Yuan/Yuon.

2. The second possible explanation for Yuon/Yuan comes simply from Yunnan, the southern province of China. In Vietnamese, "Yue" means people, and "nan" or "nam" means south, or people of the south, of which they are vis-à-vis China or of southern China. Also, it could have been the case that the Vietnamese were understood (correctly or incorrectly) by both the Khmers and the Thai to be part of the Chinese people of the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty or from the south—Yunnan, the province created during the Mongol (Yuan) dynasty.

(Lauk Pou Soubert told me that he had written an editorial published in either the Phnom Penh Post or the Cambodia Daily in the early 1990s with these explanations. Since, many Cambodian non-CPP leaders and scholars have written over the years refutations to the calumnies by the foreign writers and influencers of Cambodia who kept repeating mindlessly the harmful, false accusation of "Yuon" as a racist term.)

CNRP's Impressive NON-VIOLENT Protests

What has not been given much ink in the traditional press is HOW IMPRESSIVE the CNRP has been in guiding the MASSIVE crowds of deeply aggrieved protesters (from poverty, from landlessness, from election fraud, etc.) in NON-VIOLENT protests FOR MONTHS! Since July 2013 till recently, hundreds of thousands of aggrieved Cambodians took to the streets in PEACE... (The violence, which the CPP ALLEGED as started by garment workers, only started on the eve of the highly contested big January 7 day celebration, after Hun Sen went to consult Vietnam.)

And the PEACEFUL aspect had been conditioned by the opposition CNRP in their intentional, strategic TRAININGS, days before the initial protests AND THEIR CONTINUAL EMPHASIS on NON-VIOLENCE at EVERY PRESS CONFERENCE, at EVERY MASS PROTEST I've attended. It wasn't just empty rhetoric of "non-violence"; the CNRP strategically showed films on Gandhi and introduced Martin Luther King, Jr. and other peaceful protests from history to the larger public.

But some of the non-Cambodians have pricked their ears to and anticipated the use of the word "Yuon", the only Khmer word they know. Cambodians, almost unanimously over the years since UNTAC in 1991 when the word metastasized into a "pejorative," have been futilely defending its use as the only Khmer word we know for "Vietnamese".

We've been dismissed outright, with no space to speak of the real serious violations of rights and territory over the years, where countless villagers have been displaced and massive territory has been de facto annexed.

In their world of self-righteousness, quick, cheap moral one-upmanship, there's no space for other voices.

The reactions of both the Cambodians and the self-righteous non-Cambodians have not been helpful.

1. Cambodians, we do need to raise our language from low culture to high culture. Generally, our language is ghetto language of referring to children and some adults as "veer" / "it". We need to equally clean up our language with not only in reference to non-Cambodians, e.g. the Vietnamese and the Thais, but also with each other, e.g. women. Across the board, we need to raise our language culture to a higher level.

2. Non-Cambodians, our history is more than than April 17, 1975 to Jan. 7, 1979. We existed before April 17, and we existed and continue to exist since Jan. 7. Our life, as is your life, is fluid. You also need to reassess on how you have been conditioned to think about us, oftentimes in the most patronizing ways.

I am glad that now the understanding is BEGINNING to take hold that the word "Yuon" is not pejorative by some of these non-Cambodians, but the damage has been done, now moving into a new stage where Sam Rainsy and the whole population of Cambodians are still racists and "disingenuous" because we dare to articulate outside the non-Cambodian understanding of our existence.

- Theary C. Seng, 18 Jan. 2014

Sam Rainsy: "Yuon" is not pejorative

Sam Rainsy Facebook | 19 January 2014

[with screenshots]

វចនានុក្រមខ្មែរ ដែលល្បីល្បាញជាងគេ។ The most authoritative Khmer dictionary.

អត្ថន័យនៃពាក្យ "យួន" Definition of the word "Yuon". Nothing pejorative at all (see translation next page).

អត្ថន័យនៃពាក្យ "យួន" Definition of the word "Yuon".

អត់មានពាក្យ "វៀតណាម" ទេ ក្នុងវចនានុក្រមនេះ The word "Vietnam" does not exist in this dictionary.

ជនជាតិយួន មានដើមកំណើត មកពីខេត្តមួយ ឈ្មោះ យូណាន់ នៅប្រទេសចិន។ The Yuon (later Vietnamese) people originally came from Yunnan (China).

អត់មានប្រទេសណាឈ្មោះ "វៀតណាម" ទេ នៅក្នុងសតវត្សទី១៧ ១៨ និង ១៩ ។ There was no country named "Vietnam" in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

អត់មានប្រទេសណាឈ្មោះ "វៀតណាម" ទេ នៅក្នុងសតវត្សទី ១៩ ពេលជ្រោយឥណ្ឌូចិនស្ថិតនៅក្រោមអាណានិគមនិយមបារាំង ។ There was no country named "Vietnam" in the 19th century when Indochina was under French colonial rule.

ពាក្យ « យួន » អត់មានន័យអាក្រក់ទេ | The word “Yuon” is not pejorative

Sam Rainsy / The Cambodia Daily | February 2014

Want to Make a Lie Seem True?

Say It Again. And Again. And Again

Wired | 11 February 2017

As the article relates to Cambodia:

"...Yuon, a term for Vietnamese most consider derogatory" -- despite the fact:

(1) the term is neutral;

(2) has only been propagandized to be "racist" during the Vietnamese occupation;

(3) many Cambodian scholars and leaders have formally responded to its neutral meaning, reminding us all the distinction between what is "politically correct" and what is "offensive" (derogatory);

(4) it is the same term Yuon / Yuan that the Thai have for Vietnamese but it's a non-issue there as it should be a non-issue anywhere;

(5) only written "most consider derogatory" a stock phrase in the English-language papers -- mainly written, all edited by non-Cambodians AFTER OCCUPATION; the use of the term was never or rarely called out as "derogatory" prior to occupation; and

(6) whereas "most" Cambodians do not consider it derogatory, save the CPP for obvious reasons and the one or two non-CPP loners because they want to be politically correct with their foreign friends and interviewers.

All speak to foreign hubris, particularly this last one dismissing the bulk of the Cambodian population and giving credence only to themselves the guests

- Theary, Feb. 2017

Letter to the Editor: ‘Yuon’ May Be Incorrect, but Not Offensive

The Cambodia Daily | 10 July 2017

If there's only one book you read on Cambodia, this is it!

Click to read the complete chapter, on Facebook.

ECCC "Genocide" Verdict

"If the term 'genocide' has been widely accepted in Cambodia's case, it is because of the enormity of what was done in this small Asian country seems beyond the power of ordinary words to convey. Yet from the very start there has been a political subtext. The term was first used by the Vietnamese in the spring of 1979, when they were turning the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre into a museum cleverly designed to recall images of Belsen. It touched a chord of guilt and horror in the West subconscious that was politically extremely rewarding. The US, too, found 'genocide' to its advantage. ...their condemnation for genocide, the most heinous of crimes, would allow the US to turn the page with honor and regain the moral high ground. ...

"But the end result has been to make genocide a political commodity, to be exploited by each outside institution, each outside power, in whichever way best fits its own interests.

"For the Cambodians, this is nothing new."

- Afterward, Pol Pot by Philip Short (published 2004, 14 years before the "genocide" verdict in 2018)

Viet Nam-Cambodia Joint Victory Commemorated (Viet Nam News | 5 Jan. 2019)

The use of ad hominem attacks against Cambodians as "racist" when we raise the Vietnamization of Cambodia

Think Cambodia during the decade-plus years of Vietnamese military occupation and how we were shut up from speaking about it because of the visceral reaction to the word "Yuon", the only word Cambodians had for "Vietnamese" until in an Orwellian twist of mind control, the word was manufactured to be racist during occupation (but only for the Cambodians, not for the Thai who used the same neutral word which either means "foreigners", Yavana, in Sanskrit when the Indians first met the Ionians, or Mongol/Yunnan). It was an effective, clever trick to keep attention on the horrors of the Khmer Rouge as the "New Communist driver replacing the Old" immediately began exterminating the population—700,000 deaths in 1979 alone according to the CIA—and populating Cambodia with its citizens. The 700,000 deaths and New Communists at the wheel drove many Cambodians into Thailand, including my relatives and me, that it caused the largest refugee flow the world had seen at that moment in time, causing the Old Communist driver, the Khmer Rouge along the Thai border, and non-communist resistance forces to fear for the emptying of Cambodia of Cambodians.

- Theary, 23 March 2019

Published Articles re Vietnamization - 7 Parts

អត្ថបទ បានបោះពុម្ភផ្សាយ អំពី វៀតណាមនីយកម្ម - ៧ ផ្នែក

1. Cambodia 1979-1984 (Genocides under Occupation, Jan. 7, Orwellian)

កម្ពុជា ១៩៧៩ - ១៩៨៤ (អំពើប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ ក្រោមការកាន់កាប់, ៧ ខែមករា, «បង​ធំ»)

2. Cambodia 1985-1990 (K5 Genocide, Vietnam Security Intelligence Monitoring My FB, Blacklisted)

កម្ពុជា ១៩៨៥ - ១៩៩០ (ឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្ម ប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ ក៥, ស៊ើបការណ៍សម្ងាត់ យួន ត្រួតពិនិត្យ ហ្វេសប៊ុកខ្ញុំ, បញ្ជីខ្មៅ)

3. Cambodia 1991-1999 (Paris Peace Accords)

កម្ពុជា ១៩៩១ - ១៩៩៩ (កិច្ចព្រមព្រៀង សន្តិភាព ប៉ារីស)

4. Cambodia 2000-Present (ECCC "Genocide" verdict)

កម្ពុជា ២០០០ - បច្ចុប្បន្ន (សាលក្រម «ឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្ម ប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍» នៃសាលាក្តី ខ្មែរក្រហម)

5. Vietnamization: Demographic, Military, By Province, Along Border, Economic

វៀតណាមនីយកម្ម៖ ប្រជាសាស្ត្រ, យោធា, តាមខេត្ត, តាមបណ្តោយព្រំដែន, សេដ្ឋកិច្ច

6. Vietnamization: China Responds, ប្រវត្តិសាស្រ្ត (ខេមរ ភាសា)

វៀតណាមនីយកម្ម៖ ចិនឆ្លើយតប, ប្រវត្តិសាស្រ្ត (ខេមរ ភាសា)

7. Vietnamization: Third-Party Spokespeople, Helen Jarvis, Ben Kiernan's Yale Genocide Program, "Yuon" Racism, Ad Hominen

វៀតណាមនីយកម្ម៖ អ្នកនាំពាក្យ ភាគីទីបី, ហេឡិន ចាវីស, កម្មវិធី ប្រឆាំង អំពើប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ របស់ បិន ឃឺននីន នៅសាកលវិទ្យាល័យ យ៉េល, ការប្រកាន់ពូជសាសន៍ «យួន», តក្កវិជ្ជា យោងតាម មនុស្ស ជាជាង ភាពត្រឹមត្រូវ នៃគំនិត

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