Paris Peace Accords 23 Oct. 1991

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Impressive NON-VIOLENT protests led by CNRP over the many months

Seen and heard on Ms. Theary C. Seng's Facebook accounts: 
www.facebook.com/theary.c.seng 

KI-Media Person of the Year 2011
(Note: KI Media is now Truth2Power Media)

What has not been given much ink in the traditional press is HOW IMPRESSIVE the CNRP has been in guiding the MASSIVE crowds of 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, ALLEGED by the CPP that it was 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.



2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:12 PM

    អរគុណ ធារី ដែលបាន ជួយការពារខ្មែរនឹងសឡាញ់ខ្មែរ....

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  2. Anonymous8:42 AM

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