Hun ManetSun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our SmugMug site.
Hun Manet 

Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our SmugMug site.

LOWELL -- A protest will be held Tuesday evening outside City Hall to oppose a scheduled visit to Lowell next month by the oldest son of the Cambodian prime minister.
The planned American tour by Hun Manet, a lieutenant general in the Cambodian military, has already brought so much criticism in another large Cambodian community in California that Manet has reportedly decided to skip a planned parade there.

Lowell's Cambodian population is second in the United States to only Long Beach, Calif., and the first demonstration is scheduled here for 6 p.m. Tuesday. It will take place just before the City Council meeting, during which a resident, Champa Pang, has requested to speak to the council about Manet's visit.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his family are controversial for the prime minister's human-rights record, and Cambodians in America have never been shy about voicing their complaints about politics back home. Sen is a former Khmer Rouge commander, and has been called a corrupt dictator.

This time, it is the planned visit from Manet in Lowell April 16 and 17 that has angered many in the community. There is speculation that Manet, who was educated at the U.S. Military Academy, is his father's heir apparent.

Manet is scheduled to mark the Cambodian New Year while in Lowell, a visit that includes meeting with Mayor Edward Kennedy, U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas, and a talk at the Pailin City restaurant, a landmark in Lowell's Cambodia Town 

In Long Beach last week, hundreds of protesters rallied outside a City Council meeting to call for city officials to keep Manet out of an April 10 Cambodian New Year Parade there. The council did not take a vote on the matter but several councilors said they would not attend, according to the Long Beach newspaper, the Press-Telegram.

A Cambodian newspaper, the Phnom Penh Post, reported online Monday that Manet would not attend the Long Beach event.

"As a conscientious child of Cambodia, I don't want to see turbid feelings and division between Khmer and Khmer and, particularly, I want to avoid any possible violence... during the parade that would damage the interests of the nation; [therefore] my team and I decided not to attend the parade," the newspaper quoted Manet as saying.

"It is not time to show muscles against each other, which shows divisions among Khmers."