[Vietnamization] Responding to so-called foreign experts on Cambodia: Commentary by Theary C. Seng

Re: Ex-Prime Minister Pen Sovann dies at 80

Popular Cambodian politician Pen Sovann, a fierce critic of second Prime Minister Hun Sen, speaks to reporters at Phnom Penh’s international airport in 1997 before fleeing the country, in fear of his life. Matthew Lee/AFP

and related Pen Sovann, Former Prime Minister, Dead at 80;

Pen Sovann remembered as ‘principled’;

How Foreigners Get Cambodia Wrong (again and again)

 

Responding to so-called foreign experts on Cambodia

Commentary by Theary C. Seng

31 October 2016

“Hun Sen ‘reading the charges’ against Pen Sovann is ludicrous. Hun Sen did not yet have such an exalted position,” wrote historian Michael Vickery in 2005, describing Sovann as one of the least reliable Cambodian political figures for providing accurate accounts of his past.

[Theary C. Seng: Michael Vickery is beyond 'ludicrous'! Yes, this is the same Marxist Michael Vickery who couldn't believe any Cambodian -- called my great uncle and other refugees liars, then or in 2005. I'm once again stunned at the outright dismissal by so-called foreign experts on Cambodia for their ludicrous, outright wilful, creative, fictitious statements on Cambodia -- Marxists or otherwise.

[Re the Vickery's quote above: Remember at this time, Hun Sen was foreign minister propped up by Vietnam met daily with the Vietnamese ambassador in Phnom Penh to receive instructions from Hanoi, according to Johns Hopkins professor Stephen Morris who had rare access to Soviet archives to Vietnamese occupation in Cambodia.

[But not only a foe but a friend of democracy, rule of law and human rights like Evan Gottesman, a person I know and hung out with on several occasions in the 1990s, the author of “Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge,” outright dismissed the existence of the K5 genocide, as a matter of wilful opinion and not based on evidence, a great shame for a lawyer!, for he even acknowledges in the preface to his book (which is predominately a documentary review of) “minutes of meetings” that Vietnam allowed to be left behind. Whereas, “[m]any of the highest-level Party documents, in particular Politburo documents, are still inaccessible,” for “Vietnamese authorities took many Cambodian Communist Party documents to Vietnam in 1989, when they withdrew from the country.”

[Unsurprisingly, the book offers scant or no information on the K-5 genocide -- well, to the contrary, he outright dismissed its existence in one sentence! -- and other atrocities committed in the throes of occupation under this other closed communist power.

[Remember, Johns Hopkins Prof. Morris in Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia in its preface cautions us that “some of the important primary sources are compromised” and those “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.” 

See Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia -- PREFACE, INTRODUCTION and ch. 9 CONSEQUENCES OF THE VIETNAMESE INVASION 

[Evan Gottesman to his credit acknowledges Hun Sen 'there with Vietnamese authorities to read the charges, which included “narrow-minded nationalism” and a tax on Vietnamese airplanes' but demeans Sovann's patriotism as "narrow-minded nationalism" and the reason for the arrest for going against "a tax on Vietnamese airplanes" -- HUH? Didn't he remember his own preface caution?! Or read Prof. Morris's book which was published 5-6 years before his book?!]

For his part, Sovann said in his July 2002 interview that it was Hun Sen behind his arrest, and that the reason for his exile to Hanoi – which ended with the October 1991 Paris Peace Accords – was that he stood up to the Vietnamese officials who installed him.

“Hun Sen and Say Phouthang led Vietnamese troops and the A-21 [police unit] to arrest me,” Sovann said. “They surrounded my house with 12 tanks and about 900 troops. They handcuffed me, covered my face with a black cloth, threw me in a car and drove off.

“First, they said I created a free market, which was against communist guidelines. Second, they accused me of discrimination and standing as a nationalist for not wanting Vietnamese to live in Cambodia,” he said. “The third was that I did not respect the orders given by the Vietnamese.”