[Vietnamization] Vietnamese Here Since French Era, Says PM

Vietnamese Here Since French Era, Says PM

Khmer Times | 3 November 2016

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday stressed that ethnic Vietnamese have been living in Cambodia since the French colonial period and did not arrive only during his premiership.
 

Speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new road in Tbong [Tbaung] Khmum province, the prime minister said it was the French who had first encouraged Vietnamese laborers to come to Cambodia to work on the rubber plantations, eventually accounting for 70 percent of all workers in the industry.
 

“Vietnamese don’t just stay in Cambodia in this generation, Vietnamese people were brought by France, [but people] have always blamed me,” he said.
 

“There are no Vietnamese at Beoung Banhchhor lake, which at that time was full of Vietnamese. And the next generation blames only me.
 

“It’s the story, be careful with karma,” he warned.
 

The topic of Mr. Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s (CPP) ties with Vietnam has long been a point of attack for opposition parties. The Cambodia National Rescue Party, whose anti-Vietnamese statements have been called xenophobic, has long accused the CPP of being puppets of the Vietnamese and of allowing Vietnam to steal land along the long border shared by the two countries.
 

The CPP was put into power in 1979 by the Vietnamese government, which had invaded Cambodia and driven out the Khmer Rouge after persistent Cambodian incursions along the border.
 

The Khmer Rouge, which had received initial training and support from the North Vietnamese government, also continued a policy of deportation of ethnic Vietnamese that had existed prior to their 1975 coming to power.
 

Allegations of genocide by the Khmer Rouge against Vietnamese living in Cambodia forms part of the ongoing trial of Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, two senior Khmer Rouge leaders, at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh.
 

According to the book “The 13 Decades of Cambodia,” written by Mr. Hun Sen, “volunteer” Vietnamese soldiers started to be recalled to Vietnam by 1982 and had been completely withdrawn by 1989.
 

“Cambodia and Vietnam are the two elements which are indispensable,” he wrote.
 

Some 300,000 Vietnamese lived in Cambodia in the 1960s, social analyst Lao Mong Hai told Khmer Times yesterday, but by 1979, there were none left. That soon changed with the arrival of Khmer Rouge defectors such as Mr. Hun Sen, he said.
 

“The Vietnamese army came to occupy the country and also settlers came. Both the army and the settlers lived in Cambodia illegally, contrary to international law. When the army was taken back, the settlers had to go back as well, but we didn’t do this,” he said.
 

“We did not know who the army was and who the settlers. We had a mistake in the Paris Peace Agreement with this problem.”
 

The ongoing demarcation of the more than 1,100 kilometer border with Vietnam has been anything but smooth, and Mr. Hun Sen on Tuesday again called on governors of provinces along the border to enforce an earlier ban on renting land to Vietnamese nationals.
 

“Border demarcation will be faster and the leasing of farm land [to Vietnamese] should be stopped in all forms,” he said.
 

On Sunday, border committee chairman Var Kimhong told local media that Cambodia was powerless to halt unilateral construction taking place in contested border land in Rattanakiri province. Diplomatic messages begging construction to cease have been ignored, he said, that nothing but war would offer any recourse for Cambodia on the issue.
 

According to data from the Interior Ministry’s Immigration Department, as of August there were at least 160,872 immigrants from 25 countries living in Cambodia, of which 99.5 percent were Vietnamese.
 

While most of these migrants are in the country legally, of the almost 2,100 deportations from the country between January and June for migrants lacking correct documentation, more than 80 percent were Vietnamese.