[Vietnamization] January 7 Criticism a Historical Reminder, Not Personal Attack

 

January 7 Criticism a Historical Reminder, Not Personal Attack

The Cambodia Daily | 16 January 2017

The article “No Prisoner Talks While Rainsy Bites, CPP Says” (January 12) seriously distorts the rationale behind my criticism of the government. Regarding my comment on the yearly celebration of January 7 by the CPP, I have not “insulted” anybody, contrary to the government’s allegation. As a matter of fact, I only referred to historical facts for the sake of objectivity and balance.

-Letter to the Editor-

It is important to offer a counter narrative to the CPP’s version of events regarding January 7, 1979 because those events constitute a most controversial raison d’etre for the regime.

Countless Cambodians and foreign historians are not satisfied with the CPP’s version of January 7, 1979 because it misses the following points:

• Vietnam’s secret (not only humanitarian) agenda when it decided to invade and occupy Cambodia.
• The communist Khmer Rouge would not have been able to come to power in 1975 (and to kill millions of people) without the support of communist Vietnam in the early 1970s.
• CPP leaders are not heroes as they pretend to be. They were installed in power by a foreign invading army. They were high-ranking Khmer Rouge apparatchiks or military commanders who fled to Vietnam only several years after Pol Pot had started to massively kill innocent people and they did so, not out of any moral conscience problem, but just to expediently escape Khmer Rouge internal purges. They inevitably became subservient to Cambodia’s very assertive eastern neighboring country.

Sam Rainsy

CNRP President