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The sign before the Vietnamese Catholic
church, written in Khmer, reads “The Lamb of God Factory Church,” in
relation to the community’s former location next to a nearby brick
factory.
Image Credit: Peter Ford
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Cambodia, Catholicism, and Cauliflower
The Diplomat | 14 March 2017
KIEN SVAY DISTRICT, CAMBODIA — Over a narrow cement bridge spanning
ponds of purple-flowering lilies lies the ethnically Vietnamese village
of Koh Pos Die Edth.
With the Mekong River to its back,
the village 45 minutes south of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh,
sandwiched on both sides by farmland that floods at the height of the
annual rainy season, consists of 40 or so modest two-story houses
crowded around a bright turquoise Catholic church.
The village of Koh Pos Die Edth, surrounded by farmland, with the Mekong River behind. Image by Peter Ford.
“I want to clarify, we are not
Christian, we are Catholic,” stressed 33-year-old primary school teacher
Kim Sophea. Despite her Khmer name, both of Sophea’s parents are
ethnically Vietnamese, and she is one of the mostly Vietnamese,
75,000-strong Catholic community living in Cambodia. The most recent
census data, from in 2013, found that 0.5 percent of Cambodia’s almost 15 million population identify as Christian, rising to 1.1 percent of urban areas.
“I was born in a Cambodian village,
and do actually have [Cambodian] ID, which makes life easier, and I also
speak Khmer well,” she said, explaining that unlike most of the village
she can find better paying work, and vote in the upcoming local and
national elections.
“I feel Cambodian, but living in this community, I also feel Vietnamese.”
Posters visible through house windows, the bible in the church, even the graffiti, is all in Vietnamese.
The
writing on the wall, in Vietnamese, announces that the play of football
is banned near the church and school. Image by Peter Ford.
“Before we were all fishermen, but
now we cannot make a living from this as the fish have gone. The men do
odd jobs such as making keys and laboring, while many of the women
collect recycling. We are surrounded by Cambodian-owned farms as we
don’t have any land. We could rent, I suppose, but no one knows how to
farm.”
Danger
The recent history of Vietnamese living in Cambodia is often painful.
French colonial influence between
1867 and 1953 brought with it the first major arrivals of Vietnamese
into the country, in the form of local administrators and rubber
plantation supervisors.
Portuguese Catholic missionary
efforts in 1555 had been unsuccessful in Cambodia, but had fared better
in Vietnam. With French support, the Catholic church’s status grew in
Cambodia, culminating in the completion of the Notre Dame Cathedral in
1962 — destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in 1976.
With a mostly Vietnamese
congregation, however, the situation for Cambodia’s Vietnamese
population, and by extension, its Catholic residents, became more
tenuous following independence.
The
houses in the village are simply-made from brick, cement and metal
sheeting, and lack the distinctive spirit houses found outside Buddhist
houses in Cambodia. Image by Peter Ford.
In 1970, General Lon Nol orchestrated
a coup against the then Prince Norodom Sihanouk, whose increasingly
anti-Vietnamese policies were further intensified.
Pogroms, mass expulsions, and killings took place across Cambodia, and
many Vietnamese were forced to flee south. On April 13, some 800
Vietnamese men were gunned down and by the end of the year, an estimated
7,000 Vietnamese Catholics were still living in Cambodia, down from
65,000 a year before.
“My whole family was chased away by
the authorities. I don’t know the reason why, but I was scared,”
remembered Sophea’s mother, Nguyen Yi Can, who was 16 at the time.
Born near Wat Krosar, on the banks of
the Mekong somewhere near her present home — she can’t remember its
exact location — she returned [it's as if it's the stock answer trained to be given by all Vietnamese who "returned"] in 1982, four years after the Vietnamese
army had entered Cambodia and quickly overthrown the Khmer Rouge
government.
The Khmer Rouge’s own attitude toward
the Vietnamese in Cambodia, and their actions against them (despite
owing much of their early funding and training to Vietnamese comrades),
has seen charges of genocide brought against the two most senior surviving leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan.
Not confident in her Khmer language skills, Nguyen deferred further questions to her daughter.
“We used to live close to the river
behind the brick factory over there,” Sophea said, gesturing to a lone
brick tower a kilometer south of the village.
“The owner let us live rent free but about 10 years ago the owner changed, and we had to move as we couldn’t afford rent.”
A Vietnamese Catholic priest living
the United States, whose name she could not remember, bought [how is this legally possible?] this small
piece of land for the community in 2005, and was instrumental in
building the church in 2014.
Officially named “The Lamb of God
Factory Church,” in relation to the community’s former location next to
the brick factory, locals usually just refer to it as the factory
church.
“In 2005 there were about 40
families, now it is 70 I think… and most attend the church, normally
about 100 each Sunday, and 30 come from around the area.”
“On big celebrations up to 400 people attend, coming from across Cambodia and also from Vietnam,” she said with pride.
School
teacher Kim Sophea standing in front of the church with some of her
students. Sophea is also volunteer caretaker of the church. Image by
Peter Ford.
Barriers
Villagers are poor but hardworking,
she said, and while they get on well with their Khmer neighbors, a lack
of Khmer language skills among the Vietnamese community has direct
negative effects.
“The older people do not speak much Khmer, some even none at all, and so they cannot find work outside of our community.”
The 2013 inter-census found that 0.42 percent of people in Cambodia speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue.
For the village’s children, however,
parents and community leaders stress the need to learn the national
language, going so far as to enforce a “Khmer only” language policy in
school lessons.
This emphasis on the importance of learning Khmer has also spread into the naming of children born in the community.
“It is funny how the Catholics in
Vietnam all use Western names, but here many choose to take Khmer ones
instead to help them integrate.”
Church
services take place each Sunday at 8 a.m., and feature about 130
families from the village and surrounds. Everything takes place in
Vietnamese. Image by Peter Ford.
There is only so much that the community can do though, as ethnically
Vietnamese children are not awarded birth certificates, and can
therefore only access public schools until grade 5.
Despite this, Sophea insisted that relations with the local Khmer population are good.
“Things have gotten better in the
last 10 years. No one has been deported from here, but in the Champa
area about 7 km away, there have been some deportations. That community
is even older than ours, but they don’t have any way to prove it.”
Of the almost 3,000 people deported from Cambodia in 2016, the vast majority were Vietnamese.
“When people are deported, they get
no support from Vietnam and have no relatives there, so most make their
way back to Cambodia. This is where they were born. People are scared,
but our leaders have good relationships with the local authorities and
so we get informed about possible raids and we get on well with
everyone.”
Harvest
Around the village, the cauliflower
harvest is in full swing, with each farm collecting some 2,500 kg, and
the fields are full of Khmer villagers.
“We all get on well. Just don’t call them ‘yuon’; they don’t like it,” said one, declining to give her name.
The term, while being the Khmer word
for Vietnam and Vietnamese, in recent years has taken on a more
derogatory connotation. Its frequent use by members of the opposition
has drawn criticism for perceived racist overtones, prompting former
Cambodian National Rescue Party leader Sam Rainsy to defend his continued use.
The specter of possible deportation
due to not having legal residency status means that Vietnamese
communities are close knit by necessity, a fact not lost on the
village’s Khmer neighbors.
“I appreciate how they support each
other as a community, much better than we do,” said Mao Long, who has
lived all of his 50-something years in the community.
“I don’t speak any Vietnamese, but we
are not mean to them, I have many friends from here and we often drink
rice wine together, and they make good food,” he said laughing.
Farmer
Mao Long has lived nearby his whole life, and often eats and drinks
with friends in the Vietnamese community. Image by Peter Ford.
He grows tomatoes, beans, and cauliflower on the land within sight of the church.
With Cambodia importing up to 400 tons of vegetables daily from its southern neighbor, locally grown produce fetches a premium price.
“Most people like to know their vegetables are grown here in Cambodia,” Long explained.
“And didn’t come from Vietnam.”
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