[Demographic Vietnamization: Military, Criminal Elements] Undocumented immigrants polluting the Tonle Sap

ផ្ទះបណ្ដែតទឹក នៅតាមបណ្ដោយ ទន្លេសាប ដែលភាគច្រេីន ជាអ្នកមាន គុណសម្តេច តេជោ​ នៃយើង​ -- យួន

- Chham Chhany

Demographic Vietnamization, undocumented immigrants polluting the Tonle Sap

Theary C. Seng

In Cambodian history -- modern (within living memory) and prior -- Vietnam has swallowed swathes of Cambodian territory (e.g. 21 provinces of Kampuchea Krom that make up present-day southern Vietnam/the Mekong Delta hardly 70 years ago) first by flooding Cambodian territory with its CITIZENS followed by MILITARY takeover/enforcement. But since the MILITARY invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam in Dec. 1978 followed by 10 years of military occupation, the process has been simultaneous and reversed -- military followed immediately and since by Vietnamese citizens -- with a blueprint to flood the south and remaining territory of Cambodia with 10 million Vietnamese by the year 2000, mainly their most vulnerables and undesirables, including the criminal elements. (That was 17 years ago.) Hence the culture of prostitution, beginning with the UNTAC era in 1991, with the occupying Vietnamese military and Hun Sen regime trafficking Vietnamese girls and women --already part of the culture during the Vietnam War with the US troops stationed in South Vietnam -- to satisfy the libido of 24,000 men from around the world paid handsomely in UN salary in a country that had just been devastated by the monsoonal downpour of US bombs at 500,000 TONS during unrelenting 4 years, followed almost immediately by another 4 years of KR mass crimes, and then the military invasion and 10-year occupation. Prostitution is the oldest profession and exists everywhere since time immemorial, including during pre-KR Cambodia, but not the CULTURE that is now identified with "Khmer" society. The initial population of trafficked Vietnamese girls and women over the years has also absorbed the once more reserved Cambodian girls and women.

Recently, I had a conversation with an in-law of the Huns who had just visited the disputed Koh Tral and a smaller nearby island that is undisputed as Cambodian. But that smaller island is now too populated with illegal Vietnamese citizens and patrolled by the Vietnamese military.

References:

Every Day in Cambodia

CNN | 23 March 2014

Mira Sorvino (5:45): Many are sold as virgins by their own parents. As we walked along the dirt road, Don points out a table of men playing cards.  He say they're there every day.

Don Brewster (5:52):  Instead of caring for their family or working, they sit there every day gambling, drinking all day because they traffic kids, including their own.

Mira: Their own?  They traffic their own children?

Don: Others, not just their own. ... They think they're untouchable.

Mira:  Do they even speak English?

Don: No, no.  Most of them speak Vietnamese.

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CNN, March 2014

Svay Pak, a dusty shantytown on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, is at the heart of this exploitative trade.

As one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in one of Asia's poorest countries – nearly half the population lives on less than $2 per day -- the poverty in the settlement is overwhelming. The residents are mostly undocumented Vietnamese migrants, many of whom live in ramshackle houseboats on the murky Tonle Sap River, eking out a living farming fish in nets tethered to their homes.

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Demographic Vietnamization