Posted at: khmerkrom.net
The Khmer-Krom people living abroad, especially in the United States, have their own reason to celebrate both the Fourth of July 2009—the American National Independence Day—and the Freedom Day of Tim Sakhorn. By the way, who is he?
Venerable Tim Sakhorn, prior to his capture by the Vietnamese Government in June 2007, was “Nobody”—an ordinary local Buddhist monk, not well known at all, at his temple in North Phnom Denh Village, Kirivong District, Takeo Province, Cambodia. During the past two years of his survival through extremely severe hardship in the Vietnamese prison, including physical and mental tortures, as well as his dangerous journey to escape from Vietnam to Cambodia and Thailand before being accepted for a special resettlement in Sweden under the political asylum program, Tim Sakhorn has become “Somebody”—the kind of “Khmer-Krom’s Dalai Lama” who is symbolizing as one of our Khmer-Krom’s national heroes in this modern time.
His name has been recognized in the international spotlights, from the Internet search engine websites, such as the Google.com and Yahoo.com, to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Congress, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the European Parliament, and the Transnational Radical Party (TRP) in Italy.
The international press/news media and other major radio broadcasting programs have been constantly keeping the world informed about the current situation of Tim Sakhorn during his hardship, among them the Radio Free Asia/Khmer Services (RFA), Voice of America/Khmer Program (VOA), the Voice of Khmer-Krom (VOKK), the Radio France International (RFI), the radio broadcasting service in Australia, the Beehive Radio Program of Mr. Mam Sonando, and the Asia Times Magazine. The documentary film produced by Ms. Rebecca Sommer, entitled “Eliminated Without Bleeding”, was clearly illustrated about the atrocity committed by the Vietnamese Communist Government against the Khmer-Krom people.
The Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) which advocate for the respects for human rights and religious freedom have also been very helpful to the Khmer-Krom’s causes, among them the Human Rights Watch (HRW)--a well-admired Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)—which recently published a book about Khmer-Kroms entitled “Vietnam on the Margins: Rights Abuses of Ethnic Khmer in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta”.
Two other important individuals who are in charge of the Cambodian NGOs in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, who have been working tirelessly to advocate the human rights for the Khmer-Kroms are greatly appreciated. They are Dr. Kek Galabru who is the president of the Cambodia League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and Mr. Ang Chanrith, presently serving as the Executive Director of the Khmer Kampuchea-Krom Human Rights Defense Association. Why Venerable Tim Sakhorn has gained a lot of sympathy from the world community?
It was the Vietnamese government’s secret services agents with a full collaboration from a small group of top ranking Cambodian Buddhist monks under an order from the Hanoi-backed Great Patriarch Tep Vong who arrested Venerable Tim Sakhorn, defrocked him, and deported him to be imprisoned in Vietnam.
One of Tep Vong’s top monk cadres, who engineered Venerable Tim Sakhorn’s arrest, was Venerable Long Kim Leang. According to Tim Sakhorn who already arrived in Sweden on July 4th 2009, Long Kim Leang was the one who directly stripped off his frock when he refused to be unjustly defrocked. Tep Vong and his band accused Venerable Tim Sakhorn of undermining the Cambodia-Vietnam’s relations. The Vietnamese judge, on the other hand, sentenced Tim Sakhorn for one year of imprisonment. Both of Tep Vong and the Vietnamese Communist government were lying to their teeth regarding Venerable Tim Sakhorn’s matter.
As a matter of fact, Venerable Tim Sakhorn was just a Good Samaritan with a true compassion to help the poor and needy Khmer-Krom refugees who escaped from the Communist repressions in Vietnam. As an Abbot of his temple, Venerable Tim Sakhorn provided his pagoda as a sanctuary place for these refugees to stay temporarily and gave them foods as well as other necessary assistance before these people could find other means to live on their own.
His monastery is located just less than a few miles from the border of Vietnam at the province of An Giang and this monk had never crossed the boundary into that country at all. Tim Sakhorn is a former Khmer-Krom refugee who fled to Takeo Province, Cambodia in 1978 from the Vietnamese government’s oppression in his hometown in Svay Tong District (Huyen Tri Ton), Mot Chrouk Province (used to be Chau Doc and is presently changed to An Giang Province in Vietnamese). Who are these Khmer-Krom people?
Khmer-Krom people are the Indigenous Peoples who have been living on their ancestral lands in Kampuchea-Krom which is now known as southern Vietnam for thousands of years. Presently, this most fertile region is the major rice basket of Vietnam, making this country to become the second biggest rice exporter in the world, next to Thailand.
During nearly a century of occupation in Indochina from 1863 to 1954, the French colonial power ceded Kampuchea-Krom to Vietnam on the 4th of June 1949 without any prior consultation with the Cambodian government or a permission from the Khmer-Krom populations at all. There were countless atrocities committed by the Vietnamese governments of all regimes through their secret ethnic cleansing policies against the Khmer-Krom.
During the American involvement in the Vietnam War, so many Khmer-Krom people were severely suffered by the atrocity and ethnic cleansing policy committed against them by the Vietnamese Communist insurgency and the Ngo Dinh Diem regime as well as other subsequent Saigon Governments. Being caught between the rocks and the hard places, so many Khmer-Krom people voluntarily served in the U.S. Army Special Forces to fight against the Communist Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Armies (VC/NVA).
monksRight image: Long Kim Leang was leading his “pro-Communist Vietnamese” monks to oppress the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks Like the Montagnard Hill Tribes in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and the Hmong Hill Tribes in Laos, significant numbers of Khmer-Krom people were specially selected to operate in top secret missions behind the enemy’s lines along the infamous Ho-Chi-Minh Trails in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. These Khmer-Krom people fought bravely, courageously, daringly, and loyally side by side with their American commanding officers of the elite U.S. Green Berets against the out-numbered, out-gunned, and well-trained VC/NVA in the most inhospitable environment in the triple canopy jungles of those Ho-Chi-Minh Trails.
After the complete withdrawal of the American troops from South Vietnam and the subsequent fall of that country into the Communist occupation in April 1975, the situation regarding the Khmer-Krom holocaust became worst. The Hanoi regime began to intensify their oppression to eliminate the Khmer-Krom race, especially to seek revenges against these poor indigenous populations for their collaborations and loyalties with the U.S. Special Forces during the war.
At the present time, even after nearly two decades of U.S.-Vietnam normalized relationship, Hanoi still continues to oppress the Khmer-Krom through their tremendous human rights violations, religious persecutions, confiscations of their ancestral lands, and other socio-economic deprivations. The Khmer-Krom indigenous peoples are not allowed to learn their own language and history in public schools or to freely practice their Theravada Buddhism without the interference and strict control of the Vietnamese government. When Khmer-Krom people stood up for their rights, the Vietnamese Communist authorities arrested these poor people, imprisoned, tortured, and executed them. These ethnic cleansing policies as mentioned in the above have secretly become one of Vietnam’s grand strategies, regardless of its political or ideological consideration. Why Tim Sakhorn and other Khmer Krom refugees have to escape from Vietnam to Thailand via Cambodia?
The UNHCR should do more to protect the Khmer-Krom refugees in Bangkok from being arrested and deported back to Cambodia by the Thai government. What was the major reason of the Khmer-Krom’s recent escape to Thailand?
On 8 February 2007, approximately two hundred Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks in Soc Trang province of Vietnam organized a peaceful demonstration to demand religious freedom. Instead of solving this problem non-violently, the Vietnamese government cracked down on these Khmer-Krom protesters. The police arrested, defrocked, and imprisoned some of the monks whom they considered of leading this peaceful demonstration. Other Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks who were fearful for their safety regarding this repression escaped to Cambodia.
Unfortunately, there is a double discrepancy in Cambodia by the Ministry of Interior regarding their handling of the Khmer-Krom refugee situation. First, the UNHCR refused to grant the refugee status for these Khmer-Krom people, claiming that according to the Cambodian constitution, any Khmer-Krom who escaped from Vietnam to Cambodia will be automatically given the full Cambodian citizenship. So, the UNHCR could not accept the Khmer refugees in their Cambodian homeland.
But the Cambodian Ministry of Interior which oversees many important aspects of the Cambodian domestic affairs including the immigration, local administration, and internal securities has never issued the official document recognizing the legitimacy of these Khmer-Krom people as the Cambodian citizenship, such as the birth certificate, national identification card, the rights to attend public school, to work and to vote. As a result these Khmer-Krom people became illegal aliens in Cambodia resulting in their inability to find employment, enrolling in schools, have the rights to vote, or to obtain the Cambodian passport. In contrast, the same Cambodian Ministry of Interior secretly granted the full Cambodian citizenship to almost all of the Vietnamese who are able to migrate freely into Cambodia by issuing them the above mentioned government document to legitimize their status.
Subsequently, to express their support and sympathy for the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks who were arrested and imprisoned in Vietnam, the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks in Cambodia organized a peaceful protest in front of the Vietnamese Embassy in Phnom Penh to demand the release their fellow Buddhist monks. Unfortunately, the Cambodian Ministry of Interior ordered the Police and even the Cambodian Buddhist monks to violently attack these peaceful protesters. Again, Venerable Long Kim Leang, was among the Cambodian high ranking Buddhist monks receiving order from the Hanoi puppet monk—the Great Patriarch Tep Vong-- who ordered other monks under his command to crack down on these Khmer-Krom monks, making this violent chaos look like the fighting between the monks and the monks.
On May 30, 2009, Mr. Huynh Ba who is a Khmer-Krom activist for the land rights was also arrested by the Vietnamese authority. Since then, the Vietnamese government has rejected the request of Mr. Huynh Ba’s family to visit him inside a prison as well as not to give him a fair trial. His family, from the day of his arrest until the present time, has been kept in the dark by the Vietnamese Communist authority from learning about the health condition and the well being of Mr. Huynh Ba.
By stealing the ancestral lands of the Indigenous Khmer-Krom Peoples in Kampuchea-Krom, which is Vietnam’s main rice basket, making this country to become the world’s second biggest rice exporter, millions of our populations are starving and are living in poverty. Besides that, while Vietnam is receiving billions of dollars from digging crude oils on the Khmer-Krom’s ancestral sea near O-Cap (Vung Tau) province, the Indigenous Khmer-Krom Peoples are getting nothing from that benefit.
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