Cambodia: SIHANOUK's SANGKUM REASTRE NIYUM (5of8) [KH] скачать в хорошем качестве

Cambodia: SIHANOUK's SANGKUM REASTRE NIYUM (5of8) [KH]

In 1965 the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese started using Cambodia as a major conduit for supplies, building the Ho Chi Minh Trail through the eastern regions of the country. Sihanouk signed a deal with the NVA in 1965 to allow them to build bases in the eastern zone-he later justified his action in his memoirs by asserting that he could already see that the North would win the war. By the late 1960s, there were NVA bases in the country, and when the Khmer Rouge took up armed struggle in 1969, NVA troops assisted them. When Prince Sihanouk was ousted in 1970, there were too many Khmer compatriots and nationalists, who were locked up behind the bar as the prisoners during his Sangkum Reastre Niyum, were released by Lon Nol's Khmer Republic Regime after the coup as William Shawcross clearly tells us: Lon Nol released political prisoners on both the right and the left; a committee of intellectuals was formed to support him and the mass of students, wearied by the fear of imprisonment for criticising Sihanouk, applauded. "We were bored with him and humiliated by him." During Lon Nol's Republic Regime, In Tam became a crab-politician that Cambodian people like to call any one who always chops and change; for example, a crab always likes to eat human dung without thinking what they eat. In Tam, former Brevet General, Governor of Kompong Som, First Deputy Prime Minster, assemblyman, leader of the Democratic party. One NSSM paper pretenders to the leadership position. However, the regular army did not like him, and he was criticised for his "mandarin" attitude and for refusing to listen to subordinates' advice. In Tam had little experience in foreign affairs and had "a tendency to become emotional when frustrated. As these conclusions were being made in Washington, In Tam proposed himself for election as an alternative to President Lon Nol in the summer 1972 elections. The prince made clear his determination to see his supporters in power by appointing Dap Chhuon, the former rebel now administering Siem Reap as his personal fiefdom, to take charge of security for the elections. Barely literate and known for his brutality towards his enemies, Dap Chhuon was assisted by Lon Nol, Sam Sary and Kou Ruon, a man who was to earn a deservedly sinister reputation as the head of Sihanouk's secret police during the 1960s. In May 1968, Sihanouk allowed the official AKP news bulletin to record his triumphant claim that he had ordered 200 rebels summarily executed in the northeast. This was not the only public boast Sihanouk made, nor his only direct intervention to order executions. According to sources used by Ben Kiernan, which on Sihanouk's own orders 490 schoolteachers suspected of treason were thrown to their deaths from the mountainous heights of Bokor above the provincial capital of Kampot. Cambodia is Sihanouk' was once a common judgment, and for years it seemed a valid one. THE STUFF OF LEGEND WAS BEGINNING TO BE MADE: Sihanouk addressing appeals to the international community during flying visits to Montréal, Washington and Tokyo, Sihanouk in self-imposed "exile", first in Bangkok, then in Siem Reap. As a speaker he could grip an audience as he spoke in Khmer, French or English, or a combination of all three. None who saw and heard his performance during the visit to Cambodia by Indonesia's president Sukarno would ever forget the "double act" of these two charismatic orators. Sukarno spoke in English to an assembled audience of the curiously named royal Cambodian socialist youth. As Sukarno paused between ever more intense denunciations of "imperialism', Sihanouk translated extemporaneously in Khmer, his voice rising in pitch to match Sukarno's increasing passion. The climax to Sukarno's speech was a ringing eulogy of Sihanouk and his achievements. By the time of Sukarno's visit in 1959 Sihanouk was a well known international figure, the prince w ho had been king and who was the dominant politician in his country. But given the fickle nature of the international press, it seems certain that he would not have received so much attention if personal, particularly his amatory life had not been so colorful and if his ego had not been so ready to respond either fulsomely or fiercely to praise or criticism. To have taken many women were not a cause the virility for which Cambodian kings were traditionally admired. What did come to worry the official classes of Phnom Penh was the free rein Sihanouk later gave to his most favored consort, Monique, for the greed she and her family clique displayed in the late 1960s played an essential part in Sihanouk's overthrow in March 1970.