Cambodian Bar Association is also under pressure or not, but whenever the lawyer or the Bar Association is not independent, how can this legal carrier can independently bring justice to Cambodians? Of course, according to our observation, many lawyers who have worked for the minors and opposition party members, have stopped their duty from those minors and opposition party members in order to obtain their Bar Association license. Mr.Choung Choungy’s decision to shave his head and practicing meditation this time is a puzzling question for all of us. He has been aware since the beginning that he will face with terrific obstacle ahead especially the discarding of his license from Bar Association.

Phnom Penh Post

Photo by: Heng Chivoan

Choung Choungy, a lawyer for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, has his head shaved at the party’s headquarters in Phnom Penh yesterday.

A lawyer for the Sam Rainsy Party yesterday began his meditation for justice campaign at the opposition party’s headquarters in the capital’s Meanchey district, after a Buddhist layman shaved his head and blessed him.

Dressed in white, the lawyer began meditating in the morning between placards calling on the Justice Ministry, prosecutors, lawyers and the Bar Association to defend justice.

“Lawyer Choung Choungy is focusing on clear sightedness, keeping silent and seeking tolerance and truth through meditation to liberate people from danger and obstacles,” layman Hing Phirom said.

“He is doing it for the nation.”

Late last month, Choung Choungy was charged with helping a prisoner escape jail. SRP lawmaker Chan Cheng was also stripped of his parliamentary immunity over the same case, after the Kandal provincial court charged the pair with helping Bantey Dek commune deputy chief Meas Peng escape jail in September.

Choung Choungy denied the charge, saying his client had never been formally arrested and as a result could not be legally imprisoned.

The lawyer had been reported to have disappeared last week, but then held a press conference the following day to announce he had evaded three attempts by police to arrest him. Police, however, said they had not even been looking for him.

Yesterday, he took aim at the legal system with slogans displayed on four posters placed around him. One called on judges and prosecutors to defend justice, while another read: “Good deeds receive good deeds. Bad deeds receive bad deeds. Present deeds decorate life for the future.”

Another urged the Ministry of Justice to remember to uphold social justice, while the fourth called on all Bar Association members to defend justice.

Hing Phirom said the meditation campaign would continue for one month, and that Choung Choungy would, in line with the practices of a monk, abstain from eating anything after lunch.

Cambodian Bar Association president Chiv Songhak said that Choung Choungy could be penalised or dismissed from the Bar Association if he was found to have breached its code.

“I don’t know whether it is a strike or not,” Chiv Songhak said, adding that the association’s disciplinary council had requested that he not embark on his campaign.

“We have to check the law, and if his activities are contrary to any point of the law, he could face one of four sanctions,” he said.

Those sanctions are verbal or written warnings, suspension for less than two years and disbarment.

The Khmer empire, from the ninth to the 15th century, obviously didn’t develop in isolation. But, looking at the map of Southeast Asia from a historical point of view, it’s nevertheless clear  that this political construction benefited from an unprecedented geopolitical quietness, at least until the 13th century.

The Vietnamese hadn’t even begun their march to the south, and the Thai state was  made up of embryonic chieftainships.

Yet the exception that proved the rule occurred. In the year 1177, guided by a Chinese deserter, the Cham fleet sailed the Mekong river upstream and from Phnom Penh, the Tonle Sap. They took Angkor by urprise, plundering and destroying the town.

They quickly withdrew and, from 1181, under the leadership of the future Jayavarman VII, the Khmers led the war against the kingdom of Champa, which was soon reduced to a vassal state of the Khmer empire.

Military recovery was one thing; spiritual recovery was something else. If the very heart of the empire could be so easily struck, there were spiritual causes that couldn’t be ignored.

Under the rule of Jayavarman VII, the Khmer empire was the theatre of the most dramatic religious shift in Khmer history as the new rel-igion became Mahayana Buddhism. It replaced the Hindu religion, which had proved unable to protect the empire.

Hindu gods still existed, but were submitted to the Mahayana Buddha. The temple of Angkor Wat was still there, but was no longer the axis of the world; that was now the Bayon.

Who were those Cham who were able to disrupt a mighty empire?

The beginning of a long history
IF we look at a map of peninsular and insular Southeast Asia, we notice no fewer than nine countries. But the borders between these countries don’t tell us anything about the region’s ethno-linguistic components.

The situation has become more and more complicated over the centuries. Let’s get back to the first centuries of the Common Era. Knowing that Chinese, Burmese, Lao and Thai are relatively new in the Southeast Asian landscape, the biggest part of the peninsula was peopled by Austro-Asiatic (or Mon Khmer) ethnic groups. This means that Khmer and related groups (Mon, Kui, Bahnar) were certainly the oldest inhabitants of the peninsula.

There is, however, an exception: a large blot in what is now central Vietnam where another ethno-linguistic group dominates.

This group, named Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian, is composed of a number of peoples such as Jarai, Rhade, Koho and Cham who speak closely related languages that have nothing to do with the Austro-Asiatic group.

This presence seems paradoxical. Austro-Asiatic languages are spoken on the mainland with the recent exception of Malay. As concerns Austronesian languages, they are spoken in the Pacific from Easter Island to Madagascar and from Borneo to Papua.

So, another Cham exception?  Yes and no, because we now know, thanks to the works of Bellwood and Thurgood that: “The Austro-nesian speaking group settled on the coast of Vietnam from an earlier homeland in perhaps Malaya or, more likely, Borneo, some time before 600 BC.”

From tribes to kingdom
AS for the presumably Khmer kingdom of Funan (1st – 7th century), our knowledge of Champa comes from Chinese sources that gave us an account of Lin Yi.

Lin Yi, also known by its Cham name Indrapura, was a Cham principality together with Amaravati, Vijaya, Kauthera and Panduranga, which stretched from the northern part of Annam (in central Vietnam) to northern Cochinchina (South Vietnam).

All these principalities were Indianised states, and as such inherited from India a state conception, art, religion (Hinduism and later Buddhism) and script. Cham script has the same origins as Khmer and Mon scripts.

By the fifth century, Champa (Lin Yi) was developed enough to raid Vietnamese settlements in what is now northern Vietnam with  war fleet of more than 100 ships.

Ancient Champa can be best understood through its artistic remnants from the fifth to the 15th century. We can still admire the temple of Po Nagar, near Nha Trang, or the site of Po Klaung Garai, near Phan Rang.

As the coast was heavily bombed during the Vietnam war, we often have to content ourselves with drawings and old photographs aken by early French scholars who were the first to study Cham civilisation.

Cham sandstone statuary can still be admired in the museum of Cham sculpture in Da Nang or in the Guimet museum in Paris.

Beautiful sculptures in the round, bas-relief and the most remarkable haut-relief of Southeast Asia are still here to show the greatness of Cham civilization. From an artistic point of view, in Southeast Asia these Cham masterpieces can only be compared to Khmer statues in the National museum of Phnom Penh.

The loss of a kingdom
NOWADAYS, more than 80,000 Cham people still live in central Vietnam. Many of them still speak the Cham language and still worship Hindu gods, but the land inhabited by their ancestors is now but a ghost kingdom.

They are what remain of a once-mighty kingdom that over 1000 years has faced the tenacity of the Vietnamese conquest.

The history of Champa can be read in parallel with the Vietnamese march to the south (Nam Tien).

In the early century of the Common Era, the first Vietnamese state (Dai Viet, which roughly corresponds to current Tonkin) had already reached prosperity through the dyking-up of the banks of the Red River.

The Vietnamese defeated the Chinese army in 938 AD, marking the end of 1000 years of Chinese domination; from then, a new independent Vietnamese state could launch its Nam Tien, which was soon to become the nightmare of Cham history.

The traditional warfare pattern in Southeast Asia generally aimed at conquering and dom-inating sparse populations, using their skills in irrigated rice fields, arts and crafts.

Nothing of the kind happened in the Vietnamese Nam Tien.

This Vietnamese expansion down south was intended as a populating colonisation. The process was well defined by Léopold Cadière in 1911: “As soon as they feel themselves able, they drive off the first inhabitants, whether in a peaceful manner, by taking over the land, clearing it and “planting the bamboo” _ the hedges that to this day still surround Annamese gardens and villages _ or by violence, then they fight with the Chams, destroying their temples and mutilatingr statues.”

In short, there was no room left for the Chams.

In 1471, Vijaya, the Cham capital was stormed by the Vietnamese. Therefore, it was not the end of Champa which was much more a confederation of principalities than a unified state. According to the Cham scholar Po Dharma, a lively Cham state existed in the south till 1835.

In parallel with the Vietnamese progression down south, the Cham fled overseas, to the isle of Hainan, to the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra and to Cambodia.

The early history of the Cham in Cambodia is far from being clear. To begin with, were the Cham Muslims at the time of their emigration to Cambodia? Scholars have pointed out evidence that Champa had contacts with the Muslim world as early as the 9th century. A group of Muslim Chams are still living in Central Vietnam although they are a minority; the majority still goes on worshipping Hindu religion. It is then plausible that prior to take refuge in Cambodia a part of the Cham population had already converted to Islam. The fact that today all the Cambodian Chams are Muslims led most of scholars to the conclusion that the conversion of the majority of Chams actually took place in Cambodia. The Chvea (litterally Javanese), a large Muslim population, were already living in Cambodia in the 15th century; their origin is unclear as nowadays they all speak Khmer and don’t have a language of their own. It is probably to their contact that the Chams converted to Islam.

The Cham were given by the Udong Monarchy (1601 – 1865) titles and land to settle.

After the fall of Vijaya, no less than 3 big migrations to Cambodia occurred: in 1692, 1796 and 1830 – 1835, each of them corresponding to a major Vietnamese push down south.

The Chams then deprived of their country were, as they often say, living in someone else’s house.

This doesn’t mean that they had renounced having their own state, as their history in Cambodia was punctuated with several attempts to build a Cham state. The last of these short-lived attempts took place during the reign of King Ang Duong (1847-1860) and was severely repressed.

Modern times
IT was at the time of the French protectorate (1863-1953) that modern Cham studies were pioneered in Vietnam and in Cambodia by scholars such as Aymonier and Cabaton who were also administrators. French protectorate also marks the beginning of a marginalisation of Cambodian Chams, who were not enthusiastic about sending their children to French schools. French schoolingwas broadly viewed as a threat to Muslim identity. Without the adequate degrees, the Chams could not take part in political and adminis- trative life.

Sihanouk’s years (1955-1970) defined a new attitude towards the Chams who were named “Khmer Islam”. The implications of this have been well perceived by William Collins when he wrote that:

“Anyone using the term “Khmer Islam” is aware that the Cham-Malay community is ethnically different from the Khmers. They speak languages related to Malay, they look abroad for their ancestral homeland. They vigorously maintain their distinctive identity, separate from Khmers, by professing Islam, which prohibits intermarriage with non-Muslims. This separation is reinforced by numerous ritual practices that contrast sharply with those of the Khmer majority community.

Again, the indelible difference implied by Islam makes assimilation to Khmer ethnicity an impossibility, which suggests that the term “Khmer Islam” points to a feature of the Cambodian nation, that it includes Muslims among its diverse peoples.

The Khmer republic (1970-1975) was the theatre for the emergence of new geopolitical conception in which the Chams happened to have an interesting part to play.

In the 1940s, the French authorities had promised to grant autonomy to the “Montagnards”, ethnic groups living in the highlands of Vietnam. There was even a secret project of independence. In such a case, what is today Vietnam would have been split into at least two parts: coastal Vietnam and highlands. Due to the first Indochinese conflict, which ended with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, these projects went unheeded.

The very idea was revived by the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO). Born in 1964, certainly with the support of the American Special Forces, FULRO has been playing for 10 years the part of a real army at the service of the South Vietnamese minorities. FULRO is a real ideological hodgepodge with demands for autonomy or independence, new borders…

Republican Cambodia displayed a real interest in the FULRO through his high ranking Cham officers and particularly General Les Kosem. Also known by his war name Po Nagar, this outstanding character had already become famous through the creation of the Champa Liberation Front (CLF) in 1950s. He had also been a key figure in the setting of the FULRO and in establishing official links between the Khmer Republic and Cham nationalists. For him the 2nd Indochinese conflict was an ideal opportunity to recreate a Cham state and in 1971 a Cham delegation representing the newly proclaimed Cham state was welcome in Phnom Penh in great pomp. At that time a new Khmer republican map was drawn with a new frontier between Cambodia (including Cochinchina) and Champa.

This last attempt to revive Champa was but short-lived. In April 17 1975, Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and the 3 years 9 months and 20 days which were going to follow (Democratic Kampuchea) are amongst the most terrifying episodes the 20th century can offer.

More than two million Cambodians lost their lives because of starvation, lack of medicines and executions. According to Craig Etcheson, execution is believed to have accounted for 30 to 50 per cent of the death toll.

The Khmer Rouge killed about 125,000 Chams, which amounts to half of the Cambodian Cham population. Most of scholars agree on these facts. What is subject to disagreement lies in the analysis of the perpetrators’ motives. Were the Chams peculiarly targeted as a religious or ethnic group to create an ethnic uniformity? In such a case, Democratic Kampuchea (DK) could be accused of having implemented genocide. A second interpretation is that DK implemented a typical communist mass terror and that the Cham didn’t suffer more than the other Cambodians. Cham lifestyle was targeted because it was seen as counter-revolutionary; Islam entered the category of reactionary religions and the links of solidarity within Cham communities were perceived by DK as early as 1973 as a threat for the new order it wanted to implement.

The People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) which followed DK after the Vietnamese armed intervention in 1978-1979 treated the Cham community with special tolerance. The emphasis on the sufferings of the Cham during DK was used by the PRK to stress the differences between the new “true” socialist regime from the radical DK approach to socialism. According to the text “L’Islam au Kampuchéa” published in 1987, the Chams would have entirely disappeared if DK had not been overthrown.

There is now a population of 300.000 Chams in Cambodia which roughly accounts for 70% of the total Cambodian Muslim population.

Cham identity in Cambodia today
Although there are Cham groups and cultural associations abroad which go on claiming the ancestral Cham territory in Vietnam, there are nowadays in Cambodia no more hopes about Champa as a geographical entity or a Cham state anymore.

Cham identity is nevertheless matter of controversy in Cambodia. The way Cham people practice Islam is a very interesting example. The Islam of the Cham population can be roughly divided into 2 groups.

On the one side, the Cham Sot who account for 10% of the Cham population (30.000 people) live in Kompong Chhnang, Pursat and Battambang provinces. Cham Sot or “pure Cham” is the way they call themselves as they are accused by the other groups to practice very heterodox traditions. They only pray on Friday as opposed to the normal 5 times a day prayer. They still go on writing with the former Cham script as opposed to Javi which is Arabic script originally adapted to write Malay. Other infringements have been noticed by the researcher Agnès De Feo: only initiated people can pray in the Mosque, the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) is not compulsory and can be dreamt up. They organize once a year in September a festival in their Udong Mosque to celebrate on the same day the Imam San they venerate like a saint and the birth of the Prophet; they consider themselves as the followers of Imam san.  The celebration of the birth of the prophet and saints is considered as heretic by wahhabism and Tabligh which have exerted a growing influence on Cambodian Cham’s Islam.

On the other side, there are the Chams who practice a more orthodox approach to Islam. This approach can’t be easily structured and must be considered as a continuum. There is of course a clear cut phenomenon which is the growing influence of Salafism with its Wahhabit variant and Tabligh. These two approaches do not differ on the essentials: the cause of the decadence of Islam is mainly due to the fact that the “true Islamic message” has been forgotten.

This “true Islamic message” is restricted to the religious practices of the time of the prophet and the famous pious followers (Salaf Salîh) and implies de facto to choose to overlook 14 centuries of Muslim history. In such a conception, there is no possibility of an approach to Islam which would tolerate the integration of local cultural practices; in clear, the frontier which separates the true religion from impiety goes through the Muslim community.

There is nevertheless another extremely interesting border line which hasn’t been given yet the attention it deserves. Before the war (1970), many Cham people had built their identity on a combination of Islam, Cham language and Cultural inheritance from Champa. In such an approach Islam is but a part of Cham Cultural identity.

Nowadays, there are still Cham people who define their identity through Cham culture even if this concept is often ill defined. But more and more Cham people tend now to rely only on Islam as the main source of identity.

An ethno-linguistic survey conducted in 3 Kampot region villages along the road from Kep to Kampot illustrates very well this fact. The first village centered on the Les Kosem Mosque doesn’t really differ from the others from point of view of religious practices.

The difference lies somewhere else: precisely in the fact that Cham language is still practiced in the first village and a number of families still teach it to their children. People talk proudly about their difference. In the 2 other villages, the trend is else as almost no one can speak the language.

In many cases, the only remnant of Cham language is curiously the use in a Khmer sentence of the Cham first person pronoun “lun” meaning “I, me”. In these villages, to be Cham will simply means in the end to be a Muslim.

No one can predict what is going to happen even in the near future. We have some reasons to be pessimistic about the survival of Cham language in Cambodia, not to talk about Cham culture which, as we have seen, can’t be easily defined in the present Cambodian situation. Language will of course survive in a number of islets but maybe not as an active component of Cham identity.

We can only hope that this exceptional linguistic, historical and cultural patrimony will remain alive and won’t be only reduced to a museum-like display of a dead civilisation

Dear Editor,

Reading your article “Three more sought in removal of post at Svay Rieng border” (January 4) broke my heart.

The villagers should be congratulated and taken care of by the government for their courage in publicly claiming their ownership of the rice paddies and denouncing the violation of their territory by Vietnamese authorities who have mismanaged the process of demarcating the border. Instead, as unbelievable as it may sound, these five farmers face a terrifying fate and the loss of their status as “good” citizens.

There have been different interpretations of this story within the media, but at the end of the day, no one can deny the truth: Cambodian people living along the borders with Thailand, Laos and Vietnam no longer dare voice their concerns about neighbouring countries encroaching on their territory and stealing their land for fear of reprisals.

On one hand, the government may have good reason to accuse opposition leader Sam Rainsy of acting as a provocateur in bringing news of Vietnam’s mismanagement of border posts to the public. But on the other hand, the government is following a course of action that could rob Cambodia of its strength as a nation and destroy the immunity of every parliamentarian.

At the grassroots level, Cambodian people living along the border will no longer dare to stand up and protest against the theft of their land by neighbouring countries. At the national level, parliamentarians – both government and opposition – will lose confidence in their abilities to serve the genuine interests of the people.

The government must evaluate the situation fairly if it is to effectively represent the nation’s interests. I would like to appeal to the government to restore the prowess of elected parliamentarians and allow them to fulfil their duties, which are more important than those of the lower court of Svay Rieng. I would also like to appeal to the government to drop all charges against the five farmers – Prak Chea, Neang Phally, Prak Koeun, Meas Srey and Prom Chea – and release them without condition.

Sophan Seng
University of Hawaii

Original reference: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2010010630653/National-news/a-plea-from-afar.html

Written by Sophan Seng Wednesday, 07 January 2009

Dear Editor,

It is a great privilege for me to write something about how the day of January 7 simply reflects the thought of a Cambodian. Of course, January 7 is still an ongoing controversial day. Some people see it as the day of foreign occupation over Cambodian sovereignty, but others see this day as their second life when Vietnamese troops toppled the Khmer Rouge regime.

However, to celebrate this day is not significantly representing Cambodians as the whole nation. It is only celebrated by the Cambodian People’s Party, which has been in power since the day of January 7, 1979.

In the past, the celebration of January 7 was likely to honour the victory over the Khmer Rouge regime and aimed to condemn, to ban the Khmer Rouge and make it impossible for them to control the country again, and, legally, to sentence them to death in absentia.

But in this year, the theme of the celebration after its 30 years in power, according to the news, is that the CPP will focus on increasing the awareness of sovereignty protection, economic development and leading Cambodia to enjoy a further level of advancement.

Hence, the January 7 day has significantly belonged to the CPP. It has not been generally accepted by the Cambodian people. Whatever theme each celebration expects to achieve, those themes still belong to the CPP, and it is truly reminding Cambodian people of the brutality, the foreign invasion and the nonstop division among Cambodian nationals.

I understand that the CPP holds this day as very important for their internal bond and achievement of pride, particularly the victory during each national election. This day might not work any longer to recall the brutality of the Khmer Rouge because by doing so, it might not be smart to pursue national unity, long-sighted leadership, national reconciliation and an advance of Cambodia to further achievement in the age of globalisation.

Sophan Seng
PhD student in political science
University of Hawaii at Manoa ]]> http://www.sophanseng.info/2009/01/letter-to-editor-the-phnom-penh-post/feed/ 0 http://www.sophanseng.info/2008/08/silent-behaviour/ http://www.sophanseng.info/2008/08/silent-behaviour/#comments Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:03:58 +0000 P&L http://www.sophanseng.info/?p=32 Written by Sophan Seng Thursday, 28 August 2008 Dear Editor,

Your recent news item titled “Good Karma for Sale” triggered my thoughts on the silent behavior of Cambodian people. Though the majority of the Cambodian population is Buddhist, they have only slightly learned Buddhist principles.

Over decades of social upheaval, Cambodian people seem to have fallen into a numb corner. This is a good chance for the Cambodian elite to take advantage of them. In term of economics, the Cambodian people are just enjoying the emergence of new buildings, roads and bridges. In term of politics, Cambodian people are satisfied with peace and social stability. This materialistic hard infrastructure blinds the Cambodian people to the all-important scene behind, the crucial soft infrastructure.

I don’t want to define current Cambodian politics as Abraham Kaplan said: “Politics is the redistribution of bandits.” But I prefer Gergen’s political thought: “A politician is a person who projects, motivates and rationalises the public for personal gain”.  World academic scholars have observed and concluded that many so-called authoritarian countries have adapted their strategies to receive the ideas of good governance, decentralisation and transparency, as well as to liberalise their national economics, with the intent of extending their power.

It makes sense for post-conflict Cambodian society to appreciate peace, stability, new roads paved, new schools and temples built, and modern cities urbanized. Generally, Cambodian people including Buddhist monks regard political leaders as the well-born persons who can legitimately own the power and wealth they have. Very often, they will not hesitate to beg them for donation. Very intelligent Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has never hesitated to utter his political rhetoric “culture of sharing”. Of course, this is the right time for political leaders to pursue this rhetoric.

Buddha addressed the way to go about donations in three thoughtful stages in order to plant wisdom into his audience. Firstly, concentrate on the right giver, secondly concentrate on the right receiver, and thirdly concentrate on the right material given. Significantly, the right material has not been given, in the same way as the crucial soft infrastructure has always been hidden.

For the long-term future and sustainable development, Cambodia should pursue the principle of every Cambodian citizen being offered the chance to get rid of this silent behavior, and political leaders should share the wisdom of reducing personal gain for the sake of collective national interests. Though the boat can move directly to the destination by a boat-hooker (leader), but without the competent boat-paddlers (peoples), the boat will inevitably be sunk.

Sophan Seng
Ph.D student of political science
University of Hawaii at Manoa

Original Source: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2008082821417/National-news/Silent-behaviour.html ]]> http://www.sophanseng.info/2008/08/silent-behaviour/feed/ 0