Vietnam’s nationalist tinderbox

Despite Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 20-year crusade to appease Vietnamese territorial demands, all while suppressing widespread indignation at home over the concessions, a quiet storm of discontent continues to brew over the historically Cambodian Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, home to more than one million ethnic Khmer Krom. With the help of a small but vocal Western diaspora, the “Khmer from below” (if we translate from the Vietnamese) have grown increasingly savvy in voicing their nationalist demands, which range from re-unification with Cambodia to full independence.

Last Wednesday, in anticipation of a visit by Vietnam’s president, Nguyen Minh Triet, about 50 Buddhist monks staged a rare public protest near the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia. The monks’ immediate concern was with Hanoi’s alleged defrocking of dissident monks around the Mekong Delta. The Cambodia Daily reports:

Son Hai, a 26-year-old monk who claimed he recently fled Vietnam, said the monks timed their protest with the president’s two-day visit to attract maximum attention. ‘We want to meet [Nguyen Minh Triet] face-to-face and ask him to stop defrocking monks and pressuring the Khmer Kampuchea Krom,’ he said.”

Hanoi’s efforts to “Vietnamize” the Khmer Krom have long alarmed human rights groups and are the subject of Rebecca Sommer’s widely screened 2006 documentary, “Eliminated without Bleeding.”