Hanoi must grant self-government to the ethnic Khmer population of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region or force will be used, the US-based leader of a Khmer secessionist movement said on Monday.
Thach Sang, a Funcinpec parliamentarian and self-claimed leader of the recently formed Kampuchea Krom National Liberation Front, said his movement wants a peaceful transition of power to ethnic Khmers in southern Vietnam but was prepared to fight if that failed.
Cambodian military officials and parliamentarians said last week the group poses no military threat to Vietnam but Thach Sang and the KKNLF is under investigation.
A Cambodian police report on Thach Sang’s activities could lead to his expulsion from the National Assembly and US Embassy officials in Phnom Penh are also investigating the KKNLF’s threat to use force against Vietnam.
“This front is not to create instability in Cambodia or Kampuchea Krom,” Thach Sang said by telephone from the city of Lowell in the US state of Massachusetts.
“I created the front without armed forces at this time. But if the movement continues and Kampuchea Krom is not handed self governance, the front will become an armed force movement,” Thach Sang said.
“Right now we have no weapons, no ammunition but we have our will. All the 21 provinces in Kampuchea Krom are already prepared,” he said.
“Kampuchea Krom does not belong to people other than Cambodians.”
Home to a large population of ethnic Khmers, the territory referred to by many Cambodians as Kampuchea Krom engulfs much of the Mekong Delta region and has long been claimed as Cambodian territory.
Re-claiming the region has been a rallying point for several radical Cambodian nationalist movements, including the Khmer Rouge, who launched bloody incursions across the Vietnamese border during the 1975-1979 “killing fields” regime.
But the spotlight was again thrown on issue last month when more than 2,000 people gathered in Phnom Penh to protest the 53rd anniversary of the official ceding of the Mekong Delta region to Vietnamese control by the then-French colonial government.
Thach Sang said he was not afraid of losing his National Assembly seat or being arrested by US authorities who may view the front’s activities as contrary to Washington’s “war on terrorism.”
“If they want to withdraw my National Assembly position it will only be done by a small number of Cambodian leaders and I will welcome it,” he said.
“If the US government has clear eyes, a good brain and is clever [it will know] that we are doing it to help our people who are living in suffering and oppression.”
Thach Sang said he fears assassination in the US because of his views and will not return to Cambodia for fear of arrest. He said he was working full time to promote the issue of Kampuchea Krom and was being supported by Khmer Krom people living in the US.
Royalist party colleagues have both downplayed the KKNLF’s significance and criticized Thach Sang’s espousal of conflict with Vietnam, saying statements made in the US were damaging to the party, ethnic Khmers in Vietnam and Cambodians.
A royalist party member said on Monday that no decision has been made on Thach Sang’s status as a parliamentarian but Funcinpec Party Leader and National Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh has indicated he will make a decision soon.
“Prince Ranariddh said he would follow the Constitution and the internal party regulations of Funcinpec,” the parliamentarian said on condition of anonymity.
Kampuchea Krom advocacy and human rights organizations have distanced themselves from the KKNLF but have called on the government to recognize the ethnic Khmers’ claim to Cambodian citizenship.
Co-Minister of Interior Sar Kheng said in a statement released on Friday that ethnic Khmers wishing to settle in Cambodia must provide “official documents” to prove their ethnic identity to Cambodian authorities.
However, the California-based Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation—one of the largest overseas advocacy groups—called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to allow ethnic Khmers to “flee” to Cambodia without official Vietnamese documentation.
The federation also called on the government to invite the UN to investigate human rights abuses in Vietnam that had prompted the flight of ethnic Khmers to Cambodia.
Vietnamese Ambassador Nguyen Duy Hung last week branded as slanderous allegations of discrimination against ethnic Khmers in Vietnam. He said the claims were made by those intent on stoking instability in Vietnam.
Allegations of ethnic discrimination in the Mekong Delta follows the highly publicized flight last year of more than 1,000 Montagnards from Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
The Montagnards claimed they were victims of discrimination and religious persecution by Hanoi.
A military expert warned on Monday that radical statements made by overseas groups could test Hanoi’s patience and lead to a backlash in which ethnic Khmers “could get swept up in.”
Hanoi and Phnom Penh have cooperated in recent years to stamp out groups of mostly overseas Cambodians and Vietnamese who are bent on overthrowing both governments.
Feverently anti-communist, members of overseas Cambodian and Vietnamese groups fled to Western countries during the late 1960s and early 1970s as Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos fell to communism.
Several alleged members of the California-based, anti-Communist Free Vietnam Movement were secretly extradited from Cambodia to Vietnam in 1999.
The Cambodian government also arrested hundreds of suspected members of the California-based Cambodian Freedom Fighters following a bloody attack on government building in November 2000.
A US Embassy official said last week the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still investigating CFF leader Chhun Yasith—a Cambodian-American accountant based in Long Beach, California.
Human rights workers and several parliamentarians branded the CFF crackdown and the mass arrests of suspects a ploy by the government to intimidate political rivals.
