The Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation has called on ethnic Khmer communities in Vietnam to exercise their fundamental freedoms in a peaceful effort to end what it describes as decades of Vietnamese colonial rule and to build a future rooted in freedom, justice, and self-determination.
In a statement issued today, the Federation announced that it will mark what it calls the “76th Anniversary of Kampuchea Krom under Vietnamese Colonialism” with a commemoration on Wednesday. The event is scheduled to take place at the Federation’s human rights and development center in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district.
According to the statement, the ceremony aims to recall what the group describes as historical injustice, referring to the 1949 handover of Kampuchea Krom by French colonial authorities to the Vietnamese government under Emperor Bảo Đại. The Federation says this transfer occurred without consultation or consent from the Khmer population.
It claims that over the past 76 years, ethnic Khmers in the region have endured the erosion of their autonomy, identity, and basic rights. Allegations include systematic discrimination, suppression of cultural expression, and even attempts at ethnic erasure.
The group is appealing to the international community, especially member states of the United Nations, to pressure the Vietnamese government to immediately release detained Khmer Krom human rights defenders. They specifically cite six ethnic Khmer civil society leaders and six human rights activists reportedly imprisoned by Vietnamese authorities.
Yeang Sothearin, chairman of the Public Affairs Committee of the Khmer Krom Youth Committee, told The Cambodia Daily that the commemoration represents not only historical remembrance but also ongoing suffering among Khmer families who, in his words, continue to live under foreign domination.
He added that since 1975, when southern Vietnam came under communist rule, Khmer Krom communities have faced severe repression including arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings, torture, and restrictions on religious freedom, language education, and historical study.
On June 04, 1949, the French National Assembly approved the transfer of Cochinchina, also known to many Khmers as Kampuchea Krom, to Vietnamese administration, despite Cambodia’s status at the time as a French protectorate. The decision, made without royal assent, involved 21 provinces, 2 islands, and 1 deep-sea port, covering nearly 67,700 square kilometers, roughly half the area of present-day Cambodia.
Since then, all of those former Khmer provinces have been renamed in Vietnamese.
