It’s disappointing when a journalist’s general knowledge extends a decade at most. A few weeks ago, a reporter from the Phnom Penh Post suggested that the “Spring Movement” of Cambodia’s exiled political opposition “may refer to the Arab Spring series of anti-government protests and uprisings.” Whether this was ignorance or intentionally disparaging is hard to tell. The article, after all, was an uncritical recap of a roundtable on “Color Revolutions and the Evolving Global Order” organized by the Royal Academy of Cambodia’s International Relations Institute (IRIC) earlier this month.
Roundtable, one says: actually more of a pissing contest between “academics” to see who could better recite the government’s talking points. Kin Phea, the IRIC’s director general, probably sprayed the highest. The “danger of regime change in Cambodia in the name of democracy is real and true,” he stated. “Fortunately, these conspiracy tactics have been crushed and such attempts have been prevented.”
In full: https://thediplomat.com/2024/12/whos-afraid-of-a-cambodia-spring/
