Ceremony Gives Prince Fresh Start in New Year

siem reap – Strolling out of Angkor Wat Saturday, Prince Norodom Ranariddh stopped to chat with a family of Australian tourists.

The prince had just been the guest of honor at a special boung soeun—a Khmer New Year ceremony designed to wash away bad karma of old—but the past stayed on his mind.

“Before,” Prince Ranariddh told the Australian family, sweeping his arm up towards the temple’s arched and carved ceilings, “all of this fortress was covered with gold leaf.”

The conversation then slid into Cambodia’s other past: Civil wars, foreign bombings, genocide.

“It’s true we’ve suffered a lot,” the prince said.

Modern horrors blurring and blinding past golden ages—it’s a theme in Cambodian history, and it was a theme at Angkor Wat Saturday.

Kim Chea Hung, 49, and his wife, Kim Siv, also 49, survived the Khmer Rouge and have lived in Paris ever since.

This was only their second trip back to their homeland in the last 20 years.

“I am happy to see my family,” Kim Chea Hung said, whispering under the Khmer music and Ap­sara dancers performing in the temple shrine, “but I have much pain for those who live here.”

The struggle to move on and to build again has defined Cambo­dian life and politics for the last two decades. Kim Siv, who like her husband works with computers, still has hope.

“It’s very different now” from their last visit in 1994, she said, adding that in some ways, she feels more connected to Cam­bodia now than she has in the past two decades of living abroad. “Because of the Internet, we all have a lot of information about the world,” she said.

Saturday’s cleansing ceremony came at Prince Ranariddh’s special request, Ministry of Planning Secretary of State Lay Prohos said.

“This is very special for his Royal Highness. This is very personal,” Lay Prohos said. “It’s closing a chapter of the past.”

A nun in Battambang claimed to have had a vision and sent word to Prince Ranariddh that he needed the ritual to repair himself, his Funcinpec political party, and his country, Lay Prohos said. He said the boung soeun will help the prince “beat all his enemies, ri­vals and those who op­pose him.”

That will not be easy.

Funcinpec has been torn by in­ternal dissent after the ruling CPP crushed the royalists in the Feb 3 commune council elections. Longtime Funcinpec activists have been demanding an internal shakeup, including the firing of party Steering Committee Chai­r­man You Hockry.

Speaking after the ceremony, Prince Ranariddh again distanced himself from the infighting. “You Hockry is an internal problem with two groups in the party,” the prince said. “It has to be re­solved by the parties, not by me.”

Funcinpec remains strong and will run strong in next year’s national elections, according to Prince Ranariddh.

“Oh, sure, we’ll be fine,” he said. “We cannot compare the gen­­eral elections to the commune council elections.”

Cambodian politics were not on the mind of Stuart Johnston, one of the tourists to whom the prince spoke after the ceremony.  While not certain about the powers of the ceremony, the retired lawyer from Canberra, Australia,  said he shared the hope that Cam­­bodia could escape from from  its gory past.

“It’s a wonderful country,” Johnston said. “As the prince said, it should now be known for its beauty and not for the killing fields.”

Whether that happens is up to historians, Kim Siv said.

Unlike her husband, her feelings about the country remain unchanged.

“I love Cambodia. It’s my country,” she said. “In Paris, it’s nice, but this is my country.”

 

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