Composición y síntesis

With regard specifically to the Khmer Krom ethnic minority people, it is not only a lack of research that has led to considerable factual inaccuracy. Much of what is known about the Khmer Krom is disputed, because the facts surrounding the Khmer people’s presence in Vietnam have considerable political significance. For example, according to official Vietnamese statistics, there are a little more than one million Khmer people in Vietnam, the vast majority of whom live in the Mekong Delta. Khmer Krom leaders put the number at about ten million, and claim that another 1.5 million Vietnamese Khmer have now fled to Cambodia (UNPO, 2009a).

One of the most important controversies regarding the Khmer Krom relates to their history, particularly to the question of whether the Khmer Krom are the original inhabitants of the Mekong Delta, or whether they are immigrants to Vietnam. This problem is highly complicated, as there is very little historical evidence from the time in which the Mekong Delta region first became inhabited (Peang-Meth, 1991). What is clear, however, is that the lower reaches of the Mekong Delta were once part the Khmer Empire, which dominated South-East Asia for six hundred years before it fell into decline in the 15^th century (Coe & Cof, 1957).

The word “Khmer Krom” means lowland Khmer. The reference to the Khmer as southerners relates to the concept of the Khmer Krom as part of a vision of Cambodian lands that follows the territory of the former Khmer Empire.

The old imperial borders stretched from North to South along the Mekong River, including the Cambodian hill tribes, referred to as the “upland Khmer”;

the “Khmer Islam”, Muslims living in the middle reaches of the Mekong River;

and the Khmer Krom, most of whom live in what is now called Vietnam (Ovesen & Trankell, 2004). In Cambodia, the Khmer-inhabited part of the Mekong Delta is known as Kampuchea Krom, a Cambodian territory which they allege to have been unlawfully occupied by Vietnam since the 17^th century, after the fall of the Khmer Empire. Collective indignation about Vietnam’s occupation of Kampuchea Krom is an important part of Cambodian national identity, and the dispute over the lower Mekong Delta area is the main reason for the continued enmity between Cambodia and Vietnam (Clayton, 2006). Presumably, it is for this reason that Vietnamese people tend to refer to the Khmer minorities simply as “Khmer” rather than as

“Khmer Krom”. In order to save space, the shorter version “Khmer” will be used in this chapter, however, this is not meant to imply any political opinion about the current national borders.

Khmer people in the Mekong River Delta have frequently in the past formed nationalist movements, which aimed to reunite Kampuchea Krom with Cambodia, to recreate the old borders of the former Khmer Empire. The Vietnamese government is conscious of the possibility that a new Khmer nationalist movement may form at any time and therefore reacts strongly and aggressively to any expressions of discontent or nationalism among the Khmer ethnic minorities (HRW, 2009). Various rights groups and Khmer activists accuse both the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments of using violence to suppress the freedom of Khmer people to practise their religion and retain their language, culture and identity (UNPO, 2009b). Khmer groups frequently complain about alleged human rights abuses by the Vietnamese government against their people, including the torture and unlawful killing of prisoners of conscience. The Vietnamese government officially rejects all allegations of suppression, discrimination or restrictions of rights of ethnic

minority peoples. In various Vietnamese publications, such as the Communist Party newspaper, government representatives allege that foreign organisations, such as the Geneva-based Vietnam Human Rights Committee, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations, deliberately publish fabricated information about supposed Vietnamese human rights abuses ("Vietnam rejects false report on Khmer ethnic people," 2009;

Vietnam rejects Human Rights Watch’s fabrication," 2009). However, regardless of which side one chooses to believe, the steady stream of Vietnamese Khmer refugees seeking asylum in Cambodia and Thailand suggests that there are some problems.

To sum up, the political situation of the Khmer people is dominated by the perception that they form several distinct threats to Vietnam’s stability. First of all, they are a potential source of social unrest and a national security risk.

Secondly, they are a potential source of criticism against Vietnam’s economic policy. Thirdly, the perception of ethnic minorities as being separate from the Kinh people threatens to undermine the idea of Vietnam’s unity. Perceived as

‘Vietnam’s enemy from within’, the political uneasiness surrounding the Khmer people impedes their assimilation into Vietnamese society. Moreover, the fear of any discontent being expressions of nationalist tendencies has led to a repression of legitimate development concerns voiced by Khmer people, depriving them of a way to communicate their development needs and to contribute to solutions to their economic deprivation.

The tacit hostility between the ethnic Kinh and the Khmer minority people has also influenced public discourse. Khmer people are often described in culturally fundamentalist ways, with writers using primordial explanations for Khmer people’s economic marginalisation. In Farmers, agriculture and rural development in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, which only mentions the Khmer people once in its 200 pages, the vulnerability of the Khmer people is explained as being the result of the following causes: “W less access to information, low education, strong belief and tradition, less sensitivity to changes and a large percentage of them are poor.” (Nguyen Ngoc, 2006, p.

28) The circularity of this argument uncovers the way the author sees

poverty as part of Khmer identity. In a later chapter, Nguyen Ngoc emphasizes the characteristics of the majority ethnic group in the Delta, the Kinh people: “The personal characteristics of the Kinh people in the Mekong Delta are known as communal responsibility, self-control and confidence, creative dynamism, adventure, liberation and generosity, bravery and straightness, and value of equity [Emphasis in the original]” (Nguyen Ngoc, 2006, p. 193). The fact that such a blatantly racist statement could be published in Vietnam suggests that such attitudes may not be unusual and, in any case, demonstrates that such statements can be published unchallenged. The statement also lends credence to allegations by the Khmer people that they are discriminated against in Vietnam. In May 2009, thousands of Vietnamese Khmer people staged a demonstration in Geneva, alleging that they were the target of organised discrimination and expropriation by the Vietnamese government.