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marc
Forum Admin
Cambodia
1266 Posts |
 Posted - 28/09/2005 : 03:35:57
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24-09-05
[url]http://www.wpmi.com/news/world/story.aspx?content_id=7B3F43EE-4C45-4373-B639-9492EC73EDD4[/url]
AP's Bangkok bureau chief, Denis D. Gray published his epitaph to the ailing King-Father. "King, clown, prisoner, statesman, political escape artist" he depicts Sihanouk.
Although pretty correct in painting the prince's SRN regime, the article oversimplifies the policies of and surrounding the Vietnam war, especially where it claims that "Sihanouk had sided with the Khmer Rouge", a move Gray says implicates him in the deaths of at least 1.7 million of his countrymen through executions, disease and slave labour.
This depiction is a grave misinterpretation of the facts. But besides this historical prejudice, the article does the King-Father justice, describing both the strong and the weaker sides of His Monarchy.
"Sihanouk's ouster by pro-American rightists in a 1970 coup was welcomed by Washington because it removed a geopolitical handicap it faced in fighting the communists in neighbouring Vietnam." Gray says about the Lon Nol coup that set off the Cambodian tragedy, short of admitting that the coup was a CIA plot to destabilise the country. ...and destabilising the country is what it did.
I know: when you mention to cite CIA operations, you risk sounding paranoid. But these 'covert' operations, now of course no longer practiced, were very real in those times. They have contributed as a significant factor to the cruelty after the take-over. Paranoia for CIA and Vietnamese agents were based on realities before the take-over. The readiness of Cambodians of all levels to take bribes, 'commissions', made the operations easy as child's play.
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AP editor writes King's epitaph
