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Cambodia: Identity crisis surfaces after
riots
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
PHNOM PENH - Since the anti-Thai violence here
in late January, Saray Andeth finds himself caught
between two distinct emotional poles - his loyalty to
his native Cambodia on the one hand, and his gratitude
toward neighboring Thailand on the other.
It is
an unavoidable predicament that the slightly built,
quiet-spoken Saray finds himself in over the month since
the riots, which sent Thai-Cambodian to their lowest
point, broke out here.
Saray remains thankful to
Thailand, a country that opened its doors to him as a
refugee from 1979-92. There were hundreds of thousands
of other Cambodians like Saray who sought safety in
Thailand from the war and bloody turmoil in their
country during the mid-1970s. "They welcomed us; they
offered us an escape," said the 27-year-old.
But
this gratitude is up against his strong sentiments of
being a Cambodian, and a budding Cambodian writer of
fiction at that. Saray, a member of the Khmer Writers
Association, has written 18 short stories and novellas
over the past four years.
As a voice of
Cambodian culture, he cannot ignore how cultural exports
from Thailand have infiltrated and dominated the
entertainment and aesthetic landscape of this country of
9 million people. "It is true, Thai culture is
dominating Cambodian culture," said Saray, referring to
two television stations that air a steady diet of Thai
programs.
Saray's predicament is shared by a
cross-section of people in the Cambodian capital,
although their reasons for being warm to their
economically powerful western neighbor may vary.
It is also one that is becoming more palpable
here since the January 29 attack on the Thai Embassy,
Thai commercial interests and Thai citizens, for which
the Cambodian government has since apologized.
Yet the views held by Cambodians, ranging from
those like Sary to some youth openly hostile to the
Thailand, also reveal something more about this
battle-scarred, poor Southeast Asian country: its people
are struggling to reconstruct an identity that they as a
nation can feel proud of.
None conveys this
better than what some students told a Cambodian-American
academic in the aftermath of the anti-Thai violence,
which resulted in Thailand reducing its diplomatic
presence and demanding that Phnom Penh foot the bill for
damages estimated at more than US$40 million.
"They said that the students were making a
statement to the Thais and to the international
community that the Khmer people are worth something,"
said Leakhena Nou, a medical sociologist due to start
work at the University of Cambodia.
On the
morning of the violence, Phnom Penh high-school and
university students had begun gathering outside the Thai
Embassy to express their anti-Thai sentiments after an
account that had appeared in the local media days
earlier.
One newspaper had a story that a Thai
soap-opera actress popular in Cambodia was reported to
have said that the famed Angkor Wat ruins, which
Cambodians hold dear as mark of their identity and
culture, belonged to Thailand.
This account,
which the actress later denied having ever made and
which leading Cambodian journalists agree was based on a
rumor rather than fact, was added fuel to by Prime
Minister Hun Sen. The premier criticized the actress
during a public speech two days before the anti-Thai
violence erupted.
"The students also used the
occasion to express their feelings about a lack of
appreciation of anything Khmer," said Nou, who defended
the students from the government's charge that they were
behind the anti-Thai violence. "I believe politics got
involved; the students cannot be blamed. As things
stand, the youth feel that the impressions being created
here are that there is nothing worthy of being a
Khmer.".
Even among moderate voices, this line
of thinking - that a Thai presence hinders efforts to
reconstruct a Cambodian identity - is readily
articulated.
"Over the past 10 years, we have
seen a Thailandization of Cambodia," said Kao Kim Hourn,
executive director of the Phnom Penh-based Cambodian
Institute for Cooperation and Peace.
"At the
level of people, this cannot be taken for granted,"
added Kao. "That is why what happened on January 29
should not simply be seen as an event triggered only by
a rumor. It is the result of a longer process of the
past 10 years of Cambodians feeling they are losing out
to Thailand."
To make their point, some
Cambodians draw examples from television, sports and
culture. "While Thai TV programs are popular, people
don't like the influence they are having on our life and
culture," said Yen Sophan, a Cambodian
businessman."There is a feeling that the Thai way of
living on these shows is being held up at the expense of
the Khmer way of life."
Some even object to the
sport of Thai kick-boxing or Muay Thai being
called such, since in their view it is a Cambodian
sport, called "free boxing".
"The Thais used the
years of the war in Cambodia, when we were cut off from
the world, to name this sport Muay Thai and give
the world the impression it is theirs," said one editor,
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Cambodia's
struggle to reclaim its identity hardly surprises Thai
academic Chayan Vaddhanaphuti. "I think it is natural in
the process of nation-building in a country," said
Chayan, an anthropologist at Chiang Mai University in
northern Thailand.
These efforts - reinventing
history, holding on to significant symbols from the
past, and hostility to "external forces" - are likely to
be seen in a country coming out years of war and
violence, he added.
During the rule of the
murderous Khmer Rouge from 1975-79, its attempt to
reconstruct Cambodian society and sever all its links
with its history and cultural past led to nearly 2
million deaths.
"Cambodia's effort to
reconstruct its identity will go on, the way other
countries do," said Chayan. "But if we are not careful
about this trend - developing a sense of nationalism -
it can become a time bomb."
(Inter Press
Service)
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