The Meaning of Treason

Viet troops blocking SRP MPs from visiting a border posted located inside Cambodia (Photo: Uon Chhin, RFA)

Monday, December 20, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

Call this shameless, cowardly complicity by any other name, the act or inaction therein still amounts to Treason by any definition!

Imagine how much positive impact this regime would have exerted upon society within even the last 5 years had it devoted just a fraction of the discipline, vigilance and resources it is giving towards silencing dissidents and critics, to tackling official corruption at all strata of Cambodian society instead!

Where a dispute between neighbours over a strayed fence could take the courts 2-3 years or longer to conclude (the longer the more profitable a case becomes for the judges and other officials connected with the case, as the various courts take turn to extort exorbitant bribes and fees from both parties to the case), in many instances driving litigants into insolvency without even being awarded the justice they seek.

In a country where some judges come to work once every six months or so in between periods spent in 'ill health', we are more than slightly amused to learn of this judge - the only judge who worked on a Sunday! - sentencing a man for 'distributing anti-government material'.

In fact, every piece of public criticism of this government can be construed as 'anti-government material' in some way, or be defined as such. Therefore, to put forward any critical viewpoint of general public relevance and consequence at all would be to put oneself at risk of being labelled an enemy of the state, irrespective of the semantics of one's language used to formulate such a critique/criticism in the first place.

Would polite, diplomatic words and approaches be more effective in instilling sense into the minds of men (I assume this regime's stalwarts are mostly men!) who have not been conditioned to listen to any view other than their own blind convictions, and to kowtow only to directives and commands from their direct superiors?

The martial-military monolith that underpins and sustains the CPP regime and its administrative structure is a work of pride; built to last, for its creators who are not Khmer or Cambodian, but Vietnamese.

Specifics? How many local Cambodian officials or police officers recently turned up to even question a dozen of armed Vietnamese soldiers seen on Cambodia's side of the border to block SRP law-makers and villagers from reaching one of the nearby border markers in Memot? How freely are their Cambodian counterparts allowed to walk into Vietnam or to prevent Vietnamese farmers from tilling Khmer land?

As always, the silence that greets any instance of Vietnamese bullying or encroachment is deafening. It seemed as though the entire CPP presence is conspicuous by their decreed absence as if paralysed by a tranquiliser. Once again, where a man is swiftly punished for printing out and sharing public information, where is the urgency to punish or arrest illegal loggers of timber in Kompong Thom or Rattanakiri?

Call this shameless, cowardly complicity by any other name, the act or inaction therein still amounts to Treason by any definition!