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| The monkey eats the rice, then smears rice on the goat's mouth (A 2003 Cartoon by Sacrava) |
By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS (Guam)
"People power" is not beyond reach in Cambodia. Skeptics misunderstand people power and equate it with bloody rebellion. Khmers are Buddhists -- gentle and placid, who don't rise against a ruthless dictatorship.
The Albert Einstein Institution, committed to the defense of freedom, says: "Nonviolent action (also sometimes referred to as people power, political defiance and nonviolent struggle) is a technique of action for applying power in a conflict by using symbolic protests, noncooperation and defiance, but not physical violence."
My nine years (1980-1989) in the Khmer resistance against Vietnam's military invasion and occupation took me near death's door many times, but I never believed we could defeat the Hanoi armies that brought the Americans to a negotiations table earlier. But we did believe that an effective Khmer resistance would bring Hanoi to the negotiations table. That, in fact, happened.
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