Indigenous Khmer krom Buddhists in Kampucheakrom in 1909Khmer Krom: When Will Vietnam Say Sorry?
On February 13th 2008, Australia’s newly elected Prime Minister; Kevin Rudd will make a historic apology to its indigenous peoples, the Aboriginal Peoples.
Since Britain invaded Australia 220 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal people have been killed, displaced or forced to assimilate into the British culture and ideals.
As early as mid 1800s, thousands of Aboriginal children were brutally taken from their parents and given to the white Australians, judged by them as unfit to be parents. They were sent to children’s homes, starved and told that they a shameful bunch to society.
Known as the Stolen Generation, one cannot begin to comprehend the heartache and grief that they went and continue to go through.
Today, it seems that life is getting a bit better for the Indigenous Australians.
The long awaited apology by Australia’s current Prime Minister to the Stolen Generation will be one that stops the nation and perhaps the world as Australia takes a brave step in righting past wrongs.
While the majority of Australians and perhaps the world are celebrating such an event, others are not, asking why should they be the ones apologising for something that their forefathers did.
If we do not bear the sins of our forefather, when will the hate stop and forgiveness start?
Australia is not the only guilty party with its treatments of its indigenous peoples. Canada and United States of America have had their share of bad history. In the southeast countries, Cambodia, Philippines and Vietnam are on top of the list of human rights violators.
For the Indigenous Khmer Krom Peoples of current day Vietnam, an apology as such from the Vietnamese communist government seems like a speck in the horizon. Far and a long time in coming if at all.
Especially if the first step of recognising that Khmer Krom people are the indigenous peoples of the Mekong Delta is not yet achieved.
Two years ago, during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Vietnam government representatives claimed that it was up to the minority people to determine who are indigenous. However, no legislation or initiative is in place to promote such an act only empty words to further falsify and deny the existence of indigenous peoples such as the Khmer Krom people of the Mekong Delta and the Montagnards of the central Highlands.
“It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders.….. We practised discrimination and exclusion.” - Paul Keating, former Prime Minister of Australia 1991
If the Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation did not enlighten the issue of the Khmer Krom to international community, would Vietnam place its indigenous peoples as a priority?
How much longer will the Vietnamese communist government continue to deny that it was never their lands in the first place?
Their basic fundamental freedoms and rights continue to be severely restricted. The Khmer’s unique culture is changed at will by Vietnamese officials. Some Khmer Buddhist temples are no longer a place of peace and meditation but a working office for communist officials. Buddhist monks are disrobed and imprisoned for organising peaceful demonstrations to demand their religious rights.
More disturbing still, Vietnamese officials are resorting to the use of violence in public to silence land activists. These are just a small portion of crimes coming to international light.
....To Be Continued
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