Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nauts, and other antiquated revolutionary imagery. A careful observer might also spot the
odd government seal or rusted street sign bearing the names of one of the old revolution-
ary heroes. But few other signs remain from Cambodia's socialist decade.
In large part, this was by design. As the country moved toward a peace settlement, the
KPRP made concerted efforts to distance itself from Vietnam and its communist past.
In April 1989 the regime rebranded itself the State of Cambodia (SOC), adopting a new
flag, national anthem, and coat of arms. Buddhism was reinstated as the national religion
and party officials presided over religious ceremonies like the Water Festival, once asso-
ciated with the monarchy. The SOC also reintroduced private property rights and passed
a new foreign investment law. In anticipation of peace, the death penalty was abolished
and political controls were loosened.
Despite the KPRP's attempts to whitewash its communist past, the political legacy of
the 1980s still charts a deep fault-line in Cambodian politics. The overthrow of Pol Pot
became the party's foundation myth—a story of rescue and redemption that is reinforced
annually with official pageantry marking January 7 as “Victory over Genocide Day.” The
party's critics, on the other hand, paint the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge as a foreign
invasion that represented the culmination of Vietnam's insatiable desire for Cambodian
territory. The PRK was certainly a ward of Vietnam, but few non-Cambodian observers
now credit the claims of a Vietnamese project to colonize Cambodia during the 1980s.
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Even had it wanted to, Hanoi lacked the resources to engineer a full-blown “Vietnamiz-
ation” of its eastern neighbor. Isolated internationally and counting the cost of a difficult
military occupation—not to mention its own grave economic situation—withdrawal soon
became the overriding aim for Hanoi. Like their nineteenth-century predecessor Emperor
Minh Mang, the Vietnamese had tried—and failed—in their attempts to build a Cambod-
ian party in their own socialist image.
*
Kong Korm's account is corroborated by a short biography of Hun Sen held by the Central Stasi
Archives in Berlin. The woman's name is redacted in the file, but former prime minister Pen Sovan
identified her as Pin Samnang, a villager from the Eastern Zone who fled to Vietnam and met Hun
Sen sometime in 1978. Before returning to Phnom Penh with Samnang in January 1979, Hun Sen
requested Sovan's help in tracking down his first wife, Bun Rany. When Rany returned to the city
in February, Hun Sen asked Sovan to get his “second wife” out of sight. Sovan then sent her to the
Cambodian embassy in Hanoi, where she served as a protocol officer. Author interview with Pen
Sovan, January 27, 2014.
