Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Tue, 1 Sep 1992 13:59:26 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Khmer Rouge criticized for calling Vietnamese "savages"
X-To:         FISHLM%SNYBUFVA@pucc.princeton.edu, scv@media.mit.edu,
              seasia-l@msu.BITNET, vietnam@cco.caltech.edu, vn-news@saigon.com

08/31

KHMER ROUGE CRITICISED FOR ``SAVAGES'' SLUR

    By Kevin Cooney
    PHNOM PENH, Aug 31, Reuter - The chief of U.N. peacekeepers in Cambodia on
Monday sharply criticised the Khmer Rouge guerrilla group for consistently using
a word meaning "savages" to describe Vietnamese people.
    In a letter to Khieu Samphan, president of the Maoist group, Japanese
diplomat Yasushi Akashi decried the persistent use of the term "yuon," which
means savages, on Khmer Rouge radio when talking about people from Cambodia's
eastern neighbour.
    "I consider that the use of pejorative terms, especially by an organisation
aspiring to the attributes of statehood, is unseemly and objectionable in public
discourse," Akashi said.
    The Khmer Rouge, which put Cambodia through a reign of terror in the 1970s
that killed a million people, was driven from power in 1979 by a Vietnamese
invasion that followed Khmer Rouge attacks on border areas.
    The enmity between the two peoples goes back hundreds of years to when the
Vietnamese drove the Cambodians out of the Mekong Delta and other parts of what
is now southern Vietnam in a series of wars spanning the 17th through 19th
centuries.
    The Khmer Rouge has refused to go along with the disarmament phase of a U.N.
peace plan for Cambodia saying Vietnam is still militarily active in Cambodia.
    Most diplomats in Phnom Penh largely accept Hanoi's assertion that it
withdrew all of its troops by September 1989.
    Khmer Rouge broadcasts also say that the presence of ethnic Vietnamese
settlers in Cambodia is part of a Hanoi plot to turn its smaller neighbour into
a colony.
    Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese families live in Cambodia and
some of these have done so for decades.
    Akashi said it was unfortunate that Khieu Samphan could not recognise
changes dealing with the Vietnamese issue made in an electoral law adopted by
Akashi over Khmer Rouge objections earlier this month.
    The United Nations plans to supervise an election in Cambodia next May.
    The changes from the original draft of the law tighten the definition of
just who is a Cambodian person to avoid the vote being influenced by recent
settlers.
    "The law as adopted adds an extra layer of 'Cambodianness' that has the
effect of disenfranchising two categories of persons who would have had the
right to vote under the original draft, those who were born in Cambodia but
whose parents were not born in Cambodia, those who were born outside of Cambodia
of a Cambodian parent but who do not have a grandparent born in Cambodia,"
Akashi's letter said.
    "While the revision will certainly mean additional time-consuming
complications for registration officers, it is quite incorrect to say that it
will give Vietnamese the right to take part in the elections," Akashi, head of
the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), said.
    "That was neither the intention nor was it the effect of the law," Akashi
added.
    The Khmer Rouge have consistently accused UNTAC of not taking the Vietnamese
issue seriously, and a joke circulating in Cambodia associates the U.N. body,
usually pronounced "yoon-tac," with the term applied to the Vietnamese, calling
it "yuon-tac."
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