1. Will on Teaksin Phirom royal house - Norodom Sihanouk (July 12, 2005) From: M Preuk <mpreuk@sbcglobal.net> 2. Cambodian PM takes aim at royals in border row - Asia Times From: M Preuk <mpreuk@sbcglobal.net>
Message: 1 Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 23:36:35 -0700 (PDT) From: M Preuk <mpreuk@sbcglobal.net> Subject: Will on Teaksin Phirom royal house - Norodom Sihanouk (July 12, 2005)
Dear All,
Please find attached below, an unofficial English translation of HM's will dated July 12, 2005. In this will, HM has bequeathed to the Cambodian state and people, the royal house "Teaksin Phirom" following the 20-year term free use by the DPRK of this house.
Anticipating that state properties could be illegally sold or swapped, as it is currently practiced by the cash-strapped and corrupt Hun Sen gov't, HM is requesting that this property never to be demolished or sold.
I would like to inform our beloved Compatriots, Brother and Sisters, Children, Grandchildren, Great-Grandchildren of the following:
- I gave to H.E. Marshall Kim Il Sung – the supreme leader of the Democratic Popular Republic of Korea [DPRK] who had supported me in every way, and whom I considered as my older brother and I had deep affection for – the royal house “Teaksin Phirom” to use as the embassy compound for the DPRK in Cambodia for a duration of 20 years.
The royal house “Teaksin Phirom” is my birth house located near the Independence Monument, and it is a royal house that HM King Sisowath Monivong built and gave to my mother, Queen Sisowath Kosamak.
- In the next 8 or 9 years, the 20-year term of my gift of the royal house “Teaksin Phirom” to H.E. Marshall Kim Il Sung to use as the DPRK embassy in Cambodia will be reached. Therefore, at the end of this 20-year term, I am officially announcing to our beloved Compatriots, Brother and Sisters, Children, Grandchildren, Great-Grandchildren that I am endowing this royal house “Teaksin Phirom” to the State, the Nation, and the People of Cambodia, to be used as an annex museum to the Jayavarman VII museum in Phnom Penh.
Several antique artifacts dating before the Angkor era, from the Angkor era, and following the Angkor era, which are invaluable, have be preserved in the basement of the Jayavarman VII museum and at the Angkor Conservation Institute.
I am requesting that Khmer experts and those from the “Ecole Francaise d’Extrême Orient” [EFEO] take all these antique artifacts and exhibit them at the annex museum of the Jayavarman VII museum for all Cambodian and International People to see.
I am requesting the Royal Government of Cambodia never to demolish or sell the “Teaksin Phirom” [royal house]. Please preserve this annex museum as a government property, please repair, protect the building and the fences of this annex museum in its original shape, and preserve it forever.
Signed: Norodom Sihanouk
Agreed by: Norodom Sihamoni, and Norodom Monineat Sihanouk
When retired King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia was given the task to preside over the newly formed Supreme National Council on Border Affairs, last April, he launched into the task with the natural stamina he has always shown in dealing with his country's problems. Little did he know that the council lacked teeth and was established by the government, according to diplomatic sources in Phnom Penh, purely to slow down Sihanouk's repeated calls for the Cambodian government to do something about the loss of Cambodia's territory to Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.
Cambodia's borders have always been a sensitive issue and one that has been used by the Cambodian political elite for partisan purposes, particularly at election times. In all fairness, the retired king has been the only Cambodian leader to have been truly concerned by the shrinking of Cambodia's territorial integrity and to have acted to prevent further loss of land.
In the late 1960s, he created a dilemma among the countries having diplomatic relations with Cambodia when he announced that he would sever all relations with those which refused to issue a statement recognizing Cambodia's borders with Laos, Vietnam and Thailand as they were then. Most countries, with the exception of the three named above, issued declarations recognizing Cambodia's borders as they were. This recognition lasted until March 18, 1970, when Sihanouk was overthrown and Cambodia's borders were opened wide to rapacious neighbors.
Writing in 1967, Sihanouk said, "Some 'free'-world countries and Asian states with a white population adopt an approach which I would describe as scandalous to the matter of our territorial integrity. Indeed, the countries to which I refer have just put two questions to us as a preliminary to an eventual declaration affirming their 'respect' for our actual borders."
The first question put to us is the following: "Is Cambodia disposed to let it be understood and to admit that, notwithstanding the declaration in question, the way remains open for negotiations on the delimitation of these same borders with its neighbors? It is obvious that we can only reply, no. Furthermore, the question is an absurd one. Indeed, we are demanding that the intangible nature of our frontiers should be recognized in order to ensure peaceful conditions, and to safeguard ourselves against the traditional expansionist policies of our neighbors. But if we had chosen to produce a case based on legal, historic or other rights, it would become apparent to all and sundry that our action in 'freezing' our frontiers is to the advantage of our neighbors, and not to Cambodia's advantage."
Following the signing of the Paris Agreements of 1991 - a comprehensive settlement giving the UN full authority to supervise a ceasefire with the Khmer Rouge and prepare the country for free and fair elections - many Cambodians believed that the agreements would end any territorial problems the country confronted, as they were signed by all of Cambodia's neighbors and also because the then State of Cambodia (predecessor of the ruling Cambodian People's Party) engaged itself to revoke any treaties that were incompatible with Cambodia's sovereignty.
Sihanouk, who has spent over five months in Beijing this year being treated for recurrent stomach cancer, has long been concerned by bilateral border agreements signed by the former People's Republic of Kampuchea with Vietnam, when that country's army occupied Cambodia after overthrowing the Pol Pot regime. He has said that he will never recognize those agreements that are contrary to formal promises made to him by the Vietnamese leadership to respect Cambodia's territorial integrity after the reunification of South and North Vietnam. Thailand is said to have profited from a treaty it signed with Vietnam in August 1997, delimiting the waters of the Gulf of Thailand, in which Cambodia lost some 30,000 square kilometers of its maritime land, and to have taken over border lands that were controlled by the Cambodian resistance during Vietnam's occupation with Cambodia. Laos has also allegedly taken parcels of land belonging to Cambodia in the border province of Stung-Treng, preventing the renovation of an old road built during the French Protectorate, which China has agreed to finance.
In March this year, the retired monarch wrote letters to the parliaments and government of Laos, Vietnam and Thailand asking them to stop nibbling away at the lands, seas and islands belonging to Cambodia. He stated that Cambodia's border should more closely reflect the maps drawn by the US Army between 1963 and 1969.
Sihanouk's strategy consisted in forcing the Cambodian government to tackle an issue that the government does not want publicly discussed. He had successfully used the same tactics to get the succession issue resolved last year, when he suddenly announced he was retiring, leaving the government with no alternative than to hastily pass legislation setting up the Council of the Crown and get a new monarch elected - Sihanouk's son, Norodom Sihamoni.
While Sihanouk still commands the love and respect of a majority of Cambodians and is considered a statesman by many in the region, his efforts to ensure that Cambodia does not lose any further territory have been unwelcome to Prime Minister Hun Sen, who sees in Sihanouk more of a political rival than the uncontested fatherly figure who still holds considerable sway in the small kingdom.
Hun Sen has lashed out at calls to grant more power to the retired monarch in his role as president of the border council. Indeed, the royal decree signed by King Sihamoni, but drafted solely by senior government officials without the participation of the royal palace, does not give the council any real power to solve the border issue, but only to research and assess issues pertaining to the land and sea borders of Cambodia, to advise the government and to visit border areas where incidents may have occurred. The council is not empowered to negotiate with foreign countries should problems arise in border areas.
Critics of the way the council was created say that it should have been established by legislation passed by parliament and proclaimed by the king, to have legal competence properly recognized, and not just by a royal decree. The decree gives the council president no executive power, but holds Sihanouk responsible for the country's border disputes.
Hun Sen, not mincing his words, has accused those advocating more power for the council of acting against Cambodia's constitution and of trying to launch a coup d'etat, and he disclosed that Prince Norodom Ranariddh, chairman of the National Assembly and son of King Sihanouk, had informed him that an unnamed prince belonging to the junior branch of the royal family of Cambodia had threatened a rebellion over the government's failure to deal with border issues. In his speech broadcast over Cambodian national television, the premier angrily suggested that Prince Sisowath and his followers should "prepare their coffins and put their wills in order to leave to their families".
This unprecedented attack on a branch of the royal family has opened old wounds between the senior branch, the Norodom, and the junior branch, the Sisowath, from the time of Cambodia's colonial experience with France, when the French protectorate played one branch against the other. Sihanouk, who is a Norodom by his father and a Sisowath by his mother, has been responsible for assuaging the old wounds by promoting many princes from the Sisowath branch to senior ranks in the royal family's hierarchy.
Further emphasizing the passions and divisions that exist over this issue within the ruling Cambodian People's Party, its chairman, Chea Sim, who is also the president of the Cambodian senate and seen by many as a rival to Hun Sen within the ruling party, has weighed into the debate by saying, during a speech commemorating the 54th anniversary of the party on June 28, that he congratulated the retired king for his interest in the border issue and that he felt that Sihanouk was well qualified to tackle border problems.
At a meeting with European ambassadors based in both Phnom Penh and Bangkok on June 30, Hun Sen brought the issue up and again stated loud and clear that any person demanding more power for Sihanouk as president of the border council was guilty of violating the Cambodian constitution and that he would not tolerate it.
He recalled, to the amazement of the assembled diplomats who had other issues on their agendas to raise with the Cambodian premier, but not that of borders, that in France the king's head had been cut off because he refused to recognize the revolution's changes; that in Thailand the king had given up his powers to become a constitutional monarch, and that Cambodia was not Nepal, where the king now has absolute power. The premier added that Cambodia would have a constitutional monarchy, or even a republic.
The continuous open attacks against the monarchy as an institution and against senior members of the royal family by the prime minister have once again raised a question mark about the future of the monarchy and the stability of the country, one of the poorest in Asia.
Princess Norodom Vacheahra, a member of the Cambodian National Assembly and half-sister of King Sihanouk, who was the first to raise the issue of more power for the border council, has in the meantime announced that she is not returning to Cambodia and staying in France, following the threats made by Hun Sen against unnamed members of the royal family.
The retired monarch continues to give public airing through his website to reports he is getting from unnamed Cambodians detailing new encroachments on Cambodia's territory by its neighbors. He has also said that all responsibility for the border issue must be assumed now by Hun Sen, and that the Supreme National Council on Border Affairs was a farce and is dead.
Julio A Jeldres is a former senior private secretary to King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and the king's official biographer.
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