Border Ties Chip Away at Historical Hurts

SVAY CHRUM, Cambodia – A flurry of bicycles starts from 6 a.m. onwards in Chambak and Kruos communes in this district in Cambodia’s Svay Rieng province, on the border with Vietnam. Drivers pedal frantically toward the Tanou border post, named after the stream that separates the two countries.

Up to 300 of these communes’ residents go to sell their labour across the border every day, taking on work for Vietnamese farmers such as putting animal manure as fertiliser and spraying pesticides, harvesting and transporting rice, according to local policemen. For this kind of manual work, they earn 5,000 to 8,000 riel (1 to 2 U.S. dollars) a day.

“These comings and goings are completely illegal, but we ignore them,” confides a policeman who prefers not to divulge his identity. “These villagers do need to fill their stomachs, as the income from Cambodian ricefields are not sufficient to feed them. And our Vietnamese colleagues, from the other side of the border crossing, do the same as we do by allowing them to go through.”

Over time, these informal border crossings have become more formal. Residents pay 300 riel (8 cents) to the Vietnamese border post, where they have to deposit their identity card to ensure they will be back before 5 p.m.

Chan Hel, originally from the village of Tuol Kpuos, is part of this battalion of migrant workers. He is patiently waiting for his turn to cross the Tanou stream and then get to the Vietnamese ricefields that he has been working on for the last 15 years. “My Vietnamese bosses are kind toward me; they give me food to eat and medicine when I am sick,” he reports.

As the large raft used for this cross-border ‘shuttle service’ comes to a stop, a Vietnamese vendor disembarks and pulls a bicycle full of baskets of cakes and other sweets. With a smile, she explains that she comes every day to Cambodia to sell her products. “Everybody buys my cakes. I think that people here like me. Nobody despises me, they all view me as a neighbour,” she says, speaking haltingly in Khmer.

Sara, who lives in Tanou border village, stopped going to work in Vietnam when he turned 59, but his daughter is now the one who crosses the border regularly. Sitting in the shade of his wooden house, he recalls that relationships at the border between Cambodian and Vietnamese used to be terrible. “We didn’t have any relationship with them. But we could see that they were approaching more and more in a threatening way, encroaching on our territory. But since the time they were fighting the Khmer Rouge soldiers to free the Cambodian people, our relationships have become better and better. Today, we get along well together. Both Cambodian and Vietnamese authorities don’t oppose the border crossings by the population. We can go there to work, and they can come here to sell us products. Discrimination is part of the past. I am not focusing any more on the border issue. When people love you, you have to learn to love them in return,” he philosophises.

The fact that mixed marriages are now well accepted in this part of the Kingdom provides more evidence that attitudes have indeed changed.

Neang, 26, followed her Cambodian husband to live in his native village. She met him among a group of Cambodian commuters that crossed the border to work. She testifies that she does not experience any particular difficulty in her new life in Cambodia. “My in-laws treat me as they do their other daughters-in-law, and my neighbours come to my house to have a chat. . . . Really, nobody here reproaches me for being Vietnamese.”

But this cordial relationship between Cambodians and Vietnamese falls apart as soon as you leave the border to go to the capital, Phnom Penh.

NOT QUITE WELCOME

Over the years, more and more Vietnamese nationals have come to settle in Phnom Penh, much to the dismay of more nationalistic Cambodians. Officials from the Ministry of Interior say they cannot give a precise number of Vietnamese residents in the country. But Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the ministry, estimates that the majority of the 100,000 immigrants living in the Kingdom are Vietnamese.

Residents who disapprove of seeing more Vietnamese in Cambodia contest this estimate.

“I think that, out of a population of 13 million, there are at least one million Yuon people. You just have to look around you; they are everywhere! They speak only Vietnamese between them and their only objective is to swallow our territory!” a medicine student says, choking with rage. His home is located near Chhba Ampeuv market in Meanchey district, an area mainly inhabited by Vietnamese. There, they have opened all kinds of small businesses—coffee shops, garages, grocery stores -- with shop signs written in both Khmer and Vietnamese. Residents use the word ‘Youn’  to refer to them, and are continually in search of new rude words to call them. “The Yuon are noisy people and they like insulting other persons, even their own children! A few years ago, when most houses in the area were still made of wood, if they had an argument, they would sometimes set fire to the house of the neighbour with whom they were squabbling. Several fires have been caused by such malicious intent. Fortunately, today’s houses are built of bricks and the danger is over,” grumbles the student.

But Sum Chi, president of the Vietnamese Nationals Association in Cambodia, believes that some peaceful relationships have been built with Cambodian people. “I don’t think there is any discrimination problem to settle as I don’t see any discrimination against Vietnamese people. Conflicts that occur from time to time between the two communities have to do with quarrels between neighbours and do not spring from simple racism,” insists Sum Chi, who is careful not to fuel debate.

To facilitate the integration of his compatriots into Cambodian society, his association offers training on Khmer culture and traditions as well as Cambodian laws. Yet the president of the association emphasises that “most of the Vietnamese people settled here are not newcomers, but were born in Cambodian territory.”

This is true for 34-year-old Sok Ny, who was born in Kompong Chhnang but who has been living in Chhba Ampeuv for 20 years. “I get along well with my Cambodian neighbours, who are indeed a minority here. We’re not troublemakers, and we don’t try to rake up the past. We view each other as brothers and sisters. I feel at home here; this is my country,” she declares, standing behind her home.

But the Cambodian owner of the grocery store opposite does not sing praises of the supposed brotherhood that links Cambodians and Vietnamese. “Frankly, I don’t like at all the fact that they are so many (Vietnamese) in the area where I was born! They are competing strongly with my business because Vietnamese people only purchase things from their compatriots! Because of them, many Cambodians have preferred to move away. As for me, I decided to stay here, in my house, and I do not want to socialise with them,” the grocery owner adds. “I only speak to my Cambodian neighbours.”

This deeply ingrained resentment toward the Vietnamese has obliged more than one Vietnamese born in Cambodia to hide his or her true origin to avoid jeopardising successful social integration.

A Vietnamese student, who asks not to be named, speaks Khmer like a native Cambodian because he was born in Cambodia, but has never revealed his ethnicity, even to his closest friends. “All the Cambodians I associate with, including my best friend, don’t know who I am. If I divulge my secret, I’m afraid that this might cause them to hate me. I know how much Cambodians don’t like the Vietnamese people,” he says with regret. “Stories from the past are still poisoning our relationship.”

He is afraid of the discrimination that Fang Sibouen suffered after she married her Cambodian husband. Her in-laws never visited her, not even after she gave birth. “They were angry because a Vietnamese lady became part of their family. It’s a well-known fact that Khmer people despise us. But my husband and I were madly in love, so they didn’t dare to stand in the way of our union. In front of me, they were careful of what they said and acted hypocritically. But behind my back, I knew that they had nasty tongues. They took advantage of any pretext to criticise me,” curses Fang Sibouen, now in her thirties.

Eventually, her Cambodian husband left her. Fed up with the tense and hostile atmosphere in his family due to his wife’s mere presence, he turned to another woman, a Cambodian this time, from Sihanoukville. Their wedding was more than good news for his parents, who were happy to get rid of their Vietnamese daughter-in-law. Fang Siboeun further laments: “Yet, we never had any arguments. . . I know that he left me because of family pressure. But I am now by myself with our three children.” (END)