Land Loss Feeds Nationalism
Because of a factual error, this post has been edited…
In what some consider yet another administrative error back in 1949, when granting more autonomy to its Indochinese colonies, the French administration decided that Kampuchea Krom would be part of Vietnam, without taking into account that a majority 20 to 30% of the people living in some areas there were speaking Cambodian and in fact were ethnic Khmer.
The loss of that territory has since then fed the anti-vietnamese feelings the Khmer have been nurturing for centuries.
A commemoration ceremony, attended by HRH Princess Sisowath Pongsanmony as a representative for the Royal Family, by the opposition CNRP MP’s with their presidents Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha, a couple of hundred monks and a large group of young khmer nationalists, was held at the Samaki Reangsey pagoda in Phnom Penh which was founded by a Kampuchea Krom monk.
