People power' is the best hope

PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

October 20, 2010

People power' is the best hope

By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth

It was almost three decades ago, but the events remain as vivid as if they happened yesterday.

One early afternoon I was stretched out in a hammock under a trellis, feet away from the red, yellow and white bougainvillea, in front of my thatched hut where staff in the office of planning and analysis of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front gathered to finalize a document for submission to the commander-in-chief. We waited for my director, the chief of the Bureau of Information, Research, and Documentation (BIRD -- what an interesting acronym!) to supply a piece of information to complete our report.

My Walkman -- state of the art at the time -- was on my chest, two earphones plugged into my ears. I sang along with Simon and Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa," as the warm breeze from a small muddy pond touched my face: "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail, Yes I would, if I could, I surely would."

The director came, gave what was expected to officers at work, but I remained in my hammock: "Away, I'd rather sail away, like a swan that's here and gone." He handed me a slice of mango, smiled, sat down on a bench, and asked the meaning of the last words of the song I uttered: "A man gets tied up to the ground, he gives the world its saddest sound, its saddest sound."

We spoke. Then, I took off my shirt, pulled out a toy rubber boat, courtesy of governments friendly to the non-communist resistance to use for "transport" in Cambodia's waterways. I located the boat in the pond, jumped in with my jeans on, and paddled to the middle as astonished young officers looked on. That was my R&R! An elder former colonel in the Khmer Republic army, in his krama, swam to join me and the boat -- not that it was his idea of an R&R, but he saw a snake swimming by.

Someone clicked photos of us in the pond. Precious memories!

Five years earlier, in a mountainous area, a young officer and I arrived at a pond of still water, infested with mosquito larvae. My young friend suspected I wanted to cool off in the water and pleaded that I not do so. Never mind. I kicked off my boots, jumped in with my clothes on. My young friend followed, muttering I was asking for trouble. Trouble it was: A rush to the hospital for nine days of treatment for the deadly falciparum malaria. My young friend was fine.

Nearly 30 years later, I still listen to "El Condor Pasa" -- this time, behind my computer screen as I write in hopes of inspiring and incentivizing men and women into action, especially Khmers who want to throw off the yoke of dictatorship.

I hate autocracy at any level that crushes the imagination, creativity and innovation necessary for man to survive. A few years ago, I wrote in this space that great ideas properly transformed into actions could bring down autocracy. I have not changed my mind since: The brain that took man to the moon and back can help Khmers to free themselves from dictatorship.

For several years I promoted foundational ideas for change -- many wanted change, did nothing, but talked the talk. "Trokieark slap s'dauk,"or" hip joint lies dead," Khmers say. I extracted ideas from political science professor emeritus Gene Sharp's writings for my columns -- ideas which activists in different countries found useful, and which some freedom activists turned "actionists" have applied successfully to bring down dictators.

The bottom line is this: Yes, it is possible to "disintegrate" the dictatorship through nonviolent action!

A Khmer saying I quote often goes: "Curved wood makes wheel, straight wood makes spoke, and crooked and twisted wood makes firewood." It tells Khmers there's a place for everything and every person. I take off my hat in respect to Khmers who engage in different activities against the dictatorship -- even if I have reservations about the wisdom of some activities.

It seems no aspect is ignored in discussing and writing about Premier Hun Sen's government's policies, which have brought tears and suffering to increasing numbers of citizens -- homeless, landless, farmless and victimized by gross abuses of civil rights -- nor about the world's governments, signatories to the Oct. 23 Paris Peace Accords, who are not ignorant of what goes on in Sen's Cambodia, but do nothing to change the status quo.

But the more we discuss and the more we write, the more things remain the same.

Emotions are high on both sides of the political aisle. As Khmers discuss, petition and whisper their open secret about resistance and dream of the foreign intervention that I don't think will come -- and tend to blame everyone except themselves for their nation's fate -- I think it's more fruitful to explore the potential strength of "people power." Many seem to be coming to agreement that "people power" is the best hope for Cambodia's survival.

Some dubbed me a daydreamer. But hasn't it been dreams that made activists and
actionists?

Recall Winston Churchill: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the
courage to continue that counts."

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him
at peangmeth@yahoo.com.

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You Tho, Kampong Speu

“I have no fear of being arrested. The police are trying to weaken us by intimidation. I know that if I fear them, then I cannot be a leader. So I do not listen to the threats.” Read more ...

Recognize source of state's power

PACIFIC DAILY NEWS
October 13, 2010

Recognize source of state's power,

By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth

I had an uncle who liked to tell us kids, "To be interesting, you must be interested."

Years passed, and through college I began to make connections with things that had seemed incomprehensible before. Many of the thoughts I had been exposed to begin to make sense.

I ignored my father's teaching for years: "Live with cow, sleep like cow; live with parrot, fly like parrot" -- until I learned about the political socialization process that molds man's behavior and his perceptions.

Learning, growing

Growing up can be not so simple. Some in their 50s and 60s are still struggling to grow up. Others have used life's experiences to chart new courses in life. One can learn and grow. It can begin in small things.

Possessed, as my elementary school teacher told us, with one kilo of brain, I adopted my uncle's mantra: Learn and know about the world's simplicities and complexities and its many interdependent things and become interesting and relevant. Add your own capacity to analyze and evaluate and you can change yourself and your surroundings.

But you must have a bedrock belief that change is possible.

'Hyena and chicken'

Thanks to the freedoms we in the United States are guaranteed, we have opportunities to publicly disagree; many lands don't allow it. Disagreement is not a problem; being provocatively disagreeable and quarrelsome is.

Last week, I wrote that there is no "people power" -- a term en vogue – until the people themselves understand -- and believe -- that the power is actually in their hands. I wrote that no power, force or barrier can withstand a people's determined efforts for rights and freedom.

Naturally, I expected anti-theses: A yin comes with a yang, just as day comes after night.

And so one reader from Phnom Penh e-mailed: "Many thanks to you for having reminded people of their unalienable rights and power." Another reader wrote, "Hyena or chicken can't give birth to lion."

But we deal with humans. We know all human minds can be taught.

Power of the minds

Last June, I wrote about the movie "Invictus," about South Africa's black anti-apartheid activist-turned-president, Nelson Mandela, who condemned the white rugby team when he was in jail, then -- after he was released from prison-- successfully turned the white team into a national team for blacks and whites. The team won South Africa the third Rugby World Cup in 1995.

A recently released movie, "Robin Hood," tells the backstory of Robin Longstride, a veteran of the Third Crusade who traveled to 13th century England's Nottingham, where people suffered corruption, crippling taxation and the abuse of a tyrannical sheriff. Longstride became Robin the Hood, led an uprising against the crown and became the symbol of the people's freedom.

His father also led his people against tyranny when Robin was a boy. His father was executed by the royal sword. Hood's father's motto, inscribed on a hidden stone and on the handle of a sword, reads: "Rise and rise again until lambs become lions."

The words mean don't ever give up fighting for the cause of liberty -- persevere, rise and rise again, until lions are born out of docile lambs and liberty is achieved.

In the history of the Khmers, Khmer "lions" emerged and fought valiantly. As with the builders of Angkor, Khmer ingenuity is not unknown.

Nonviolent action

Political science professor emeritus Gene Sharp, holder of Oxford University's doctor of philosophy in political theory, founded the nonprofit Albert Einstein Institution in Boston in 1983 to promote research, policy studies and education on the strategic uses of nonviolent struggle in the face of dictatorship, war, genocide and oppression.

He wrote "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation" in 1993, providing "guidelines to assist thought and planning" in liberation movements against dictatorship, based on 40 years of research and writing. It was written at the request of the late exiled Burmese democrat U Tin Maung Win, editor of Khit Pyaing (The New Era Journal). It was supposed to be used by the Burmese.

But many freedom fighters in the world found it useful. The book has been translated into 30 languages.

In Spring 2000, the International Republican Institute tapped retired U.S. Army Col. Robert Helvey, who has past experience in Burma, to conduct a workshop in Budapest, Hungary, on the nature and potential of nonviolent struggle. Some 20 young Serbs attended. Copies of Sharp's best-known book, "The Politics of Nonviolent Action," were distributed.

These young Serbs later led the Otpor (Resistance) movement's nonviolent struggle that brought down Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.

Sharp's Concepts

Political power is derived from the "subjects of the state." The state uses specific institutions (police, courts, regulatory bodies) to extract subjects' obedience, based on sanctions (jail, fines) and rewards (titles, wealth, fame).

Since any power structure is based on the subjects' obedience to the orders of the ruler(s), if subjects do not obey, then leaders have no power. If subjects recognize they are the source of the state's power, they can refuse to obey and their leader(s) will be left without power.

So says Sharp. And so say many who have understood and acted on his theses.

Khmers can learn from that, like the young Serbs did.

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him
at peangmeth@yahoo.com.

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People must know they have power

PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

October 6, 2010

People must know they have power By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth

The Khmer blog KI-Media recently has been publishing in sections Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation," by the Albert Einstein Institution, that provides significant guidelines to "assist thought and planning" in the fight against dictatorship.

Sharp hopes his study on "how a dictatorship can be disintegrated" would be useful "wherever people live under domination and desire to be free."

Sharp presupposes people who live under a dictatorship can distinguish between a dictatorship and a democracy, and there are those with a "desire to be free."

Enormous work and effort are required from fractious democrats and rights activists who fight powerful ruling tyrants. In Cambodia, deeply rooted old habits and thoughts stand opposite imaginative, creative and innovative thinking.

Some 70 percent of the people polled said Cambodia under autocracy is headed in
"the right direction." Khmer and foreign partisans of political "stability" ignore civil rights violations, while opponents of autocracy speak of "people power."

Yet power doesn't exist until the people understand it is actually in their hands; until democrats and rights activists help them to believe the truth that no power, force or barrier can withstand their determined efforts for rights and freedom.

More than ever, Cambodians need democrats and rights activists to lead them. Through enlightened and efficient leadership, the citizens become aware of the parameters of oppression and develop the confidence that will bring down any dictator.

'Pigs don't fly'

Some readers complain that I write a lot about better thinking but don't tell them what and how it will help defeat Cambodia's autocracy and keep Khmers Khmer. In some ways, the complaint itself is evidence of a lack of analytical thought.

I don't normally read comments posted by anonymous bloggers, whose expletives, racial slurs or demonization of opponents affirm the bloggers' true values, but every now and then I peruse them.

Some people blog to relieve their frustration and unhappiness -- which is useful to detect the symptoms of a disease, if not the disease itself.

A blogger took offense at my remarks that all minds can be taught, and responded with "pigs don't fly" -- i.e., some minds simply cannot improve, just like a horse refuses to drink even if led to the water. There can't be change without a belief that it is possible. Are some unredeemable intellectually?

Pigs don't fly. We know that. But human minds do develop and grow. We know that, too.

Pol Pot decided that a people so "stupid" as to refuse his ways and thoughts must be destroyed and re-educated through forced labor and "tbaung chawb" (hoe blade) to strike the necks of those with "incorrect" thinking. There is no gain to keep them, no loss to eliminate them, the Khmer Rouge said. Thus, Pol Pot killed the nation.

When I was a child, my father often reminded me that if I didn't use my brain to read and reflect, the brain's lack of exercise would kill me, just as if I denied my stomach food, the stomach would contract and shrink and I would die.

Peasants, businessmen, the elite and those of royal heritage are human, each with "one kilo of brain" that can think. Royals may know much about the throne, but peasants know much about the rice that feeds the royals.

Pigs won't fly. But the human brain has taken man to the moon and back.

True stories

I had just passed my doctoral comprehensive examinations and defended my dissertation proposal at the University of Michigan when Cambodia's republican regime tapped me to take a post at the Khmer Republic Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Long Boret, the foreign minister, who examined a political bulletin I edited in Ann Arbor, called me to join his delegation to the United Nations, observed my work, and I agreed to serve the republican embassy under Ambassador Um Sim. Both Boret and Sim gave me enough room to apply my creativity, innovation and analytical thinking in my work. They saw some tangible change. Both were interested in results and not gossip and backbiting.

In his last words to me before the collapse of the republican government, Long Boret told me to prepare to join him in Phnom Penh. Boret was executed by Pol Pot's men on April 17, 1975.

The situation was different after I joined the Khmer People's National Liberation Front in the field in 1980. With a degree of freedom to think and act as a member of the front's executive committee, I applied my creativity, innovation and analytical thinking. Objective observers could affirm some positive change.

But those qualities also gained me enemies, even within our ranks. My problems mounted. But that is a story for another day, if ever I have the desire to share my perspective.

Better thinking

I subscribe to Edmund Burke's philosophy that traditions link the dead, the living and those to be born. But I distinguish those traditions that are barriers to surviving in an advancing world -- like blind obedience and unquestionable loyalty -- and those that uphold a people's culture and integrity -- like taking off shoes when entering home or clasping hands to say thank you.

It's anyone's prerogative to prefer one regime over another. But I think it's not good thinking to hate a monarchy or a republic. Professor Thomas Szasz once said, "A system is not stupid, the people in it are."

A.    Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.

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