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Author Topic: King of Cambodia supports equal marriage
swallow
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Babbler # 2659

posted 22 February 2004 06:12 PM      Profile for swallow     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This is so cool.

Cambodian King backs same-sex marriage

Norodom Sihanouk's handwritten message (in French)

The President of Taiwan is also campaigning on a promise to allow equal marriage rights.


From: fast-tracked for excommunication | Registered: May 2002  |  IP: Logged
beluga2
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posted 22 February 2004 09:47 PM      Profile for beluga2     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good lord, I had no idea Sihanouk was even still alive.

Good on him.


From: vancouvergrad, BCSSR | Registered: Mar 2003  |  IP: Logged
Mycroft_
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posted 22 February 2004 11:19 PM      Profile for Mycroft_     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Almost makes you want to forgive his role in bringing Pol Pot to power, eh?
From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2002  |  IP: Logged
Pimji
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posted 23 February 2004 12:24 AM      Profile for Pimji   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Its no where near that simple. He hated the KR. They hated him. The KR, who was only 4000 people in 1973, used a statement Sihanouk made denouncing Lon Nol, who was a comlete ididot, to their favour by saying Sihanouk was on the side of the KR in the fight against the American backed Lon Nol governemnt.
From: South of Ottawa | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
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posted 23 February 2004 07:00 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Did he contradict the claim? (I'm asking in earnest - I don't know much about Cambodian history.)
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Pimji
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posted 23 February 2004 10:33 PM      Profile for Pimji   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There was a brief alliance with his enemies in vain attempt regain some measure of control over the situation that had spiraled out of his control. I’ll attempt to explain my previous post. It was a “statement” Sihanouk made from Peking rather than any specific action on his part. When he did return to Cambodia it was as clear as day he had his power withdrawn from him by the KR leadership.

Sihanouk wasn’t perfect and made some grave errors. In 1965 Sihanouk to took overly strong action against a spontaneous peasant uprising. Peasants rioted against Chinese business men who had tried to get the local police to expropriate peasant land. He foolishly blamed the uprising on Cambodian leftists and at the same time ordered Lon Nol to quash the uprising with sheer brutality. Many fled to the bush. Pol Pot didn’t support these types of riots for he knew that Sihanouk couldn’t be overthrown with spontaneous riots and that would be quickly crushed.

Sihanouk was no leftist. However Cambodia was weak militarily and Sihanouk also wanted to stay out of a war thus his friendship with the North Vietnamese that he correctly predicted would take over the south. Many Cambodians are very weary, to say the least, of Vietnamese influence on their country and culture. Sihanouk got his administration to relentlessly hunt down “les Khmer Rouges” until the coup in 1970. This allowed him to concentrate on his more bourgeois escapades.

He was in Peking at the time of the coup and almost retired to the south of France. I’ll agree that he should not have made his so called alliance and should have waited it out but who’s to say? There where just to many fires to be put out. The Khmer Rouge exploited this alliance and the popularity of the Prince to gain some measure of acceptance of a Marxist ideology, which before this had never taken hold. The KR didn’t let him leave Peking after he made his statement for they knew that Sihanouk’s popularity was something that could also work against them. Village and city administrators as well as the people followed their Prince.

At this point American backed Lon Nol was driving the country into the ground making one mistake after another, corruption and massive indiscriminant bombing and a slowly starving urban population with hundreds of thousands of rural refugees trying to move into the two major cities and an educated communist leader waiting for a revolution is a disaster in the making.

From Jan 1 to April 17, 1975 KR soldiers blasted their way into the cities and announced over bullhorns that the Americans are finally going to bomb the cities and that it is time to leave.

I’m parsing years of complex world history into a few short sentences here. There is so much more as to what happened to Cambodia, which was once the hub of South East Asia about 1000 years ago and today it’s somewhere lost in the Buddhist hinterland.


From: South of Ottawa | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Pimji
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posted 23 February 2004 10:39 PM      Profile for Pimji   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
81 Year-Old Cambodian King Backs Gay Marriage

His advancing years hasn't stopped the 81 year-old King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, from embracing new ideas. He runs and maintains a royal website, on which he posts letters to the public regularly. Having watched the gay marriages in in San Francisco on the television, he has posted a hand written message on his popular website in support, "Marriage between man and man... or between woman and woman" should be allowed in a "liberal democracy".

The constitutional King is well respected in Cambodia but has no executive powers, his views on gay marriages are not widely spread in Cambodia. The King said that gays are the way they are because God loved a "wide range of tastes."


If only Cambodia was a liberal Democracy.


PUBLIC STATEMENT
22 February 2004


ANOTHER COWARDLY MURDER OF OPPOSITION MEMBER


The SRP Members of Parliament denounce, in no uncertain terms, the latest cowardly murder of one of their active members, who was shot dead while enjoying the company of his family and friends.

Kong Voeun, 42, an active member of the Sam Rainsy Party for many years, was shot dead at close range with an AK 47 bullet from behind at 8:00 pm on 20 February 2004 in his cousin's home, which is opposite to his in the village of
Trapaeng Thlouk, Svay Chor Chep commune, District of Borseik, in the Province
of Kompong Speu.

The perpetrator was not identified, and quickly disappeared into the darkness.

He served as an active member of the SRP Village Council for his home village of Trapaeng Thlouk Village.

Kong Voeun was survived by his wife, Ouk Rom, 32, and six young children.

The SRP demands that the authorities thoroughly investigate and bring the assassin(s) to justice. The Party has no reason to believe that the murder was motivated by personal disputes.


The Sam Rainsy Party Members of Parliament


From: South of Ottawa | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
radiorahim
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posted 23 February 2004 10:55 PM      Profile for radiorahim     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Sihanouk was no leftist. However Cambodia was weak militarily and Sihanouk also wanted to stay out of a war thus his friendship with the North Vietnamese that

Sihanouk wrote a book called "My War with the CIA" back in the early 1970's while the war with the U.S. was still raging.

He described how he tried to keep Cambodia out of the Vietnam war only to be eventually overthrown by Lon Nol in a CIA-backed coup.

True he was no leftist, but he was a nationalist.


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