Kampuchea Krom = Vietnam's Algeria ?
- From: "PEN Nearovi" <nearovi@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 22 Oct 2005 10:30:44 -0700
Kampuchea
Krom =
Vietnam's
Algeria?
(2005-Oct-22)
N.P. : King
Sihanouk was
too happy to be
crowned by
Decoux in 1941
as head of a
kingdom nearly
completely
swallowed by its
neighbours
Thailand and
Vietnam. When
Ho Chi Minh
chose the armed
struggle to take
advantage from
post-WW2
weakening of
France and
conquer
Vietnam's
independence,
the joyful and
vain Cambodian
monarch chose
to blackmail the
French for
Cambodia's
autonomy.
Of course the French preferred to simplify their problems by "giving"
Cochinchine to the Vietnamese. Now that the
Cochinchine Khmer want to liberate their homeland from Vietnamese
rule, the Sihanouk way will make Hanoi laugh
to death. Algeria -- the French's Cochinchine in Africa -- has been
France's department for 132 years and gained its
independence in 1962 by a liberation war. If the former Cochinchine --
Kampuchea Krom -- does no longer want to be
Vietnam's department, the Algerian way seems more realistic
than the Sihanouk-wooden-rifle way.
France Orders Positive Spin on Colonial Past
AP, PARIS (Oct. 21) - France, grappling for decades with its
colonial past, has passed a law to put an
upbeat spin on a painful era, making it mandatory to enshrine in
textbooks the country's "positive role" in its
far-flung colonies. But the law is stirring anger among historians and
passions in places like Algeria, which gained
independence in a brutal conflict. Critics accuse France of trying to
gild an inglorious colonial past with an "official
history." At issue is language in the law stipulating that "school
programs recognize in particular the positive
character of the French overseas presence, notably in North Africa."
Deputies of the conservative governing party
passed the law in February, but it has only recently come under public
scrutiny after being denounced at an
annual meeting of historians and in a history professors' petition.
An embarrassed President Jacques Chirac has called the law a
"big screw-up," newspapers quoted aides as
saying. Education Minister Gilles de Robien said this week that
textbooks would not be changed. But the law's
detractors want it stricken from the books - something the minister
says only parliament can do. The measure is
one article in a law recognizing the "national contribution" of French
citizens who lived in the colonies before
independence. It is aimed, above all, at recognizing the French who
lived in Algeria and were forced to flee, and
Algerians who fought on the side of France. Unlike other colonies,
Algeria, the most prized conquest, was
considered an integral part of France - just like Normandy. It was only
after a brutal eight-year independence
war that the French department in North Africa became a nation in 1962,
after 132 years of occupation.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has equated the law
with "mental blindness" and said it smacks of
revisionism. The Algerian Parliament has called it a "grave precedent."
The friction comes as France and Algeria
work to put years of rocky ties behind them with a friendship treaty to
be signed this year. "Morally, the law is
shameful," said University of Paris history professor Claude Liauzu,
who was behind the petition, "and it discredits
France overseas." France was once a vast empire, including large
holdings in Indo-China and Africa. It unraveled
in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly calmly. However, France suffered
ignominious defeats in Indo-China and Algeria.
Paris only called the Algerian conflict a "war" in 1999. Throughout the
fighting, and for decades thereafter, France
had referred only to operations there to "maintain order."
In colonial times, French textbooks typically depicted the
French presence in the colonies as that of
benevolent enlightenment, with a clear mission to civilize. The
newspaper Liberation this week published drawings
from "France Overseas," an illustrated colonial Atlas of 1931 that
showed "before" and "after" drawings, one a
sketch of Africans cooking and eating another human being, the second a
school house on a well-manicured
street with a French flag flying overhead. The Association of History
and Geography Professors has asked that
politicians "end the practice of manipulating history" and abrogate the
law. The separate petition by history
professors gathered 1,000 signatures in three weeks, said Liauzu.
"We're in a rather crazy situation," he said.
"They say the law won't be applied but it's up to lawmakers to cancel
it."
Beyond the real concerns over the political manipulation of
historic events, there is another danger of
falsely misrepresenting French colonization, Liauzu said. "France is a
country profoundly marked by immigration"
with the majority of French from immigrant stock, Liauzu said. By
failing to tell the truth, children of today's
immigrants "are deprived of any past."
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.
.
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