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Monday, September 10, 2012

Hun Sen

Hun Sen
Early life

Hun Sen was born Hun Nal in the village of Peam Koh Sna, which is located within Stung Treng District, Kampong Cham Province and was the third child of six children to a peasant family. His father, Hun Neang was a resident monk in a local Wat in Kampong Cham province before disrobing to join the French resistance and married his mother, Dee Yon in the 1940s. Hun Neang's paternal grandparents were wealthy landowners of Teochew Chinese heritage.[2][3] Hun Neang inherited some of his family assets and led a relatively comfortable life, as they owned several hectares of land until a kidnapping incident forced their family to sell off much of their assets.[4] Hun Sen left his family at the age of 13 to attend a monastic school in Phnom Penh. When Lon Nol usurped power from Sihanouk in 1970 during a bloodless coup, Hun Nal gave up his education to join the Khmer Rouge.[5] Two years later, Hun Nal changed his name to Hun Sen. In 1974, Hun Sen met his future wife Bun Rany. He was wounded in the left eye, which was later removed, in 1975 on the day before the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh. The following year, Hun Sen married Bun Rany.[6]
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Political career

Hun Sen came to power with the Khmer Rouge and served as a Battalion Commander in the Eastern Region of Democratic Kampuchea (previous name of Cambodia). After falling out with the Khmer Rouge Hun Sen fled to Vietnam.[7] Hun Sen was selected by the Vietnamese for a leadership role in the rebel army and government they were creating for Cambodia. When the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown, Hun Sen was appointed as Foreign Minister of the Vietnamese-installed People's Republic of Kampuchea/State of Cambodia (PRK/SOC) in 1979 and in 1985 he was made Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Prime Minister, after the death of Chairman Chan Sy until 1990, (with a brief interruption from 1986 until 1987). As Foreign Minister, Hun Sen was a key figure in the Paris Peace Talks, which brokered peace in Cambodia.

In 1987, Amnesty International accused Hun Sen's government of torture of thousands of political prisoners using "electric shocks, hot irons and near-suffocation with plastic bags."[8]

From 1993 until 1998 he was Co-Prime Minister with Prince Norodom Ranariddh. In 1997, the coalition was shaken by tensions between Ranariddh and Hun Sen. FUNCINPEC began to collaborate with the remaining Khmer Rouge rebels (with whom it had been allied against Hun Sen's Vietnamese-backed government during the 1980s), aiming to absorb them into its ranks.[citation needed]

In response, Hun Sen launched the 1997 Cambodian Coup, replacing Ranariddh with Ung Hout as the First Prime Minister and himself still as the Second Prime Minister until the CPP's victory in the 1998 election and thus becoming the country's sole Prime Minister in 1998. During that year the media broadcast him as the Strong Man of Cambodia which he later said was premature, and that the July 1997 was merely, the government taking action against the paramilitary anarchy that was sponsored and brought to Phnom Penh by Norodom Ranariddh.[citation needed]

In an open letter, Amnesty International condemned the summary execution of FUNCINPEC ministers and the "systematic campaign of arrests and harassment " of political opponents.[9]

The elections of July 2003 resulted in a larger majority in the National Assembly for the CPP, with FUNCINPEC losing seats to the CPP and the Sam Rainsy Party. However, CPP's majority was short of the two thirds constitutionally required for the CPP to form a government alone. This deadlock was overcome and a new CPP-FUNCINPEC coalition was formed in mid-2004. When Norodom Ranariddh was chosen to be Head of the National Assembly and Hun Sen became again sole Prime Minister of Cambodia.
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Corruption

Some political opponents of Hun Sen accuse him of being a Vietnamese puppet. This is due to his position in the government created by Vietnam while Cambodia was under Vietnamese military occupation and the fact that he was a prominent figure in the People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (now known as the Cambodian People's Party), which governed Cambodia as a one-party state under Vietnamese military occupation from 1979 until elections in 1993. Hun Sen and his supporters reject such charges, saying that he represents only the Cambodian people.

Forced evictions:Hun Sen's government has been responsible for the sale of land to foreign investors in 2007-08 resulting in the eviction of thousands of residents from their homes.[10]

Hun Sen was implicated in corruption related to Cambodia's oil wealth and mineral resources in Global Witness 2009 report on Cambodia. He and his close associates were accused of carrying out secret negotiations with interested private parties and taking money from those who he would grant rights to exploit the resources. However, the credibility of this accusation has been questioned by government officials and especially Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself.[11]
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Personal life

Hun Sen is married to Bun Rany. They have six children, 3 sons and 3 daughters: Manet, Mana, Manit, Mani, Mali and Malis. The youngest, Malis was adopted. Hun Manet is a 1999 West Point Academy graduate and obtained his PhD in Economics at the University of Bristol. In 2010, Manet was promoted Major General in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) and became the Deputy Commander of the Prime Minister's Body Guard headquarters.

Although Hun Sen's birthday is officially celebrated on April 4, 1951, he had revealed that his actual date of birth was August 5, 1952.[12] He had apparently lied about his date of birth to appear older when joining the Khmer Rouge as a youth.

Norodom Sihamoni

Norodom Sihamoni
Reign 14 October 2004 – present
Coronation 29 October 2004
Predecessor Norodom Sihanouk
Prime Ministers Hun Sen

House House of Norodom
Father Norodom Sihanouk
Mother Norodom Monineath
Born 14 May 1953 (age 59)
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Religion Theravada Buddhism
       
          Sihamoni was born in 1953. At the time of his birth and that of his younger brother, his mother, a Cambodian citizen of Italian and Khmer ancestry, had been one of King Norodom Sihanouk's consorts after being a constant companion since the day they met in 1951, when the young Monique Izzi won first prize in a national beauty contest.[2] She was granted the title of Neak Moneang and the name of Monineath at the time of her marriage to King Norodom Sihanouk in 1952. Furthermore, Queen Monineath is a step-granddaughter of the late Prince Norodom Duongchak of Cambodia, and the daughter of Pomme Peang and of her second husband, Jean-François Izzi, a French-Italian banker.[3] The Royal Ark website entry about the genealogy of the Cambodian royal family states that Sihanouk and Monineath were married twice, once on 12 April 1952, when she was 15, and again ("more formally", according to the website) on 5 March 1955. She is described as Sihanouk's seventh wife.

King Norodom Sihamoni has 14 half-brothers and half-sisters by his father's various relationships; his only full sibling, a younger brother, HRH Samdech Norodom Narindrapong (born 1954) died in 2003.

He has spent most of his life outside Cambodia. As a child, Sihamoni was sent to Prague, Czechoslovakia, by his father in 1962, where he, while attending elementary school, high school and Academy of Music Arts, studied classical dance and music until 1975. He is fluent in French and Czech, as well as being a good speaker of English and Russian. During the 1970 coup d'état by Lon Nol, Sihamoni remained in Czechoslovakia. In 1975, he left Prague and began to study filmmaking in North Korea, and in 1977 returned to his native Cambodia. Immediately, the ruling Khmer Rouge government turned against the monarchy, and Sihamoni was put under house arrest by the Khmer Rouge with the rest of the royal family until the 1979 Vietnamese invasion. In 1981, he moved to France to teach ballet and was later president of the Khmer Dance Association. He lived in France for nearly 20 years, but even then he regularly visited Prague, where he spent his childhood and youth. He is the only ruling monarch who speaks Czech.

In 1993, the prince was appointed Cambodia's delegate to UNESCO, the UN cultural body based in Paris, where he became known for his hard work and his devotion to Cambodian culture. He previously refused an appointment as Cambodia's ambassador to France.[4]

On 14 October 2004, he was selected by a special nine-member council, part of a selection process that was quickly put in place after the surprise abdication of King Norodom Sihanouk a week before. Sihamoni's selection was endorsed by Prime Minister Hun Sen and National Assembly Speaker Prince Norodom Ranariddh (the new king's brother), both members of the privy council. He was inaugurated and formally anointed as King on Friday, 29 October 2004.[5] King Sihamoni and his parents, King Father Norodom Sihanouk and Queen Mother Norodom Monineath specifically requested that the ceremonies be kept low-key because they did not wish for the impoverished country to spend too much money on the event.

The original gold and diamond encrusted crown, a sacred symbol of Mount Meru, used in official coronation ceremonies in Cambodia for centuries dating back to the ancient Angkorian Empire, disappeared along with many other items of Royal Regalia during the Lon Nol regime in the early 1970s. As stated by Julio A. Jeldres, King Father Norodom Sihanouk's official biographer, "The King did not want a crown remade because of Cambodia's poverty."[6]

Sihamoni remains a bachelor. His father Norodom Sihanouk has stated that Sihamoni "loves women as his sisters".[7] Sihamoni has no children, but this does not pose a problem because the King in Cambodia is selected by the throne council even when such a successor exists.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Flag of the Cambodia under French protection


Flag of the Cambodia under French protection
1863- March 1945, October 1945-1948


Flag of the short-lived Cambodian Pro-Tokyo puppet state established under the Japanese occupation of Cambodia
March - October 1945

Flag of the Kingdom of Cambodia
1948–1970, 1993–present

Flag of the Khmer Republic
1970–1975

Flag of the Democratic Kampuchea
1975–1979

Flag of the People's Republic of Kampuchea
1979–1989

Flag of the State of Cambodia[1]
1989–1991

Flag of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)
1992–1993

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