Many Cambodians Resent Vietnamese Presence : Phnom Penh Making Joyless Comeback

By the 9 p.m curfew, Phnom Penh’s streets are deserted except for the few exempt foreigners who are heading home from dinner at the city’s riverside restaurants.

In the shadows, Cambodian soldiers man checkpoints. Cambodians are already laying out their sleeping mats in their shops and homes. The restaurant workers will sleep overnight at their jobs.

The darkness seems to be the harbinger of the mood of Phnom Penh’s more than a half-million residents, even though this capital city is making a comeback after its devastation by the Communist Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot.

The Cambodians will tell you they have many, many problems. First it was Pol Pot, who killed hundreds of thousands of people and inflicted untold misery on the country.

Now that he is gone, driven into the mountains, the Cambodians say there is still little joy in their country because of the Vietnamese they detest and see as colonialist overlords.

Vietnamese shantytowns with restaurants, cafes and merchandise stalls have sprung up on the banks of the Tonle Sap River.

Viet Troops on Roads

Vietnamese soldiers, weapons slung over their shoulders, patrol the roads.

A young government employee took this reporter aside in a state-run hotel during a recent visit and said, “This is not my country anymore.”

Another government employee sent a note to my room asking to talk to me.

“We have many difficulties,” he said, “because of the Vietnamese.”

The Vietnamese invaded Cambodia on Christmas Day 1978, ousting the Khmer Rouge and installing a friendly Communist government headed by President Heng Samrin.

Cambodians are reminded daily of the atrocities of Pol Pot.

Western observers surmise that this is a campaign by the Heng Samrin regime to justify the Vietnamese occupation and to keep Cambodians from switching loyalties to the Khmer Rouge and two non-communist resistance groups that have taken to the mountains to fight.

Government officials here will tell you to the day how long Pol Pot was in power: three years, eight months, 20 days.

One of the main tourist attractions in Phnom Penh is Tuol Sleng Museum, the museum of crime that was once a high school. Government authorities say Pol Pot turned the high school into a prison where his followers humiliated, tortured and killed thousands of Cambodians including peasants, technicians, monks, ministers, doctors, teachers and students.

Handful of Americans

Among the top-selling tape cassettes is “Battambang Destiny,” a song about forced labor and hardships under the Pol Pot regime in Battambang province in the northwest of the country, where thousands were sent in exile.

Only a handful of Americans are in Cambodia, among the less than 50 Westerners with the United Nations and with private aid organizations such as Church World Service.

The old U.S. Embassy building, which the Americans evacuated on April 12, 1975, as the Khmer Rouge closed in on Phnom Penh, is now used by the Department of Fisheries.

The United States does not recognize any government in Cambodia; it opposes the Heng Samrin regime on the grounds that it is controlled by Vietnam.

One government official says there have been no major terrorist attacks in Phnom Penh since 1979, adding that the curfew is a precautionary measure.

With or without a curfew, social life is limited for foreigners, generally dinner at one of two riverside restaurants, tennis, swimming and bicycle riding.

Socializing with Cambodians is frowned upon by the government. One lower-level official did join this correspondent for dinner but said his wife could not accept the invitation.

However, people you meet in the streets are friendly; in some cases, they are forthcoming about their feelings.

Letters to Relatives

One woman working in a state-run store took the risk of asking me if I could help her get out of the country. Cambodians pass on letters to foreigners to be mailed to their relatives and friends in the United States.

Movies are a main source of entertainment. One Saturday, Cambodians were lined up at 8 a.m. outside a theater to buy their tickets.

In addition, the city has a zoo that has only two elephants, a park that draws large Sunday crowds and a national stadium.

Once-elegant hotels are run-down. The Samaki, once the most popular hotel in the city, was called the Le Phnom when the Americans were there. Then you could eat a breakfast of coffee and fresh croissants around the swimming pool as the sun rose.

Now, in the evening, a Cambodian woman whose husband was executed by Pol Pot troops because he worked for the Americans stands at the entrance to the hotel with her daughters. She hands me a letter.

”. . . I am very poor,” the letter says. “I have two daughters. I have no money to make a living. And I have some problem in my life. I have been sick for a long time. I have not any money to buy medicine. I am sad all the time.”