Cambodian Leaders Applaud Visa Decision : Culture: Community reaction is generally positive, but local leaders don’t rule out protests over dance company participation in the L.A. Festival.

Local Cambodians said they were pleased that the State Department has finally granted visitor visas to a Phnom Penh dance company to perform in the upcoming Los Angeles Festival, but some community leaders said protests from some factions could not be ruled out.

Under review since June, the visas allow 32 members of the Cambodian Classical Dance Troupe based at the University of Fine Arts in the Cambodian capital to visit the U.S., marking the first cultural exchange between the two countries since the Vietnam War.

Credited with resurrecting a nearly lost art form, the company is scheduled to perform a program of classical repertoire adapted from the sacred “The Ramayana” in four performances at the L.A. State and County Arboretum Sept. 13-16. It will be the company’s first U.S. appearance since 1971.

“I think it is good,” said Narim Kem, editor of the Long Beach-based Cambodian newspaper, Serey Pheap. “It will show everybody that we still have our classic art.”

Kem said that he expected the company’s performances to boost morale among local Cambodians who would be able to take public pride in their art for the first time in two decades. During the Pol Pot regime, classical Cambodian art forms were nearly decimated, he said.

The U.S. government recognizes neither Cambodia nor the Vietnamese-backed Hun Sen regime which came to power in 1979. The State Department said that issuance of these visas “should not be construed as reflecting any change in U.S. policy vis-a-vis the Phnom Penh regime. We have merely decided not to stand in the way of a bona-fide cultural event.”

Judith Luther, festival executive director, said approval of the visas had come “just barely” in time for the festival to arrange for transportation and housing for the dancers, their artistic director and two teachers, who will arrive here Sept. 7.

Luther said the festival would give priority to selling tickets to the Cambodian performances; since the festival was unsure whether the group would be allowed to enter the country, only 500 of the 2,000 tickets available have been sold to date, she said.

Kem said political implications of the dancers’ visit have been widely discussed within the estimated 40,000 Cambodians in Long Beach, considered the largest Cambodian population outside Asia.

“This is a prelude to a kind of normalization, or friendly relationship between Cambodia and the United States,” said Nil Hul, president of the Long Beach-based Cambodian Assn. of America.

Khamchong Luangpraseut of Santa Ana, the immediate past president of the Washington-based National Assn. for Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans, said the possibility for protests or other negative reactions remains.

“Many Cambodians here have lost so many (friends), had their families destroyed and they blame the Khmer Rouge and the Hun Sen government and the Vietnamese. There could be protests . . . but they should be directed toward the regime, not the art.”

Than Pok, executive director of the United Cambodian Community, the largest Cambodian organization in the region, who had earlier said that violence was a possibility if the visas were approved, could not be reached for comment.