Khmer People
Ethnic Khmers
According to official statistics, around 96% of the people who live in Cambodia are ethnic Khmers (ethnic ambodians), making the country the most homogeneous in South-East Asia. In reality, there are probably much higher numbers of Vietnamese and Chinese than such statistics account for. The Khmers have inhabited Cambodia since the beginning of recorded history (around the 2nd century AD), many centuries before the Thais and Vietnamese migrated to the region. During the next six centuries, Khmer culture and religion were Indianised by contact with the civilisations of India and Java. Over the centuries, the Khmers have mixed with other groups resident in Cambodia, including the Javanese (8th century), Thai (10th to 15th centuries), Vietnamese (from the early 17th century) and Chinese (since the 18th century).
Ethnic Vietnamese
The Vietnamese are probably the largest non-Khmer ethnic group in Cambodia. According to overnment figures published in March 1995, Cambodia is host to around 100,000 Vietnamese. Unofficial observers claim that the real figure may be as high as one million. The official Khmer Rouge position was that there are four million Vietnamese in Cambodia. The truth is, no-one knows. There is a great deal of mutual dislike and distrust between the Cambodians and the Vietnamese, even those who have been living in Cambodia for generations. While the Khmers refer to the Vietnamese as yuan, a derogatory term that means ‘barbarians’, the Vietnamese look down on the Khmers and consider them lazy for not farming every available bit of land, an absolute necessity in densely populated Vietnam. Historic antagonisms between the Vietnamese and the Khmers are exacerbated by the prominence of ethnic Vietnamese among shopowners.
For the Khmers the mistrust of the Vietnamese has a historical basis. The Vietnamese appropriated the lands of the Mekong Delta from the Khmers in the 16th and 17th centuries and now govern the people and area known as Kampuchea Krom. With Vietnamese encroachments on Cambodian territory continuing to be a major concern in Cambodia, and with the border between them still not satisfactorily demarcated, it is unlikely that such prejudice will disappear in the near future.
Ethnic Chinese
Officially, the government claims there are around 50,000 ethnic Chinese in Cambodia. This is another unrealistic figure. Other informed observers say there are more likely to be as many as half a million of them.
Until 1975 the ethnic Chinese controlled the country’s economic life. In recent years they have reemerged as a powerful economic force, mainly due to investment by overseas Chinese from other parts of Asia. Although intermarriage with Khmers is not infrequent, the Chinese have managed to retain a significant degree of cultural distinctiveness.
Cham Muslims
Cambodia’s Cham Muslims (known locally as the Khmer Islam) officially number around 203,000. Unofficial counts put the figure at around halfa million. They live in villages on the banks of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers, mostly in Kompong Cham and Kompong Chhnang province. The Cham Muslims suffered particularly vicious persecution between 1975 and 1979, when a large part of their community was exterminated. Many Cham mosques that were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge are now being rebuilt.
Ethno-Linguistic Minorities
Cambodia’s diverse chunchiet (ethnolinguistic minorities, or hill tribes), who live in the country’s mountainous regions, probably number from 60,000 to 70,000. Collectively, they are known as Khmer loeu ,literally the ‘upper Khmer’. The majority of the hill tribes are in the north-east of Cambodia, in the provinces of Ratanakiri province, Mondulkiri province, Stung Treng province and Kratie province. The largest group is known as the Tumpoun (many other spellings are used), who number around 15,000. Other groups include the Kreung, Kra Chok, Kavet, Brao
and Jorai.
The hill tribes of Cambodia have long been isolated from mainstream Khmer society and there is little in the way of mutual understanding. They practise shifting cultivation, rarely staying in one place for more than four or five years. Finding a new location for a village requires the mediation of a village elder with the spirit world. Very few of the minorities wear the sort of colourful traditional costumes you see in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. While this may not make for interesting photographs, it takes away that depressing human safari park feel there is to visiting tribal villages in other countries.
Little research has been done on Cambodia’s hill tribes and tourism in the northeast is still in its infancy. A seminar held in 1995 entitled ‘Ethnic Communities and Sustainable Development in North-East Cambodia’ was given over almost entirely to reports on the fate of hill tribes in Thailand and Laos. Given the plight of the Thai hill tribes, the seminar found much to be concerned about regarding the impact I tourism, development and logging on Can bodia’s even more isolated hill tribes.
Repatriation Programs
Since 1992 the United Nations High Con missioner for Refugees (UNHCR) . repatriated more than 70,000 Carnb dians, most of whom had sought refuge Thai land. The first returnees crossed the border at Poi pet (Poay Pet) on 30 Marc 19.92. The following year, hundreds thousands more were resettled and able take part in their country’s election Dozens of nongovernment aid agencies provided support for the program, one of the largest and most complex ever undertaken.
Even today there are significant number of internally displaced people in the country who fled heavy fighting in the north al north-west of the country during 1998. During the first half of 1999, many nternal displaced Cambodians were returned to the original areas they inhabited. This included the return of a number of chunchiet, who were originally recruited by the Khmer Rouge during the late 1960s, to their homes in Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri.
Category: Cambodia Cultures