Sơn Ngọc Minh

Sơn Ngọc Minh (* 1920 in Nam Bo, Trà Vinh Province ( French Indochina ), † December 22, 1972 in Beijing , People's Republic of China ), actually Phạm Văn Hua , also known as Achar Mean , was a communist Cambodian politician. In 1950 he was appointed leader of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of a future Communist Cambodia by the Khmer Issarak Association . In 1951 he founded together with Tou Samouth the People's Revolutionary Party of the Khmer .

Early life

Sơn Ngọc Minh was born during the French colonial times in the province of Trà Vinh (now Vietnam ) in a district inhabited by a majority of Khmer people as the son of a Khmer father and a Vietnamese mother. As a teenager he was a fisherman on the Tonle Sap before he was recruited by the Political Commissar of the Vietnamese Communists ( Việt Minh ) Nguyen Thanh Son in 1936 for his printing works Duong Phuong in Mỹ Tho , where he was indoctrinated by communists. As the son of mixed Cambodian-Vietnamese parents, he was ideally suited for the Vietnamese to lead a revolution in Cambodia under Vietnamese guidance. He was first sent to Svay Rieng Province in the south-east of the country, where he established a first revolutionary cell, and then to Battambang in the north-west to serve as chairman of a newly formed Cambodian People's Liberation Committee (CPLC). Eventually he began studying in Phnom Penh and became a Buddhist lay preacher (Achar) .

During the Indochina War

A defining experience for Minh was the arrest of the respected monk Hem Chieu by the French police in 1942 for allegedly preaching against the colonial militia. Minh took part in the protest against the arrest, the first large modern demonstration in Cambodia on July 20, 1942, which brought 700 monks and 2,000 civilians onto the streets. The leaders of the demonstration were arrested, causing further riot. Two of the most important nationalists that emerged from this movement were Minh and Tou Samouth , also lay Buddhist preachers. When the French restored their control of Cambodia, which they had temporarily lost to the Japanese, in 1945, both of them gave up their monastic life in order to be politically active. They joined the communist independence movement Khmer Issarak founded by the popular opponent Norodom Sihanouk's Sơn Ngọc Thanh and in 1946 the Indochinese Communist Party . Minh took on the battle name Sơn Ngọc Minh , probably an allusion to Sơn Ngọc Thanh, whom Sihanouk had banished and who was still living in exile in France at the time. During the Indochina War (1946 to 1954) Minh and Samouth continued to build the Khmer Issarak, which in 1954 had 5,000 fighters and numerous village militias.

Sơn Ngọc Minh was chairman of the first nationwide congress of the left-wing Khmer Issarak groups in Hồng Dân in the Mekong Delta in April 1950 , when the Khmer Issarak Association (KIA) was founded and Minh was appointed leader of the provisional revolutionary government of the aspired communist Cambodia. In the same year, he formally declared Cambodia's independence after claiming the KIA controlled a third of the country. Together with Tou Samouth, Minh founded the Revolutionary People's Party of the Khmer , predecessor of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (KPRP) in August 1951 .

After the Indochina War and death

After the Geneva Agreement of 1954 , which ended the Indochina War, but unlike the Laotian Pathet Lao and the Việt Minh, at the request of France, denied the Cambodian communists participation and guaranteed them no zone of retreat and no participation in the government, Sơn Ngọc Minh and many others left Khmer Issarak officials Cambodia and went to North Vietnam .

Minh occupied by important his death functions in the regime of North Vietnam and was also an important member of the KPRP, although he largely from Hanoi operated out until 1972 at the request of Ieng Sary was brought to a hospital in Beijing to protest against hypertension to be treated . Minh died there at the age of 52. His death further diminished the influence of the Hanoi-trained communists within the Khmer Rouge and accordingly increased the power of the party center hardliners led by Pol Pot .

After his death, his memory was honored in the People's Republic of Kampuchea , the Pro-Vietnamese communist regime, which was established in 1979 after the fall of the Democratic Kampuchea of the Khmer Rouge. One of the main boulevards of Phnom Penh was named after him, and his portrait appeared on the 100 riel banknote.

literature

Arthur J. Dommen: The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2001, ISBN 978-0-253-33854-9 .
James A. Tyner: The Killing of Cambodia: Geopolitics, Genocide, and the Unmaking of Space. Ashgate, Burlington (VT) 2008, ISBN 978-0-7546-7096-4 .
Ben Kiernan : How Pol Pot Came to Power. Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975. Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) 2004, ISBN 978-0-300-10262-8 .

Individual evidence

^ Christopher E. Goscha : Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885-1954. Routledge, New York 1999, ISBN 978-0-7007-0622-8 , p. 339 ( limited preview in Google book search).
^ Tyner: The Killing of Cambodia. 2008, p. 34.
^ Dommen: The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans. 2001, p. 181 ( limited preview in Google book search).
↑ Solomon Kane: Dictionnaire des Khmers rouges. Mean (achar) (transl .: François Gerles, foreword by David P. Chandler ). Institut de Recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine (IRASEC), Bangkok 2007, ISBN 978-2-916063-27-0 , p. 245 f.
↑ Ben Kiernan : The Pol Pot Regime. Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. 3. Edition. Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5 , p. 12.
↑ Kiernan: The Pol Pot Regime. 2008, p. 13; According to Kiernan, the frequently used designation United [or Unified] Issarak Front is based on a false French translation of the Khmer-language name Samakhum Khmer Issarak .
↑ Kiernan : How Pol Pot Came to Power. 2004, p. 80.
↑ Kiernan: How Pol Pot Came to Power. 2004, p. 360.
^ David P. Chandler : Brother Number One. A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Revised Edition. Silkworm, Chiang Mai 2000, ISBN 978-974-7551-18-1 , p. 219.

personal data
SURNAME	Sơn Ngọc Minh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Phạm Văn Hua; Achar Mean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Cambodian politician
DATE OF BIRTH	1920
PLACE OF BIRTH	Nam Bo, Trà Vinh Province , French Indochina
DATE OF DEATH	December 22, 1972
Place of death	Beijing , People's Republic of China

[1] Christopher E. Goscha : Thailand and the Southeast Asian Networks of the Vietnamese Revolution, 1885-1954. Routledge, New York 1999, ISBN 978-0-7007-0622-8 , p. 339 ( limited preview in Google book search).

[2] Tyner: The Killing of Cambodia. 2008, p. 34.

[3] Dommen: The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans. 2001, p. 181 ( limited preview in Google book search).

[4] Solomon Kane: Dictionnaire des Khmers rouges. Mean (achar) (transl .: François Gerles, foreword by David P. Chandler ). Institut de Recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est Contemporaine (IRASEC), Bangkok 2007, ISBN 978-2-916063-27-0 , p. 245 f.

[5] Ben Kiernan : The Pol Pot Regime. Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. 3. Edition. Yale University Press, New Haven (CT) 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14434-5 , p. 12.

[6] Kiernan: The Pol Pot Regime. 2008, p. 13; According to Kiernan, the frequently used designation United [or Unified] Issarak Front is based on a false French translation of the Khmer-language name Samakhum Khmer Issarak .

[7] Kiernan : How Pol Pot Came to Power. 2004, p. 80.

[8] Kiernan: How Pol Pot Came to Power. 2004, p. 360.

[9] David P. Chandler : Brother Number One. A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Revised Edition. Silkworm, Chiang Mai 2000, ISBN 978-974-7551-18-1 , p. 219.