Word: sihanouk
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Throughout this area last week there was a rapid reshuffling of positions. The reason: Cambodia's Premier, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, suddenly abandoned his "active" (i.e., pro-Western) neutrality and recognized Red China. Sihanouk visited Red China two years ago and appeared impressed with China's totalitarian "vigor." But he was not stampeded into recognition then. Last month, Sihanouk wrote cogently in the American quarterly Foreign Affairs that "a prince and a former king must be well aware that the first concern of the Communists is to get rid of the king and the natural elite of any country...
...Cambodia, this was all right with everybody. Besides, Sam Sary was somebody special. As a delegate to the Geneva Conference that ended the Indo-Chinese war in 1954, Sam Sary had become a hero by leading the fight to prevent partition of Cambodia between Communists and nonCommunists. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the King who resigned to become Cambodia's Premier, rewarded his longtime friend and admirer (Sary is the Prince's biographer) by promoting Sary to the vice-premiership...
Then trouble became "Sad Sam" Sary's middle name (TIME, June 10, 1957). Last summer powerful political enemies complained that Sary was granting profitable import licenses to the wrong people, i.e., someone other than Sary's accusers. Tears in eyes, Sary crawled before Sihanouk on hands and knees and asked to be relieved of his job. Tears in eyes, Sihanouk let him go. In remorse, Sary shaved his head and eyebrows, entered a Buddhist monastery...
...Communists he had permitted to flourish so freely, Sihanouk told the convention, "are going to cut my throat." With a nod in the direction of both Red China and Communist North Viet Nam, he declared: "If the moment comes when we must die or be taken over by the Communists, we will accept inevitable death with the conviction that we have not betrayed our country." It was his most forthright anti-Communist speech to date. Sihanouk added: "Many countries have not believed in the mortal danger of Communism, and then, when the evidence became clear to them...
Last week some 5,000 demonstrators marched on the royal palace to cheer Sihanouk's stand. Sihanouk himself followed up his words with actions: first he summoned his ambassador home from Moscow, then warned Pnompenh's Soviet embassy and Chinese Communist trade mission to stop their propaganda activities forthwith. Apparently intending to get a brand new start all along the line, he had his father, King Norodom Sura-marit, dissolve the squabbling Assembly, and ordered new elections...