Cambodian Unity, Good or Bad? What is Unity?

Recently there is a disagreement in the Cambodian community in California's new Cambodia town about whether to invite Sok An to Khmer parade or not. This disagreement have led many Khmer to evaluate their values and why they as individuals, whether they live in the Cambodia Town or elsewhere in America, would have disagree/agree with allowing Sok An participating in Cambodian New Year Parade in Cambodia Town or now.

Navy Phim briefly summarizes this new stir in the Cambodian community in her blog, I took a chance to post on her blog today and here's what i post in a reply to another blogger who believe Sok An should be allow to visit Cambodia town because its a Khmer thing to do, because this mean Khmer unity. But what is unity, read my opinion below.

FromNavy's Blog
i disagree with Young Khmer on Khmer unity. That does not mean I don’t want Khmer unity or don’t understand this concept. Every individual has an idea, and not all ideas are conceived equally by their thinkers. There are many Khmer, and so there are many Khmer with different ideas, far better ideas of a vision for Cambodia then the current regime. Unity in this context is just a pretext to suppress those different ideas and ways to progress Cambodia. Having different ideas does not lead to war, but not respecting them does, violently suppressing them those. And today, who are those people who commit such acts? They are the Hun Sen regime, so how can anyone accuse the other Khmer of not wanting unity? Hun Sen regime breaks unity and doesn’t understand unity, they only understand servitude. Unity to them means listen to us! However that is wrong why? Because unity does not occur when one person follows another, according to Khmer Young, if we Khmer don’t have unity then we will always have war and struggle, but i disagree. Khmer can have unity and different ideas and there are no wars. no struggle. Unity in Khmer is loving another Khmer, and taking pity on another Khmer, and acting in compassion for the entire Khmer Nation. As long as we have those unity, the love of our people, then the political parties doesn’t matter, if we have 2 hundred, we are all working for a better Cambodia, the pluraism in governmence means that we have learn to accept our brothers and compete with each other maturely to progress our nation based on our individual values and ideas.

And be grateful that there are people out there, smarter then us, who have far better ideas, because if our ideas aren’t great, we still have hopes. That is unity. Which is humble, tolerance, and pity towards others.

Unity is not following the foot step of others. That is slavery. Just another case, what if everyone of us in the Pol Era decide that the best thing to do was to follow the ruling party of the time just for the sake of this unity concept(applied in the wrong way) then wouldn’t Cambodia be all dead by now? Not all, maybe a few thousand survive. But That’s unity, unity in following without dissent, unity in allowing those to do evil continue doing because to disagree would be fragmentation.

That is a disastrous unity. And again today, we are ask to apply that same concept of unity to be allow the Hun Sen regime to inflict suffering on the rest of our relatives that are survivors or Khmer Rough and still living in Cambodia.

Let unity be in the heart, an act of pity and compassion, not the action of submissive and blind following.

Vibol,
http://khmerarts.blogspot.com