Cambodian Queen Mother
Norodom Monineath Sihanouk mourns for her husband and former King
Norodom Sihanouk in Beijing, China, on Monday, Oct. 15, 2012. Sihanouk,
the revered former king who was a towering figure in Cambodian politics
through a half-century of war, genocide and upheaval, died Monday. He
was 89. He had been getting medical treatment in China since January and
had suffered a variety of illnesses, including colon cancer, diabetes
and hypertension. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Lan Hongguang)
Sopheng Cheang
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (AP) - He was many things to
the Cambodia he helped navigate through half a century of war and
genocide - revered independence hero, ruthless monarch and prime
minister, communist collaborator, eccentric playboy, avid filmmaker.
Most of all, perhaps, Cambodia’s former King Norodom
Sihanouk was a cunning political survivor who reinvented himself
repeatedly throughout his often flamboyant life.
In this July 29, 1941
file photo, Cambodia’s former King Norodom Sihanouk smiles at an unknown
location. (AP Photo)
On Monday, aged 89, Sihanouk died of a heart attack
in Beijing, where he had been receiving medical treatment since January
for a variety of ailments.
First crowned king by the French in 1941 at the age
of 18, Sihanouk saw his Southeast Asian nation transformed from colony
to kingdom, from U.S.-backed regime to U.S. bombing zone, from Khmer
Rouge killing field to what it remains today - a fragile experiment in
democracy.
He ruled as a feudal-style absolute monarch, but
called himself a democrat. He was a man who sang love songs at elaborate
state dinners, brought his French poodle to peace talks, and charmed
foreign dignitaries such as Jacqueline Kennedy.
He also painted, fielded a palace soccer team,
composed music and led his own jazz band. His appetite extended to fast
cars, food and women. He married at least five times - some say six -
and fathered 14 children.
In this Oct. 20, 2004 file
photo, Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk, left, introduces his son and
successor, King Norodom Sihamoni upon their arrival at Phnom Penh
airport, in Cambodia. (AP Photo/Andy Eames, File)
When the murderous Khmer Rouge seized power in the
1970s, he was reviled as their collaborator. Yet he himself ended up as
their prisoner and lost five of his children to the regime. Later, in
the 1990s - after a U.N.-brokered deal to end Cambodia’s long civil war
- he recast himself as a peacemaker and constitutional monarch.
In the twilight of his life, Sihanouk suffered colon
cancer, diabetes and hypertension. Prince Sisowath Thomico, a royal
family member who also was Sihanouk’s assistant and nephew, said the
former king passed away before dawn Monday, Oct. 15.
In this July 17, 2001
file photo, Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk acknowledges the crowd
while walking to greet North Korea’s national assembly leader Kim Yong
Nam at Phnom Penh airport, in Cambodia. (AP Photo/Andy Eames, File)
“His death was a great loss to Cambodia,” Thomico
said, adding that Sihanouk had dedicated his life “for the sake of his
entire nation, country and for the Cambodian people.”
In 2004, Sihanouk abdicated the throne, citing his
poor health. The move paved the way for his son Norodom Sihamoni to take
his place.
On Monday, Sihamoni flew to China with Prime Minister
Hun Sen to retrieve Sihanouk’s body. State flags flew at half-staff, and
Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said a week of official
mourning would be held once the former king’s body is repatriated on
Wednesday. A cremation ceremony will be held in three months, according
to Buddhist tradition.
While officials said they expect as many as 100,000
to line the route from the airport to the Royal Palace for the return of
Sihanouk’s body, the immediate reaction in the capital seemed muted,
partly because it was a holiday, which took many people out of town.
In this photo released by
China’s Xinhua News Agency, Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni, right,
shakes hands with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen at the airport in
Phnom Penh on Monday, Oct. 15, 2012. Sihamoni and Hun Sen flew to
Beijing on Monday morning to retrieve the body of former King Norodom
Sihanouk who died at the age of 89. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhao Yishen)
One of those mourning was 67-year-old Yos Sekchantha,
who said she offered prayers that his soul would rest in peace.
“I don’t know much about politics, but the king
father was really a good leader and cared about his county and people,”
she said as tears welled in her eyes.
Many Cambodians, though, are too young to have
emotional bonds to a man who in the past two decades has been
overshadowed by Hun Sen, the country’s current political strongman.
In January, Sihanouk requested he be cremated in the
Cambodian and Buddhist tradition. He asked that his ashes be put in an
urn, preferably made of gold, and placed in a stupa at the Royal Palace.
Born Oct. 31, 1922, Sihanouk enjoyed a pampered
childhood in French colonial Indochina. In 1941, the French crowned him
king instead of other relatives closer in line to the throne because
they thought the pudgy, giggling prince would be easy to control.
They were the first of many to underestimate him, and
by 1953 the French were out.
In 1955, Sihanouk stepped down from the throne,
organized a mass political party and went on to hold various positions
as head of government and state.
Through those years, he steered Cambodia toward
uneasy neutrality at the height of the Cold War and was a founder of the
Non-Aligned Movement.
In 1965, he broke off relations with Washington as
U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War shifted into high gear. But by 1969,
worried about increasing Vietnamese communist use of Cambodian soil, he
made new overtures to America and turned away from China.
Sihanouk’s top priority was to keep Cambodia out of
the war, but he could not. U.S. aircraft bombed Vietnamese communist
sanctuaries in Cambodia with increasing regularity, over his public
protests. Privately, U.S. officials believed, he had given tacit
permission for the attacks on Vietnamese communist sanctuaries near
Cambodia’s eastern border.
Internally, Cambodia was a one-man show. Sihanouk’s
sharpest critics accused him of running a medieval state as an ancient
Khmer ruler reincarnated in Western dress.
“I am Sihanouk,” he once said, “and all Cambodians
are my children.”
Indeed, many adored Sihanouk as a near-deity.
In 1970, though, Sihanouk was overthrown in a
U.S.-backed coup that came while he was abroad on a trip that included a
stay at a French weight-loss clinic. He spent years of lonely, if
lavish, exile in Beijing.
Seeking to regain the throne, he joined the communist
Khmer Rouge-dominated rebels after his overthrow. Only a few years
earlier, his government had been suppressing them in the city and
countryside.
They had numbered only a few hundred until the coup,
but his presence gave them a legitimacy they had never before enjoyed.
The alliance left Sihanouk open to subsequent
criticism that he opened the way for the Khmer Rouge holocaust. But his
relations with the communist group were always strained.
“The Khmer Rouge do not like me at all, and I know
that. Ooh, la, la ... It is clear to me,” he said in a 1973 interview.
“When they no longer need me, they will spit me out like a cherry pit.”
When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, Sihanouk
returned home. But he was detained and the former rebels ordered his
execution. Only the personal intervention of Chinese leader Zhou Enlai
saved him.
With Sihanouk under house arrest in the Royal Palace,
the Khmer Rouge ran an ultra-radical Maoist regime from 1975 to 1979,
emptying the cities to create a vast network of forced labor camps. An
estimated 1.7 million Cambodians were executed or died of disease and
hunger under their rule.
Vietnam invaded in 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge.
Freed as the Vietnamese advanced on Phnom Penh, Sihanouk found exile in
Beijing and North Korea.
From there, he nominally headed an unlikely coalition
of three guerrilla groups - including his former Khmer Rouge captors -
fighting the Vietnamese-installed puppet government. The war lasted a
decade.
Sihanouk remained a unifying figure, though, going on
to lead the U.N.-supported interim structure that ran Cambodia until
1993 elections.
The same year, Sihanouk re-ascended the throne in a
traditional Khmer coronation. Restored to his palace and travelling the
countryside with personal bodyguards on loan from North Korea, he
assumed a new role as beloved father of the country - even though many
adoring, older Cambodians expressed hope for a return of his previous
direct rule.
But the bright promise of the elections soon faded.
Four years after the polls, Hun Sen launched a
violent coup, and he remains in power to this day.
In the last years of his life, Sihanouk’s profile and
influence receded. While older people in the countryside still held him
in reverence, the young generation regarded him as a figure of the past
and one partly responsible for Cambodia’s tragedy.
Rarely at a loss for words, he became for a time a
prolific blogger, posting his musings on current affairs and past
controversies. Most of his writing was literally in his own hand - his
site featured images of letters, usually in French in a cramped cursive
script, along with handwritten marginalia to news clippings that caught
his interest.
His production tailed off, however, as he retreated
further from the public eye, spending more and more time under doctors’
care in Beijing.
The hard-living Sihanouk had suffered ill health
since the early 1990s. He endured cancer, a brain lesion and arterial,
heart, lung, liver and eye ailments.
In late 2011, on his return from another extended
stay in China, Sihanouk dramatically declared that he never intended to
leave his homeland again. But true to his mercurial reputation, he flew
off to Beijing just a few months later for medical care.
Associated Press writers Kay Johnson, Grant Peck,
Denis Gray and Todd Pitman in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Cambodian
students hold lotus flowers while praying in front of the main gate of
the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to mourn the death of former
King Norodom Sihanouk Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)