Keywords

Introduction

For centuries, Khmer Buddhism has played a central role in moderating the exercise of worldly power in Cambodia. The brotherhood of monks (sangha), the dhamma teachings and the space of the pagoda historically represented a realm of virtue that transcended and was independent of secular interests. The sangha could bestow legitimacy upon appropriately deferential rulers, but could also rise up in resistance against rulers who transgressed Buddhist norms. In this way, Khmer Buddhism might be said to have performed as Cambodia’s only source of legitimate opposition to the otherwise incontestable power of her rulers.

This chapter is concerned with the factors that have increasingly mitigated against the sangha’s ability to recover its former role after its complete destruction during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979). I argue that these have to do with the way the sangha has been drawn into the secular realm of politics since 1979, firstly under Vietnamese occupation until 1989, then within the framework of UN efforts to graft multi-party democracy onto Cambodia’s authoritarian political culture. As we shall see, and despite the best efforts of some monks to revive monastic power, the past three decades have seen the silencing of Cambodian monks perceived as a threat to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s authority. Today, the chances of the sangha recovering its once so significant power to protect its congregations from the excesses of abusive rulers seem ever more remote, given China’s increasing support and legitimisation of Hun Sen and his nascent dynasty.

I shall first present a brief history of the arrival of Buddhism to Cambodia and its interweaving with pre-existing religious practices. I describe the relationship between Khmer Buddhism, the spirits of nature and the powers of the King. There follows a description of the historical lead up to the complete annihilation of Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge, and then its state-controlled revival under the Vietnamese-supported People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK, 1979–1989). This period marked the beginning of an unprecedented entanglement of Khmer Buddhism with secular politics.

The last thirty years of Cambodia’s history—the period that Strangio (2014) has called “Hun Sen’s Cambodia”—has witnessed a major resurgence of Buddhism and many Cambodians initially invested great hopes in the restoration of moral order through Khmer Buddhism. However, as we shall see, the grafting of liberal democratic norms onto Cambodian political culture, deregulation of the market and a swing in the balance of geopolitical influence from the West towards China have meant that the sangha’s potential to confer legitimacy upon Cambodia’s ruler by moderating his exercise of power has been ever more stifled. Following an eruption of resistance to Hun Sen by lay people and outspoken monks in 2013, Hun Sen’s shift to hegemonic authoritarian rule, supported economically and normatively by China, meant the hopes that many Cambodians had once pinned upon their monks have ultimately been dashed.

The Land and Spirits of Cambodia

When Theravada Buddhism spread throughout Cambodia in the thirteenth century, it subsumed but did not eclipse pre-existing animistic practices. It came to play a role in domesticating the wild, dangerous powers of both land and people (Bizot, 1976; Chouléan, 1988). Buddhism was implanted into a world inhabited by a range of spirit beings. The source of all life—known as the maja tuk maja day (literally owner of the water and land)—manifested in specific forms, such as rivers, mountains, great ancient trees, peculiarly shaped rock formations, termite stacks, wooden lingaFootnote 1 and more. The term neak ta (or lok ta) was adopted to refer to these spirit forms as well as to guardian spirits, human ancestors and deceased heroes. Some spirits derive from wild (prei) dangerous jungle areas, outside of the civilised space (srokFootnote 2) of the village. Others are capricious ancestor spirits that can protect a community but also turn against people. The analogous relationship between the sacred geography of the Buddhist pagoda and its constituency is suggested by the fact that the neak ta of the community and that of the pagoda were located at the northeastern limit of the village and pagoda compound respectively. Further, the pagoda area is enclosed by a ritually demarcated boundary known as sıma, which once marked out the area within as beyond the control of secular power.Footnote 3 The pagoda thus housed the power to establish order in an otherwise inchoate world (Davis, 2022; Kent, 2022). The role of the monks in preserving order is apparent in the fact that they wrote works of moral instruction, known in Khmer as chbap (the Khmer term for “law”) (Harris, 2005: 86–89). These provided moral instruction to all lay people, including the political and aristocratic elite.

The relationship between the monks and the ruler was also one of moral modulation. The political fulcrum of the ideal pre-modern Cambodian polity was the righteous king (dhammaraja), a status achieved by showing deference to the monks and practising the ten kingly Buddhist virtues known as dasa rājadhamma.Footnote 4 Fifteen years ago, Heng (2008: 311) described how, despite Cambodia’s tumultuous history since the mid-1970s, most Cambodians were still looking to earlier ideals of political configuration as their moral compass, stating that “in general, Khmer people believe that peace and development can only come about when the government knows how to unite modern state governance, anachak [the ‘wheel’ of state affairs], with traditional governance, Buddhachak [the ‘wheel’ or way of life of Buddhism] both conceptually and in practice.” He explained that Cambodia’s modern ideal of political configuration, now phrased as the trinity of Nation, Religion and King, identifies the duties of the ideal king (ruler) to steer the chariot of society (nation) safely by keeping the two wheels on an even course. At the time he was writing, he claimed that the messianic search for a Just Leader (Preah Batr Dhammik) who adheres to these principles was still vivid in Cambodian popular imagination.

The extent to which these imaginings of order will survive in coming generations is a moot point. A Cambodian in his forties recently told me that his contemporaries, but more frequently his parents’ generation, sometimes compare today’s regime to the stories of a legendary “Gangster King” (sdech peal), who usurped the throne and ruled with greed and cruelty, enraging both the people and the spirits and resulting in a deluge. The king was forced to flee, while his subjects drowned or died of disease. However, “nowadays,” he said, “most people don’t know these stories any more … They just say all leaders are the same. They promise to do this and that, but after the elections they don’t keep their promises—they just want a position so they can do corruption. For me, I think the tenfold duties of the Buddhist King only exist in books, not in real life.” Nevertheless, sections of the monkhood still draw upon this traditional conception of the relationship between the ruler’s virtue (or lack of it) and the wellbeing of all that comprises the srok Khmer.Footnote 5

The Death of Khmer Buddhism

Cambodia edged towards independence from the French Protectorate (1863–1953) on what Harris (2005: 228) referred to as “a breaking wave of Buddhist activism and martyrdom that had its seeds in the late nineteenth century.” The charismatic King Sihanouk, who would secure independence by 1953, drew upon both his royal status and Buddhist norms to ground his authority. In 1947, he ordained for three months and then became an avid sponsor of the religion. As both the “father of independence” and major patron of Buddhism, his popularity grew. Notwithstanding Sihanouk’s harsh intolerance of any opposition, he aligned his self-presentation according to the ideals of a compassionate Buddhist father of his people, whom he referred to as his children. In his favour was the fact that the 1950s and 1960s were relatively peaceful times in which popular expectations of a royal ruler, who presented himself as virtuous, and a strong sangha were largely borne out. Cambodians now began to see themselves as a people of virtue who were protected by Sihanouk, the Buddha, local monks and the spirits of the land.

However, 1970 saw the opening of a sinister chapter in Cambodia’s history as the United States war with Vietnam spilled over the border while Cambodia’s own home-grown communist insurgents were gathering strength in jungle hideouts. Thousands of villagers fled to Phnom Penh, and in the ensuing chaos, Sihanouk’s General, Lon Nol (allegedly spurred on by the US) usurped his position in a 1970 coup d’état. Striking back, Sihanouk aligned himself with the communist Khmer Rouge, while Lon Nol presented himself as a true Buddhist leader, who was now gathering his people against communist and Vietnamese non-believers. At this time, Harris (2013) notes, prophecies began circulating among Cambodians predicting the demise of Buddhism.

On 17 April 1975 Khmer Rouge forces marched into Phnom Penh and within three days had cleared the city of its population, forcing them out into the countryside to begin its radically secular agrarian moral cleansing programme. Society was to be wiped clean of its history and restarted as a tabula rasa, or from “year zero” (Ponchaud, 1977). The state-produced metaphor could be said to have reduced the two wheel configuration of anachak and Buddhachak to a single, terrifying “wheel of history” as its axis of “progress”: “As the wheel of history inexorably turns, if you are in its path and if it touches your arm, it will crush it; if it catches your leg, it will roll over that, too” (Locard, 2004: 211).

This de-historicised, state-authorised dictate was not simply a slogan—the new revolutionary norms were imposed forcibly such that virtually all facets of pre-revolutionary Cambodian society were crushed—religion, kinship, markets, money, private property, hierarchy and royalty. “Enemies” of these new values were to be rooted out for re-education or, commonly, elimination. Cambodia’s monks were forced to disrobe, pagodas were emptied and many were repurposed as workshops, storehouses, pig-sties or torture centres and prisons (Harris, 2013).Footnote 6 By 1978, the Khmer Rouge minister of culture, information, and propaganda, Yun Yat, had declared Buddhism dead and the ground clear for the foundations of a new revolutionary culture. Sihanouk was held under house arrest. In less than four years, Cambodia had lost two of its major cultural axes—a kingly figure and the sangha—and the country suffered. An estimated one quarter of the population perished from overwork, starvation, disease or torture and execution.

State-controlled Regeneration of the Sangha

In late 1978, the Vietnamese invaded the country and by January 1979 had established a compliant regime in Phnom Penh through which to impose their own variant of socialism. As a leader of the Vietnamese-sponsored rebel army which had fled the Khmer Rouge, Hun Sen was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Vietnamese-installed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) and later became Prime Minister in 1985.Footnote 7 The now liberated Sihanouk went into exile and, in 1981, established the royalist resistance movement FUNCINPEC (Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendent, Neutre, Pacifique et Coopératif). The PRK set about restoring markets, money, roads, hospitals and schools and permitted Cambodians to return to their homes or flee the country. Importantly, especially since the regime stood in opposition to the Cambodian monarchy, the PRK also saw value in regenerating Khmer Buddhism. They proposed that Cambodia’s morally just communist revolution had been perverted by a handful of genocidal traitors: the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary-Khieu Samphan clique (Ledgerwood, 1997: 82), whereas the Vietnamese would now impose a desirable form of socialism that would include a revived sangha.

In September 1979, the Vietnamese sponsored the re-ordination of seven former Khmer monks who were then able to ordain others and formally re-establish the Cambodian sangha (Keyes, 2022: 60–61). The state now permitted the ordination only of men over the age of fifty, and it forbade them from performing the traditional alms round, which had formerly enabled donors to make merit. This meant that politically unproblematic features of pre-revolutionary religious life (such as weddings, funerals and seasonal rituals) could be revived, while the potential of the sangha to acquire real influence was constrained.

The youngest of the re-ordained monks, the Venerable Tep Vong, was subsequently appointed head of a unified sangha, merging the Thommayut and Mahanikay orders. He was given explicitly political positions as Vice-President of the National Assembly and Vice-President of the Central Committee of the Kampuchean United Front for National Construction and Defence. This meant that the pinnacle of the sangha lost any semblance of moral independence and became broadly viewed as a part of the political machinery of the new regime. The institutionalised sangha’s autonomy to put a moral brake on secular power wielders was thus kept firmly in check. The party that evolved under the supervision of the Vietnamese, the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP), rebranded as the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) in 1991, has since continued to support—and control—the Venerable Tep Vong, elevating him in 2006 to the position of Supreme Patriarch of both revived Buddhist orders in what Larsson (2015) has described as a form of “religious disenfranchisement”.Footnote 8 He is widely considered to be lacking in Buddhist education and to be acting as a mouthpiece of the government.

Remaking the Khmer Buddhist Kingdom

Vietnamese efforts to earn legitimacy in Cambodian eyes proved largely futile and civil war persisted throughout the 1980s. But with the ending of the Cold War and dwindling Soviet support to Vietnam, the Vietnamese began withdrawing from Cambodia. The warring factions signed Peace Agreements in Paris in 1991. With the Vietnamese gone, the revival of Khmer Buddhism flourished. Sihanouk returned to Cambodia from exile and was reinstated as King. This marked the birth of Cambodia’s Second Kingdom, with the motto Nation, Religion and King (cheat, sasana, mohaksatr) (Norén-Nilsson, 2016a, 2016b). The way was also clear for a wave of foreign-sponsored liberal values to sweep into Cambodia, with imperatives to introduce multi-party democracy and liberalise the economy. Communist norms were rapidly replaced by consumerism and purchasing power (Kent, 2007).

The notion of peaceful cession of power from one party to another was entirely novel to Cambodian political culture, and it did not take root. The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)-supervised democratisation process 1991–1993 simply shifted the competition for power from war to elections, which “meant complying with the expectations of the international community, when necessary, and protecting power in undemocratic and frequently violent ways, when possible” (Gottesman, 2003: 349). Thus, when Hun Sen’s CPP lost to Prince Ranariddh’s FUNCINPEC party in the UN-organised 1993 general elections, Hun Sen refused to peacefully cede power. Rather than risk a return to violent conflict, King Sihanouk brokered a power-sharing arrangement between the leaders of the two parties. And just four years later, in 1997, a death knell sounded for FUNCINPEC when forces loyal to Hun Sen fought and defeated FUNCINPEC forces on the streets of Phnom Penh. This meant that while Cambodia continued to hold elections, an illiberal form of democracy was evolving, illustrating what Schmitter and Karl (1991: 78) describe as the fallacy of electoralism—a misguided belief that merely holding elections will channel political action into peaceful contests among elites, regardless of what factors may constrain winners.

The new 1993 constitution, which enshrined the right of universal adult suffrage, included monks as voters in a multi-party democracy. This was decided by the head of UNTAC against an explicit request from the heads of both Cambodian monastic orders, Supreme Patriarchs Tep Vong and Bour Kry, that monks be excluded from the vote. UNTAC’s refusal meant monks became absorbed into the Cambodian electorate for the first time ever. As Lawrence (2022a) observes, the Cambodian constitution stands out as one of the world’s only constitutions to recognise Theravada Buddhism as state religion—yet not include a religious exemption to the universal franchise for its monastics.

As the country became increasingly absorbed into the global marketplace, the most significant instrument of power shifted from arms to property and capital. The sangha too was becoming monetarised as a flood of international NGOs tried to engage monks in foreign-sponsored development projects and as politicians began making large monetary donations to monks, who were then obliged to show loyalty to their patrons.

Traditionally, monks had been respected authority figures with strong grass-roots anchorage in local communities throughout the kingdom. As recently as in the 1960s, many remoter villages had enjoyed relatively autonomous lifestyles that were of little interest to urban power holders (Vickery, 1999 [1984]: 1–4), but the changes in the political importance of village monks, the democratisation process, the privatisation of land and natural resources, and improved road networks all helped make accessing peripheral areas both more interesting and feasible for urban elites. This meant that when monks became voters in 1993, politicians had both the means and motivation to control them in rural areas, particularly if the monks were popular.

The powerful could exert influence by creating patron-client relationships with village authority figures, who in turn control the monks and villagers under their authority. Intervention by high-ranking people into village life also began taking place within the sacred space of pagodas, such as by presiding over ground-breaking ceremonies. Aware of the risks of displeasing party officials, abbots have usually been keen to attract their patronage (Kent, 2007). The CPP thus learned how to woo the monks to its side, silence opponents, purchase patronage, and instal government-friendly pagoda abbots. As Hughes (2006: 486) has shown, gift-giving by the newly enriched “big brothers” (bang thom) enabled Hun Sen and his CPP supporters to present themselves as “keepers of tradition—not so much in that they require continued observance of the tradition, but that they can bend it to their will, with sufficient menace that overt challenge is not possible.”

Many marginalised, disenchanted young men from rural areas began ordaining as monks during the 1990s to gain access to food and education. This exacerbated mistrust between indigent monks and the swelling elite, but it also made monks susceptible to menacing manipulation by wealthy donors. Some monks yielded more or less willingly to the new pressures. Those who resisted and were perceived by elite figures as a threat were subjected to various forms of coercion, including expulsion from pagodas, intimidation and violence. The renowned teacher of Vipassana Meditation, the Venerable Sam Bunthoeun, was shot as he was entering a pagoda in central Phnom Penh, just months prior to the 2003 elections. He died later in hospital. Although no one has ever been prosecuted for the murder, and various stories circulate about the reason for the killing, some contended that the murder was politically motivated (Öjendal and Lilja, 2009: 241). Whatever the truth, his death subsequently kept many monks in fearful silence.

Yet, as monks with more impressive monastic credentials than the Venerable Tep Vong began returning from exile in the 1990s, the credibility of the politicised ecclesiastical hierarchy became increasingly contested. At the same time, a new generation of young and internet-savvy monks began acquiring Buddhist education and monks who showed leadership qualities and had moral legitimacy in the community were becoming problematic for Hun Sen and his CPP following (Soeung & Lee, 2017).

The politicisation of the sangha leadership was also becoming glaringly evident. Following the 1998 general elections, monks were among those who protested about election irregularities. When the protests broke out, Cambodians were shocked by “… the willingness of the police to use violence against Buddhist monks, who had come to take prominent roles in the protests” (Marston, 1999: 15). Prior to the general elections in 2003, Supreme Patriarch the Venerable Tep Vong proclaimed that it was contrary to their ascetic vows for monastics to cast votes. This was endorsed by CPP supporters but condemned by many Cambodians as a statement of the Patriarch’s subordination to the CPP, which was anxious about monks’ moral surveillance. Monks were thus divided over whether or not they should vote, reflecting the wider struggle by politicians to secure the influential backing of a Buddhist clergy that was now pondering how to play its role in a democratic future.

In 2004, the ailing Sihanouk abdicated and his son, Norodom Sihamoni, was elected new king by the Throne Council. The death of King-Father Norodom Sihanouk in October 2012 signalled for many Cambodians the demise of Cambodia’s last god-king (Norén-Nilsson, 2016b). The childless bachelor Sihamoni contrasted sharply with his father. He had spent most of his life in Czechoslovakia and France, where he dedicated himself to classical dance.

Lawrence (2022b) has discussed the tensions pertaining to the role of the monarch as outlined in the 1993 constitution. While the constitution provided for a ceremonial role for the monarch, it also cast the monarch as “‘guarantor’ of Cambodia’s independence and sovereignty (Article 8), the rights of its citizens (Article 8), and the independence of its judiciary (Article 132); or as (2) ‘arbitrator’ to ensure the regular functioning of government (Article 9)” (Lawrence, 2022b: 383). Lawrence notes that in the context of the CPP’s ever-tightening grip on national institutions, neither Sihanouk nor Sihamoni have been able to execute this “safeguarding” power. This has largely stymied the monarch’s influence over the political sphere, although both Sihanouk’s and Sihamoni’s absences from the country at the time they were to sign controversial legislation is read by many Cambodians as a mark of royal disapproval (Lawrence, 2022b: 392).

As Norén-Nilsson (2013, 2022) details, in the early 2000s Prime Minister Hun Sen also started fashioning the narrative of his own rule according to that of a reincarnation of the sixteenth-century King Sdech Kân—a commoner who, thanks to his own merit, toppled the king and ascended to the throne himself. In this way, Hun Sen surpasses the genealogical line of today's royal family and elevates himself above the sitting king. This both reconciles his image as a revolutionary with that of king-like leader, and functions as a declaration of his supreme and incontestable legitimacy.

Consuming the Land from Under People’s Feet and a Dhammocratic Moment in 2013

Although some 75% of Cambodians still relied on agriculture as a major part of their livelihoods, by 2012, the Cambodian state had granted around 2 mn hectares of land as concessions to private corporations to create monoculture plantations, extract minerals, log hardwood and construct hydroelectric dams. By 2020, this area had more than doubled. To make way for this flood tide of so-called development, communities that traditionally respected the spirits of the land were displaced from areas their forebears inhabited for generations (Work, this volume). Communities, spirits and forests have been disappearing at an exponential rate as the new, consumerist way of relating to the land literally gained ground (Kent, 2020). Monks as well as spirit mediums have been prominent in efforts to protect both the natural environment and the communities that have been forced off their ancestral lands. The CPP anticipated another easy victory in the July 2013 general elections, but by this time, the rampant greed and disenfranchisement of the most vulnerable had left many Cambodians desperate for a change in leadership. CPP complacency was shattered by the votes of embittered youth and former CPP loyalists enraged by land grabbing, corruption and the culture of impunity among the politically connected. Online media had also broken the government’s stranglehold on press coverage of the campaigning. The increase in popularity of the merged opposition party, the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), now presented a real threat to Hun Sen’s iron rule. Five years earlier, the CPP had won 90 of the 123 seats in the National Assembly, whereas in 2013, according to official election results, it won just 68 seats while the opposition took 55.

The opposition responded by alleging electoral irregularities such as ghost voting, document fudging, and voter disenfranchisement. Five monks were also reported to have been beaten in their pagoda on election day, and this helped galvanise a movement known as “The Independent Monks’ Network for Social Justice”, a group of advocate monks who began uploading information to the internet to reveal social injustice and promote equality (Le Coz & Besant, 2014). The founder of the network, the Venerable But Buntenh, proclaimed, “We will monitor any government and support social justice. At the moment there is no justice” (Erker, 2014).

After the elections, protests broke out with monks prominent among the protesters who gathered at Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park. Journalists reported that monks were even seen addressing the crowds of opposition party supporters. These monks claimed that although their seniors disagreed, they were convinced it was their duty to support the people on whose alms they depended. “We’ve been eating our people’s food, and now our people, our nation, is experiencing injustice, so we can stand and help them,” a Venerable named Keo Somaly was quoted as saying to a reporter (GlobalPost, 2013). When the government cracked down on the protests and closed off Freedom Park with barbed wire in January 2014, Buddhist monks were ever present, demanding that the barriers be removed. Monks also played a leading role in other protests in 2013–2014, supporting striking garment workers in their demands for higher wages and backing those who had been evicted from their homes in land disputes.

In November 2013, the Venerable But Buntenh organised a 25 km march of 40 monks and a dozen or so youth volunteers through the dense jungle of the Areng Valley. The march was to protest about a Chinese company’s plans to build a hydroelectric dam, flooding 20,000 hectares of forest. The protest included drawing an 80-metre-long saffron cloth around some large trees. This practice of “ordaining” trees has often been used both in Thailand and Cambodia to demarcate the trees’ sacred status and protect them from loggers. The Venerable Ngim Saosam Khan, 33, was quoted as saying he was optimistic about making a difference: “In Cambodia, monks have power and can stand up to the government if something is wrong … So the government and many companies are not happy with our work because we are disturbing their [quest for] money” (Forsyth, 2013, italics added). However, this upsurge in popular resistance to the leadership was short-lived. By 2017, efforts by the laity as well as from within the sangha to hold the powerful accountable had effectively been quashed (Norén-Nilsson, 2019).

Defeating the Dhamma: Unfettered Autocracy

The shock for the CPP of the 2013 elections was compounded by the CNRP’s strong performance in commune elections in 2017. With national elections looming in 2018, the CPP stalwarts were quick to act. In September, CNRP President Kem Sokha was arrested on charges of treason, and in November, his party was dissolved by Supreme Court order over accusations that its leaders were conspiring to overthrow the government.

This meant that the CPP ran unopposed in the July 2018 elections, claiming all of the 125 seats in the National Assembly and marking the dawning of a new era of hegemonic authoritarian rule (Loughlin & Norén-Nilsson, 2021). Behind this political spectacle lay a series of other changes—legal reforms, closures of independent media outlets, criminalisation (and indeed assassinations) of activists, and the creation of state-controlled social media platforms, all of which took place in the context of China’s increasing provision of economic support and legitimacy for the CPP’s rule.

Significantly, there was a corresponding escalation in the harassment of activist monks. Prominent among the monks who protested in 2013 was the Venerable Luon Sovath, a monk from Siem Reap (nick-named the “multimedia monk”), who witnessed his family and fellow villagers being violently evicted from their homes in 2009. After this, and at great risk to his personal security, he began representing and supporting communities and human rights defenders across Cambodia using essays, poetry, songs, and videography to raise awareness for victims of human rights abuses. As land grabbing and forced evictions of people from their property gathered speed, the Venerable Luon Sovath increased his activity, despite threats of arrest and disrobing. In 2011, Supreme Patriarch Non Nget banned the Venerable Sovath from pagodas, claiming that he had “violated” religious policies. In 2012, the Venerable Sovath received the Martin Ennals Award for human rights for his advocacy work (Martin Ennals Award, 2012). The Cambodian judiciary then began bringing various felony “incitement” charges against him (Witness, 2014). In 2020, the Venerable Sovath was defrocked following an online disinformation campaign, after which he sought temporary refuge in Switzerland.

Similarly, the Venerable But Buntenh, who had founded the Independent Monks’ Network for Social Justice in 2013, also incurred the wrath of the government for his stance on corruption, land dispossession, and environmental degradation. He was at the forefront of various public protests, including the protest to protect the Areng Valley mentioned above. His network also founded a mobile radio station and spearheaded a campaign to protect Prey Lang forest. In January 2018, the Venerable But Buntenh and two other prominent civil society activists were charged with fraud over accusations of misappropriating funds collected for the funeral of political analyst Kem Ley, who had been assassinated in July 2016. Denying the accusations, the three activists noted that the lawsuit came amid the 2017 government crackdown that had paved the way for the CPP’s victory in the 2018 general election.

The Venerable But Buntenh immediately fled Cambodia to the United States. A statement by government spokesman Phay Siphan again captures the tension inherent in how government figures demand an apolitical role for monks despite the monks’ constitutional voting rights: “I don’t call him a monk. He just wears monk’s clothes. He is a political activist. His speech is not monk’s words. It is just the language of someone who does politics against Samdech Hun Sen” (Narin, 2018). Another “activist monk”, the Venerable Bor Bet, took refuge in Thailand in November 2020 to avoid arrest after having joined protests in Phnom Penh to demand the release of incarcerated labour union leader Rong Chhun. Life for Khmer monks who were willing to speak out against injustices was becoming ever more precarious.

By December 2021, a new draft law regulating monks’ behaviour came before the Ministry of Cults and Religions. It originally proposed prison terms of six months to five years for monks who “act against the decisions of authorities at all levels” (Dara, 2022). Not only did the draft law threaten the civil and political rights of all Cambodians enshrined in the 1993 Constitution, but perhaps more troublingly, monks were now set to see their long legacy of resistance against secular authorities and injustice completely stamped out by legislation (Dara, 2022).

This draft legislation had immediate effects on prominent monastic figures. The same month, the Venerable Bor Bet was arrested in a temple south of Bangkok and taken to an immigration detention centre, sparking concerns he would be deported to Cambodia (RFA, 2021). However, like the Venerable Luon Sovath, he was granted asylum in Switzerland where both vow to continue their criticism of the situation in Cambodia using social media. In an interview in January 2022, the Venerable Bor Bet pointed out that the tradition of rebellion among monks is nothing new, but dates back a century (Dara, 2022). These cases illustrate the way in which the sangha’s capacity to perform any variant of their traditional role in putting a brake on the excesses of power holders has been strangled.

The Spirit of China in Cambodia

Chinese migrants have a long history of engaging in trade in Cambodia, often intermarrying with Khmers. Since the 1990s, a new wave of Chinese migrants has been arriving in Cambodia and the impact of Chinese norms and money has been felt increasingly throughout the country. Some Cambodians initially held out hopes of rapid enrichment, but by around 2010, this began giving way to growing tensions. The new Chinese were establishing patron-client relationships with officials, and their social mobility was aided by their use of rent-seeking and crony capitalism, thus underpinning Cambodia’s political-economic order in which ethnic Chinese dominate, and the disparity between elites and the general population is widening (Chheang, 2022).

A Cambodian acquaintance whose paternal grandfather came to Cambodia from China explained to me in 2020:

Before 2017, Khmer people who had Chinese ancestors were proud to make offerings to them, because their livelihoods improved each year. But around 2018-2019, Khmer-Chinese people began feeling ashamed to celebrate this ceremony, because of all the problems created by those Chinese …. Khmer people also see that some rich Chinese can buy a position working with the government—even though they can’t speak Khmer. They own lots of businesses here, even small businesses such as barbers’ shops, selling fruit, fixing motorbikes and driving tuk-tuks.

In the last few years, he had asked his wife to stop preparing any offerings or putting Chinese stickers up outside their apartment. “Those stickers used to be a sign of happiness,” he said. “But now they remind us of trouble, so we keep the stickers inside.”

Cambodia illustrates how twenty-first-century Chinese expansionism is operating—enabling Beijing to rewrite the rules of global trade and security and preclude challenges to its multiplying global interests. In 2006, Cambodia and China signed a treaty of “Comprehensive Partnership of Cooperation.” China increased its loans and aid portfolio to Cambodia, began providing military aid and became increasingly involved in constructing contentious hydropower plants (Chheat, 2022). President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) has been welcomed by Prime Minister Hun Sen as a means to boost “regional and global cooperation in terms of hard and soft infrastructure, economy, trade, investment, cultural exchange, people-to-people connectivity, and so on” (Press and Quick Reaction Unit, 2019). Cambodia’s deep-sea port town of Sihanoukville, previously a sleepy beachside town, became known as China’s first port of call on its massive initiative. Chinese hotels and casinos mushroomed, essentially transforming the town into a Chinese enclave. Chinese investments in the country, which include large casinos and real estate projects, also largely lack transparency and accountability, thus fueling corruption.

Chinese companies have been awarded some half of Cambodia’s 4.6 million hectares of economic land concessions and they are responsible for a considerable acceleration of environmental degradation and disenfranchisement of communities. For example, China’s Union Development Group alone was reported in 2017 to have cleared some 36,000 hectares of forest in the largest national park in the country—Botum Sakor—for “development”, leading to the displacement of thousands of embittered locals. When a Reuters reporter tried to enter the zone, a ranger forbade them, threatening to call in the military police who provide security for major concessionaires like this, and stating, “This is China” (Kent, 2021).

Observers see a correlation between the Cambodian leadership’s relationship with China and the consolidation of CPP power through the intensifying crackdown on all dissenting voices—within politics, civil society, the media as well as the sangha. Loughlin (2021), for example, notes that ties between authoritarian regimes enhance their chances of survival in moments of crisis such as experienced by the CPP after the 2013 elections.

Some reporters have proposed that Hun Sen’s use of Chinese-style oppression sits uncomfortably with most Cambodians:

The prime minister speaks in legal terms, referencing Cambodia’s UN-backed 1993 constitution and concepts such as the rule of law and human rights that he frequently disregards in practice. Cambodians’ affinity for the West makes the strongman’s embrace of China a difficult sale, forcing him into this kind of manipulative language. But this camouflaging suggests the prime minister’s awareness of his dwindling support and perhaps his weakening grip on power (Dunst, 2019).

Indeed, while the outlawing of the opposition CNRP in 2017 was decried as the “death of democracy” by Western observers, it was endorsed by Beijing as a means to ensure continued stability and “development” in Cambodia (Kent, 2021). China’s “face mask” diplomacy during the Covid crisis—providing medical supplies, vaccinations and medical training to Cambodia—may since have helped boost the CPP’s performance legitimacy (Luo & Un, 2021), but the events of 2017–2018 are nevertheless regarded by observers as the final step in Cambodia’s slide from competitive into hegemonic authoritarianism (Loughlin & Norén-Nilsson, 2021), despite or as evidenced by the regime’s intense search for legitimacy through royal imagery since (Norén-Nilsson, 2022).

Troublingly, comparisons may even be made between today’s leadership and the Khmer Rouge era, when the moderating power of the sangha was also crushed. Norén-Nilsson (2013: 7) describes how the nineteenth-century prophecy known as the Putth Tumneay foretells that a Just Leader (Heng, 2008) will bring peace to Cambodia after a time of violent inversions of order, in which the ignorant take power and Buddhism is destroyed. Although this prophecy has been mainly associated with the Khmer Rouge, Norén-Nilsson notes that the text has also been seen by political opponents to apply to the incumbent CPP regime, with its roots in communism. Indeed, Courtney Work (personal communication) noted while doing fieldwork in Prey Lang forest in north-central Cambodia that some people even compare the Khmer Rouge era favourably to the situation today. One man of the Kuy ethnic minority, in his fifties, thus stated: “Pol Pot only killed the people; he didn’t touch the forest. Now, everything’s gone.” In sum, Cambodia’s shift towards hegemonic authoritarianism with Chinese endorsement have left the sangha and Buddhist norms of righteous rule with virtually no avenue to exercise influence over the country’s leadership.

Conclusions

This chapter has focused on the longstanding role Khmer Buddhism has held in moderating the exercise of worldly power in Cambodia. For centuries, the sangha, the Buddhist teachings, and the sacred space of the pagoda represented a cultural realm that could both confer and deny leaders the moral legitimacy to rule. In this sense, Buddhism performed as the only source of legitimate and effective opposition to the otherwise boundless power of rulers. Following an historical background to the introduction of Buddhism to Cambodia in the thirteenth century, and its ultimate destruction under the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979), I have explored a number of factors that have impacted negatively upon its recovery in the post-Khmer Rouge era.

Firstly, I discussed how the sangha has been drawn into the secular realm of politics since 1979, initially during the Vietnamese-supported PRK, then in the framework of UN efforts to graft multi-party democracy onto Cambodia’s authoritarian political culture. The politicisation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy through the figure of the Supreme Patriarch, the Venerable Tep Vong, and the inclusion of monks in the electorate in the 1993 constitution, both contributed to the erosion of the monks’ autonomy and, consequently, their moral authority.

The constraints upon the revival of monastic authority have been all the more significant given parallel economic and political developments in Cambodia. Economic liberalisation, and ever greater connectedness both within the country and between Cambodia and the global economic forum, have created competition over and opportunities to extract resources. In this climate of consumerism, Hun Sen’s leadership style has facilitated accumulation by his elite networks through dispossession of the vulnerable (Springer, 2013). The sangha, too, has been influenced by the norms of consumer culture, and the powers residing in the pagoda, subject to purchasing power.

Further, we have seen how Hun Sen fashioned his rule according to familiar Cambodian notions of royalty—as supreme and meritorious—while he simultaneously elevated himself over the sitting monarch.

I have discussed how these trends towards an increasingly predatory society, in which the powers of the elite have grown unchecked since the early 1990s, ultimately led to an eruption of opposition in 2013, when the population tried to use electoral means to oust Hun Sen’s CPP from power. I have paid particular attention to the role played by monks in this period of unrest, despite the regular intimidation of monks deemed to be politically threatening ever since the early 1990s. This was, perhaps, the final effort by members of the sangha to reclaim the moral authority over the leadership that it had traditionally held. The presence of the new Chinese in Cambodia and Beijing’s growing global influence at this time helped Hun Sen consolidate his power and silence opposition, including that of the sangha.

The sangha has thus been stripped of its traditional capacity to transcend partisan politics. Its ability to protect the Khmer people and their land from the cruelty and greed of secular power holders has been more or less extinguished. The Cambodian people are left with neither a modern democratic system nor their traditional cultural system to safeguard their interests. Against this background, I propose, the chances of the sangha recovering its once so significant power to protect its congregations from the excesses of rulers seem ever more remote.