A Change of Guard

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Saturday 2 May 2015

FEATURE: Cham Muslim communities along the Bassac River in the Mekong Delta



01-May-15 Cambodia Herald

PHNOM PENH (Catch and Culture) -- It's not clear when Cham people first settled in the Mekong Delta or from where they came. The region's abundant fisheries, however, seem to have been a major attraction, along with commerce. According to Australian anthropologist Philip Taylor, some Cham Muslims living in Chau Doc in An Giang Province in Viet Nam trace their arrival from the central Vietnamese coast "several centuries ago." In these accounts, "the frontier region where they were resettled offered some localised subsistence opportunities but also the opportunity to trade," he wrote in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology in 2006, "While over time more people engaged in trade, they also continued to fish and raise crops for subsistence purposes." 

But according to other local accounts, the Cham Muslims of Chau Doc trace their roots to people who came from the Malay world (present-day Malaysia and the Minangkabau Highlands of West Sumatra in present-day Indonesia) or the Middle East. These accounts also highlight the attraction of trading opportunities. "Other accounts attest that the earliest settlers came here to fish or alternatively to propagate the faith and only later turned to trade," Taylor wrote.

In the late 19th century, French colonial administrator Etienne Aymnonier observed that Cham people in central Viet Nam were different from those in Cambodia, southern Vietnam and present-day Thailand. The latter shared the same dialect and religion and "apart from a few insignificant variations, the same traditions and customs." In Cambodia, Aymnonier found that many Cham Muslims lived along rivers where they fished and made nets from plant fibre. They also built boats, travelling several days to trade fish in exchange for rice and navigating along the Mekong River to buy resin, wax and fibre for fishing nets.

Today, Cham Muslims of the Mekong Delta mainly live along the Bassac River, a distributory that flows from the confluence of the Mekong River and the Tonle Sap River in Phnom Penh. In Cambodia, these Muslim communities can be found on the left bank of the river in Meanchey District in southern Phnom Penh and also on the right bank in the municipality of Takhmao, the administrative centre of Kandal Province. Numerous other Cham Muslim villages exist further downstream before the river flows into Viet Nam.



About 20 kilometres from the border is the Cham Muslim community of Chau Doc District, located at the confluence of Takeo River and the Bassac, known as the Song Hau in Vietnamese. Taylor estimated the population of this community in the Vietnamese part of the Mekong Delta at about 13,000 people. Residing in ten small settlements, most of the Cham Muslim families fished with nets, traps and spears. "Yet, despite the local abundance of fish, they rarely sell what they capture," the Australian anthropologist wrote. And despite being "renowned as a specialised fishing community," Taylor noted that the Cham Muslims had mostly not been engaged in the recent boom in caged catfish aquaculture in Chau Doc. This he attributed to lack of capital, collateral and technical knowledge as well as "absence of connections with those investing in and purchasing the fish."

Back in Takhmao, in Cambodia's Kandal province, the Cham Muslim community specialises in making fishing nets, or at least modifying basic nylon nets made in neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Viet Nam. These are bought from markets in Phnom Penh such as Chbar Ampeou Market, about 5 kilometres upstream on the left bank of the Bassac. The basic nets serve as the "raw material" for adding rope and metal chains to produce specialised types of fishing gear such as stationary gillnets, dragnets and cast nets. The work takes place in Prek Tapov Village in Daeoum Mean Commune near the centre of town. The village is located on the banks of the Prek Thnout River, a tributary of the Bassac originating in the mountains of Kampong Speu Province.

Sou Sen, the village chief, says Prek Tapouv has about 600 households including 446 Cham Muslim families of which about 200 are engaged in making fishing nets (the village reportedly had a Cham Muslim population of only 600 people
in 1979, down from 3,000 in 1975). The work of making nets is carried out by men, women and children. In addition, 12 Cham Muslim households operate retail or wholesale outlets next to the local mosque, Masjid Al-Azim. These specialise in nets and other types of fish gear such as traps. A typical 7 kg cast net with metal chains attached sells for 200,000 riel ($50). 

The village chief says customers are not only local fishermen but also traders from as far away as Svay Rieng Province, more than 100 kilometres east of Phnom Penh. Most of the net buyers are said to be ethnic Khmers, who resell the nets in their home provinces. But Sou Sen says customers also include fishermen from Kampong Cham, a province on the Mekong River upstream from Phnom Penh which is also home to Cambodia's largest population of Cham Muslims.

According to Sou Sen, the village has 95 Cham Muslim families engaged in fishing as their main occupation. Most of the fishermen use nets to catch fish from the Bassac River, although some venture further upstream to Koh Pich, an island at the confluence of the Bassac and the Mekong rivers in central Phnom Penh. At the same time, about 200 other families in Prek Tapouv Village are engaged in subsistence fishing. Fishing activities mainly target small mud carps that start migrating down the Tonle Sap River at the end of the annual flood season in October. At the peak of the fishing season, the haul is said to be as high as two tonnes a day, about four times the regular
daily catch.

Yunus Abdullah, the imam at the local mosque, says the village also produces fishing boats, a skill for which Cham Muslims in Cambodia are renowned. "Some boats are produced here," he says, adding that others come from Cham Muslim communities along the Mekong River upstream from Phnom Penh in Kampong Cham Province and Kratie Province.

Sou Sen says most of the Cham Muslim community in Takhmao originally came from Chau Doc and that textiles such as sarongs are still brought by traders from the Vietnamese district to sell in the Cambodian village. Writing in 2006, Taylor noted that the Cham Muslims of Chau Doc had recently started to import gas cookers from Cambodia. "In recent years the Cham have become the region's most successful long-distance traders," he wrote, describing trading journeys of two to three months as common. "Many Cham youths travel continuously, returning home briefly to visit their families and make new purchases." According to Taylor, Cham traders were using both the Vietnamese and Khmer languages, residing temporarily in places where they found demand for their wares and selling them from door to door.

Abdul Halim Ahmad, a commune councillor in Svay Proteal Commune in Sa'ang District, about 25 kilometres downstream from Takhmao, says he still has family in Chau Doc. His brother, a former soldier in Cambodia, now runs a small business in the Vietnamese district. Halim, who goes by the Khmer name of Mat Salim, says he and his siblings recently agreed to donate the property of his recently-deceased grandmother to a mosque near Chau Doc. The councillor is currently serving his third five-year term on the Svay Proteal Commune Council as one of six elected representatives of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (the council also has three representatives of opposition parties). Halim also served as the appointed village chief for the Muslim-majority village of Baren Kraum between
1994 and 2007. 

Today, the village comprises about 700 households of which about 500 are Cham Muslim families. The rest are ethnic Khmers. Halim says about 20 percent of the Cham Muslim households are engaged in fishing full time while about 40 percent are involved in part-time fishing for subsistence. The village's average catch per season is estimated at about 30 tonnes. The village also has three Cham Muslim households engaged in making nets, mainly gillnets but also drag nets. They use the same techniques as found in Takhmao, adding rope and metal chains to nylon nets made outside of Cambodia. Most of the customers are ethnic Khmers. According to one man engaged in net making, customers come from as far away as Siem Reap. "I don't have a job so I learnt to do this myself," he said.

Halim says he believes the inhabitants of the village, located on the left bank of the Bassac River, are descended from Champa in central Viet Nam. The village had more than 200 Cham Muslim families before Pol Pot's forces took over Cambodia in 1975. After liberation in 1979, there were less than 100. "Most of the victims were men," he says. "We have many widows."

Prek Thmei Commune is located even further downstream towards the Vietnamese border in Koh Thom District. The commune comprises 12 villages including two Muslim Cham villages. There are also 9 ethnic Khmer villages and one ethnic Vietnamese village. Another three Muslim Cham villages are located in nearby communes. 

Mat Lah is the village chief in Cham Leu Village, one of the two Cham villages in Prek Thmei Commune. He says all 487 families in the village are Muslim and that about a third of the households are engaged in fishing-related
activities on a full-time basis. The village has more than 10 families engaged in making fishing nets. "The Chams don't buy nets, they sell them to the Khmers," Mat Lah says. "The Vietnamese buy their own nets from Viet Nam."

According to Mat Lah, the village was founded in 1868 by Cham Muslims living in another village seven kilometres away. He says the founders of the original village, known as Loung San, were Cham Muslims already living in Cambodia. Trade with Chau Doc, 37 kilometres downstream in Viet Nam, mainly comprises imports of mats, pillows, mosquito nets and kitchenware.

Fishing activities are not limited to the local stretch of the Bassac. Mat Lah says about 20 or 30 families go on major fishing expeditions to Phnom Penh, at the confluence of the Mekong River and the Tonle Sap River. Some even go as far upstream as Kampong Chhnang Province, on the Tonle Sap. Regardless of fishing grounds, they leave their boats and return to the village by road, awaiting phone calls from family or friends to return when fishing picks up. The boats return to the village at the end of the commercial fishing season around the middle of the year.

"We've always known fishing," Mat Lah says. "But now our young people are getting other jobs." Not all, however. Si Yom, a niece of the village chief, earns most of her income from growing corn, beans and rice. She supplements her income by modifying nylon fishing nets with rope and chains, a skill she learnt from her grandmother. In a good month, she can sell about 20 gillnets and castnets.

Like most Cham Muslim villages in Cambodia, the inhabitants of Cham Leu suffered disproportionately greater losses than ethnic Khmers during the Pol Pot period. Ben Kiernan, a history professor at Yale University, has estimated that 36 percent of the Cham population died during the Khmer Rouge regime compared with 21 percent for the country as a whole. Such numbers help explain the strong Cham allegiance to the ruling party, which liberated the country in 1979. Indeed, one of the 14 founding members of the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea formed in late 1978 was Mat Ly, the son a Cham Muslim elder from Kampong Cham who was among the first Cambodians to join the Communist Party of Indochina as early as 1950. Another founding member was a Buddhist monk. Embracing both Buddhist and Muslim leaders was a top priority for the United Front headed by Heng Samrin, the former head of state for the People's Republic of Kampuchea who is now president of Cambodia's
National Assembly.

Sa Sen, the 70-year-old imam, says the local mosque was used as a warehouse during the Pol Pot period between 1975 and 1979. Construction of a new mosque, Masjid Darun Noman, started in 1994 and was completed in 1999. About 300 Cham Muslim families lived in the village before 1975, the imam says. By the time the country was liberated in 1979, there were only about 200 families left. 

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