Dear Sir,

John C. Brown's article "Cambodia only for the Khmer?" (Phnom

Penh Post Vol.3 No.11) is - as far as Germany is concerned wrong - revoltingly

wrong, unless the author thinks the so-called "Nuremberg Laws" of the 1930's,

drafted to degrade German citizens of Jewish origin, still to be

valid.

If German citizenship were defined by ethnicity, as Mr Brown

wrote, how can the author explain the hundred of thousands of German citizens

originating from A (=Afghanistan, one of them to looked at in Phnom Penh) to Z

(=Zimbabwe)?

There are even Germans with that gentle, heartwarming smile

- be it highland -Khmer or lowland-Khmer or Cham - from Cambodia.

In

1913, when the German Citizen Law was drafted, it also referred to some millions

of Germans of Polish origin, who besides the German citizenship (which they

disliked) possessed the Prussian citizenship (which they hated).

A

considerable Danish and Slavonic Serb minority is living inside of Germany since

two and more thousand years.

So there are no problems with citizenship in

Germany?

In legal theory almost none. But legal theory can sometimes be

so awkwardly disturbed by reality, as you know.

But be assured: we are

working hard to bring them together again!

- Dr Wiprecht von Treskow,

German Ambassador, Phnom Penh