Cambodia’s King Sihamoni says he has prostate cancer, to undergo treatment in China

PHNOM PENH, April 10 — Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will stay in China for prolonged treatment, he said in a statement today.

Doctors in Beijing “have confirmed that currently I have prostate cancer”, the 72-year-old king said in a statement to his country, adding that doctors have prescribed hospitalisation of up to two months for treatment.

Sihamoni departed for Beijing for hospital checks over a month ago.

A lifelong bachelor who speaks French, Czech and English, Sihamoni spent most of his adult life abroad pursuing a career in the arts before taking the throne in 2004.

He took over the role after his father King Norodom Sihanouk abdicated following his own cancer treatment in Beijing.

Sihamoni’s reign as head of state has been largely symbolic under a deal struck between his father and Cambodia’s leadership in 1993, allowing the elder king to re-ascend the throne after years in exile.

Born in 1953 — the year Cambodia gained independence from France — to Sihanouk’s sixth wife Monineath, Sihamoni’s name is a combination of the first two syllables of his parents’ first names.

He got much of his education abroad and was studying cinematography in North Korea in 1975, but was abruptly summoned back to Phnom Penh in 1976.

The Khmer Rouge had come to power the year before, and the radical communists had allegedly faked a telegram from his father asking that Sihamoni rejoin the family in the capital.

There the royal family was kept under house arrest as the Khmer Rouge launched a devastating four-year rule that left up to two million Cambodians dead, including five of Sihanouk’s 14 children.

With Vietnamese forces poised to overthrow Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in 1979, Sihamoni was spirited to China along with his parents. The prince served there and in Pyongyang as Sihanouk’s private secretary.

In 1981 the French-speaking prince travelled to Paris and became a professor of classical dance. He formed his own troupe of dancers, Ballet Deva, which performed pieces he choreographed himself, and he made ballet films.

In 1993 he was appointed Cambodia’s ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in Paris, working towards halting the traffic of Khmer antiquities from his homeland.

The decision to pass the crown to Sihamoni, rather than to his oldest and more politically ambitious son Ranariddh, was seen by some diplomats as an attempt by Sihanouk to ensure the survival of the monarchy, albeit one with little power. — AFP