Thailand and Khmer Issarak(01)

Thailand and Khmer Issarak(01)

The Khmer Issarak adopted a red flag

with a yellow five-towered Angkor Wat silhouette.

After World War II, in conducting a policy of a policy designed to keep intact the territories in Indo-China, Thai decision-makers were well aware of their military and economic weakness in comparison with the French and also of the rise of militant nationalism in Indo-China. The Thais therefore sought to draw the Indo-Chinese independence movements into Thailand’s scheme of things as a source of countervailing power. These movements were the Lao Issara (Free Lao), Khmer Issarak (Free Cambodia), and Viet Minh (League for the Independence Vietnam) .

Cordial Thai-Free Cambodian relations had existed before the outbreak of the Pacific War. Thailand under Prime Minister Phibunsonggram had already exploited the Cambodian independence movement in the interest of a greater Thai movement. In 1940, just before the outbreak of the shorted-lived Franco-Thai war, Pock Khun (Phra Phiset), a retired Cambodian official, came to Bangkok and founded a Khmer Issarak (Free Cambodian League) for the purpose of regaining Cambodian independence.

Members of the League were recruited among the Cambodian minority including those who had newly escaped from Cambodia before the outbreak of the Franco-Thai war. The military wing of the Khmer Issarak were trained and organized, along with the Vietnamese and Laotians, into an alien battalion affiliated to one of the Thai armies which was sent to occupy Cambodian territories during the Franco-Thai war.

After the Pacific War, despite their memories of bitter pre-colonial relations with Thailand, the Cambodian nationalists turned to the Thai leaders for assistance. Before son Ngoc Thant, the Cambodian prime minister under the control of Japan, was arrested by the British on October 16, 1945, Pridi Banomyong, then the Regent of Thailand, received a letter from him dated October 7, 1945, the letter indicated  that  Khmer agreed completely with the ideas expressed by the United Nations at the San Francisco conference and wished to co-operate sincerely with the United Nations.