Thailand and Khmer Issarak(04)

Thailand and Khmer Issarak(04)

The Issarak movement was replaced by new leaders headed by Houl Vongse-arnuphab as Prime Minister and Ta Ta Rajatipvongse as Deputy Prime Minister. In September 1946, Houl’s group was recognized by Thailand as the Free Cambodian government. The Issaraks were able then to buy arms, raise money, and even publish a newspaper in Bangkok.

The Khmer Issaraks suffered from the rise to power of Phibunsonggram. The coup d’etat in 1947 had shattered the Khmer Issarak movement in Thailand.  The training camps which it had established there had to be abandoned, and their trainees dispersed along the Cambodian frontiers. The Thai military clique clamped down on the Issaraks, and their propaganda, purchase of arms, and collection of funds had to be carried on in a clandestine manner.

After Phibunsonggram became Prime Minister, Houl Vongse-arnuphap, Prime Minister of the Free Cambodian Government, was arrested on a charge of having illegally sold an automobile. In the meantime, negotiations were going on between the French and former Khmer Issaras which aimed at returning the Bangkok dissidents to Cambodia. Some did return to Cambodia while other had to look to Viet Minh for support, despite their long-standing fear of Vietnamese expansionism.

Even Pock Khun (Phra Phiset), the founder of the Khmer Issarak in 1940, was reported to have co-operated with the Viet Minh and the Communists. In March 1949 he stated that the result of the Chinese civil war was the main question in South-East Asia. If the Chinese Communists offered, in Pock Khun’s words, “us arms to drive out the French, we will accept them even if it means going red.”