The tales of two freedom fighters

Piseth Lem (L) and Sourn Serey Ratha (R)

July 1, 2009
By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News (Guam)

"As adults, Sourn believes the power of the pen will bring forth a people power that will defeat the power of the guns, and Lem believes in the power of free press to promote democracy and human rights.

By running such men out of the country, Sen and his party only enhance the fervor of those who are committed to the struggle against dictators."

A man becomes what he is as he accumulates knowledge, encounters personal and communal experiences, embraces the values and the beliefs passed down by his elders.

This process of political socialization is the foundation of one's culture and shapes one's perceptions, thoughts, and actions. A fluid process, this continual learning causes us to be different at 30 than we were at 20, and changed again and again as we age.

I have written in this space about two Cambodian men whom I have never met but whose past and present activities have compelled me to tell their stories as I know them.

One is 38-year-old Serey Ratha Sourn, who earned political asylum in the United States in 2006. The other is 40-year-old Piseth Lem who earned political asylum in Norway in 2008. Both men's personal freedom and physical well-being were threatened in their home country.

Sourn is chief of mission of the U.S.-based Cambodian Action Committee for Justice & Equity, which promotes popular participation in political action from grassroots to the national level, to build the ideals of republicanism. Sourn also is a poet and a historian.

Lem has set up a weekly Free Press Magazine Online, to be launched officially in January 2010, in cooperation, he says, with other Cambodian freedom fighters in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, Thailand and Cambodia.

The FPM is dedicated to freedom of expression, free press and equality for all Cambodians. The FPM Online in English is now available. It will publish in the Khmer language in six months.

Sourn and Lem are two freedom fighters among many who say they love and miss their native land, its culture and traditions, their families and friends, and the people -- but they can't rest and freeload in their fight against dictators.

What makes them do what they do so resolutely?

Sourn, born to a poor farm family eight months after Cambodia underwent the 1970 historic regime change that brought down the once untouchable Khmer devaraja, grew up with Buddhist monks in a pagoda. He again lived with monks when he did his higher studies in Phnom Penh.

His father and two uncles joined the Kansaeng Sar (White Scarf) fighting force to face communist Vietnamese forces that, in pre-1970, occupied 3,500 square kilometers of Khmer soil, and then emerged from their sanctuaries and moved westward into Cambodia's interior. Both uncles died during the war.

The Sourns are fiercely nationalistic. Their perception of the Khmer monarchy and of Vietnam has been colored by the two countries' historical relationship: Vietnamization and the colonization of Cambodia's Prey Nokor, later named Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.

The elder Sourns encouraged in the young Sourn a duty to continue the values and beliefs of the Kansaeng Sar, created in Cambodia by Khmers who fled Kampuchea Krom (southern Vietnam), and who believed in republican ideals.

Piseth Lem was born to a well-educated family eight months before the country's regime change. His father was a professor of Khmer literature, his mother was a teacher. According to Lem, his father's friends were Khmer progressives who, upon Prince Sihanouk's ouster from power, prodded his father to join the maquis to fight Lon Nol. His father declined, still holding to the ideals of republicanism.

Young Lem grew up living with Buddhist monks at Wat Tronum Chroeung in Kandal, and again with monks at Wat Sansam Kosal when he did his higher studies in Phnom Penh.

According to Lem, after Pol Pot took power in Cambodia in 1975, there were Cambodians in Kompong Speu, Pursat and Koh Kong who joined an underground movement. By 1976, Lem, contacted by those based in Kompong Speu, was deeply involved. In 1977, he used his son, Piseth, as a conduit to close friends to join the movement.

That year, the professor left his family behind. He and another professor friend walked from Kompong Speu to Koh Kong to meet some underground members, and moved on foot to the Khmer-Thai border where a base of the anti-Pol Pot "Khmer Sar" (White Khmer) was to be established.

Lem's mother said her husband and his friend never made it to the border. En route they were captured and killed by Pol Pot's soldiers.

In 1978, young Lem, then 9, barely escaped death by Pol Pot's youth corps, whose members lured him to come outside the house one night, jumped him, bound his hands behind his back, walked him to a ricefield and accused him of being an enemy of the regime. There was agitation to torture Lem, but a mysterious blow suddenly fell on the youth leader's head and someone whispered to Lem that he should run away and leave the village. He did.

As adults, Sourn believes the power of the pen will bring forth a people power that will defeat the power of the guns, and Lem believes in the power of free press to promote democracy and human rights.

By running such men out of the country, Sen and his party only enhance the fervor of those who are committed to the struggle against dictators.

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.