‘The Accidental Terrorist’: a California Accountant’s Coup

Chor Sokunthea / Reuters

Chhun Yasith

What made an accountant from California try to overthrow the Cambodian government with grenades and anti-tank weapons? Former Newsweek editor Adam Piore tells the story of Yasith Chhun in 'The Accidental Terorist,' a new ebook single from The Atavist.

May 2, 2012

The Daily Beast

On the evening of February 12, 1999, a man made his way through the potholed streets near Phnom Penh’s sprawling Russian Market, a ramshackle conglomeration of tin-and-plastic-sheeted stalls, propped by up by flimsy wooden beams and stretching an entire city block. It was the height of the dry season, when the temperature settled just above 80 degrees and stayed there, a nice night to sit in one of the many open-air coffee shops or karaoke bars, order a cold can of Angkor beer for half a U.S. dollar, and croon along with the latest hits from neighboring Thailand. The man approached an establishment popular with Phnom Penh’s Vietnamese population, filled with molded-plastic chairs clustered around cramped tables, and threw a grenade into the café. The explosion that followed sent furniture and people flying through the air.

The next morning the incident appeared in all the local newspapers—a remarkable fact given that violence in the war-numbed capital was hardly rare, and no one had died in the attack. It was not unheard of for veterans to commit random acts of aggression, especially if they’d consumed excessive amounts of rice whiskey and lost a competition for a favored prostitute.

When two attackers lobbed another grenade into a karaoke bar in Phnom Penh on March 3, this time killing one person and injuring 17, a Ministry of Interior official dismissed it as a revenge attack, unrelated to politics. It seemed a particularly plausible explanation that night because, in a separate incident, a 31-year-old man was shot in the head when he refused to hand over a karaoke microphone to five “would-be singers, suspected to be members of the military.”

Resolution would affirm Khmer soldiers

March 06, 2012
By Susan Hegarty
Session Weekly/Session Daily (Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota, USA)

The Khmer Freedom Fighters of Cambodia supported and defended U.S. military troops during the Vietnam War, yet the U.S. government has never officially recognized them as U.S. veterans, although many became naturalized citizens.

Rep. Bruce Anderson (R-Buffalo Township) sponsors HF2629, a resolution that would allow the state to officially recognize the Khmer Freedom Fighters and the Cambodian people for their support and defense of United States military forces. The resolution also urges the president, Congress and all other state legislatures to do the same.

The House Veterans Services Division approved the resolution and referred to the House floor. It has no Senate companion. Thirty-seven Khmer Freedom Fighter representatives were on hand to witness the division’s approval.

The soldiers fought alongside American soldiers to defend the rights of Cambodians and became American refugees after the war. Today, about 8,000 of these freedom fighters and their descendants live in Minnesota.

Slide shows on the KPNLF

Dear Readers and Friends,

On the occasion of the 32nd anniversary of the KPNLF, I invite you to review a slide show I created, The Face of the KPNLAF, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsb0tyYLar8

Two earlier slide shows on the KPNLF may be viewed at:

KPNLF No Fire Like Passion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FowU4vPYsCc

Never Doubt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqs0bKxraYc

Sincerely yours,

Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D.

Chhun Yasith's case allowed Hun Xen to demonstrate — with an assist from a federal court in Los Angeles — that his reach now extends all the way to Long Beach

The Lonely War

The California accountant who tried to overthrow a foreign despot

May 05, 2011
By Eric Pape
Los Angeles Time (California, USA)

Yasith Chhun

Chhun in the heady days before the attack

The revolution’s HQ in Long Beach

Chhun plots the coup.

Chhun after the failed coup

Ultimately, the case has also allowed Cambodia's leader to demonstrate — with an assist from a federal court in Los Angeles — that his reach now extends all the way to Long Beach.

Long Beach accountant Yasith Chhun stood before Judge Dean D. Pregerson in a Los Angeles courtroom on June 22, 2010. The judge noted that the bespectacled Cambodian-American wasn't a "bad man," just someone who had the misfortune to be born in a place where terrible things were happening.

Still, Pregerson chose to sentence Chhun to life in prison for his pitiful attempt to overthrow the despotic government of Cambodia.

How does a judge condemn someone who isn't a bad guy to life behind bars? As Chhun's defense attorney Richard C. Callahan said, comparing Chhun's punishment with that given to criminals who committed far more serious crimes, "None of this makes any sense."

Indeed, many exiles living in the United States are being celebrated for trying to foment revolutions in their home countries of Libya, Iran, Iraq and elsewhere. But unlike those Americans, Chhun fell into one of those eddies of U.S. foreign policy that swirls with contradictions.

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.

Court Sentences Eight CFF Members to Prison

By Mean Veasna, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
14 December 2007

With no participation either from the families or human rights observers, the Cambodian Supreme Court on Friday upheld the verdict of the eight members of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF) from six to sixteen-year in prison.

The Phnom Penh municipal court sentenced the eight men for establishing a terrorist group to overthrow the Phnom Penh's government through the attack in Phnom Penh in November 2000. Eight died and more than a dozen were wounded in the attack.

Two years ago, the Cambodian Court of Appeal upheld the municipal court's sentences. Six of the eight men were present when the Supreme Court declared its verdict today. One of the men died while in Prey Sar prison, while another man was sentenced in absentia.

Khim Pon, chief justice at today's hearing, explained the reason why the Supreme Court upheld the sentences.

"The authority confiscated a number of weapons, so the fact that the accused denied the accusation is not reliable. Therefore we sentenced Ou Sokhom, Nem Sopheap, Chea Chhoy, So Sain, Sin Soth and Khleung Savoeurn in person and Hang Nhorn and Yonn Yi in absentia. Keep the verdict by the court of appeal issued on April 20, 2005 in effect."

However, Kao Ty, lawyer of the defendants, challenged the Supreme Court's verdict, calling it unfair.

"The hearing is unjust. For one thing, the proof was brought in to make my clients accept. When they were arrested, my clients were unarmed. There was no proof even after the inquiries, yet at the hearing the court brought in the weapons as proof. The court said this is the proof of your activities, which bears the sign CFF. The court did not investigate my clients' case."

Neither the family members of the men nor the human rights workers were present at today's sentencing.

Fifty years old CFF's founder, Chhun Yasith, was indicted in June 2005 on charges related to the November 2000 clashes involving government forces in Phnom Penh. He was arrested at his home in Long Beach, California, by federal agents and has been awaiting trial in jail.

CFF members verdict upheld

Cambodian Supreme Court upholds verdict for militant group

PHNOM PENH, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Cambodian Supreme Court on Friday upheld the verdict of eight to 18 years in jail for eight members of the militant organization Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF).

The Phnom Penh municipal and the Battambang provincial courts gave them the sentence over establishing terrorism group and illegal use of weapons during their night raid on several government buildings in the capital in November 2000.

"We uphold the decision from the low courts," said Khim Pon, president of the council of judgment of the Supreme Court, insisting that they had enough proof to do so.

While the verdict was declared, six members of the group were present. One of rest two stayed in the prison in Kompong Cham province and the other one had died recently in jail.