Chao Lao, a local leader, is still fighting for reform on the same issues that moved him to join the Khmer Rouge more than four decades ago — social injustice, corruption, land rights and illegal Vietnamese immigration.

By Sun Narin | VOA Khmer | June 27, 2018
អានអត្ថបទ​នេះជាភាសាខ្មែរ

Boeng Reang district, Battambang province Chao La’s body bears the scars of a complicated life.

As a young man, the ex-Khmer Rouge soldier was injured four times, on his leg, back, arm and face, during armed fighting in the lead-up to the brutal Communist movement’s takeover of Cambodia in 1975.

Then, while participating in a protracted guerilla insurgency after the Khmer Rouge government was ousted in 1979, he stepped on a land mine and did permanent damage to his leg.

Limping over to a stone bench near his home here one recent morning, the stoic and serious 64-year-old veteran recounted how he joined the Khmer Rouge as a teenager after heeding a call to arms from Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who had just been ousted by his trusted aide, Gen. Lon Nol.

Chao La fervently believed that the monarch was the country’s rightful leader. He assumed that Sihanouk would lead the country once again if the Communist forces managed to prevail in the civil war against the U.S.-aligned Lon Nol government.

But when the Khmer Rouge did take over the country in April 1975, they commenced a campaign of slaughter and forced labor that would leave some 1.7 million Cambodians dead. The former king was placed under house arrest, and many of his relatives were murdered. Chao La felt baffled at the turn his life – and that of his country – had taken.

“I didn’t know why it turned into the Khmer Rouge, after liberating [the country] from Lon Nol,” he said.

Chao La, who was then around 23 years old, was assigned to join a special guard unit in Phnom Penh. He was later sent to Kampong Cham province, in what was known as the Eastern Zone.

There, he fought border skirmishes against the Vietnamese and encountered a soldier known as “Comrade Nal,” who would soon defect from the Khmer Rouge and return fighting alongside an invading Vietnamese army that would seize power in Phnom Penh. This man later took another name – Hun Sen – by which he was known in 1985 when he ascended to the position of prime minister, which he still holds today.

But unlike Hun Sen, who has told interviewers that he fled across the border because the Khmer Rouge’s cruelty had become intolerable, Chao La recalls leading a relatively privileged life as a Communist soldier. In any case, he says he preferred the Pol Pot regime to living under the rule of Vietnam, Cambodia’s historic enemy and a country he hated.

“They didn’t look cruel in person, and their advice was not cruel,” he said.

“The soldiers had enough food to eat three times a day,” he added of life with the Khmer Rouge. “It was not difficult for them.”

So unlike Hun Sen, Chao La made the fateful decision to stay with the Khmer Rouge, even after the invading Vietnamese pushed the Communists back to the very western edge of Cambodia.

From strongholds along the Thai border, Chao La and his comrades would wage guerilla war against the Hun Sen-led government in Phnom Penh for nearly two more decades. Unlike many of those who defected from the Eastern Zone, who ascended to positions of power and privilege as founding members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), Chao La grew old fighting in the jungle.

Same Principles, Shifting Parties

On the wall of Chao La’s small stone home in Battambang hang a series of photographs that sum up his life in politics. First, there is a portrait of King Norodom Sihanouk, then three photos of Chao La wearing a Khmer Rouge uniform, and next, a picture showing longtime opposition leader Sam Rainsy dressed in formal wear for his investiture as a lawmaker.

The differences between the radical communist Khmer Rouge, the hereditary monarch King Sihanouk, and the democratic opposition leader Sam Rainsy might seem vast.

But to Chao La, his own political principles have never changed. Instead, the Cambodian political landscape changed around him, and different leaders stepped in to fill the gaps.

Chao La’s political career began in 1994, as the Khmer Rouge began to contemplate a civilian governance structure for the areas they controlled in Cambodia’s west. He was appointed chief of Boeng Reang commune in Battambang, although he was still under the authority of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader.

In 1998, Pol Pot died. What remained of the Khmer Rouge movement crumbled entirely. The remnants of the Communist forces integrated into the Hun Sen-led government, but local leaders were often kept in place to ensure a smooth transition.

Chao La continued to lead Boeng Reang commune, but under the auspices of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which was a linear descendent of the Khmer Rouge’s party. For most of that time, he says he held his nose, hating much of what the ruling party stood for. He was especially aggrieved by what he felt was the CPP’s enduring closeness to the Vietnamese state, whose influence he had staked his life on opposing.

In 2002, when Cambodia held its first-ever commune elections, which required the hundreds of government-appointed commune chiefs across the country to join political parties and formally contest their seats, Chao La was asked to become a member of the CPP. He declined.

“I see Vietnamese people in the party,” he said. “I think it is the same.”

He lay low for a few years, practicing traditional medicine as a folk healer, before deciding to re-enter politics in 2007 as a member of the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), which opposed the Hun Sen government.

“I want the country to develop and genuinely implement the democracy in accordance with laws and the constitution.”

Chao La says the same issues that led him to join the Khmer Rouge decades ago – social injustice, corruption, land rights and illegal Vietnamese immigration – spurred his decision to align with Sam Rainsy, a former finance minister who opposed the CPP government.

“I want reform of the legal system, and to be stronger on immigration,” Chao La said. “I want the country to develop and genuinely implement the democracy in accordance with laws and the constitution.”

Still popular among his neighbors, who had positive memories of his leadership during the Khmer Rouge days, Chao La was elected as an opposition commune councilor. He felt satisfied to finally have found an anti-Vietnamese, democratic alternative to the CPP.

He continued serving as commune councilor as the SRP merged into the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), and watched as the CNRP enjoyed unprecedented success in the 2013 national election, and obtained the best opposition results ever in the 2017 commune elections, swelling the ranks of its commune councilors nearly twelvefold.

Choa La was re-elected in that vote, while the CNRP made significant gains, winning four seats out of seven in Boeng Reang commune and garnering around 1,000 more votes than the CPP.

Leap Saroeun, 63, a villager, said Chao La was a popular leader because he was honest and “good,” and residents of the commune were frustrated over persistent land disputes involving powerful people.

“People lost land to powerful people, and they dare not go against them,” Saroeun said.

Old Concerns Endure as New Problems Pile Up

The government of Chao La’s old comrade “Nal” has now led the country for over three decades. Although Hun Sen has succeeded in reducing poverty and bolstering infrastructure, Chao La says he is still deeply concerned with social injustice, particularly land rights disputes that have pitted ordinary Cambodians against well-connected tycoons and foreign investors.

He says he also worries about poor public services and corruption based on patronage and nepotism – the same problems the Lon Nol government was criticized for in the early 1970s.

But most crucially, Chao La is upset at the erosion of democratic principles that has occurred since last year’s commune elections.

Just four months after his party’s triumph and his re-election as commune chief, Chao La’s long political career came to an abrupt end.

Kem Sokha The CNRP leader was arrested in 2017The government arrested CNRP leader Kem Sokha, accusing him of treason, and took steps to dissolve the CNRP and ban all its high-level elected officials from practicing politics.

Lower-level officials, like Chao La, were urged to defect and join the ruling CPP. In many cases, they were pressured with lawsuits or surveillance.

Since the CNRP was formally dissolved in November 2017, Chao La says he has been repeatedly asked by ruling party officials in the district to join the CPP in order to regain his position in local government. He says he has turned them down every time.

“Now what is right is distorted into wrong and people who are not guilty become guilty,” he said. As the national election approaches, the government has toughened its surveillance over communes and villages and is targeting people who appear to be talking about politics, particularly those previously connected to the opposition CNRP.

Some villagers who still respect Chao La and enjoy his company are afraid to meet with him these days.

“I am afraid to talk to him nowadays, because we don’t know what he is dealing with,” said Heng Phoeung, 69, one of the older villagers in Ou Krouch. “We are scared.”

Indeed, while Chao La was being interviewed by VOA journalists in front of his house, local police quickly arrived and began watching him and the reporters. Later, four district police officers approached and began to photograph the journalists repeatedly.

But despite having attracted the attention of local authorities for his anti-CPP stance, Chao La says he is not afraid to continue speaking his mind.

“I have only one life. I have not done anything wrong,” he said. “They don’t allow us to do politics, but we have mouths to speak, so why not speak?”