The ‘Golden Age’ of the Brao People in Northeast Cambodia
AKP Phnom Penh, January 05, 2021 --

The Brao people of northeastern Cambodia played a key role in fostering regional cooperation in the 1970s through their close ties with Vietnamese and Lao leaders. Dating back to the early 1950s, such collaboration had significant national consequence which, a new book agues, allowed the Brao to enjoy a golden age during the period of the People's Republic of Kampuchea between 1979-1989.

As a joint Vietnamese-Cambodian military offensive against Pol Pot was fully underway 42 years ago in early 1979, senior defectors who fled the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime met in Vietnam. It was Jan. 5 — two days before the Liberation of Phnom Penh.
At the time, Samdech Akka Moha Ponhea Chakrei Heng Samrin was chairman of the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, which had just held its inaugural congress in Cambodia near the Vietnamese border the previous month. He remembers the Jan. 5 meeting well.
Now Speaker of Cambodia's National Assembly, Samdech Heng Samrin had led a group of Cambodians in fleeing to Vietnam to escape Pol Pot’s killings in 1978. Among those who also defected were fellow military commanders Samdech Akka Moha Thamma Pothisa Chea Sim, the future Senate President, and Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo HE, the current Prime Minister who succeeded Samdech Chea Sim as head of the Cambodian People’s Party following his death in 2015.
Full article from the AKP (gov site) : https://www.akp.gov.kh/post/detail/224625