Almost Forgotten: Cambodia’s Anti-Colonial Nationalists
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Almost Forgotten: Cambodia’s Anti-Colonial Nationalists
Bun Chanmol, the author of Kok Niyobay. Photo from Kok Niyobay
Author: Rinith Tain
12 Oct 2018
“They tied his testicles with a rope, hanging from the ceiling. Then, they tightened the rope or squeezed the testicles, as the prisoner was crying with pain.”
Three Cambodian men stood on the deck of a Japanese destroyer, gazing at the tropical island. For three years, they’d believed that it would not only be their prison, but also their grave. 24-year-old Bun Chanmol, the youngest among them, waved goodbye—not to the island nor the prison, but to the spirit of Hem Chieu, a monk and prominent player in the Cambodian nationalist movement, who passed away from dysentery just a few months after arriving on Con Son.
According to Chanmol, there were about 6,000 inmates in Con Dao prison in 1942, most of whom were Vietnamese. Among them were rebels who had joined the Viet Minh, the independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh, as well as Vietnamese criminals convicted of crimes like murder and robbery. Only a smattering of Cambodians joined the prisoners’ ranks, and their presence has been largely forgotten by history.
Hard labour and starvation caused hundreds of deaths, as did inadequate medical care. Treatment by both French and Vietnamese staffers was closer to experimentation than healing, he wrote, and usually led to infection and even death.
A Cambodian historian, who asked to be anonymous, tells New Naratif that the struggle of Cambodian anti-French nationalists is overshadowed by the success of former King Norodom Sihanouk in the Royal Crusade for Independence. It can still be difficult to talk about these early anti-colonial activists; the nationalist movement isn’t taught in great detail in schools, and there is still fear in Cambodia of going against the monarchy.
More than 70 years later, Chhoeun’s granddaughter Vany Wells is trying to put more pieces together.
Full https://newnaratif.com/journalism/almos ... 3fd8cb8ed/
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Re: Almost Forgotten: Cambodia’s Anti-Colonial Nationalists
Interesting story but why did the Japanese liberate them? The prison on Phu Qouc has a guillotine and a tiger cage and lots of graphic torture stuff from that era.
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Re: Almost Forgotten: Cambodia’s Anti-Colonial Nationalists
A question for John Bingham or one of the other more learned perhaps.willyhilly wrote: ↑Sun Aug 04, 2019 2:47 pm Interesting story but why did the Japanese liberate them?
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