Page "French protectorate of Cambodia" Paragraph 14

Japanese calls of " Asia for the Asiatics " found a receptive audience among Cambodian nationalists, although Tokyo's policy in Indochina was to leave the colonial government nominally in charge.

When a prominent, politically active Buddhist monk, Hem Chieu, was arrested and unceremoniously defrocked by the French authorities in July 1942, the editors of Nagaravatta led a demonstration demanding his release.

They, as well as other nationalists, apparently overestimated the Japanese willingness to back them, for the Vichy authorities quickly arrested the demonstrators and gave Pach Choeun, one of the Nagaravatta editors, a life sentence ) loyal to Son Ngoc Thanh, and plain bandits taking advantage of the chaos to terrorize villagers.

Though their fortunes rose and fell during the immediate postwar period ( a major blow was the overthrow of a left-wing friendly government in Bangkok in 1947 ), by 1954 the Khmer Issarak operating with the Viet Minh by some estimates controlled as much as 50 percent of Cambodia's territory.