domination of the civil service and criticising France’s failure to educate Cambodians to the same level. Its founder, Son Ngoc Thanh, and his fellow intellectuals saw Japan as a lever to prise Cambodia from France’s grip; Japan saw them as a ginger group, keeping the French off balance.
These conflicting ambitions provided the embryonic nationalist movement with its first martyrs. On July 18 1942, the French authorities arrested two monks suspected of subversive activities. They omitted to obtain the prior approval of the Buddhist hierarchy, as law and custom required. Two days later, Pach Chhoeun, the editor of
Nagaravatta,
led some two thousand demonstrators — including hundreds of saffron-robed monks holding yellow parasols — to protest to the French
Resident Supérieur.
A riot ensued, in which ‘the police used their batons, and the monks hit back with their umbrellas.’ Pach Chhoeun, Bunchan Mol and the other alleged ringleaders were arrested, sentenced to life imprisonment and transported to the French prison island of Poulo Condor, off the southern coast of Vietnam. Son Ngoc Thanh fled to Thailand and thence to Japan, where he remained until 1945.
The ‘Umbrella Revolt’, as it became known, was the first major anti-French demonstration for almost thirty years and served as a long-term catalyst for the growth of Khmer nationalism. But it had little immediate impact on youngsters of Sâr’s generation. They knew of it — indeed, Sâr himself was almost certainly in Phnom Penh the day it occurred, though it appears he did not witness the event — but even a socially aware student like Keng Vannsak failed to grasp the implications. Among the few who did take note was Ieng Sary, then at school in Prey Veng, near the Vietnamese border. When the news reached the town, he remembered, ‘everyone talked about it. It gave me for the first time an understanding of the word, “nation”.’ Sary was a few months older than the others and had led a much less sheltered life. Born Kim Trang, he was the son of a village notable in a Khmer-speaking district of southern Vietnam. While he was still a small child, the family fell on hard times. His mother managed to send him to elementary school, but at the age of fourteen he was put to work selling ferry tickets at Neak Luong, the main crossing point on the Mekong, forty miles south of Phnom Penh. A year later, with the help of an elder brother, who had secured a job in the provincial governor’s office, he moved to Prey Veng, where an elderly
achar,
or lay Buddhist leader, named Ieng, adopted him as his son.
Not even Sary, however, used to read
Nagaravatta.
Among the students at the Lycée Sisowath, only the oldest, like Mey Mann, four years Vannsak’s senior, had begun to take a real interest in politics. For the rest, as Sâr’s
friend and contemporary, Ping Sây, put it: ‘We were simply too young. In Europe, when you are twenty, you are an adult. But in Cambodia in those days, people of that age had no idea of what was going on in the world. We matured much later.’
At the college Preah Sihanouk
at Kompong Cham, as at the Ecole Miche, Sâr was a mediocre student. Whether this was because he had difficulty keeping up, or because schoolwork did not interest him, is unclear. Either way, he was not academically inclined. He could perhaps be described as a modest all-rounder. Khieu Samphân, who was in the class below him, remembered him playing the violin, enthusiastically but ‘not very well’, in the school orchestra. Later he took up the
roneat,
a traditional Cambodian stringed instrument similar to a zither. A love of music and romantic French poetry — Verlaine was one
of
his favourites — remained with him into old age. He liked football and showed a certain flair for the game: one of his friends at the time spoke admiringly, fifty years later, of the ‘scissors kick’ which Sâr perfected, sending the ball backwards over his head. He
These conflicting ambitions provided the embryonic nationalist movement with its first martyrs. On July 18 1942, the French authorities arrested two monks suspected of subversive activities. They omitted to obtain the prior approval of the Buddhist hierarchy, as law and custom required. Two days later, Pach Chhoeun, the editor of
Nagaravatta,
led some two thousand demonstrators — including hundreds of saffron-robed monks holding yellow parasols — to protest to the French
Resident Supérieur.
A riot ensued, in which ‘the police used their batons, and the monks hit back with their umbrellas.’ Pach Chhoeun, Bunchan Mol and the other alleged ringleaders were arrested, sentenced to life imprisonment and transported to the French prison island of Poulo Condor, off the southern coast of Vietnam. Son Ngoc Thanh fled to Thailand and thence to Japan, where he remained until 1945.
The ‘Umbrella Revolt’, as it became known, was the first major anti-French demonstration for almost thirty years and served as a long-term catalyst for the growth of Khmer nationalism. But it had little immediate impact on youngsters of Sâr’s generation. They knew of it — indeed, Sâr himself was almost certainly in Phnom Penh the day it occurred, though it appears he did not witness the event — but even a socially aware student like Keng Vannsak failed to grasp the implications. Among the few who did take note was Ieng Sary, then at school in Prey Veng, near the Vietnamese border. When the news reached the town, he remembered, ‘everyone talked about it. It gave me for the first time an understanding of the word, “nation”.’ Sary was a few months older than the others and had led a much less sheltered life. Born Kim Trang, he was the son of a village notable in a Khmer-speaking district of southern Vietnam. While he was still a small child, the family fell on hard times. His mother managed to send him to elementary school, but at the age of fourteen he was put to work selling ferry tickets at Neak Luong, the main crossing point on the Mekong, forty miles south of Phnom Penh. A year later, with the help of an elder brother, who had secured a job in the provincial governor’s office, he moved to Prey Veng, where an elderly
achar,
or lay Buddhist leader, named Ieng, adopted him as his son.
Not even Sary, however, used to read
Nagaravatta.
Among the students at the Lycée Sisowath, only the oldest, like Mey Mann, four years Vannsak’s senior, had begun to take a real interest in politics. For the rest, as Sâr’s
friend and contemporary, Ping Sây, put it: ‘We were simply too young. In Europe, when you are twenty, you are an adult. But in Cambodia in those days, people of that age had no idea of what was going on in the world. We matured much later.’
At the college Preah Sihanouk
at Kompong Cham, as at the Ecole Miche, Sâr was a mediocre student. Whether this was because he had difficulty keeping up, or because schoolwork did not interest him, is unclear. Either way, he was not academically inclined. He could perhaps be described as a modest all-rounder. Khieu Samphân, who was in the class below him, remembered him playing the violin, enthusiastically but ‘not very well’, in the school orchestra. Later he took up the
roneat,
a traditional Cambodian stringed instrument similar to a zither. A love of music and romantic French poetry — Verlaine was one
of
his favourites — remained with him into old age. He liked football and showed a certain flair for the game: one of his friends at the time spoke admiringly, fifty years later, of the ‘scissors kick’ which Sâr perfected, sending the ball backwards over his head. He
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