The Cham Rebellion:
Survivors’ Stories from the Villages

Ysa Osman
Cambodia: The Documenter Center of Cambodia, 2006. 184 pages.

This book is a study of what happened to Cambodia’s Cham Muslims living
in the Khmer Rouge-controlled Kroch Chhmar district (Kampong Cham
province) during the 1970s. Based on reconstructed events and survivors’
memories, it is an account of ordinary Muslims caught up in a utopian mael-
strom of deceit, brutality, fear, unexpected compassion, torture, and deliber-
ate murder on an almost unbelievable scale while the Muslim world, and the
world at large, was “occupied” with other concerns.

Chapters 1 and 2 explain how the Khmer Rouge entered the district and
found young Cham and Khmer men eager to join up. How could they resist,
when Norodom Sihanouk, who enjoyed near-divine status among the peas-
antry and presented himself as the sole architect of Cambodia’s independ-
ence, called upon them to join with the Khmer Rouge (which he had already
done) to reverse General Lon Nol’s overthrow of his government? In the “lib-
erated” zones, the Khmer Rouge renamed villages with numbers; selected
new Cham village heads based on their lack of education, total servility, and
unquestioning obedience; and gradually communalized life because, they
promised, that would make the people’s lives better and easier. 

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The Khmer Rouge helped the Cham farm and harvest, asked locally
esteemed Cham figures to manage their affairs, and respected Islamic beliefs
and practices. Such deeds convinced many Cham that the Khmer Rouge
message was compatible and even identical to that of Islam. By 1973, how-
ever, Cham religious and other officials began to be replaced, arrested, and
sometimes executed (in secret). After this became public knowledge, the
people’s protests were sometimes heeded. But even then, some people were
beginning to close their eyes to avoid drawing attention to themselves. As
the Khmer Rouge’s demands became more insistent, threats gave way to
ever-rising levels of violence and intimidation. Suraus (small village places
of prayer common throughout the Malay-Indonesian world) were closed,
praying was forbidden, women had to uncover and cut their hair, Qur’ans
were collected and burned, and Muslims were made to raise pigs and eat
pork. While the Cham of Koh Phal village never obeyed these “requests,”
those of Svay Khleang village did. But when the Cham’s anger over what
they considered to be the Khmer Rouge’s betrayal could no longer be con-
tained, both villages revolted within weeks of each other. 

Chapters 3 and 4 deal with these revolts, launched during Ramadan
1975. In Koh Phal, Ta Yok, a Cham appointed by the Khmer Rouge to han-
dle Cham affairs, addressed the audience at what turned out to be the final
meeting. After pointedly lighting a cigarette, he stated bluntly: “Today
begins a new world” (p. 55). The following day, when a Khmer Rouge cadre
came to collect the Qur’ans for burning and to lead forty religious leaders
and elders away, both of which the villagers refused to allow, they mobilized
themselves on the assumption that they would die sooner or later anyways.
After several days of resistance and about 1,000 villagers had been killed
defending their village with swords and knives against a well-armed and
trained military force, the 900 survivors were rounded up and dispersed. The
village was reportedly burned to the ground, renamed, and became the site
of a Khmer Rouge security office. Apparently, the surrounding forty-nine
mass graves did not bother its occupants.

The villagers of Svay Khleang, a major center of Cham Islamic learn-
ing, reached their limit two weeks later. Largely unaware of what had hap-
pened in Koh Phal, even through it was only ten kilometers away, they asked
the Khmer Rouge to let them hold the Eid al-Fitr prayer in their surau, which
they had agreed to close one year ago. Receiving no answer, they assumed
agreement and observed the prayer. Unbeknownst to them, however, each
worshipper’s name was recorded. Someone saw the list and the accompany-
ing arrest order. Word spread, and the villagers mobilized themselves. The
rebellion, launched the next day, was crushed ruthlessly. The survivors were

Book Reviews 127



led away, and some of the men were executed. After a month in prison, sur-
viving family members were reunited and dispersed.

Chapter 5 deals with Cambodia’s Cham community from “liberation”
(1975) to collapse (1979). The author says that these two rebellions con-
vinced the Khmer Rouge to destroy the large Cham communities and erase
their non-Khmer ethnic identity. One survivor thought that the Khmer
Rouge provoked these rebellions to justify their imminent murderous assault
on all Cham communities. 

After Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge, they implemented their anti-
Islam and anti-Cham policies through conspicuous displays of armed might
during village-wide meetings of unarmed civilians, threats that any dissent or
resistance would not be tolerated, and mass arrests and deportations without
warning. Interestingly, many of the interviewees in this chapter are women,
so a new perspective is given: how formerly sheltered teenaged girls react
when confronted with naked hostility and imminent death; how mothers bear
the forcible removal of their children or helplessly watch them starve to
death. The book ends with a postscript, a bibliography, and endnotes.

This disturbing book fits in well with recognized western scholarship
(e.g., Michael Vickery and Ben Kiernan), other survivors’ accounts (e.g.,
Haing S. Ngor, Pin Yathay, and Molyda Szymusiak), and with what my
Cham friends who survived have told me over the years. As I was walking
the streets of Phnom Penh in 2004 with some of them, I could not stop look-
ing at the people we passed and wondering who they had been during the
1970s. It was a deeply unsettling experience.

The author is to be commended for his meticulous research and docu-
mentation of a period that many people have already forgotten and that
many young Cambodians, I have read, cannot believe ever happened.

Jay Willoughby
AJISS Managing Editor

Herndon, Virginia

128 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 24:3