Golden State Terrorists

What do Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, the Philippines, Iraq, and Garden Grove and Long Beach, California have in common? They all appear to be harboring terrorists of one stripe or another. If President Bush is steadfast in his belief that "if they [countries] fund a terrorist, they're a terrorist. If they house terrorists, they're terrorists," look out California!

Randy Gould, editor of the e-zine The Oread Daily, facetiously asked in the November 26 edition, "Will the US bomb California? Can we expect Special Forces on the ground in Orange County?"

Garden Grove? Long Beach? Home to terrorists? That's right. During the past year, Time magazine and several other mainstream publications have identified organizations -- with home offices in the Golden State -- that are plotting coups, planting bombs in other countries and raising money for more of these activities. And they're not your usual Cuban exile groups.

Two organizations -- the Long Beach-based Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF), and the Garden Grove-based Government of Free Vietnam (GFV) -- are finally drawing some attention from the U.S. government these days.

Cambodia's California Connection

In early January, Time-Asia reported that on November 24, 2000, "some 70 rebels armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers -- and wearing matching Cambodian Freedom Fighters T-shirts -- attacked government buildings in downtown Phnom Penh." Within an hour, the raiders were crushed by local authorities "but the fire-fight killed at least four people and terrified a nation still recovering from civil war."

The Long Beach, California-based Cambodian Freedom Fighters was founded and is led by Chhun Yasith, a 44-year-old American citizen whose family fled to the U.S. in 1982. When Yasith isn't organizing the overthrow of the Cambodian government he is an accountant by trade. Although the attack failed to ignite the masses, Yasith told Time-Asia that it succeeded in establishing his group as a force to be reckoned with. "We're definitely going to try again," he said. "There will be more operations. It won't be long."

Shortly after the failed attack, Yasith told the LA Weekly why the group resorted to armed violence against the Cambodian regime. "I did many nonviolent demonstrations in 1995 and 1996," he said, "but it is not workable. We will never change the nature of the communist dictatorship with rallies. Communists are like cows. When you talk to cows, they don't understand."

The Cambodian Freedom Fighters, who claim to have 500 members in the U.S. and up to 20,000 supporters in Cambodia, have an office in Long Beach, where, according to the LA Weekly, there are more than 50,000 Cambodian-American residents. According to its web site the group, legally registered with the Secretary of State of California, aims "to fight against communist[s] to protect the interests of Cambodian people." The web site points out that: "CFF has not recognized and will not recognize the current government who was born out of an election fraud and brutality, [and] gave immunity to the former Khmer Rouge Leaders who were responsible for the deaths of two million Cambodians instead of bringing them to justice. We, our children and later generation, [can] neither afford to stand by nor allow the dictators to continue their destructions to our homeland. CFF works and stands ... with all classes of the Cambodian National Armies under one color to free our country from communist dictatorship." (CFF can be contacted at: CFF USA-CB Office: 2728 E. 10th Street, Long Beach, CA 90804 Tel. (562) 433-9930, Fax (562) 433-7490).

In late June, BBC News reported that a Cambodian court had sentenced three U.S. citizens -- two in absentia -- to life in prison resulting from the November 2000 attack. The court also sentenced 27 Cambodians to sentences ranging from three years to life.