By Sebastian Strangio
Asia Times Online
PHNOM PENH - Early on November 24, 2000, about 70 gunmen slipped into the center of Cambodia's capital city. After drinking and singing traditional songs at a karaoke bar, one unit of men moved towards a series of government buildings armed with AK-47 rifles, grenades and B-40 rocket launchers.
After seizing control of the city's railway station, they sprayed bullets at the Ministry of Defense and Council of Ministers and lobbed a grenade as a nearby gas station. The Cambodian military engaged the attackers in a firefight, scarring many nearby buildings with bullet holes. They quelled the ragtag militia, leaving eight dead and around 14 wounded, after an hour of fighting.
In the wake of the attack, an obscure group calling itself the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF) took credit for the violence. The group's ethnic Khmer leader, Chhun Yasith, a Long Beach, California-based accountant, at the time made no attempt to hide his intent to overthrow the government of Hun Sen, Cambodia's long-serving prime minister. Despite the failure of the "coup" attempt, Yasith boasted that he would continue working to topple the "tyrannical" regime by force. "Next time," he told a journalist in 2004, "we will attack the whole country."
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