Gordon Conochie
A Tiger Rules the Mountain: Cambodia’s Pursuit of Democracy
Monash University Publishing: 2023
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In early 2018, Chheang Vun, a big-mouthed parliamentarian from Cambodia’s ruling party, accused Sin Rozeth of holding rebel meetings at her noodle restaurant on the outskirts of Battambang City. Months earlier, Rozeth had been elected chief of the city’s O’Char commune in an election that saw the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) secure unprecedented local power across the country. Within months, the party was banned and Rozeth forced out of office. After Vun’s comments, Rozeth hung a banner outside her restaurant: “Rozeth’s shop welcomes all guests, but not rebels.”

Rozeth, who was thirty-one at the time, is a principal player in A Tiger Rules the Mountain: Cambodia’s Pursuit of Democracy by Gordon Conochie, a former journalist who spent a decade working in Cambodia’s aid sector. Unlike her party’s leaders, Rozeth refused to flee to safety or shut up. And unlike many of the party’s supporters, she hasn’t given up the fight for democracy despite crushing blows from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

“Yes, I am scared. Everyone is scared and gets scared in this society, so it’s no different for me,” she told Conochie. “But we only have one life, so we have to speak out about what we want and speak our true feelings, and not just for our family but for the whole country.” She’s an anomaly in today’s Cambodia, where dissent has been suppressed through violence, prison, legal threats and a general sense that opposing the ruling party is risky and futile.

• Tags: Cambodia, Colin Meyn, Gordon Conochie, Issue 35