Speaking Up for a Long-Silent Majority : Cambodia: Santa Ana woman returns to her homeland to run for a seat in the National Assembly.

Everywhere Nanda Chamroeun of Santa Ana campaigned she saw the wreckage of Khmer society. Two decades of war had turned a large portion of the population into impoverished widows and orphans.

Outside her headquarters one day, five men, some dressed in tattered army uniforms, milled around the campaign posters. All were amputees, and the government had not paid them one riel of their military pensions in three months.

One, whose limbs were lost to a land mine, wore sandals fastened by elastic bands to the stumps of his legs. The others stood on handmade prostheses of wood and rubber. Because of countless others like them, Cambodia is known as “the Land of the One-Legged Man.”

“Men have been leading the country so long, and look what has happened to the country,” Chamroeun often said during her speeches across the province.

Returning to her homeland after spending more than half her life in the United States, the former Cambodian refugee and Orange County social worker is running for a National Assembly seat in the first multi-party elections in the country in two decades.

Chamroeun’s platform, which advocates equality for women, is significant in the political annals of this male-dominated nation that has suffered up to 2 million deaths because of civil strife since 1970.

Since her arrival in November, Chamroeun’s endeavor has become particularly difficult. Politically motivated violence has killed at least 176 people in the last 10 weeks, and male chauvinism is firmly rooted in Khmer society although women now make up about 65% of the population and 54% of the electorate.

In Kompong Speu alone, where Chamroeun is campaigning, four United Nations peacekeepers sent to monitor the elections have been slain in terrorist attacks. Elsewhere in the country, 10 of her fellow party members have been killed or wounded in shootings and bombings.

Though forced to take security precautions and conduct a stealth campaign in regions known for political violence, Chamroeun, 34, says she is undeterred in her effort to advance the country’s nascent women’s rights movement.

“It is time for Cambodian women to stand up and be part of the political process,” said Chamroeun, who does not characterize herself as a feminist. “My responsibility is to speak for every other woman, be pro-women’s rights, to demand and claim equality.”

But some political observers in the United States are not optimistic about the election prospects for alternative parties. They say that Chamroeun and other candidates have an uphill fight considering the power of the Maoist Khmer Rouge and the current Vietnamese-installed Phnom Penh government. Both have resorted to violence to achieve their political ends.

“Nanda is pretty strong, but it is going to be tough,” said Vora Huy Kanthoul, the executive director of the United Cambodian Community, the largest social service agency for Cambodians in the United States.

Son Vo, a Vietnamese refugee who is the coordinator of the Intercultural Development Center at Cal State Fullerton, said, however, that women are more likely to vote for candidates such as Chamroeun because of the Khmer Rouge’s disrespect for human rights.

“Cambodian women traditionally would not vote, but they learned a hard lesson from the Khmer Rouge,” Vo said. “They have to come out of their shell. They have to assume more responsibility than being a housewife.”

Chamroeun, who worked as a counselor for a United Cambodian Community program in Santa Ana, is one of six Cambodians from Orange County who have returned to their homeland to run for the 120-seat assembly.

The national vote begins today and will continue until Friday. Supervised by the United Nations, the election is the centerpiece of a peace accord signed in Paris in October, 1991, by the Vietnamese-installed government, the Khmer Rouge and two other rebel factions.

But in June, 1992, the Khmer Rouge, threatening the nation with further civil strife, reneged on the agreement and refused to disarm. The Khmer Rouge, which was responsible for the deaths of more than a million people from 1975 to 1979, is boycotting today’s election and vowed to disrupt the voting. Nevertheless, the United Nations has pushed ahead with the scheduled elections, which will result in a new Cambodian government.

In contrast to most elections, votes will be cast for about 20 national political parties that have sponsored a total of 2,400 candidates. The percentage of votes received by a particular organization will determine how many of the party’s candidates gain office in each province.

During the campaign, Chamroeun, who is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, has emphasized issues of particular importance to women, including equal rights, health care and education.

“It’s a first step, a difficult hurdle,” she said of her candidacy. “If we pass this, there will be a lot more women in politics. . . . With my experience in the United States, I feel that I can be part of the changes that will happen in Cambodia.”

Her desire to return began in December, 1991, when she and her parents went to Cambodia to visit relatives for the first time since 1975 and assess the possibility of setting up a vocational training center. It was two months after the signing of the Paris peace accord that officially ended the civil war.

Tears filled her eyes as she recalled flying into Pochentong Airport near Phnom Penh. Logging and defoliation aggravated by the dry season had stripped the once-beautiful landscape, leaving behind barren rice fields and the brown stubble of sheared vegetation.

“All I saw was red and brown,” Chamroeun said, referring to the parched earth. “It was a shock. I was sad and overwhelmed.”

About 60 relatives waited for her and her family in the stifling airport terminal. Chamroeun scanned each face, but only recognized five or six family members. Overcome by emotion, she fainted into her mother’s arms.

Near the end of her three-week visit, Chamroeun went to a village in Kompong Speu, which is a farming region about 50 miles outside of Phnom Penh. Her grandfather had been a well-known government official there.

During her stay, she brought flowers and held a ceremony for relatives who had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. Chamroeun also distributed $553 from the Cambodian Women and Family Assn. in Long Beach to 30 widows, orphans and handicapped people. It was a substantial sum of money by Cambodian standards, considering that the average government worker there makes no more than $20 a month.

“All the people there were very poor,” Chamroeun said. “That’s how I knew I had to come back. It was very depressing seeing them without good clothing, without health care. The orphans don’t even know where their parents are.”

Back in Orange County, Chamroeun became absorbed in the prospect of returning permanently to her homeland. She initially considered starting vocational training or small business development programs, but was drawn to politics and women’s issues, two longtime interests.

Chamroeun also noticed that things were beginning to change in Cambodia. The United Nations had set up a human rights campaign that addressed, among other things, the disparity between men and women in Khmer society.

“Women in the U.S. are recognized as intelligent and capable of doing the same things as the men,” Chamroeun said. “It is the first time in (Cambodian) history that we can speak at the same time as the men.”

Traditionally, Cambodian women have been limited to household duties. Less than 20% of the women ever attend high school and most get married by the age of 16. Relegated to the home, they raise children and tend to household finances.

Illiteracy rates among Cambodian women is estimated to be between 60% and 70%. Marriages are arranged. United Nations statistics show that women represent 60% of the agricultural work force and nearly 70% of factory labor.

About 30% of households are headed by women, who have, on average, five children and work 16 hours a day. Because of civil war casualties, an estimated 65% of the adult population is now female--a staggering 70% in rural areas, according to the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia.

Although their contributions to Cambodian society are substantial, women are largely disenfranchised from the nation’s politics. Women, for example, are not represented on the Supreme National Council, a four-party interim body set up until the vote.

No political party participating in the current election is headed by a woman, and only 3% to 5% of the candidates are women. Even the campaign is unofficially segregated. Male candidates generally speak to the men, while female candidates talk to the women.

“The role is staying home, raising children and being a wife. Now things are changing,” Chamroeun said. “Cambodian women do not speak up. They walk and talk a certain way. With my job I learned the American way, being able to speak up and say what you think is right and ask questions.”

Chamroeun finally returned to Cambodia in November, 1992, after an agonizing decision to leave her two children, Nancy, 8, and Jason, 11, with her estranged husband in Fresno.

She said she spent every day for almost four months trying to tell her children how important it was for her to leave and how dangerous it would be for them to accompany her because of the political violence.

Chamroeun has not told them yet, but she said she might want her children to live with her in Cambodia after the election. Even if she does not win an assembly seat, she would like to become a social worker there.

Her campaign opened on April 12 at an old Buddhist temple in Kompong Speu, near an area dominated by the Khmer Rouge. Dressed in a traditional sarong and a blouse trimmed in white lace, Chamroeun stood out as she walked among the villagers.

Her glasses, makeup, jewelry and Western-style hair drew the attention of the weathered, thin women inside, who were sitting on straw mats and chewing betel nut, which stains their teeth black.

Surprised to learn she was a political candidate, the women wanted to know why someone like her would return to Cambodia after living and working in the United States.

“It must have been paradise,” said a dark-haired woman nursing a baby.

“Why do you come back?” asked another.

“Can it really happen that men and women could have the same rights?” another person asked.

Thousands of people have turned out for her rallies across the province, and women have wept after hearing Chamroeun talk about their plight and the need for social and political reform on their behalf.

“I ask them: ‘Why does (the United Nations) teach you human rights?’ ” Chamroeun said. “You need to realize that you have struggled and managed to survive. They feel sad, helpless. Yesterday I went to my province, near the mountains held by the Khmer Rouge, and the widows asked me for soybean seeds. They are very strong, but they just don’t know it. I tell them: ‘You are very intelligent or you couldn’t go through this. No one ever gives you credit for that.’ ”

Chamroeun said she has no illusions about the dangerous situation she has put herself into. At the outset, her campaign was delayed five days because of threats to her and her supporters.

Assassinations and terrorism by the Khmer Rouge and the Phnom Penh government have become widespread since March. The ongoing threats to campaign workers and intimidation at political rallies have forced Chamroeun and other candidates to scale back their campaigns. At considerable risk to her own life, Chamroeun has quietly entered villages to give speeches and hand out flyers.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “I’m not afraid for my life because I am committed to this. I will not back out--I want to work as hard as I can. Women can risk their lives as good as the men for democracy” in Cambodia.