[3] The rebellion was put down in July 1835, though both Ja Thak Wa and Po War Palei were killed in Phan Rang earlier in May.
[9] In August 1834, Ja Thak Wa's forces began the first uprising by organizing attacks on Vietnamese military garrisons in coastal Bình Thuan and rallied people to revolt.
[note 5] Ja Thak Wa believed 'the revolution could only succeed if it gained fully passionate commitment and support from the lowland mass,' the rebels forced people to reach affidavits by launching a terror campaign, mass killing of disloyal Cham and Kinh settlers, especially those who allied with the king Po Phaok The.
[11] In late 1834, the revolution's headquarters (located in the Central Highlands east of Khanh Hoa province) were put under a newly established provisional assembly, an aggregate made up of an anti-Vietnamese coalition of the suffered, namely Cham Bani and Cham Balamons, the highlanders,...[note 8][12] The assembly's plebiscite then elected Po War Palei, Cei Dhar Kaok's brother-in-law, a descendant of king Po Rome's dynasty, and being a person of Raglai background from Cadang village, as king of New Champa.
These actions, historian Po Dharma commented, an emphasis that manifests the polyethnic, antiracist, and democratic intentions of Ja Thak Wa's independence movement.
[14] Upon learning news of the uprising, Minh Mang was furious as he complained about Ja Thak Wa's movement "anti-Viet idiotic and barbarous highlands led by traitorous and disobedient mobs.
The Vietnamese court initially underestimated rebels and waged conventional warfare against them but could not match both popular uprisings and guerrilla fighters.
[15] By early 1835, the Nguyen army had been driven out after being outflanked by rebels and losing battles at key towns of An Phước, Hòa Ða, Tuy Tịnh districts, and the Bình Thuận governance fell to the revolutionaries.
[15] Upon learning of his territorial losses to the Cham rebels, Minh Mang dispatched a reinforcement of 3,000 royal troops forward to the old Thuan Thanh to return his grips over Panduranga and put down the revolution.
[note 13] In March 1835, Minh Mang promised good remittances for soldiers who killed and beheaded a rebel to liquidate the revolt.
[note 14][18] The same notorious method Minh Mang had employed in suppressing many previous rebellions and Christian revolts, however, quickly went out of control and turned into an ethnocide in Champa.
Unstoppable, Vietnamese royal troops and Kinh paramilitary units were competing at hunting down and murdering innocent Cham civilians to receive task prizes.
[note 17][20] Then he expected a hiatus by retracting his agenda and bribing the Cham aristocrats who have been adverse from the beginning to sabotage the revolution's core supporters.
[note 20] Ja Thak Wa was wounded in Hamu Linang hamlet, near Phan Rang, was then captured by the Vietnamese, and he was sentenced to the death penalty.
[29][30] Ming Mang's successors Thieu Tri and Tu Duc reverted most of their grandfather's harsh policies on religion and ethnic assimilation, and the Cham was reallowed to practice their faiths.