Pol Pot
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Snepp, Frank, Decent Interval, Random House, New York, 1977
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Confessions, unless otherwise indicated, are from the Tuol Sleng Archives, Phnom Penh. Other abbreviations are employed as follows:
CPK
Communist Party of Kampuchea
FUNK
National United Front of Kampuchea
GRUNC
Royal Government of National Unity of Cambodia
ICP
Indochinese Communist Party
PRPK
People’s Revolutionary Party of Khmerland (subsequently Kam puchea)
VWP
Vietnamese Workers’Party
AOM
Archives d’Outremer, Aix-en-Provence
ASEMI
Asie du Sud-est et le Monde Insulindien
BBC SWB
British Broadcasting Corporation Summary ofWorld Broadcasts
BCAS
Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars
CWIHP
Cold War International History Project
DC-Cam
Documentation Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh
EMIFT
Etat-Major Interarmes des Forces Terrestres en Indochine
JCA
Journal of Contemporary Asia
MAE
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères
QD
Archives du Quai d’Orsay, Paris
RC
Réaltiés Cambodgiennes
SDECE
Service de Documentation Extérieur et de Contre-Espionnage
SHAT
Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes
VA
Vietnamese Archives, Hanoi
PROLOGUE
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3 The news reached . . . surrendered: This account is drawn from interviews with Ieng Sary in Phnom Penh on Nov. 30 2000, Mar. 9 and Nov. 12 2001.
5 If you preserve: Interview with Mey Mak, Pailin, June 25, Sept. 20 and 21 2000; Mar. 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 2001. ‘Patriotic intellectuals’: See Caldwell and Lek Tan, pp. 418—33, where the text of the declaration and the list of signatories are reproduced.
6 Disaffected schoolmaster: RC, Mar. 1 1968. Cropped up again: The list was issued on Mar. 23 1972 (see Serge Thion, ‘Chronology’, in Chandler and Kiernan, Aftermath, p. 300). During Sihanouk’s visit: China Pictorial, June 1973. ‘The enemy is searching’: Sien An, confession, Feb. 25 1977. ‘Knew who I was’: Pol Pot, Yugoslav interview. On April 17: The following account is drawn from interviews with Khieu Samphân (Pailin, Mar. 28 and 29, Apr. 2, 3 and 20 2001) and Phi Phuon (Malay, May 4 and 6, Nov. 14 and 15 2001); and from conversations with villagers during a visit to Sdok Toel on Dec. 16 2001.
7 It would build . . . gone before: Der Spiegel, May 2 1977.
8 There the assembled . . . Buddha: Phi Phuon, Khieu Samphân, interviews. Fateful decision: Phi Phuon, interview.
10 What I saw: Ong Thong Hoeung, Récit, p. 8.
One and a half million: Estimates of the number of deaths under Khmer Rouge rule from April 1975 to January 1979 range from 250,000 to 3 million. The ‘unbearable uncertainty of the number’, as one demographer has put it, stems from two main causes.
Estimates based on sampling—in other words, interviews with individual survivors about the numbers of their family members who died—may be inflated by double-counting and, more importantly, fail to take into account the enormous disparities which existed not just between zones and regions, but from one district to another and even, within districts, from one co-operative or village to another. Moreover, a disproportionate number of refugees interviewed were former city-dwellers, who accounted for only 800,000 out of a total population of about 7 million in 1975 and who suffered a far higher mortality rate than any other group in Democratic Kampuchea. (It must be noted that of the estimated 3 million people living in Cambodia’s towns in April 1975, the vast majority were peasants who had taken refuge there to escape the fighting and who returned to their home villages as soon as the war ended.)
Estimates based on demographic trends are bedevilled by uncertainties over the exact popu
lation in 1970; over the death toll from the war and the natural rate of population increase from 1970–5; over levels of emigration and over the numbers of famine victims after the Vietnamese invasion in 1979.
I have taken the figure of 1.5 million deaths as representing a reasonable midpoint. I suspect, but cannot prove, that the true death toll may have been lower. If the entire population of former city-dwellers had died (which it did not), there would have been 800,000 deaths; and if 10 percent of the remaining 6.2 million peasants died (again almost certainly an overestimate), the total woudl be 1.42 million. It is certainly possible therefore, that the actual death toll was of the order of one million.
That is surely horrific enough. Whether the true figure is 3 million, 1.5 million or ‘only’ 750,000 in no way alters the barbarism of a regime which brought about the demise of between 10 and 40 per cent of its own people.
CHAPTER ONE: SÅR
15 Prek Sbauv . . . civil war: This account relies mainly on my own visits to Prek Sbauv and on interviews with Saloth Nhep on Nov. 29 and Dec. 27 2001. Regarding Sâr’s change of birth date, Ieng Sary and Suong Sikoeun, among others, made themselves younger for the same reason (Ieng Sary, Suong Sikoeun, interviews). March 1925: Pol Pot gave this date when he recounted his life-story to the Chinese journalist Cai Ximei, in May 1984. In 1997 he told Nate Thayer:’They wrote it on the wall in my home. The month bos, the year, chluv [ox]. January’. According to Thayer, he repeated the word in French: ‘Janvier’. The problem is that January 1925 fell in the Year of the Rat; the new lunar year of the Ox began in the month cet, in the last days of March 1925. The only way the different accounts can be reconciled is if Pol Pot meant the first month, not of the lunar year, but of the cyclical year, which would indeed correspond to March/April 1925 (see Institut Bouddhique, Cérémonies des Douze Mois, Phnom Penh, n.d., p. 15 and calendar).
16 French missionary: Khin Sok, pp. 239–40.
18 Keng Vannsak endured . . . fainted: Keng Vannsak, interview.
19 Sâr’s earliest memories . . . powers of protection: In Sopheap, interview. See also Ang Chouléan, Etres surnaturels.
21 Each year . . . religious obligation: This account draws on an interview with the Abbot of Wat Botum Vaddei, Nhun Nghet, on Sept. 27 2001; on visits to the monastery that year; and on Chhang Song’s reminiscences of his childhood in a wat in Takeo in the late 1940s (interview, Phnom Penh, Oct. 25 2001).
21–2 In those days . . . beaten: Nhun Nghet, interview.
22 Never turn your back: Saveros Pou, Une Guirlande de Cpap, Cedoreck, Paris, 1988, pp. 411–51.
23 Your eyes: Khing Hocdy and Jacqueline Khing, Les Recommandations de Kram Ngoy, Cedoreck, Paris, 1981; see also Khing Hocdy, Ecrivains, pp. 14–15. They taught us: Nhun Nghet, interview. See also Migot, supra. Catechism: ‘Bref aperçu sur l’Ecole Miche, 1934–42’ by Fr.Yves Guellec, unpublished ms held at the Archives Lasalliennes, Lyons; interviews with Ping Sây in Phnom Penh, Nov. 25, Dec. 1 and 4 2000; Mar. 6, Apr. 25 and Oct. 30 2001. Sây, who spent several months at the Ecole Miche during the winter of 1944–5, remembered the catechism but not the prayers.
24 The street traffic: H. W. Ponder, Cambodian Glory, Butterworth, London, 1936, pp. 155–6.
25 Didn’t surprise us: Saloth Nhep, interview. See also Kiernan, How Pol Pot, p. 25.
26 Royal audiences: Meyer, Sourire, pp. 112–13.
27 Nostalgia: In Sopheap, interview. Joke: Searching for the Truth, no. 4, p. 8.
28 Politeness: Saloth Nhep, interview. See also Meyer, Sourire, pp. 32–3. ‘Nice to be with’: Ping Sây, for example, remembered:’He was a very, very nice person [in those days] . . . It was always really pleasant to be with him’ (interview). See also interviews with Nghet Chhopininto, Paris, Feb. 17 and 22 2001; Mey Mann; and Khieu Samphân. Saloth Nhep said Sâr and Chhay were both ‘good fun’. ‘Adorable child’: Interview with Saloth Suong (Loth Suong), Phnom Penh, Nov. 1991; Chandler, Brother, pp. 9 and 204 n.5; and Kiernan, How Pol Pot, p. 27.
31 At the college Preah Sihanouk . . . theatrical troupe: The following account is taken from Khieu Samphân, Ping Sây and Nghet Chhopininto (interviews).
32–3 School was closed . . . breath away: Khieu Samphân, interview.
33 ‘I can still remember’: Khieu Samphân, interview. Found a job: In Sopheap, interview.
34 Riensouth: Pierre Lamant, interview, Paris, Mar. 25 2002; and David Chandler, personal communication. Other Frenchmen who taught in Cambodia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as Henri Locard and Claude Rabear, experienced similar frustrations in dealing with the current generation of Cambodian students. Keng Vannsak, in the late 1950s, noted the same lack of initiative among the staff of the Phnom Penh Teacher Training College.
36 Ieng Sary . . . Sisowath: Ping Sây, Thiounn Mumm and Ieng Sary, interviews.
38 Communist Manifesto: Keng Vannsak and Ieng Sary, interviews. Conflict of a different kind: The following section is drawn mainly from Christopher E. Goscha’s illuminating thesis on the First Indochina War, Le Contexte Asiatique de la Guerre Franco-Vietnamienne: Réseaux, Relations et Economie (d’Août 1945 a Mai 1954).
42 In the summer: Ping Sây, interview. See also Mey Mann and Ieng Sary, interviews. ‘Most students’: Khieu Samphân, interview.
43 On the eve: The following account is from the recollections of Mey Mann (interview) .
44 ‘Indefinable half-smile’: Meyer, Sourire, p. 33.
45 The morning after: The following account is taken from Mey Mann and Nghet Chhopininto, interviews.
CHAPTER TWO: CITY OF LIGHT
48 ‘Policemen who gesticulate’: Khemara Nisut, no. 8, Dec. 1949, pp. 19–20.
49 Sâr was lucky: Mey Mann remembered: ‘He had a friend, or a cousin, I’m not sure what exactly . . . who took him off to stay with him . . . somewhere not in the Latin Quarter’ (interview). Nghet Chhopininto thought Sâr spent the first year staying with the sons of the governor of Kratie (Em Samnang and Em Samrech) in an apartment near the Jardin des Plantes (which is close to the Ecole de Radio-Electricité in the rue Amyot), in the 5th arrondissement of Paris (interview). Vannsak (interview) thought it was ‘probable’ that he had spent the first year with Somonopong. In fact, it seems certain that he stayed at 17 rue Lacepède, where Samnang and Samrech were both still living in 1955, together with two of Somonopong’s relatives, Prince Sisowath Monichivan and Prince Sisowath Vongvichan (cote 19800042, art 21, dossier 1912, AS de l’Association Khmer, 13 avril 1955, Centre des Archives Contemporaines, Fontainebleau). Bon vivant: Mey Mann and Ping Sây, interviews. See also Ieng Sary, interview. Girlfriend: The account of Sâr’s relationship with Son Maly is taken from Keng Vannsak, interview.
50 ‘Quite good marks’: Pol Pot, Cai Ximei interview and Thayer interview.
51 Camping holiday: Pol Pot, Thayer interview. ‘Progressive students’: Pol Pot, Cai Ximei interview. One of these . . . had left: Ieng Sary, Fiche d’étudiant and interview with Henri Locard, Pailin, 1998; Keng Vannsak, interview. Pay his respects . . . daily injections: Keng Vannsak, interview.
52 ‘Patriotic and against’: Pol Pot, Cai Ximei interview.
55 Statutes: ‘Statuts du Parti Révolutionnaire du Peuple du Cambodge’ and ‘La ligne politique du Parti’, translated in ‘le Parti Ouvrier Vietnamien’, SDECE, c. 10H620, SHAT.
57 ‘Lack qualities’: ‘Rapport du Général Viet Minh Nguyen Binh sur le Front Cambodgien’. Aug. 11 1951,0. 10H636, SHAT. ‘Truly paradoxical’: Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Cambodge, EM/3B, No. 2371/3, ‘Synthèse d’exploitation’, undated, c. 10H5585, SHAT.
59 ‘Gathering of friends’: Keng Vannsak, interview
60 They screwed me: Keng Vannsak, interview. Young working men and women: ‘Festival Mondial de la Jeunesse’, Berlin, 5 au 19 août, in c. BA2275, Archives de la Prefecture de Police, Paris.
61 Armed struggle: Vandy Kaonn, La Nuit, p. 182. ‘[They] came back convinced’: Keng Vannsak, interview.
62 Thiounn Mumm had invited: Nghet Chho
pininto, interview. Mumm (interview) confirmed making a report after his return from Berlin but did not specify the circumstances.
63 ‘The main question’: Mey Mann, interview. Selected participants: Nghet Chhopininto, interview. Too doctrinaire: Keng Vannsak, interview. Rue Lacepède: Sâr himself claimed that ‘I and some of the other students organised a small group called the Cambodian Marxist [Circle]’, and dated its foundation to July-August 1951 (Cai Ximei interview). Ieng Sary (interview) said: ‘Initially, Saloth Sâr did [not take part] . . . Only later did his views start to change’; and (Maben interview): ‘We tried to bring him into our group . . . but he did not want to come. Finally he joined us before he left France.’The truth no doubt lies somewhere between—Sâr trying to pretend falsely that he was a founder member, Sary exaggerating his reluctance to join because of his links with Vannsak and Son Ngoc Thanh. For the location of Sâr’s cell, see Sher, thesis, p. 120; and Ieng Sary (interview with Phnom Penh Post, July 3–16 1998), who stated: ‘Chandler made quite a few mistakes. He did not have knowledge of Pol Pot’s role in rue Lacepède.’
64 Masturbate: Sher, thesis, p. 134. Out of wedlock: Thiounn Mumm, interview.
65 ‘I did not wish’: Pol Pot, Thayer interview: ‘That is my nature . . . I never talked much. [Someone] wrote that he knew me [in Paris] to be a polite, discreet, smiling young man. So, I did not want to show myself as a leader.’ ‘Out of his depth’: Keng Vannsak, interview. That summer failed: Pol Pot, Cai Ximei interview; Saloth Sâr, Fiche d’étudiant. ‘Middle school certificate’: Pol Pot, Thayer interview.
66 ‘Big, thick works’: Pol Pot, Cai Ximei interview. Sâr joined: Sâr himself told a Chinese interviewer in 1984 that he had joined the PCF in Paris (Pol Pot, Cai Ximei interview), and this is confirmed—though apparently on the basis of hearsay—by both Mey Mann and Keng Vannsak (interviews). Pham Van Ba, who in the early 1950s headed an Indochinese Communist Party cell in eastern Cambodia, also stated that Sâr had a PCF membership card (Chanda, Brother Enemy, p. 58). Thiounn Mumm, who insists that, contrary to widespread belief, he himself was never a PCF member, has questioned Sâr’s claim, and some Western specialists, including Christopher Goscha, have likewise expressed doubts. To muddy the waters further, Ieng Sary, whose PCF membership is not in question, has also denied ever having held a Party card (Maben interview). Until the PCF follows the example of the Soviet, Chinese and Vietnamese parties and permits broader access to its archives, questions will remain. However, given the state of Sino—Soviet relations in the early 1980s, it is hard to see why, if it were untrue, Sâr should have invented PCF membership in an interview destined to be read by the Chinese leadership. Until proof to the contrary emerges, therefore, it should be assumed that his version is correct. For an overview, see Mey Mann, interview; and Pol Pot, Talk with Khamtan. Easier to understand: Pol Pot, Cai Ximei interview.