Pol Pot

by Philip Short

  185 ‘Not [too] optimistic’: ‘Zhou Enlai, Kang Sheng and Pham Van Dong, Hoang Van Thai, Pham Hung and others in the COSVN delegation’, Beijing, 20 and 21 Apr. 1969, CWIHP Archives.

  188 ‘Very tense’: Black Paper, p. 32. Likewise deflected: Ibid., pp. 32–4; Pol Pot, Talk with Khamtan. During his visit to Hanoi in the winter of 1965, Sâr had asked to meet the Soviet Ambassador. A meeting was arranged but, to his annoyance, only with a Third Secretary (Mosyakov, Khmer Rouge, p. 12).

  CHAPTER SIX: THE SUDDEN DEATH OF REASON

  190 Pouk: Phi Phuon, Suong Sikoeun, interviews.

  191 ‘You’re asking me . . .principle’: Phi Phuon, interview.

  192 So was the system . . . uniquely Khmer: Engelbert and Goscha, Falling, pp. 123–4. In another, revealing Confucian allusion, the Vietnamese Party in the 1960s referred to Sâr as Hai Thien, ‘[First] Brother with a Like Mind’. The Confucian doctrine of the ‘rectification of names’ holds that if the name of a person or thing is changed, their behaviour will change accordingly: by referring to Sâr as ‘like-minded’, the Vietnamese leaders were expressing the hope that he would be so. This was not the only such case of a soubriquet conveying wishful thinking: the Vietnamese called Ieng Sary, the most devious of the CPK leaders, the ‘Brother of Straight-forwardness’. For the Vietnamese use of Anh Hai in 1965, see ‘Texte du Camarade Nguyen Huu Tai, spécialiste de B68 à Phnom Penh’, Doc. 32(N442)/T79i7,VA. Keo Meas, who represented the CPK in Hanoi after 1969, referred to Sâr as ‘Comrade Hay’ in his confession (Sept. 30 1976).

  193 Translate Marxist: Sâr’s explanation, some years later, was that Marxism-Leninism sprang from ‘revolutionary practice’, which implies that any revolution, regardless of its goals, is by definition Marxist (Pol Pot, Talk with Khamtan). See also Nuon Chea Statement, p. 26.

  198 ‘I am going to return’: In My War (p. 29), Sihanouk says he told Zhou on March 19: ‘I am going to fight and fight till the end’. Chinese documents confirm that he did speak in those terms, but do not make clear when (‘Zhou Enlai and Prince Sihanouk’, Beijing, Mar. 22 1970, CWIHP Archives). Zhou Enlai nianpu (vol. 3, p. 356) quotes the Prince as saying on Mar. 19 that he ‘wished to return immediately to his country’ and adds that Zhou advised him not to. ‘Long, hard’: Sihanouk, Indochine, p. 109. ‘I think Sihanouk . . . reaction’: François Ponchaud, interview, Phnom Penh, Dec. 2 2001. In a press statement on Mar. 20, Sihanouk was already complaining of the new regime’s ‘monstrous calumnies concerning . . . my private life’ (Peking Review, Mar. 30 1970). On March 21 . . . us to do: ‘Zhou Enlai and Pham Van Dong’, Beijing, Mar. 21 1970, CWIHP Archives.

  199 Monarchical-communist: Interview with RC, quoted in Gorce to MAE, No. 37/CX, Jan. 26 1960, c. CLV 11, QD. Also met Sâr: Black Paper, p. 38. The problem was: Sâr wrote later that the Prince was ‘on the defensive’ during his first two days in China (Black Paper, p. 35). We should . . . Kompong Som: ‘Zhou Enlai and Pham Van Dong’, Mar. 21 1970, supra. The CIA reported the same day that Lon Nol had instructed his forces ‘to avoid friction with [Viet Cong/North Vietnamese] forces . . . as talks are continuing with [their] representatives in Phnom Penh’ (quoted in Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 124–5). The Chinese Ambassador in Phnom Penh, Kang Maozhao, told Lon Nol in April that China would recognise his government if he maintained the communist sanctuaries, allowed weapons’ transit and aided the Viet Cong in their propaganda; not surprisingly, Lon Nol refused (Qiang Zhai, Vietnam Wars, pp. 189–90). ‘On oath’: Etienne Manac’h, Pékin, to MAE,Telegram Nos. 1194–9, Apr. I, and Nos. 1264–72, Apr. 6 1970, c. A-O-1965–78 442, QD.

  199–200 Two days later . . . near and far: Sihanouk,‘Message to Compatriots’, in Grant et al., Widening War, pp. 105–9.

  200 As the language: The reference to ‘the pure working people’ bears the hallmark of Sâr’s style. ‘Pure’ was one of his favourite adjectives; it was not a word Sihanouk used, nor was it Chinese communist jargon. See also the commentary in RC, May 28 1971. References to socialism: Sâr claimed in the Black Paper (pp. 35 and 38) that he ‘examined and modified’ the text (which he called the FUNK ‘political programme’ because it contained what the Khmer Rouge described as a ‘five-point programme’ of action), and that this was why ‘there was no question of socialism or communism in that document’. The claim is credible. The Khmers Rouges went to great lengths throughout the civil war to hide their communist goals. See also Sihanouk, Calice, Ch. 6, p. 45. During the meeting . . .no persuading: Zhonghua renmin gongheguo waijiaoshi, p. 74. This source says that Sâr met ‘many members of the CPC Centre’. Sâr himself speaks only of meeting Zhou Enlai (Black Paper, pp. 35 and 38). While in China in 1970, he also had frequent contact with Kang Sheng (Ieng Sary, interview), but this took place before the coup. Never told: Sihanouk, Calice, Ch. 6, p. 44.

  200–2 Political matters . . . to the interior: This account relies essentially on the recollections of Thiounn Mumm (supra). For details of the Indochina Summit, see Xinhua News Agency, Apr. 25 and 26, and Renmin ribao, Apr. 26 1970; for the GRUNC cabinet, see Peking Review, May 18 1970, and Jennar, Clés, p. 70.

  204 ‘They told us . . . have nothing’: ‘Rapport [oral] du camarade Khieu Minh’, supra. This was confirmed by Kuong Lomphon, who spent nine months with Ith Sarin in the Special Zone in 1972 and early 1973. Arguing that the Khmers Rouges did not want a quick victory, he wrote:‘They realise that the people do not yet know them . . . Thus they are preparing for a long drawn-out struggle. If they won quickly it would be meaningless’ (quoted in Kiernan, How Pol Pot, p. 399 n.133).

  205 Some Vietnamese . . . supervision: Former Khmer Rouge commune chief who wished to remain anonymous (hereafter ‘Mekhum’), interview, Phum Chinik, Prek Kabas district, Takeo, Mar. 10 2001. Sâr complained: Black Paper, pp. 54–7. No choice: Siet Chhê, then CPK Secretary of Region 22 in the Eastern Zone, recalled that after the coup, ‘The Vietnamese came in all over the place, everywhere in the Zone . . . with working groups for this and that. They had letters of authorisation from the Zone [Secretary, So Phim] . . . They organised some village authorities, but I did not recognise them . . .’ (confession, May 11 1977). Sdoeung, in Region 25, remembered: ‘In April 1970, the Vietnamese organised the village and commune authorities . . . The district chief of Koh Thom was a Yuon [Vietnamese] . . . and he assigned me to be a member of te commune committee’ (confession, May 4 1978). According to the Black Paper (p. 56), Vietnamese-installed local administrations were widespread in the Eastern Zone and existed to a lesser extent in the South-West. See also Mey Mak, interview. COSVN urged: ‘The Vietcong March-April 1970 Plans for Expanding Control in Cambodia’, US Mission, Saigon, Vietnam Documents and Research Notes, No. 88, Jan. 1971, quoted in Kiernan and Boua, Peasants and Politics, pp. 257–61. The documents betray the same patronising tone toward Khmers as in the 1950s. Then the Viet Minh spoke of the ‘insufficiency of their intellectual level’ (see Ch. 2). Now Viet Cong cadres were told:‘because [the Khmers’] capacity for learning is slow, we must use explanations that suit their level of understanding.’ Although the texts quoted by Kiernan and Boua were from lower-level units, they reflected COSVN guidelines.

  207 When cannon fodder . . . were raped: Robert Sam Anson, War News: A Young Reporter in Indochina, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1989, pp. 116–28 and 135–42; AP, Neak Luong, Apr. 15, quoted in Sihanouk, My War, p. 72; and UPI, Phnom Penh, Apr. 10 1970, quoted in Sihanouk, Calice, pp. 60–1; Ponchaud, Cathédrale, pp. 136–7. See also Dauge to MAE, Telegram Nos. 801–4, Apr. 14 1970, where the Ambassador, whose reporting was generally sympathetic to the new regime, warned of the risk of ‘a real genocide’. The following day, he speculated that the killings were becoming ‘more selective’ because two priests, crossing the Mekong at Neak Luong, had counted 139 male bodies in the water, considerably fewer than on previous days (Telegram Nos. 846–8 Apr. 15). The Judicial Affairs Division of the French Foreign Ministry advised that ‘the acts currently being perpetrated in Cambodia could come within the scope of the UN Conv
ention against Genocide’ (Direction des Affaires Juridiques, Note 420, Apr. 21 1970), all in c. A-O-1965–78 442, QD. It looked and smelt . . . not the outside: Observer, Apr. 19 1970.

  208 Only possible way out: Phillips, Social Contact, pp. 351–5. Groslier: Quoted in Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 127. Terrible explosions: Sihanouk, Indochine, pp. 90–1; see also Sihanouk, Prisonnier, pp.379–82. Radio broadcast: Lon Nol,’Message to Buddhist Believers’, May 11 1970, in Grant et al., Widening War, pp. 109–12. The original broadcast was in Khmer. A French translation was issued by AKP on May 12 (c.A-0-1965–78 442, QD).

  209 There was a price . . . resistance army: Kiernan, How Pol Pot, pp. 306–10; and Communist Movement, pp. 262–3; Shawcross, Sideshow, pp. 174–5; Sheldon Simon, War and Politics in Cambodia: A Communications Analysis, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1974, pp. 40–1. Sosthène Fernandez was quoted as saying at the end of 1970: ‘South Vietnamese troops rape, they destroy houses, they steal, they loot pagodas and they beat the Buddhist monks’ (Bernard K. Gordon,‘Cambodia’s Foreign Relations: Sihanouk and After’, in Zasloff and Goodman, Conflict, p. 163).

  210 Sâr bade farewell: Black Paper, p. 55; Pâng, confession, May 28 1978. So anti-Vietnamese: Interview with Chen Xiaoning, Beijing, July 9 2000. Stretcher: Pâng, supra. Schizophrenia: Thiounn Thioeunn, interview.

  210–11 Sâr’s cook . . . atrocities: Moeun, interview; and ‘Alone among Brothers’, Cambodia Daily, Oct. 20 2001.

  211 Friends remembered: Moeun, interview. Trigger: Ibid. During the talks: Black Paper, p. 34. 1,500 exiles: Kit Mân, interview;Yun Soeun, confession, May 26 1977.

  212 Before leaving . . . pocket lights: Kit Man, interview. Sâr himself: Phi Phuon, interview; Tiv Ol, confession, June 14 1977 et seq. On the eve . . . Khieu (‘Blue’): This account of the taking of new revolutionary names is drawn from Phi Phuon, interview. Khmers will also change their names if they are frequently ill, or narrowly escape death, ‘in order to deceive the evil spirits’ that threaten them (Ponchaud, Cathédrale, p. 213). Pol: David Chandler (Tragedy, p. 370 n.64; and Brother Number One, p. 209 n.25) quotes Keng Vannsak as saying that Sâr was known as Pol (or Paul) in Paris and speculates that this might have been the name by which he was known at the Ecole Miche. Vannsak’s memory was at fault in this case: Sâr never used the name Pol in Paris. According to a missionary who taught at the Ecole Miche, it was not the school’s practice to give Christian names to Cambodian children who studied there (‘Bref aperçu sur l’Ecole Miche, 1934–42’by Fr. Yves Guellec, unpublished ms held at the Archives Lasalliennes, Lyons).

  213 The resolution . . . to be used: Extracts from the text are given in ‘Recherche sur le Parti Cambodgien’ (supra) and, more fully, in Doc. TLM/165, ‘Les Perspectives, les Lignes et la Politique Etrangère du Parti Communiste Cambodgien’,VA.

  214 Fifteenth salvo: Dauge to MAE, Telegram Nos. 2720–5, Oct. 9 1970, c. A-O-65–78 443,QD.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: FIRES OF PURGATION

  215–16 Nothing the guerrillas: Truong NhuTang, Memoir, pp. 167–70 and 177.

  218–219 The French . . . attackers to flight: Bizot, Portail, pp. 46–51.

  219 Um Savuth: Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 202; see also Donald Kirk, Tell it to the Dead, Nelson-Hall, Chicago, 1975, pp. 137–8.

  218–220 His first attempt . . . slaughtered: See the eyewitness description in Chantrabot, pp. 86–7.

  220 I remember: ‘Mekhum’, interview. Wearing black: Mey Sror, interview.

  221 But for those . . . oppressing classes: Mey Mak and Mey Sror, interviews. Both men remembered Khmer-speaking Vietnamese instructors addressing political education meetings in Mok’s South-Western Zone.

  222 Surrealistic years: Deac, Road, p. 89; Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 186.

  223 Week-long meeting: Black Paper, pp. 58–9. Pol’s claims in this work, which he dictated to a group of Foreign Ministry officials (Suong Sikoeun, interview), must be treated with the greatest caution: some are pure invention—like his claim that, at this meeting, the Vietnamese tried to have him poisoned; others contain interesting nuggets of truth. Caveat lector.

  Three decisions . . . all-Khmer units: This interpretation runs counter to the Black Paper’s claim (p. 58) that the Vietnamese military training programme was carried out ‘secretly’ and closed down as soon as the CPK discovered its existence. The fact that Vietnamese instructors were operating freely in Mok’s South-West Zone until the summer of 1971, and that mixed units continued to exist both in the South-West and the East until at least 1972 — if not, in some cases, 1973 — indicates CPK acceptance of those policies at the highest level. Mok met Pol in January 1971. Had the guideline then been to prevent such co-operation, Mok would certainly have stopped it, as he did when CPK policy towards the Vietnamese tightened a year later. The fact that he did not suggests that the November 1970 meeting endorsed the training programme. Moreover, any other decision would have been against the CPK’s own interests and would not have been understood by the Party rank and file, most of whom at that time regarded the Vietnamese as loyal allies.

  The decision to phase out the mixed units, which had been created during the Vietnamese advance in April–May 1970, and to replace Vietnamese administrative cadres with Khmers, were both, in contrast, commonsense measures which would have been difficult for the COSVN to refuse. Indirect confirmation of this view comes from a US State Department source, who reported that ‘late in 1970, Vietnamese advisers to FUNK [administration] committees were instructed to assume a lower profile’ (Kiernan, How Pol Pot, p. 313; Brown, Exporting Insurgency, p. 129); and from General Tran Van Tra’s subsequent claim that the VWP CC ‘wanted to reconcile differences with [our CPK] friends’ (quoted in Engelbert and Goscha, Falling, p. 100). Shortly after Pol’s meeting with Nguyen Van Linh, a senior Vietnamese official, Hoang Anh, spoke in similar terms at the December 1970 VWP CC plenum in Hanoi: ‘The matter of Cambodia is very important. For its successful resolution we must enhance our military efforts there and materially aid the local patriotic forces’ (Morris, Why Vietnam, pp. 48 and 255 n.3, quoting a Russian translation of Hoang’s report held in the Centre for the Preservation of Contemporary Documents, Moscow).

  A later, hostile, Vietnamese account of Pol’s meeting with Nguyen Van Linh stated: ‘In essence, he said he did not agree with the way the General Staff had organised things to help the Cambodian revolution develop strongly after Lon Nol overthrew Sihanouk. After the meeting, [they] dissolved the forces and units that we had spent a long time helping to build for them, and they asked us to transfer to them completely all [Khmer] units which were being led by [Vietnamese] cadres’ (Le Quang Ba, ‘Un sommaire de la situation Cambodgienne’, Doc. 32(N442)/T8807,VA).

  224–5 Ping Sây worked . . . own headquarters: Ping Say, interview. Most of the account that follows is drawn from Ping Say’s recollections, except the detail about the Zone secretaries’ bodyguards, which comes from Phi Phuon, interview.

  224 Gastric . . . to take it: Moeun, interview; and ‘Alone among Brothers’, Cambodia Daily, Oct. 20 2001.

  225 ‘Khmers cannot’: Khieu Samphân, interview.

  225–6 In mid-January . . . inner councils: Ibid, and Phi Phuon, interview.

  226–7 Pol’s message . . . eventually went home: Except where otherwise indicated, this account is taken from Phi Phuon, interview.

  226 Party line . . . struggle: Quoted in Engelbert and Goscha, Falling, pp. 96–7.

  227–8 Apart from . . . Dângkda: Unless otherwise indicated, the following account is drawn from Phi Phuon, interview.

  228 His message: See also the CPK directive quoted in Kiernan, How Pol Pot, p. 323. Kiernan’s claim that the Congress approved policies of ‘war communism’, however, is mistaken. Had such a decision been taken in August, it would have become apparent before the end of 1971; it did not. The burden . . . new regime: Tung Padevat, Dec. 1975/Jan. 1976, supra. This account is extrapolated from the meagre information available; however, it would hardly have been necessary for the CC to
issue an ‘emergency directive’ unless Pol had discovered weaknesses which he believed required urgent correction. Kiernan (How Pol Pot, pp. 328–9) details some of the May 1972 decisions, but attributes them to the Third Congress in 1971. (See also Tung Padevat, Sept.-Oct. 1976, pp. 1–33, quoting Pol’s speech on the Party’s 16th anniversary, and Sreng, confession, Mar. 13 1977.)

  229 For the first two . . . support the resistance: Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is drawn from Quinn, Khmer Krahom Program, pp. 11–17, and Kate G. Frieson, ‘Revolution and Rural Response in Cambodia: 1970–1975’, in Kiernan, Genocide and Democracy, pp. 33–47, esp. p. 43 et seq. See also Brown, Exporting Insurgency, p. 128; and Quinn, Political Change, p. 19. On credit co-operatives, see Khieu Samphân, interview: on harvest-time mutual aid, Nghet Chhopininto, interview; Kiernan, How Pol Pot, p. 321; and Ebihara, Revolution and Reformulation, pp. 18 and 23. Pick fruit: Former Lon Nol district chief Chhing Nam Yeang, quoted by Kiernan in How Pol Pot, p. 319. If a peasant.. .friendliness: 1th Sarin, Bureaux, p. 46.

  230 Opposing . . . beaten to death: Bizot, Portail, pp. 73–6 and 87–9; Quinn, Khmer Krahom Program, p. 19. Mass graves: According to the French chargé d’affaires, Gérard Serre, the graves may have contained altogether as many as 500 bodies (Serre to MAE, No. 20/DA.AI, Sept. 17 1971, in c. A-O-1965-78, vol. 134 ns, QD). Exceptions: Kenneth Quinn, on the basis of refugee interviews, concluded: ‘The brutality of Khmer Rouge cadres . . . [was] quite limited in the early phases of FUNK control [in] 1970–71 and even 1971–72’ (Political Change, p. 22). The former government district chief Chhing Nam Yeang, quoted by Kiernan, said that ‘in 1970–71, the [Khmers Rouges] did not kill people’ (How Pol Pot, p. 319).