Pol Pot

by Philip Short

  —The Economist

  “Short writes in the punchy, confident tones of a journalist with a great scoop and the verve to tell it. Certainly one of the most important—and thoroughly readable—works on Pol Pot and modern Cambodian history . . . Makes for chilling reading. Would that Short could chronicle all our tyrants.”

  —Bookforum

  “Short casts his net as wide as it will fling . . . assembling a narrative just as well as his vastly admired Mao. Unerringly broadens the inquiry to the point where tory begins, and serious judgments can be made.”

  —Financial Times (U.S. edition)

  PHILIP SHORT has been a foreign correspondent for The Times (London), The Economist, and the BBC in Uganda, Moscow, China, and Washington, D.C. He is the author of the definitive biography of Mao Tse-tung, and lived in China and Cambodia in the 1970s and early 1980s, where he has returned regularly ever since. He now lives in southern France.

  *Sâr’s officially registered, but false, birth date was May 19 1928. In those days, Cambodian families often neglected to register births until a pressing administrative need — usually connected with school admission — made it necessary to do so. Parents commonly subtracted months or years from a boy’s age to comply with school entrance requirements.

  *In large, polygamous households, such behaviour is less unusual than it might seem. In imperial China, palace women, including the Empress Cixi, had liaisons with eunuchs. Pakistani servants in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States frequently speak of advances from the wives of their employers and also of cases of incest involving adolescent sons.

  *’Labour, Family, Fatherland’ or, by a play on its French initials, ‘Forced Labour Forever’.

  *The French education system in the 1930s and ‘40s comprised three years of elementary school (the first of which would now be regarded as a pre-school year); three years of primary school; four years of junior middle school (or college) — 6ème to 3èrne (6th to 9th Grade), and three years of upper middle school (or lycée) — Seconde to Terminale (10th to 12th Grade). Children took the diplome or brevet, the entrance examination for the lycée, at the end of 3èrne (9th Grade). It was the equivalent of British O-levels or CSE.

  *The Communist International (Comintern) was established by Lenin in 1919 as an instrument of Soviet control over foreign communist parties. Ho Chi Minh worked for several years at its headquarters in Moscow.

  *The brevet d’etudes techniques — equivalent to the technical section of a British O-level or CSE — was the highest academic qualification Saloth Sâr ever achieved.

  *In the 1970s, ranks and foreign aid would be two of the Khmer Rouges’ betes noires.

  *They included Chi Kim An, Hang Norin, Mey Mann, Mey Phat, Rath Samoeun, Saloth Sâr, Sanh Oeurn, Sien An, Sok Knaol and Yun Soeun. Out of the entire group, twenty-five years later, only Mey Mann and Saloth Sâr were still alive.

  *Tuol Svay Prey would later acquire a sinister reputation as the site of the Khmer Rouge torture centre, S-21, set up after 1975 at the Tuol Sleng secondary school. In 1955, a primary school stood on the site, but most of the surrounding area was still undeveloped. Samouth’s home and another house used by the Party lay just north of the school, between Tuol Sleng and what was then the horse-racing track, now the Olympic Stadium.

  *Ieng Sary claimed not to know Hay So’s real name. He has been identified as Nguyen Van Linh, who became Vietnamese Communist Party leader after Le Duan’s death in 1986.

  *The suspicion was justified. Ten years later, Diem’s Director of Intelligence, Tran Kim Tuyen, described how the gift boxes had been prepared in Saigon on the orders of the President’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. It had been assumed that, after unpacking his own present, the chamberlain would give the other to the Queen, who was known to enjoy opening gifts herself.

  *Vietnamese documents name the eighth — and ninth-ranking members of the CC as ‘Keo Can ma li’ and ‘Ray Thon’. According to Ieng Sary, the first of these was probably Thang Si (a veteran ethnic Lao leader from Stung Treng); the second may have been Non Suon (who was also called Chey Suon). Those known to have been present at the Congress were Tou Samouth, Nuon Chea, Saloth Sâr, Ieng Sary, So Phim, Mang, Prasith, Keo Meas, Ping Sây, Non Suon, Vorn Vet, Thang Si, Vy (a former student, subsequently a journalist with the Pracheachon group, who went on to become deputy Zone Secretary in the North-East) and ‘another, unnamed cadre from the North-East’. It is almost certain that Chan Samân, Ney Sarann, Ruos Nhim and Son Sen were also there. Others who may have attended include Mok, who worked with Mang in the South-West, and Kong Sophal, shortly afterwards to become head of the new Party Youth League. Ok Sakun was present but took no part in the debates.

  *Ieng Sary told a French Maoist delegation in September 1978 that the Second Congress took place on March 2 1963. Earlier Khmer Rouge documents, issued in 1971 and 1973, said it was held on February 21-22 1963. Vietnamese Party histories do not give a precise date.

  *The thirty-four comprised Keng Vannsak and Son Phuoc Tho (both left-wing Democrats); Hou Yuon, Chau Seng and Khieu Samphân (then members of the cabinet); Uch Ven, Son Sen, Toch Phoeun, Thiounn Prasith, Sim Son, Saloth Sâr, Ieng Sary, Sien An, Tiv Ol, Siet Chhê, Sok Lay, Chou Chet, Keat Chhon, Hu Nim, Ping Sây, Chi Kim An and Ok Sakun (who would all eventually be revealed as communists) and twelve others.

  *The meeting was apparently attended by all twelve members of the Central Committee — except Son Ngoc Minh and possibly Thang Si — and by Chan Samân, Chou Chet, Keo Meas, Kong Sophal, Koy Thuon, Ney Sarann and Sien An. No CC Plenum had taken place between 1960 and 1963, and before 1960 there had been only a provisional leadership. The holding of regular CC meetings was a further step towards the respect of Party norms.

  *Like many other Khmer Rouge techniques, this was inherited from the Issarak. Thiounn Mumm’s uncle, Bunchan Mol, described in his memoirs how, at a bar where Khmer nationalists used to meet in the 1940s, a picture of a dog would be displayed whenever a French informer was present.

  *It was later reported that ‘on Sihanouk’s own orders, 40 schoolteachers suspected of treason were thrown to their deaths from the mountainous heights of Bokor above the provincial capital of Kampot’, a story which may well have originated with these arrests. It was probably no more true than the grisly claims of Khieu Samphân’s death in an acid bath or Hou Yuon’s under a bulldozer. But like those tales, it was universally believed. Cambodians expected the Prince to treat his opponents with atavistic cruelty and it suited his purposes that they should think so.

  *In 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese penetration of the border areas began to grow exponentially. That September, French military analysts concluded that there were nine Vietnamese bases in Cambodia — three in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri, including a transit facility at the end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail (probably in the same area as the Khmer Rouge camp, K-12); and six further south, among them two logistics bases in southern Memot district, near COSVN, and at the eastern tip of the Parrot’s Beak in Svay Rieng, a sanctuary in Snuol district and another in Kompong Thmey. The French estimated that there were up to 6,000 Vietnamese soldiers on Cambodian soil at any one time. In September 1969, Lon Nol estimated their strength at 32-35,000. Three months later the figure had reached 40,000.

  *The system is in fact slightly more complicated. In Vietnam, the first child is called the second, for superstitious reasons similar to those which lead some Western hotels to omit the thirteenth floor: evil spirits will be tricked into thinking they have already carried off the missing ‘first’ child and leave the ‘second’ alone. Ho Chi Minh, the notional ‘Second Brother’, accordingly named his deputy, Le Duan, ‘Third Brother’; Pham Van Dong, ‘Fourth Brother’; Truong Chinh, ‘Fifth Brother’, and so on down to Pham Hung (‘Youngest Brother’). Sâr’s title in Vietnamese, Anh Hai, literally meant ‘Second Brother’, but with the sense, in Vietnamese usage, of ‘First Brother’. In Cambodia (and China, where different tricks are used to confuse the spirits), this refinement i
s ignored. Bang ti moi in Khmer is both literally and figuratively ‘First Brother’.

  *The Viet Cong also heard the coup rumours and did take them seriously. A new head-quarters for the COSVN was prepared in Kratie province, 60 miles north of the existing base at Memot, and escape routes mapped out through Prey Veng and Kompong Cham, in case a pro-American regime took power in Phnom Penh and the fighting in the border areas intensified. They also made contingency plans for a further retreat, should it become necessary, either west of the Mekong or northwards into Laos.

  *North Vietnam’s Defence Minister, General Vo Nguyen Giap, assigned hundreds of Vietnamese instructors to train a ‘Sihanoukist’ army in the ‘liberated zones’ of Cambodia, which eventually numbered some 15,000 men.

  *The summit nearly came to grief because of a row between Sihanouk and Penn Nouth, who had been with him at the time of the coup and accompanied him into exile. Sihanouk wanted to appoint Huot Sambath, whom Penn Nouth detested, to a cabinet position. Nouth threatened to retire to France; Sihanouk dug in his heels. Eventually a solution was found, but not until the early hours of the morning of the day the conference was to open. Thiounn Mumm had a surrealistic 3 a.m. meeting with Vice-Minister Han Nianlong, in his bedroom wearing undershorts, at which it was agreed that it would have to be postponed. Zhou Enlai had wanted the summit to start on April 23, to coincide with the launching of China’s first satellite. Instead it began a day later. Disputes over personalities were a characteristic of Cambodian politics under Sihanouk and have remained so ever since.

  †The composition of the GRUNC, taking into account later reshuffles, was as follows (with the names of ministers living in the maquis in italics):

  Prime Minister: Penn Nouth

  Vice-Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office: Keat Chhon

  Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence: Khieu Samphâ

  Foreign Minister: Sarin Chhak

  Vice-Minister: Pok Deuskomar

  Information Minister: Hu Nim

  Vice-Minister: Tiv Ol

  Interior Minister. Minister of Co-operatives: Hou Yuon

  Vice-Minister of the Interior and National Security: Vorn Vet

  Minister of Economy and Finance: Thiounn Mumm

  Vice-Minister: Koy Thuon

  Minister for Special Missions: Chau Seng

  Minister of Co-ordination: Thiounn Prasith

  Minister of Education and Youth: Chan Yourann

  Vice-Minister Khieu Thirith

  Minister for Armament: General Duong Sam Ol

  Minister of Justice: Chea San

  (later Prince Norodom Phurissara)

  Minister of Rites and Religious Affairs: Chey Chum

  Minister of Public Works: Huot Sambath

  Minister of Public Health: Ngo Hou

  Vice-Minister: Chou Chet

  Phurissara resigned as Lon Nol’s Foreign Minister a few days after the coup. He fled with his wife to the maquis in January 1972.

  *In interviews with former Khmers Rouges, I was frequently made aware by a change of tone or expression that I had overstepped the bounds of what was deemed to be acceptable questioning, and that the answer given would then be a transparent fiction. This was even more true of Western-educated leaders like Khieu Samphân than of unlettered peasants. There was no embarrassment about the lie: it was the answer such a question merited. Cambodian officials under Sihanouk, Lon Nol, Pol Pot and Hun Sen — not to mention the leaders themselves — have all, in their different ways, been insouciant of truth, viewing it as a practical, not a moral commodity. In communist Vietnam and China, the approach is different. Lying is equally common (as indeed it is in Europe and America) but efforts are made to cloak the deception in verisimilitude, and political statements, even when riddled with distortions and omissions, usually have some basis in fact. In Cambodia, they are often pure invention.

  *William Shawcross, in Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, has argued the contrary case, writing eloquently of ‘peasant hoys and girls, clad in black, moving slowly through the mud, half-crazed with terror as fighter bombers tore down at them by day, and night after night whole seas of 750-pound bombs smashed all around’. He noted that Khmer Rouge casualties were often well above levels where, in orthodox military doctrine, units suffer ‘irreversible psychological damage’, and quoted Zhou Enlai as saying that the longer the war continued, ‘the more extreme and harsh will be the final victory’. All that is certainly true. However, policy was made not by the peasants but by Pol and the other members of the CPK Standing Committee, men who did not experience the bombing at first hand. The pitiless absolutism of Khmer Rouge rule after 1975 had other causes.

  *Those present were: Pol, Nuon Chea, So Phim, Vorn Vet, Mok, Prasith, Ruos Nhim (all members of the previous CC); Chou Chet and Sê, from the South-West; Kong Sophal and Tol, the chief of the Mount Veay Chap base in the North-West; So Phim’s deputy, Phuong, and two other Eastern Zone leaders — Sok Knaol and Siet Chhê; Vorn Vet’s deputy in the Special Zone, Cheng On; Koy Thuon, Ke Pauk and Doeun from the Northern Zone; Hang, who had succeeded Vorn as underground Party chief in Phnom Penh; Va and Hâng, from Preah Vihear; Yem [Sin Son], later Khmer Rouge Ambassador to Pyongyang, and three others from Kratie; Khieu Ponnary, in her capacity as President of the Women’s League of Democratic Kampuchea; and Pang, to assure the secretariat. Of the five other CC members elected in 1963, Mang had died; Ieng Sary and Son Ngoc Minh were in Hanoi; and Thang Si and Son Sen, together with the other North-Eastern Zone leaders, were instructed to stay at their bases, presumably because it was felt they had already been sufficiently briefed before Pol’s departure from Ratanakiri.

  *In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge movement consisted of four different categories of people: non-Party elements; ‘core elements’ (those awaiting admission to the Youth League or, more rarely, directly to the Party); Youth League members; and Party members. The last two groups were subdivided into candidate and full rights members.

  *There is a close precedent in China, where the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 created a climate of patriotic exaltation which permitted a marked acceleration in the dispossession of the landlords, the creation of agricultural co-operatives, the elimination of ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and the nationalisation of commerce and industry. As a result, social and economic changes which had been expected to take twenty years were completed in five.

  *Suong Sikoeun has said that when he worked at the Democratic Kampuchea Foreign Ministry after 1975, he found repeated errors in Pol’s speeches and other documents. But when he proposed a correction, ‘What do you think I was told? That I was casting doubt on the abilities of the leadership!’ After that he kept quiet.

  *According to Pol’s aide-de-camp, Phi Phuon: ‘After the Paris peace accords, all the former Khmer Viet Minh had problems . . . Some of them disappeared altogether; others were dismissed from their posts; still others had their responsibilities reduced.’ It appears that the killing of the returnees began in earnest in the autumn of 1974, but it was not systematic: some of those at Chhlong survived until at least mid-1976 and possibly as late as mid-1978. Among those who were left at liberty, but with diminished responsibilities, were Yun Soeun, who had been with Pol at Krâbao in 1954; Mey Pho, one of the group of Young Turks who had taken Sihanouk prisoner in the abortive coup of August 1945; and a young man who became Ieng Sary’s private secretary and managed to hold the post throughout the time the Khmers Rouges were in power. One of the unresolved mysteries of the period is what happened to Rath Samoeun, Sary’s close friend and co-founder of the Cercle Marxiste. He was last seen in Hanoi in mid-1970 by Thiounn Mumm’s younger brother, Prasith. Sary has claimed that he was killed ‘immediately after returning to Cambodia’. However, in 1976 he was still referred to as a Party ‘comrade’, which would not have been the case had he been liquidated. It seems most probable that, like Uch Ven and Pok Deuskomar, he died from illness while in the ‘liberated zone’.

  *This was amply
demonstrated by the accuracy of a contemporary Interior Ministry report on Thion’s visit: ‘Agent 044 reported that in early January 1972, a Frenchman, name unknown, thin and tall with a pointed nose, red hair and sandals, left Phnom Penh on National Road 5 for Thpong district of Kompong Speu in enemy-controlled territory in the South-West. When he reached [their area], he presented the enemy with a pistol. On January 13 1972, the Frenchman was seen taking part in a celebratory meeting at Wat Krang Phngea, Sangkat Veal Pun, in Oudong district of Kompong Speu. He carried a notebook and a bag full of documents. The source stressed that those Khmers [Rouges] strictly banned the Frenchman from seeing any Vietnamese.’ In December 2001, the village chief of Ra Smach, who had escorted Thion thirty years earlier, confirmed that they had indeed been under instructions to prevent their visitor seeing any sign of the Vietnamese presence.

  *The quotation may be apocryphal. Certainly, in the light of later events, it reads a little too pat. However it is frequently cited in Khmer Rouge circles, and the fact that, from 1974 onwards, Hou Yuon had disputes with Pol over policy is widely attested.