Pol Pot
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*So did Ke Pauk. His Northern Zone troops regularly executed villagers after US bombing raids, claiming they must be CIA spies who had called in enemy air strikes.
*It is frequently claimed that the Khmers Rouges purchased the floating mines from China with the promise of rubber exports from the formerly French-owned estates in eastern Cambodia whose nationalisation Sihanouk had announced the previous autumn. This is untrue. All Chinese military assistance to Cambodia, both before and after 1975, was made in the form of grants, as was China’s far greater military aid to Vietnam during a quarter of a century of Indochinese wars.
*The one certainty is that the bank was not deliberately blown up by the new regime itself. Not only were other, more visible symbols of capitalism, like the Central Market, left untouched, but in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge leadership had every intention of issuing currency and establishing a banking system of its own. A month later, when the preparatory team started work, it was based in an undamaged area of the bank premises.
*The National Library, for instance, was protected throughout the period the Khmers Rouges were in power. The pulping of its collections did not occur until 1979, when the government of Heng Samrin ordered it as a stopgap measure at a time of an acute shortage of paper.
*Mao quoted Kumârajîva, as saying: ‘If you copy everything I do, it will be a fatal mistake’. He did not explain the story behind it, which recounts that the Buddhist master had numerous mistresses. When his disciples started to follow his example, Kumârajîva filled his alms bowl with sharp iron needles and, showing it to them, said: ‘He who wants to do as I do must first eat this; then he will be able to keep women.’ He took a spoonful of needles and ate them as easily as rice. The disciples were mortified and mended their ways.
*It is commonly asserted that Hou Yuon was executed as an opponent of the regime in August 1975. This appears to be untrue. According to Yuon’s former bodyguard, Pol sent a Jarai messenger to escort him back to Phnom Penh. Either the Jarai mistook Yuon’s gesture and thought he was reaching for his pistol, or, fearing that he was about to be arrested, Yuon attempted to commit suicide, but in any case the man shot him dead. While the details remain obscure, it seems certain that his death was accidental. It may also have taken place a year later than is generally believed: Ping Sây says he was told that Yuon was still at Stung Trang in August 1976. Thereafter, Khmer Rouge cadres often referred to him as a traitor. But by late 1978 that charge was no longer heard; it was officially claimed that he had died ‘while on a mission for the Party’; and Pol himself, in conversations with aides, described him as a ‘comrade’, indicating that he was not suspected of treachery
*Three tons of paddy is equivalent to just under two tons of milled rice. In this book, all references are to unmilled rice, unless specifically stated otherwise.
*Despite their reputation for iconoclasm, the Khmers Rouges preserved the most important Cambodian historical monuments. The Buddha’s Tooth Stupa in front of the Phnom Penh railway station survived Khmer Rouge rule unscathed, as did the Royal Palace and the National Museum. So did all the major Buddhist monasteries in Phnom Penh and in most provincial towns. So, too, did Angkor Wat and the other Angkorian sites. The French-trained Khmer conservationists were kept together and given special protection at a cooperative in Bakong, in Siem Reap province, evidently with the intention that their skills would be used again when economic conditions improved.
*Apart from Sihanouk and his immediate entourage, Thiounn Mumm appears to have been the one man who escaped this rule entirely. He never went to the maquis; nor did he do manual labour or live in a co-operative. In Sopheap and Suong Sikoeun were allowed to go directly to K-33 (the Information Ministry) and B-I respectively, but both had spent a year working at the FUNK radio station in Hanoi before returning to Phnom Penh in May 1975, and both were regarded as essential personnel to get the new administration running. For the same reason Ok Sakun, Thiounn Prasith, and possibly one or two others, spent only a few weeks at co-operatives before Ieng Sary recalled them to Phnom Penh.
*The term ‘illumination’ was used not only by the Cambodians but also by Vietnamese communists, whose vocabulary was likewise Buddhist-influenced. But whereas in Vietnam it was simply a metaphor, denoting understanding of Marxist-Leninist ideas, the Cambodians used it literally in its original Buddhist sense. It is not found in Chinese or Korean communist texts.
*The new government comprised:
Pol Pot
Prime Minister
Ieng Sary
Vice-Premier, Foreign Affairs.
Vom Vet
Vice-Premier, Economy
Son Sen
Vice-Premier, Defence
Keat Chhon
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office
Hu Nim
Minister of Information
Khieu Thirith
Minister of Social Affairs
Yun Yat
Minister of Education and Culture
Thiounn Thioeunn
Minister of Health
Kang Chap
Minister of Justice
Toch Phoeun
Minister of Public Works
Non Suon
Minister of Agriculture
Cheng On
Minister of Industry
Doeun
Minister of Commerce
Mey Prang
Minister of Transport
Phuong
Minister for the Rubber Plantations
The last six cabinet members, while holding ministerial status, were officially described as Committee Chairmen and reported to Vice-Premier Vorn Vet. None of the four Sihanoukist ministers in the previous united front government — Penn Nouth, Norodom Phurissara, Sarin Chhak and Chey Chum — was reappointed. Nor were Hou Yuon (Interior Minister) or two Khmer Rouge vice-ministers, Tiv Ol and Chou Chet. Koy Thuon, who had been designated Commerce Minister, never took up the post. From May 1976, Doeun and Non Suon shared responsibility for his portfolio. Doeun became titular Minister later the same year.
*In the case of the visit to Sisophon by the Thai Foreign Minister, Chatichai Choonhavan, in November 1975, this was literally true. Pol personally inspected the bedroom slippers, soap and bath-towels sent from Phnom Penh for the occasion. Hun Sen, who eventually succeeded him as Cambodian Prime Minister, showed the same tendency to concentrate all power in his own hands. In the 1990s, speeches by Chea Sim — then the second most powerful man in the kingdom — were vetted and where necessary corrected in Hun Sen’s own hand before they were delivered.
*Koy Thuon’s removal from the position of Northern Zone Secretary in May 1975 and his appointment as Commerce Minister, a less powerful post, suggests that Pol already distrusted him. His philandering may have been one reason; he may also have been blamed for the debacle in Kompong Thom in 1974, when 40,000 ‘base people’ fled the ‘liberated areas’ to take refuge with Lon Nol’s forces. In later years it became the rule that whenever a provincial official was suspected of disloyalty, Pol’s first step was to detach him from his local power base and bring him to Phnom Penh to work in one of the ministries.
*The persistence of Vietnamese feeling over this issue was shown a few years later, when one of Hanoi’s first moves, once it had installed a more accommodating Cambodian government, was to change the date of the Party’s foundation back to 1951.
*One aspect of this Byzantine affair remains to be elucidated. In late September or early October, the journal Revolutionary Youths published an article marking the anniversary which — in violation of the Standing Committee decision in March — took 1951 as the year of the Party’s foundation. Shortly afterwards Tung Padevat appeared, containing a text of Pol’s speech at the October 11 meeting, in which he not only affirmed 1960 as the Party’s birth date, but explained: ‘We must arrange the history of the Party into something clean and perfect in accordance with our stance of independence-mastery.’ The conventional explanation that the discrepancy reflected a power str
uggle between Pol and Keo Meas is plainly wrong. As we now know, Pol had complete control over the content of both journals, and neither Keo Meas (who had been under surveillance ever since his return from Hanoi, fifteen months earlier) nor anyone else could have used them to criticise his leadership.
With hindsight there seem two possibilities. Either it was a simple mistake: the staff of Revolutionary Youths, unaware of the change of date, prepared a routine article on the anniversary which Pol or Nuon Chea approved unread. Or it was a deliberate attempt to persuade the Vietnamese, who had access to Revolutionary Youths but not to the restricted ‘Five Flags’ edition of Tung Padevat, that it was business as usual in Phnom Penh.
*There is a crucial distinction between ‘strings’ and factions. Even in orthodox Marxist-Leninist parties, true factional activity is relatively rare. The 1957 ‘anti-Party Group’ in the Soviet Union and the ‘Gang of Four’ in China are exceptions that prove the rule. From the 1930s, in Stalin’s case, and the 1940s, in Mao’s, no serious factional challenge was ever mounted to their power. To both men, ‘factionalism’ was a convenient label to damn those of their followers whose devotion appeared to be flagging. In Democratic Kampuchea, Pol never used even the label, and though sometimes he sought to portray purge victims as having engaged in factional activity, in reality Cambodian communist politics was played out on feudal lines. Individual leaders attracted retinues of followers and jockeyed for personal advantage, but they did not join together to form cliques. It was each man for himself, which made Pol’s task far easier.
*It has often been claimed, on the basis of statements by both Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge sources, that So Phim attempted to rebel against Pol Pot with Vietnam’s support and that it was the failure of his efforts which finally persuaded Hanoi that only a full-scale Vietnamese invasion would bring down the regime. There is no evidence for this. Phim, like Ruos Nhim, may have had reservations about Pol’s domestic policies. He may also have doubted the wisdom of an aggressive military posture against Vietnam. But he was no more pro-Vietnamese than Pol himself. Vietnam’s lack of contact with Phim — and, at that time, with other Eastern Zone cadres — is amply demonstrated by the fact that, four months after his suicide, the Vietnamese leaders believed he was still alive.
*Pich Chheang and his wife, Moeun, were unable to remember when the visit took place and the Chinese archives on the subject are sealed. The evidence for a late September dating is that the anniversary of the founding of the CPK appears to have been celebrated ten days earlier than usual, on September 19, yet when Pol’s speech was broadcast, more than a week later, Radio Phnom Penh claimed that he had spoken on September 27. According to Pich Chheang, Pol’s visit lasted about a week and was spent mainly in talks with Deng, who by this time, in fact if not yet in name, had eclipsed Hua Guofeng as China’s paramount leader.
* Ieng Sary was more deeply implicated in the events in New York than the Chinese realised. Sihanouk wrote later that the final straw which made him defect was a message from Beijing, shortly after his speech to the Security Council, advising him that Sary would lead the Cambodian Delegation to the UN General Assembly and proposing that he stay on as his deputy. Sihanouk by this stage loathed Sary with a consuming, visceral hatred. That such an ‘execrated, despised individual’ should try to take precedence over him, Sihanouk wrote, was ‘an offence which my dignity could not tolerate’. It was exactly the same kind of problem that had triggered Sihanouk’s resignation as Khmer Rouge Head of State almost three years earlier. Then, too, Sary had been responsible.
*More importantly in the long term, it strengthened Deng’s hand in his struggle for power with Hua and other leaders who wanted to stick more closely to Mao’s ideological legacy. The unsatisfactory performance of the Chinese army, which suffered 20,000 dead and wounded, enabled him to remove hundreds of leftist officers and to undertake the first fundamental reform of military policy since the 1940s.