Pol Pot (119 page)

242

,

244

,

329

reservations about Khmer Rouge policies

218

n,

300

,

301

Zhu De

100

P

HILIP

S

HORT

has been a foreign correspondent for the London

and BBC in Uganda, Moscow, China, and Washington. He is the author of the definitive biography of Mao Zedong, 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 with his wife.

P

HILIP

S

HORT

has been a foreign correspondent for

(London),

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

— 6ème to 3èrne (6th to 9th Grade), and three years of upper middle school (or

— Seconde to Terminale (10th to 12th Grade). Children took the

or

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

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’

*

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,

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 is ignored.

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.