Pol Pot (92 page)

Editions Apsara, Paris, 1996 (

)

Vann Nath,

White Lotus Press, Bangkok, 1998 (

)

Vergès, Jacques,

Michel Lafon, Paris, 1994 (

)

Vickery, Michael,’Looking Back at Cambodia [1945–1974]’, in Kiernan and Boua,

(

)

—’Democratic Kampuchea: Themes and Variations’, in Chandler and Kiernan,

(

)

—

Frances Pinter, London, 1986 (

)

—

Silkworm Books, Chiangmai, 1999 (

)

Y Phandara,

Métailié, Paris, 1982

Yi Tan Kim Pho,

(avec Ida Simon-Barouh), L’Harmattan, Paris, 1990 (

)

Yun Shui, ‘An Account of Chinese Diplomats Accompanying the Government of Democratic Kampuchea’s Move to the Cardamom Mountains’, in

vol. 34, no. 4,2002, pp. 497–519 (

)

Zasloff, Joseph J., and Goodman, Allan E.,

Lexington Books, Lexington, MA, 1972 (

)

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

CWIHP

Cold War International History Project

DC-Cam

Documentation Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh

EMIFT

Etat-Major Interarmes des Forces Terrestres en Indochine

MAE

Ministère des Affaires Etrangères

QD

Archives du Quai d’Orsay, Paris

SDECE

Service de Documentation Extérieur et de Contre-Espionnage

SHAT

Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes

VA

Vietnamese Archives, Hanoi

3

This account is drawn from interviews with Ieng Sary in Phnom Penh on Nov. 30 2000, Mar. 9 and Nov. 12 2001.

5

Interview with Mey Mak, Pailin, June 25, Sept. 20 and 21 2000; Mar. 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 2001.

See Caldwell and Lek Tan, pp. 418—33, where the text of the declaration and the list of signatories are reproduced.

6

, Mar. 1 1968.

The list was issued on Mar. 23 1972 (see Serge Thion, ‘Chronology’, in Chandler and Kiernan,

p. 300).

June 1973.

Sien An, confession, Feb. 25 1977.

Pol Pot,

.

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

May 2 1977.

8

Phi Phuon, Khieu Samphân, interviews.

Phi Phuon, interview.

10

Ong Thong Hoeung,

p. 8.

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 population 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.

15

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).

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

the year,

[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

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,

Phnom Penh, n.d., p. 15 and calendar).

16

Khin Sok, pp. 239–40.

18

Keng Vannsak, interview.

19

In Sopheap, interview. See also Ang Chouléan,

21

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

in Takeo in the late 1940s (interview, Phnom Penh, Oct. 25 2001).

21

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Nhun Nghet, interview.

22

Saveros Pou,

Cedoreck, Paris, 1988, pp. 411–51.

23

Khing Hocdy and Jacqueline Khing,

Cedoreck, Paris, 1981; see also Khing Hocdy,

pp. 14–15.

Nhun Nghet, interview. See also Migot,

.

‘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

H. W. Ponder,

Butterworth, London, 1936, pp. 155–6.

25

Saloth Nhep, interview. See also Kiernan,

p. 25.

26

Meyer,

pp. 112–13.

27

In Sopheap, interview.

no. 4, p. 8.

28

Saloth Nhep, interview. See also Meyer,

pp. 32–3.

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’.

Interview with Saloth Suong (Loth Suong), Phnom Penh, Nov. 1991; Chandler,

pp. 9 and 204 n.5; and Kiernan,

p. 27.

31

The following account is taken from Khieu Samphân, Ping Sây and Nghet Chhopininto (interviews).

32

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