Pol Pot (96 page)

Pol Pot,

141

–2

Ieng Sary,

According to Ruos Nhim (con fession, undated), Koy Thuon—who had not attended the 1960 Congress—was among those present in 1963.

142

Mok said he, Ruos Nhim and Vorn Vet joined (

Kiernan (

p. 201) quotes Nguyen Xuan Hoang as saying that Son Sen and Phuong, an Eastern Zone leader, also entered the CC at this Congress: that appears to be correct in the case of Son Sen, but not of Phuong, who entered the committee in 1971.

Ieng Sary, interview. This second change of name, like the earlier use of ‘Labour Party’, was kept secret from the Party at large and from the Vietnamese.

143

Keng Vannsak (interview) and Siet Chhê (confession, July 18 1977) both said police guards were posted at their homes. They were respectively among the best — and least-known figures named. It is hard to believe that they were singled out for such treatment, so I have assumed that the measure applied to all thirty-four.

143

–4

Ieng Sary, interview. See also In Sopheap,

p. 60, where Sary is quoted as saying that he argued that the Party should have its own rural bases and a solid network in the cities before the leadership moved to the countryside.

144

Massenet to MAE, June 26; and De Beausse to MAE, No. 1527 AS/CLV, Sept. 24 1962, c. CLV 15, QD. The latter contains the text of a Cambodian government memorandum, detailing a prediction by an oracle at Kratie that ‘bloody battles will break out’ on Cambodia’s border with Thailand in April 1963, but that the country would emerge from the trial strengthened. A minute in Sihanouk’s hand ordered that the prediction be made known to the cabinet, the General Staff of the Armed Forces and members of parliament.

On May 19 1957, by Circular No. 35/PCM/2B/C, Sihanouk informed his cabinet and all the provincial governors: ‘The choice of nourishment by the

[royal] oxen after the ploughing of the sacred furrow authorises the prediction that the coming rains will be unfavourable for the harvest . . . According to the official astrologers the rains will end early . . . and the harvest will only be one sixth of that obtained last year . . . I feel I must therefore draw the attention of the competent ministries and services (Agriculture, Public Works, Veterinary Services etc.) to the imperious necessity of drawing up, with immediate effect, practical measures to enable us to ward off the hideous spectre of famine . . .All those who succeed in giving our people and our peasantry a real chance of avoiding famine and misery will be rewarded with official honours’ (annexed to Gorce to MAE, No. 710/CX, May 24 1957, c. CLV 9, QD). See also Meyer,

pp. 86–96.

145

Ieng Sary, interview.

Truong Nhu Tang (

p. 128) described in these terms his first impressions of the COSVN (Central Office for South Vietnam) HQ on the Cambodia-Vietnam border at Memot in 1968. The camp where the Khmers lived was probably less elaborate.

146

Sdoeung, confession, May 4 1978. Ieng Sary (interview) said that in negotiating with the Vietnamese, ‘Pol Pot was very good at that. He could manoeuvre; he was very subtle—very clever at tactics.’

147

The following account of the operations of the ‘printing office’ is taken from Nikân (interview). He worked there from late 1967 to mid-1968 after it had been transferred to Ratanakiri. See also Ieng Sary, interview; Pâng, confession, May 28 1978; Sdoeung and Siet Chhê, confessions.

Pol Pot,

Pol Pot,

Pol Pot,

Pol Pot,

148

Pol Pot,

Mao spoke of the experience of the Chinese people ‘enriching and developing’ Marxism-Leninism, but he never claimed, as Pol Pot did, that the masses could ‘create’ it on their own.

149

Pol Pot,

Khieu Samphán, interview.

Thompson,

p. 2.

150

Robert S. Newman,

La Trobe University, Melbourne, 1978, pp. 7–8; Migot, pp. 351–2.

Aug. 1973, pp. 9–20, quoted in Carney,

pp. 30–3, refers repeatedly to the ‘worker-farmer class’. The same term is used in the Sept. 1973 issue.

Khieu Samphân, interview.

151

Pol Pot,

Pol Pot,

Nuon Chea,

pp. 28–30.

152

Meyer,

pp. 191–5. No accurate figures exist for the number of members of the CPK’s urban underground killed by the regime in the 1960s, but scattered references in interviews with former Khmers Rouges and confessions from Tuol Sleng suggest that it was probably in the order of several dozen. Sihanouk himself acknowledged that his ‘Buddhist neutralism, tinted with Hinduism, could not work without a few drops of violence’ (Sihanouk,

p. 73), and at the beginning of 1964 warned bluntly that ‘Khmers Rouges and left-wing intellectuals, accused of communism and sabotage’ would be summarily shot (De Beausse to MAE, No. 243/AS, Feb. 4 1964, c. CLV 113, QD).

Pol Pot,

He told Le Duan in 1965 that the Party had 3,000 members, a figure which was almost certainly inflated (‘Recherche sur le Parti Cambodgien’, Doc. 3KN.T8572, VA).

153

De Beausse to MAE, No. 2019/AS CLV, Dec. 19 1962, QD.

153

–4

Phal, interview.

156

Sâr said he had been ‘delegated by the Cambodian communists to have a meeting with them [the Vietnamese]’ (Pol Pot,

Ieng Sary (interview) confirmed this.

‘Les Perspectives, les Lignes et la Politique Etrangère du Parti Communiste Cambodgien’, Doc.TLM/165,VA.

Vorn Vet, confession, Nov. 24 1978; Pang, confession (quoted in Chandler,

p. 69); Pol Pot,

157

Pol Pot,

and

See the text of Le Duan’s talk with Saloth Sâr on July 29 1965, in Engelbert and Goscha,

pp. 143–55.

The same phrases are to be found in ‘Instructions Viet Minh pour la Campagne au Laos et au Cambodge’, a document obtained by the French SDECE in 1953 (No. 3749/234, June 22 1953, c. A-O-I 165, QD).

157

–8

Engelbert and Goscha,

pp. 143–55•

158

Pol Pot,

159

I am grateful to Youqin Wang of the University of Chicago for this information.

Pol Pot,

Ieng Sary, interview. Sâr himself said in 1984 he had seen ‘other Politburo members’, but without mentioning names (

they may have included the Foreign Minister, Chen Yi, and Kang Sheng, the Head of the CPC International Liaison Department and concurrently Mao’s security chief. According to Sary, Sâr had extended conversations with Kang Sheng only during his subsequent visit in 1970. An internal Chinese Party document, which notes his meetings in 1965 with Chen Boda and Zhang Chunqiao (neither of whom were then Politburo members), makes no reference to his seeing Kang either in 1965 or 1970.

Sept. 3 1965, pp. 9–30. Although the article was published under Lin Biao’s name, he played no part in the writing of it, which was carried out by a propaganda group under the leadership of Luo Ruiqing.

160

p. 10. Le Duan had made clear when he met Sâr in July that, on this point, Vietnam disagreed with the Chinese (and by implication Cambodian) stance (Engelbert and Goscha,

p. 145). Subsequently, Vietnamese historians condemned the January 1965 Cambodian Party CC resolution for ‘putting in first place the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed peoples; emphasising the contradiction between the peasants and the feudal landowners; and putting the contradiction between imperialism and socialism last’ (‘Recherche sur le Parti Cambodgien’, Doc. 3KN.T8572, VA).

Unpublished internal Chinese Party document.

Doc.TLM/165,

apparently quoting from a transcript of Sâr’s discussions in Beijing which he gave the Vietnamese on his way back through Hanoi.

161

Keo Meas, confession, Sept. 30 1976.

Pol Pot,

.

‘Rapport [oral] du camarade Khieu Minh . . . le 10 Mai 1980’, Doc. 32(N442)/T8243, VA.

163