Distant Voices (61 page)

As Khieu Samphan raised his glass in Paris, a nightmare began for the people of Site 8. The gates were closed, and foreigners told to stay away. A few days earlier the camp's leaders had been called to a ‘meeting' with senior Khmer Rouge officials and were not seen again. The camp library, central to the showpiece, was closed and people were told they must no longer be ‘poisoned by foreign ideas' as they prepared to return to the ‘zones'. From here and in the ‘closed camps' run by the Khmer Rouge along the border, the forcible, secret repatriation of hundreds, perhaps thousands of refugees had begun.

They crossed minefields at night and were herded into ‘zones of free Kampuchea' in malarial jungles without UN protection, food or medicine. Even as the UN High Commission for Refugees announced that an orderly return of all 370,000 refugees was underway, there were as many as 100,000 refugees in Khmer Rouge border camps and more were trapped in the ‘zones', to which UN inspectors had only limited access or none at all.

If the ‘peace process' was proving a theatre of the macabre, Prince Sihanouk provided his own theatre of the absurd. As decided in Paris, he returned to Phnom Penh in November 1991 to head the transitional ‘supreme national council', made up of representatives of his followers, the KPNLF, the Hun Sen Government and the Khmer Rouge. ‘I am returning to protect my children,' he said. ‘There is
joie de vivre
again. Nightclubs have reopened with taxi dancers. I am sure soon there will be massage parlours. It is our way of life: it is a good life.'
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He brought with him four chefs, supplies of pâté de foie gras hurriedly acquired from Fauchon, one
of Paris's most famous gourmet shops, a caravan of bodyguards and hangers-on, including two sons with dynastic ambitions. (With their father ensconced in his old palace, Prince Ranariddh and Prince Chakrapong have set their private armies on each other. ‘Anyway,' said Ranariddh, ‘my brother has run out of troops.' Prince Sihanouk described this as ‘just a small clash . . . they are good boys, but as brothers there is bickering. They never got on as children.'
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)

Many Cambodians were pleased to see the ‘god-king', and the elderly struggled to kiss his hand. It seemed the world had again located Cambodia on the map. The cry, ‘Sihanouk is back' seemed to signal a return to the days before the inferno of the American bombing and the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Sihanouk's presence even suggested to some that the Khmer Rouge had surrendered. For them the Paris ‘accords' meant that the United Nations would protect them. They could be pardoned for failing to comprehend the perversity of an agreement which empowered the United Nations to protect the right of the genocidists to roam the cities and countryside free from harm and retribution, and which had appointed two of Pol Pot's henchmen to a body, the Supreme National Council, on which they could not be outvoted. This was described by Congressman Chet Atkins, one of the few American politicians to speak for the Cambodian people, as ‘the consequence of a Faustian pact' with Pol Pot.
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At one of his many press conferences, Sihanouk was asked about the Khmer Rouge. ‘In their hearts', he said, ‘they remain very cruel, very Maoist, very Cultural Revolution, very Robespierre, very French Revolution, very
bloody
revolution. They are monsters, it is true . . .
but
since they decided to behave as normal human beings, we have to accept them . . . naughty dogs and naughty Khmer Rouge, they need to be caressed.' At this, he laughed, and most of the foreign press laughed with him. His most important statement, however, caused hardly a ripple. ‘Cambodians', he said, ‘were forced by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council . . . to accept the return of the Khmer Rouge'.
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The following day Khieu Samphan arrived to join the
prince on the Supreme National Council. Suddenly, the gap between private pain and public fury closed, and the people of Phnom Penh broke their silence.
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The near-lynching of Khieu Samphan might have been influenced by the Hun Sen Government, but there could be no doubt that it was heartfelt. Within a few hours of landing at Pochentong Airport, Pol Pot's emissary was besieged on the top floor of his villa. Crouched in a cupboard, with blood streaming from a head wound, he listened to hundreds of people shouting, ‘
Kill him, kill him, kill him
.' They smashed down the doors and advanced up the stairs, armed with hatchets. Many of them had lost members of their families during the years that he was in power, at Pol Pot's side. One woman called out the names of her dead children, her dead sister, her dead mother – all of them murdered by the Khmer Rouge. The mob dispersed after Hun Sen arrived and spoke to them. Khieu Samphan and Son Sen (who had escaped the attack) were bundled into an armoured personnel carrier and taken to the airport, and flown back to Bangkok.

On April 17, 1975, the first day of Year Zero, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and marched the entire population into the countryside, many of them to their death. Generally, people did as they were told. The sick and wounded were dragged at gunpoint from their hospital beds; surgeons were forced to leave patients in mid-operation. On the road, a procession of mobile beds could be seen, with their drip-bottles swinging at the bedposts. The old and crippled soon fell away and their families were forced to go on. Ill and dying children were carried in plastic bags. Women barely out of childbirth staggered forward, supported by parents. Orphaned babies, forty-one by one estimate, were left in their cradles at the National Paediatric Hospital without anyone to care for them. The Khmer Rouge said that the Americans were about to bomb the city. Many believed this, but even among those who did not, defeatism, fear and exhaustion seemed to make them powerless. The haemorrhage of people lasted two days and two nights, then Cambodia fell into shadow.

What happened to Khieu Samphan more than sixteen years later, in the streets he helped to terrorise and empty, was a catharsis, and only the beginning.

Now, when Khieu Samphan and Son Sen were in Phnom Penh, their stays were brief and secret, and they were guarded behind the walls of a UN compound, ‘the protected wards of the international community', as Chet Atkins has described them.
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Western ambassadors presented their credentials to Prince Sihanouk. The French ambassador was first; Cambodia, after all, used to be theirs, and they look forward once more to the fruits of ‘trade'. The American ambassador, Charles H. Twining Jr, followed. ‘It seems to me', he announced, ‘that if we [that is, the United States] neglect the countryside, then the Khmer Rouge can come back again.' The ambassador assured the people of Cambodia that he and his staff would refuse to meet any Khmer Rouge official. ‘We'll refuse even to shake hands with them,' he said. ‘That's the bottom line.'
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His remarks brought to mind a meeting of the UN Credentials Committee in September 1979. The United States strongly supported a Chinese motion that Pol Pot's defunct regime continue to be recognised as the only government of Cambodia and to occupy Cambodia's seat in the General Assembly. As the American representative, Robert Rosen-stock, gathered his papers after voting for Pol Pot, somebody grabbed his hand and congratulated him. ‘I looked up,' he recalled, ‘and saw it was leng Sary [Pol Pot's foreign minister]. I felt like washing my hands.'
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The people of Phnom Penh now saw a procession of Western notables, among them those who pointedly did not visit the country following their liberation from Pol Pot, not even to pay respect at the shrines to the victims of their holocaust. Lord Caithness of the Foreign Office has been through, lauding the peace plan and telling Cambodians: ‘Look here, it's now up to you.'
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(Lord Caithness later gave his private view to an ex-aid agency official. ‘It's falling apart,' he said.)
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One visiting notable to receive much media attention was Gareth Evans, the Australian foreign affairs minister credited
with thinking up the ‘peace plan' and who promised to be ‘even handed' in his treatment of the Khmer Rouge.'
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Evans had made a series of assertions which left little room for doubt about the future. ‘I think it's pretty well obviously clearly decided', he said, ‘that [the Khmer Rouge] has no military future . . .' Indeed, the danger of the Khmer Rouge regaining power was ‘negligible'.
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Evans apparently based this confidence on ‘personal assurances' given to him by the Beijing regime. He said that when he told the Chinese foreign minister that the Khmer Rouge would be ‘totally internationally isolated' if they caused the peace plan to break down, the foreign minister ‘agreed absolutely'.
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Remarkably, Evans then declared the ‘genocide issue and all the emotion that's associated with that' over and done with and ‘resolved'.
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One wondered if he had asked ordinary Cambodians during his visit if the ‘genocide issue and all the emotion associated with that' was ‘resolved'. And had he considered that the regime handing out ‘reassurances' was the same regime that had reassured the world that it was no longer arming Pol Pot when it was, and the same regime that had massacred hundreds of Chinese students when it said it wouldn't? And how did he explain China's ‘two approaches' to Cambodia – seeking international respectability by backing the UN plan, while its ambassador in Phnom Penh secretly sided with Pol Pot?

From Gareth Evans we at least could understand the scale of risk being taken in the name of the Cambodian people by those who came and went. No doubt to demonstrate its faith in Evans's certainties, the Australian Government committed itself to sending back terrified Cambodian refugees. In 1992 Evans was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Congressman Solarz, who had been largely responsible for maintaining the Khmer Rouge's position at the centre of US policy. Indeed, it was Solarz who had ensured that the US plan for Cambodia was largely concealed behind the façade of the ‘Evans Plan'. Not for the first time was an Australian foreign affairs minister successfully used by Washington, and Australian ‘initiatives' defined by Washington.

‘If Cambodia's peace process remains on course', wrote Colin Smith in the
Observer
, ‘ . . . it will be because of Khmer Rouge restraint'.
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In January 1992 the Khmer Rouge launched a major offensive, attacking government positions in Kompong Thom, in the hinterland around Kampot and Siem Reap. What was striking about these attacks was their smooth co-ordination and the fact that troops appeared to materialise from base camps the UN inspectors knew nothing about and to bring up firepower – including artillery – from a network of secret dumps. All of this was in violation of the ‘accords'.

When a clearly marked UN helicopter flew over the area, it was attacked and an Australian UN commander wounded. ‘You must realise', said the Khmer Rouge commander in Pailin, ‘the country is still at war.'
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The absurdity of the UN position was demonstrated by the fact that UN personnel were barred from moving more than 400 yards from Khmer Rouge military headquarters in Pailin, while the UN commander, Lieutenant-General John Sanderson, confirmed that UN forces had ‘prevented the Phnom Penh army from significantly building up the counter-offensive'.
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Indeed, some accused the UN of having ‘two sets of rules'. While the Phnom Penh Government opened its territory and prisons to the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), as agreed at Paris, the Khmer Rouge would not even talk about it. While the UN intervened in Phnom Penh to stop a law limiting press freedom, it did nothing to stop the restriction of a whole range of freedoms in Khmer Rouge zones. While the UN allowed the Khmer Rouge to build its headquarters in Phnom Penh, next to the Royal Palace and surrounded by a high security fence, it never authorised the Phnom Penh Government to open offices in any of the Khmer Rouge towns. And while the UN began to disarm the Phnom Penh Army, it stood by while the Khmer Rouge fortified their positions and conducted a pogrom against the ethnic Vietnamese population.

According to the Cambodia specialist Raoul Jennar, the Khmer Rouge were given ‘the perfect ally . . . time'. ‘They
are not prisoners of a calendar they would impose on themselves,' he wrote. ‘They have succeeded in eight months of “peace” in reinforcing their military positions without having conceded anything, while the other parties, respecting their promise [at Paris], have begun a process which puts them, a little more each day, in a position of weakness. This is, to date, the real result of the UN operation in Cambodia.'
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As Jennar and others pointed out, those running the UN operation in Cambodia were so committed to the ‘peace plan' working, they ‘hide the truth'.
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The truth is that the Paris agreement gave the Khmer Rouge a long-term advantage, having already caused ‘Lebanonisation' of the country. Although a principal sponsor of the ‘accords', the United States continued to give unilateral aid to the so-called ‘non-communist' factions. The US government aid agency, USAID, spent several million dollars building a strategic road and facilities across the Thai border into the KPNLF headquarters at Thmar Pouk.
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The Thai Army were, as ever, zealous collaborators in such ventures. At one crossing, Thai soldiers escorted Thais to work in the gem mines controlled by the Khmer Rouge: the source of great wealth for both the Khmer Rouge and the Thai generals.

In Phnom Penh under the UN unreality persisted. Echoing Neville Chamberlain, the head of UNTAC, Japanese diplomat Yasushi Akashi, ‘publicly rebuked' the Khmer Rouge for their lack of co-operation.
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General Sanderson said, ‘It's outrageous . . . them stopping our people'.
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One of his officers, a Dutch colonel, complained about dealing with the Khmer Rouge, ‘One day a nobody is a somebody,' he said, ‘then a somebody is a nobody. A corporal becomes a colonel. They are friendly one day and unfriendly the next.'
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A Western diplomat said he ‘hoped' the Khmer Rouge ‘will take a pragmatic approach'.
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