Pol Pot (97 page)

Malo to Manac’h, Paris, June 11 1966, c. A-O 1965–78 438, QD.

164

‘Recherche sur le Parti Cambodgien’, Doc. 3KN.T8572, VA; Chheang [Kong Sophal] (confession) confirms the decision in October 1966 to ‘seize authority in the villages and communes’.

Pol Pot,

pp. 218–19. For a contemporary expression of the same idea, see the communist pamphlet quoted in

(July 1966), which stated: ‘Don’t have too much confidence in Sihanouk! That should be the motto of every Party member.’

165

The North Vietnamese Premier, Pham Van Dong, told Zhou Enlai on Apr. 10 1967: ‘We still do not know fully to what extent the struggle is organised and to what extent it has been provoked by the enemy’ (CWIHP Archives).

Chheang [Kong Sophal], confession. Ben Kiernan quotes an official Party history, circulated in the South-Western Zone in early 1972, as saying: ‘From 1967, the Party resumed the armed struggle . . . The events at Samlaut were prepared in advance’ (

p. 256).

166

Kong Sophal and Say, confessions,

According to Say, senior monks fom Wat Thvak and Wat Treng took part in the negotiations. Kiernan (

Part I, p. 30) said the abbot of a monastery in Battambang, Iv Tuot, was also involved. In a speech at Siem Reap on June 20, Sihanouk paid tribute to ‘the efforts made by the clergy of Battambang’ to bring the unrest to an end (Argod to MAE, No. 1377/AS-CLV, July 4 1967, c. A-O 1965–78 439, QD). According to the North Vietnamese Premier, Pham Van Dong, the COSVN also sent emissaries to the CPK in April (or possibly earlier) to try to persuade the Cambodian leadership to call off the struggle (talks with Zhou Enlai, Apr. 11 1967, CWIHP Archives).

167

Kong Sophal (confession, Nov. 12 1978) quoted the leadership as saying: ‘If Battambang just does this alone, the enemy will be able to destroy all the revolutionary forces.’

Lancaster,

p. 52.

Osborne,

p. 43.

168

The Reuters’ correspondent Bernard Hamel was present at the dinner;I am grateful to Sacha Sher for this anecdote. See also Hamel’s despatch for Reuters, ‘Mystery about Cambodian communist leader Khieu Samphân’, Phnom Penh, Apr. 24 1974. Milton Osborne (

p. 80;

p. 194) quotes Khim Tit, a former Defence Minister with close links to the Prince, as telling a similar story.

Khieu Samphân, interview. A slightly different account appears in In Sopheap,

pp. 86–7.

170

‘Lettre du Comité Permanent du CC du CPK au Bureau politique du CC du CPC’, Oct. 6 1967, Doc.TLM/175,VA.

172

Phi Phuon and Ieng Sary, interviews. Pang (confession, May 28 1978) said: ‘In late 1966 (around July or August 1966)

Office 100 was . . . dissolved . . . The group travelling to the north-east was led by Brother Van [Ieng Sary]’—but this is evidently an error for 1967. Ieng Sary (interview) said the move to Ratanakiri took place in 1967. Engelbert and Goscha refer to Sâr receiving treatment in Vietnam in 1968 at ‘the Central Committee’s Southern Bureau Hospital’, which was presumably the same place as ‘Hospital No 5’ (

p. 83).

Khieu Samphân, interview; In Sopheap,

p. 90.

Phi Phuon, interview; Pang, confession, May 28 1978; Mey Mann, interview.

172

–3

Moeun, Phi Phuon, interviews.

173

Khieu Samphân, interview. Isolated incidents had occurred, both in Battambang and in the South-Western Zone, even before the ‘official’ outbreak of the rébellion (see the account of Sihanouk’s visit to Kompong Tralach district, near Oudong, on January 9, in

Jan. 13 1968).

175

—6

Speech at Andaung Pich, Bokeo, on Feb. I 1968 (

Jan-Mar. 1968, p. 72); Argod to MAE, Telegram Nos. 350–7, Mar. 7, and Nos. 669–75, May 24, and Dauge to MAE, No. 157/AI, July 2 1968, c. A-O 1965–78 439, QD; Kiernan,

pp. 274 and 293 n. 164;

Nov. 20 1969.

176

Kiernan,

pp. 265 and 276. Ten years later, the Khmers Rouges were alleged to be executing suspected spies using the same method. The stories may be apocryphal, but in both cases they were widely believed.

Phi Phuon, interview; Pâng, confession, May 28 1978.

176

–7

‘Alone Amongst Brothers:The Story of Khieu Ponnary, Revolutionary and First Wife of Pol Pot’,

Oct. 20, 2001.

177

Phi Phuon, interview. The ‘Biography of Pol Pot’, broadcast by Radio Pyongyang on Oct. 3 1977, said he was North-Eastern Zone Secretary ‘from 1968 to March 1970’ (BBC SWB FE/5634/B/4).

‘Recherche sur le Parti Cambodgien’, Doc. 3KN.T8572, VA. At a meeting with Thai communists in August 1977, Sâr also spoke of the disunity caused by the CPK’s dual origin (Pol Pot,

).

Pol Pot,

178

–9

In Sopheap,

pp. 89–90. Ill-health was a constant problem. Toch Phoeun remembered arriving at Phnom Pis in the South-West Zone in 1970 to find ‘most of our comrades were sick, lying in their hammocks’ (confession, Mar. 14 1977).

181

RC, Nov. 11 1967.

182

Conversation between Mao Zedong and Pham Van Dong, Beijing, Nov. 17 1968, CWIHP Archives. The North Vietnamese Premier said the money was paid ‘to Sihanouk’ which raises the question of whether the Prince himself benefited from these transactions. Until the minutes of this meeting became available, it had been assumed that Sihanouk himself was honest but lacked the will (or the inclination) to discipline those around him. It is of course possible that Pham Van Dong used the Prince’s name merely as a synonym for the Cambodian administration. There is no way to be sure.

183

Except where specified elsewhere, this account of the raids, which took place between Aug. II and Sept. 6 1968, is drawn from

Aug. 30, Sept. 13 and 20 1968).

Vorn Vet (confession, Nov. 24 1978) said ‘more than twenty people’ were arrested. Six of those he identified—Dam Pheng, Leang Kim Huot, Pa Sieng Hay, Kum Saroeun, Chhoeun and Kac Sim—were also named by RC. The two sources together cited a further sixteen names. Vorn Vet’s account stated that all except one woman, Kac Sim’s wife, were ‘killed by the enemy’, which would normally mean that they were condemned by the Military Tribunal and shot. The Bokor story is told by, among others, Milton Osborne, in

p. 197; Kiernan,

p. 276; and Meyer,

p. 193.

185

‘Zhou Enlai, Kang Sheng and Pham Van Dong, Hoang Van Thai, Pham Hung and others in the COSVN delegation’, Beijing, 20 and 21 Apr. 1969, CWIHP Archives.

188

p. 32.

Ibid., pp. 32–4; Pol Pot,

During his visit to Hanoi in the winter of 1965, Sâr had asked to meet the Soviet Ambassador. A meeting was arranged but, to his annoyance, only with a Third Secretary (Mosyakov,

p. 12).

190

Phi Phuon, Suong Sikoeun, interviews.

191

Phi Phuon, interview.

192

Engelbert and Goscha,

pp. 123–4. In another, revealing Confucian allusion, the Vietnamese Party in the 1960s referred to Sâr as

‘[First] Brother with a Like Mind’. The Confucian doctrine of the ‘rectification of names’ holds that if the name of a person or thing is changed, their behaviour will change accordingly: by referring to Sâr as ‘like-minded’, the Vietnamese leaders were expressing the hope that he would be so. This was not the only such case of a soubriquet conveying wishful thinking: the Vietnamese called Ieng Sary, the most devious of the CPK leaders, the ‘Brother of Straight-forwardness’. For the Vietnamese use of

in 1965, see ‘Texte du Camarade Nguyen Huu Tai, spécialiste de B68 à Phnom Penh’, Doc. 32(N442)/T79i7,VA. Keo Meas, who represented the CPK in Hanoi after 1969, referred to Sâr as ‘Comrade Hay’ in his confession (Sept. 30 1976).

193

Sâr’s explanation, some years later, was that Marxism-Leninism sprang from ‘revolutionary practice’, which implies that any revolution, regardless of its goals, is by definition Marxist (Pol Pot,

See also Nuon Chea

p. 26.

198

In

(p. 29), Sihanouk says he told Zhou on March 19: ‘I am going to fight and fight till the end’. Chinese documents confirm that he did speak in those terms, but do not make clear when (‘Zhou Enlai and Prince Sihanouk’, Beijing, Mar. 22 1970, CWIHP Archives).

(vol. 3, p. 356) quotes the Prince as saying on Mar. 19 that he ‘wished to return immediately to his country’ and adds that Zhou advised him not to.

Sihanouk,

p. 109.

François Ponchaud, interview, Phnom Penh, Dec. 2 2001. In a press statement on Mar. 20, Sihanouk was already complaining of the new regime’s ‘monstrous calumnies concerning . . . my private life’ (

Mar. 30 1970).