Khieu Samphan: Former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was a patriot concerned about social justice and fighting foreign enemies

Former Khmer Rouge head of state praises Pol Pot in his new book

Sunday, November 18, 2007
The Associated Press

"Khieu Samphan alleges that Cambodia's social ills and injustices today are comparable to those under a U.S.-backed 1970-75 government, rife with corruption and misrule, that 'the Khmer Rouge crushed' to come to power."

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was a patriot concerned about social justice and fighting foreign enemies, the regime's ex-head of state says in a new book, dismissing claims the group was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians.

Khieu Samphan also denied that the Khmer Rouge had a policy of starving people or had ordered mass killings during its 1970s rule, but added that Pol Pot was responsible for all its policies, right or wrong.

The book, "Reflection on Cambodian History Up to the Era of Democratic Kampuchea," offers a possible preview of what Khieu Samphan might offer as a defense if, as is expected, he is charged soon by Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal. Democratic Kampuchea was the country's name under Khmer Rouge rule.

Most historians and researchers believe the radical policies of the Khmer Rouge, which sought a utopian communist state, led to the deaths of at least 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

Evidence in the form of documents and survivors' testimonies, as well as mass graves found throughout the country, is abundant. The society was in a shambles when a Vietnamese invasion ousted the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime.

Khieu Samphan, however, says the Khmer Rouge was resilient "in the struggle to defend national sovereignty, (and) in demanding social justice."

"There was no policy of starving people. Nor was there any direction set out for carrying out mass killings," he writes. "There was always close consideration of the people's well-being."

After seizing power in April 1975 after a bloody civil war, one of the group's first moves was to evacuate the 3 million residents of the capital, Phnom Penh, with just hours' notice and no provision for transporting them to the countryside. Those who survived the arduous trek were forced to work in giant rural communes.

Khieu Samphan said the action was necessary to keep the Khmer Rouge revolution clean of foreign infiltrators, especially from its archenemy Vietnam. The communist government of Vietnam had in fact helped build and arm the Khmer Rouge, and attacked them only after massacres of Vietnamese civilians along their common border.

"Coercion was also needed" in making the entire population work "exhaustingly" to address food shortages facing Cambodia following the end of the civil war, Khieu Samphan says.

While historians agree that the country faced a food shortage at the time, the Khmer Rouge refused most foreign offers of food aid, its communes were inefficient at production, and there was no distribution network for what was grown.

Khieu Samphan portrays Pol Pot as a leader who "sacrificed his entire life ... to defend national sovereignty."

At the same time, he assigns Pol Pot responsibility for the group's polices, and says he was involved in the purges of any Khmer Rouge suspected to be disloyal or spies, claiming they probably only numbered in the hundreds.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group researching Khmer Rouge crimes, dismissed the book as "an old story of denial that contributes nothing new to shed the light on what happened" during the group's rule.

Four of Khieu Samphan's former colleagues have been charged by the genocide tribunal this year, and their trials are expected to begin in 2008.

Khieu Samphan, 76, is also expected to be charged. He was hospitalized last Wednesday in Phnom Penh after suffering a stroke and being flown from his home in Pailin in northwestern Cambodia by a helicopter dispatched by Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The most surprising passages of the book criticize the current regime, which allowed Khieu Samphan to live freely after he surrendered in 1998.

Khieu Samphan alleges that Cambodia's social ills and injustices today are comparable to those under a U.S.-backed 1970-75 government, rife with corruption and misrule, that "the Khmer Rouge crushed" to come to power.

"Now such a regime is gradually re-emerging in Cambodia," Khieu Samphan says, listing the problems of land grabbing by the rich and powerful, illegal logging, drugs, decadent nightlife and "widespread corruption throughout the country."

"Government officials, military officers, the rich, indulge themselves with excessive spending," Khieu Samphan writes. "Clearly, if the present situation continues, our country will unavoidably see its own dissolution."

Information Minister Khieu Kanharith, who is the government spokesman, could not immediately be reached for comment.