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| The remains of Cambodians killed by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime during their 1975-79 reign of terror lie in an abandoned school house in Tonle Bati, 40 km south of Phnom Penh.Photograph by: Reuters, Special To The Sun |
Four top leaders of Khmer Rouge regime to face UN-backed tribunal in Phnom Penh on June 27
June 8, 2011
By David Kattenburg
Special To The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia, Canada)
It's unclear why Richmond native Stuart Robert Glass was sailing off the coast of Cambodia, back in August 1978, on a little yacht named Foxy Lady, when a patrol boat of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime appeared out of the haze.
He might have been on his way to Bangkok to pick up a load of Thai marijuana. Perhaps he was just there for fun and adventure.
Whatever the reason, Stuart Glass, who was only 27, was gunned down in a hail of bullets -the only Canadian to die, along with two million Cambodians, in one of the 20th-century's largest mass murders.
The fate of Glass's pals, a New Zealander and an Englishman, would be far worse.
Now, 33 years later, four top leaders of Democratic Kampuchea -as the xenophobic Khmer Rouge called their regime -will face a United Nations-backed tribunal on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Their trial begins June 27.
In July 2010, the tribunal sentenced Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch -the commandant of Democratic Kampuchea's preeminent death house -to 30 years in prison.
In retrospect, Stuart Glass's family and friends aren't surprised the young Richmond man died the way he did. "If we did anything adventurous, we really were worried," recalls Stuart's cousin, Alec Dutt. "But Stuart was different. He would take on an adventure as if it meant something different."
"I distinctly remember him telling me 'I've got a feeling that I'm gonna die young'," says Stu's old pal, Roy Delong.
"And I'd say, 'Sure, right.' You kind of blow it off."
Glass was born in London, England, moving to B.C. with his family when he was five. In 1972, he returned to London to live, work and pursue risky ventures. In the summer of 1973, as he re-entered Britain from a trip to Morocco, customs officers discovered 176 pounds of plastic-wrapped hashish stuffed inside a false gas tank in his blue Vauxhall.
Six months in jail didn't reform Stu. He travelled the Hippie Trail to India, and from there down to Australia, ending up in northern Darwin. There, he and a Kiwi friend named Kerry Hamill bought a traditional Malaysian yacht named Foxy Lady. Other contacts were forged. A local heroin addict named "Peter" (not his real name) claims to have hatched a plan with Stu to smuggle marijuana from Bangkok to New Zealand. The claim cannot be corroborated.
What is known is that Foxy Lady sailed from Darwin to Singapore, and then up the Strait of Malacca to lovely Phuket. A few months later, on the other side of the Malaysian peninsula, Stu and Kerry met a young British wanderer named John Dewhirst. "Don't forget to come back," Christine Rohani-Longuet, now in her 70s, recalls calling out as the boys glided out to sea on the afternoon of Aug. 7, 1978. She would be the last friend to see them alive.
Five days later, near a speck of sand and forest named Koh Tang, Foxy Lady was seized by a patrol vessel of the Democratic Kampuchean navy.
Glass and Kerry should have avoided the area. For years, the Khmer Rouge had been waging a vicious war against their arch-nemesis, neighbouring Communist Vietnam.
Hundreds of boats had been captured and their crews "smashed." Just three months earlier, a pair of American yachtsmen had been arrested.
Stu -spared the worst -was shot and killed in a hail of machine gunfire.
Kerry and John were trucked off to Comrade Duch's S-21 death house for months of torture. In mid-October 1978, in front of a former evangelical church, their throats were cut and their bodies burned to bone and ash.
Four more yachtsmen -two Americans and two Australians -would suffer the same fate in the regime's closing days.
It would take Stuart's mom 17 months to find all this out, in the Jan. 4, 1980, edition of The Vancouver Sun. "Canadian believed among victims: 12 'spies' executed in Cambodia," the headline read.
Stuart's family never spoke publicly about his death. Having refused to recognize Cambodia's new Vietnameseinstalled regime, Ottawa was unable to investigate. Over the next 30 years, Glass would come to be known solely by his name and nationality. Duch's 2009 trial briefly retrieved the nine murdered yachtsmen's horrific stories from oblivion.
The tribunal's second trial, due to start on June 27, may reveal more. One of the four aging defendants, Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, would have known about the young mariners. Pol Pot's right-hand man, Nuon Chea, was the one who ordered them killed and their bodies burned to ashes, Duch testified at his trial. The yachtsmen's families are glad to see justice finally served, but dismayed by the threatened dismissal of a third case involving the chief of the Khmer Rouge navy. Meas Mut, a self-professed Buddhist, says he knows nothing. However, Mut "lies about virtually everything, as far as I can determine," an informed tribunal observer quips.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen -a former Khmer Rouge officer himself -has stated that people of Mut's rank should not go on trial.
Although the Canadian government has contributed $2.5 million US to the tribunal, it won't even confirm that a Canadian was killed by the Khmer Rouge.
"We have no comment on this case," an External Affairs spokesman says.
"As the full details of the investigation remain confidential, we cannot comment on whether a Canadian citizen has been identified as a victim."
Meanwhile, Glass's family and friends are philosophical about the unfolding trial of aging Khmer Rouge chiefs.
"They're going to die and face their maker," says one cousin.
Roy Delong, who chummed with Stuart in the early 1970s, is less philosophical. "[Meas Mut] isn't someone we'd pursue to Pakistan and kill," says Delong. "If you don't pursue him, we might as well shut up. We sit here and talk high and mighty, preaching to others about human rights. Hey, one of our own citizens was killed. Let's put the guy on trial."
Whoever ends up being tried for these 30-year-old crimes, some questions about Foxy Lady's last voyage may never be resolved.
Were Stu and his pals travelling to Bangkok to pick up a load of "Buddha sticks"? What became of his body and personal effects? Questions like these hang like humidity over the warm waters of the northern Gulf of Thailand.
Dave Kattenburg is the author of Foxy Lady: Truth, Memory and the Death of Western Yachtsmen in Democratic Kampuchea - the first full account of Stuart Glass's life and death.
4 comments:
(សូមមេត្តាអភ័យទោស ខ្ញុំពុំប្រើពាក្យស្ដេចទេ)
កាលសីហនុបានធ្វើស្ដេចក្នុងសម័យយមបាលហ៊ុន សែននិយាយថា,"ឆ្អឹងខ្មោចទាំងអស់នោះ ដុត
កំទេចរំលាយចោល ហើយ បាចចោលក្នុងទឹក
ទន្លេឲ្យអស់ទៅហើយបំភ្លេចចោល"។
នេះឬជាសម្ដីអ្នកកំពូលរាស្ត្រខ្មែរ?
ពលរដ្ធខ្មែរនិងតុលាការអន្តរជាតិឬប្រទេសខាង
លិចត្រូវក្រឡេកមើលកំហុសសីហនុនិងហ៊ុន
សែនផង។
Editors: David Goldman, Erin Mahan
General Editor: Edward C. Keefer
United States Government Printing Office
Washington
Office of the Historian
Bureau of Public Affair
Press Release
Overview
During the period covered by this volume, July 1970–January 1972, the Nixon administration expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos as part of its strategy. This volume covers South Vietnam in the context of this larger war in Southeast Asia; therefore, the volume begins in July 1970 in the aftermath of the Cambodian incursion. At the time, a variety of topics dominated the policy discussions of President Nixon and his principal advisers. Among these topics were U.S. troop withdrawals, Vietnamization, negotiations in Paris (both the public plenary sessions and the secret talks between Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho), and possible South Vietnamese operations in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. Throughout the rest of 1970 these themes moved forward on separate paths that occasionally intersected with one another. South Vietnamese operations, first in Cambodia and then in Laos, were seen in policy terms as providing South Vietnam additional time to develop a more effective military, to generate economic growth, and to achieve some degree of political stability. The operations were also to demonstrate the success of Vietnamization and justify the continuing withdrawal of U.S. troops.
In late 1970 and early 1971, the focus shifted to decision making regarding plans to implement a major South Vietnamese out-of-country operation called Lam Son 719, launched in early February 1971. The strategic purpose of the operation was to halt or slow the flow of military supplies to Communist forces in South Vietnam via the panhandle of Laos. At the same time, it would demonstrate the growing military prowess of the South Vietnamese Army. On the negotiating front, Kissinger continued in 1970 and throughout1971 to meet periodically in Paris with Le Duc Tho and other senior Vietnamese Communist functionaries, but made no progress. At the same time, representatives of both sides also met publicly in the plenary meetings. Each side used the public Paris meetings to exchange carefully calibrated propaganda, making the meetings, if possible, less productive than the secret talks. The volume focuses on the Kissinger–Le Duc Tho talks with only occasional documentary coverage of the public talks.
This volume also documents President Nixon’s penchant for secret operations and covert warfare: his continued support for secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos and his approval of the November 1971 Son Tay raid into North Vietnam to rescue American prisoners of war. Nixon also signed off on new and continuing information gathering initiatives and propaganda that supported intelligence operations against Communist forces, organizations, and governments in South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Additionally, he approved clandestine support for South Vietnamese political entities friendly to the United States. These operations are documented in some detail to demonstrate the role of covert actions in support of overt political and military operations.
In the waning months of the period covered by this volume, deadlock had set in. Neither side appeared able to win militarily, or even to weaken his adversary sufficiently to make him negotiate in good faith. There were signs, however, that Hanoi might be preparing to mount a major military effort in 1972. Its purpose would be to break through this impasse without having to travel a diplomatic path. The volume concludes at this point.
While acknowledging the mass atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime, we should never forget the level of atrocities committed during the US secretive bombing of Cambodia from 1968-1973. A declassified telephone discussion between Henry Kissinger and General Alexander Haig, Nixon's deputy assistant for national security affairs, recorded that Nixon had ordered a “massive bombing campaign in Cambodia [to use] anything that flys [sic] on anything that moves”.
The map of US bombing targets released by Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program shows that more than half of the country was affected by the indiscriminate bombings. Professor Ben Kierman, director of the program, puts the casualties figure from the bombing at 150,000 deaths, while Edward Herman, a professor of Wharton School, and Noam Chomsky put the toll at 600,000 using figures provided by a Finnish Commission of Inquiry.
Based on this, we can never naively claim that US bombing led to the mass executions by the Khmer Rouge or refuted the regime's mass atrocities. But, to certain extent, the blanket bombing, which directly led to the destruction of livestock and agricultural land, could have definitely played a role in the mass starvation.
From new data released during the Clinton administration, Taylor Owen, a doctoral student at Oxford University, and Professor Kierman noted that 2,756,941 tons of bombs were dropped on Cambodia.
To put the figure into perspective, just over 2 million tons of bombs were dropped by the allies during all of World War II. The bombs dropped in Cambodia represented about 184 Hiroshima atomic bombs combined, making Cambodia the most bombed nation in the world. Based on the new data, Professor Kierman also stressed that the casualties might be much higher than his earlier predicted 150,000.
Lok Mom Yin & Ly Diep: I appreciate you as being yourself - a true unique Khmer. Believe in what you are doing, you will succeed!
To all SRP supporters & Khmers: it's time to learn some history. Youns/Viets always paint our Khmer nationalists and then we start biting each other without thinking.
You need to accept the truth that Sam Rainsy's political career almost comes to an end. I appreciate his courage and his commitment to changes, but when comes to Leadership, he is not the most charismatic leader for Cambodia yet.
I invite you to be open-minded and to re-assess all his deeds:
- Changing 2/3 majority to 50%+1 is the biggest mistake to exchange for his return
- Claiming to boycott the 4th-term assembly meeting today and switching to attend the meeting the next day is considered what?...
- Blaming others for not wanting him and SRP to unite with other democratic parties. What his rationale being a leader?
- Dropping case against Hun Xen in the US? Why need to drop?...
- Why running away from your loyal members? Look at MP Mu Sochua. What Hun Xen can do to her?
- SRP needs to solve the internal issues and stop painting the ones who offer the ideas/opinions
- Public debates among all opposition and self-claimed democratic parties should be held publicly and let the public judge.
I'm not a supporter of HRP, SRP and whosoever, but always attend those leaders' meeting. One solution for our nation is to UNITE, UNITE & UNITE. Don't use pretext/excuses.
Please learn to trust with vigilance.
Best Regards to all true Khmers!
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