Why did a radical British professor become a cheer-leader
for Pol Pot? And why was he murdered on the very day he'd met the brutal
dictator? Andrew Anthony on the
extraordinary life and death of Malcolm
Caldwell
Elizabeth Becker as a young reporter in the 1970s and author of "When the War was Over" - reproduced from khmer 440.com |
Becker with the other two men on the day of Malcolm Caldwell's killing. A Khmer Rouge cadre standing in between Becker and the leftist historian - [Becker collection]. |
“In theory, the trial is a joint effort between the UN and Cambodia, but the effort has been all the UN's. The Cambodian People's Party, which has ruled since Pol Pot was overthrown, is led by onetime Khmer Rouge members who, under threat of purging, had defected to Vietnam. One of these is Hun Sen, a former revolutionary soldier, who has been prime minister since 1985. His government was accused by Amnesty International of widespread torture of political prisoners, using "electric shock, hot irons and near suffocation with plastic bags". And for many years, senior former members of Pol Pot's government lived under protection in Cambodia, some with family links to the government. So there were several reasons why a major trial with international media coverage was potentially embarrassing or inconvenient.”
by Andrew Anthony
The Observer, January 2010
The name of
Malcolm Caldwell is remembered now by very few people: some friends, family,
colleagues, and students of utopian folly. In the 1970s, though, Caldwell was a
major figure in protest politics. He was chair of CND for two years, a leading
voice in the anti-Vietnam war campaign, a regular contributor to Peace News,
and a stalwart supporter of liberation movements in the developing world. He
spoke at meetings all over the country, wrote books and articles, and engaged
in public spats with such celebrated opponents as Bernard Levin.
The name of Kaing Guek Eav is, arguably, known by even fewer
people, at least outside of Cambodia. Instead it is by his revolutionary
pseudonym "Duch" that Kaing is usually referred to in the press. Duch
is the only man ever to stand trial in a UN-sanctioned court for the mass
murder perpetrated by the Cambodian communist party, or the Khmer Rouge, in the
late 1970s. His trial on charges of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of
the Geneva Conventions, and homicide and torture concerning thousands of
victims, drew to a close in November. Justice has taken more than 30 years, but
a verdict and sentence are expected sometime in the next few weeks.
Although their paths crossed only incidentally, the two men
shared two main interests. They both had a pedagogic background: Caldwell was a
history lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),
University of London, while Duch, like many senior Khmer Rouge cadres, started
out as a schoolteacher. And they both maintained an unbending belief in Saloth
Sar, the leader of the Khmer Rouge revolution, who went under the Orwellian
party title of Brother Number One, but was known more infamously to the world
as Pol Pot. It was an ideological commitment that would shape the fate of both
men and they held on to it right up until the moment of death – in Caldwell's
case, his own, for Duch, the many thousands whose slaughter he organised.
In each circumstance, the question that reverberates down
the years, growing louder rather than dimmer, is: why? Why were they in thrall
to a system based on mass extermination? It's estimated that around two million
Cambodians, more than a quarter of the population, lost their lives during the
four catastrophic years of Khmer Rouge rule. What could have led these two
individuals, worlds apart, to embrace a regime that has persuasive claim, in a
viciously competitive field, to be the most monstrous of the 20th century?
When Caldwell appeared at SOAS for an interview in the late
1950s, the senior faculty thought that they had landed one of the academic
stars of the future. Caldwell, who took his PhD at Nottingham University, had
gained a reputation as a bright young talent and, according to college legend,
he presented himself as a sober scholar.
"So they hired him," recalls Merle Ricklefs, a
former SOAS colleague and now a history professor at the National University of
Singapore. "Then he showed up for lectures and suddenly he was this
Scottish radical with long hair, looking unkempt, and they felt as though
they'd been betrayed.
"I thought he was actually a very good economic
historian," says Ricklefs, who remembers "an extraordinary character…
very ideologically committed". He was also struck by his warmth and good
manners. As a young American, who dressed in conservative fashion, arriving in
England during the height of the Vietnam war, Ricklefs expected to be greeted
with a certain amount of antipathy, but he found Caldwell to be "always
cordial. Always looking slightly dishevelled and revolutionary, but never the
slightest hint of discourtesy."
The picture of a friendly, if rather unconventional
character, is confirmed by others who knew him. Professor Ian Brown was
Caldwell's successor at SOAS and he was also his former student. "He was well
liked – I suspect not by the SOAS hierarchy," says Brown, "but
certainly loved by students and colleagues."
He describes a "skinny, somewhat emaciated, rather
scruffy character who, bizarrely, always used to wear a suit – though it was
clearly a suit that had been bought in the 1950s equivalent of Oxfam and not
seen too many dry cleaners." Caldwell never hid his politics from his
students, indeed he made a point of proselytising to them. One of his protégés
was Walter Easey, who, according to Easey's obituarist, Caldwell converted to
"a fierce and angry communism". But to Professor Brown, "he was
a gentle person, quietly spoken, and very tolerant of opposing views. He
treated everyone well. He was very encouraging and a really inspiring
teacher."
Both Brown and Ricklefs use the same word to describe this
well-travelled, extremely well-read and highly intelligent man: naive. SOAS,
says Brown, was a college whose standing and ethos rested upon sound empirical
study. "Everyone else in the history department went off every summer to
the archives in Rangoon, Baghdad, etc, and got deep inside the data. Malcolm
didn't. He was a man with very clear theoretical and ideological views and the
empirical basis didn't seem to worry him hugely."
It's not that Caldwell was lost in bookish abstraction, for
he did visit the various communist regimes he extolled. It was more that when
he got there he was all too willing to accept state propaganda as verified
fact. For example, he praised the "magnitude of the economic achievements"
of Kim Il-Sung's impoverished North Korea and, returning from a trip to the
highly secretive state, he wrote that the country was "an astonishing
tribute not only to the energy, initiative and creativeness of the Korean
people, but also to the essential correctness of the Juche line".
"Juche" was the mixture of ultra-nationalism and self-reliance on
which Kim built his monumental personality cult. About the totalitarian
surveillance and ruthless political repression, Caldwell said nothing.
Although academic traditionalists may have disapproved of
Caldwell's slanted scholarship, many idealistic students were inspired by his
lectures. Tariq Ali, who became famous as a 1968 student leader, recalls going
to see him talk on southeast Asia when Ali was at Oxford. They soon got to know
each other and in the summer of 1965 went to a peace conference together in
Helsinki. "We had to fly to Moscow," says Ali, "then there was a
train, via Leningrad as it was then, to Helsinki. We talked a lot and became
very friendly. It was later on that his Cambodian deviation was a bit
off-putting. And he could never completely explain it."
At one time, the pair discussed opening a Vietnamese
restaurant as a sort of act of antiwar gastro-prop. "He would say that
after a few drams," Ali recalls. "He was a great whisky drinker. He
was also a great cricket fan and an early Scottish nationalist."
Cricket is mostly followed in Scotland by the upper classes,
but Ali got the impression that his old friend came from a middle-class
background. His Wikipedia entry states that he was the son of a miner.
"You know," says Ali, "we never bothered about these things. We
were so totally immersed in politics and the state of the world, we never
really talked about each other, our personal lives or social backgrounds."
In seeking to understand why this idealistic Scotsman became
a cheerleader for Pol Pot, it would be wrong to consign him to the maverick
margins. A member of the Labour Party, he stood as a candidate in the 1977
local elections in Bexley. John Cox, who followed in Caldwell's footsteps as
chair of CND, is adamant that there was nothing out of the ordinary about his
predecessor's politics. "He was well in the mainstream of what I would
call generally progressive liberal thinking," says Cox.
This idea that support for the most illiberal systems of
government is all part of the liberal tradition is one of the more bemusing
aspects of progressive politics. But the missing factor in the equation is the
view that the United States of America is the ultimate villain. The background
to the brutality visited on Cambodia was the brutality visited on Vietnam by US
forces.
Although the Vietnam war was more complex than is often
acknowledged (the tensions between North and South, for example, long predated
the war), the Americans essentially inherited France's colonial conflict. But
they fought it in the context of the Cold War. As much as US administrations
may have seen the battle as one between communism and the free world, to the
majority of Vietnamese it was a liberation struggle.
In an effort to close down North Vietnamese supply lines to
the South, the US also launched a devastating bombing campaign on neighbouring
Cambodia. Instead of winning the war in the former, it served only to
destabilise the latter. To make matters worse, an American-supported coup put
in place the corrupt government of Lon Nol in Phnom Penh. So there was a
tendency among many anti-war protesters to see the Khmer Rouge as just another
national liberation movement, fighting to escape from under the American yoke.
One man who observed the truth up close, four years before
the Khmer Rouge came to power, was a French ethnologist called François Bizot.
In 1971, while out researching Buddhist practices, he was captured in the Cambodian
countryside by Khmer Rouge insurgents. He was held captive with scores of
Cambodian prisoners at the M-13 prison camp, a precursor to the 196 santebal
(secret police) offices that were set up after the Khmer Rouge seized power.
The head of the camp, and the Frenchman's tireless interrogator, was Duch.
Bizot wrote about the encounter in a remarkable memoir
called The Gate. After three months, during which he was shackled and
repeatedly accused of being an American spy, he was suddenly released – all the
other prisoners were executed. So relieved was the Frenchman that he asked Duch
if he would like a gift. His jailer thought for a while and then replied,
"with the look of a child writing to Father Christmas, 'The complete
collection of Das Kapital by Marx.'"
Three days before Christmas in 1978, Malcolm Caldwell
received an early present. On the final day of a two-week tour of Cambodia, he
was told that he would meet Pol Pot. This was indeed a rare privilege. Unlike
most other communist leaders, Pol had not created a personality cult. There
were no posters of him. He was seldom seen or quoted. Many Cambodians had not
even heard of him. Only seven westerners were ever invited to what had been
renamed Democratic Kampuchea. And Caldwell was the first and only Briton.
There were several reasons why Caldwell had been received in
Phnom Penh. He was on good terms with China, Cambodia's main ally in the
region. There were also growing tensions between Cambodia and its larger
neighbour Vietnam and, fearful of an invasion, Pol Pot was belatedly attempting
to improve Kampuchea's image abroad. Most of all, while other supporters had
wavered, Caldwell had remained steadfast. Only months before, he had written an
article in the Guardian, rubbishing reports of a Khmer Rouge genocide. He cited
Hu Nim, the Kampuchean Information Minister, who blamed the deaths on America.
Caldwell was unaware that Hu had himself already been tortured to death in one
of Pol Pot's execution centres. Such killings that the Khmer Rouge had committed,
argued the peace activist, were of "arch-Quislings who well knew what
their fate would be were they to linger in Kampuchea".
Travelling with Caldwell were two American journalists,
Elizabeth Becker and Richard Dudman. Becker had been a foreign reporter in
Phnom Penh during the civil war that brought the Khmer Rouge to power. She knew
the terrain, and had been to Thailand to talk to refugees. She and Caldwell
argued endlessly about the true nature of the situation.
"He didn't want to know about problems with the Khmer
Rouge," she says. "And that carried over to not wanting to know about
problems between Cambodia and Vietnam. He was stuck in '68 or something."
Yet for all their disagreements, she liked Caldwell.
"He was a lovely man, very funny, very charming," she says. "A
real sweetie. He was also very homesick for his family and he said he'd never
spend another Christmas away from them."
According to Becker, Caldwell had not read François
Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero, the book that first catalogued the Khmer Rouge
genocide. A friend of François Bizot, Ponchaud was a Catholic missionary who
was in Phnom Penh when the victorious Khmer Rouge army marched into town. His
book became required reading for anyone interested in what was happening in Cambodia.
"The fact that Malcolm, a professor, had not read it before he went, that
I couldn't believe," says Becker. "I think it was almost ideological
that he didn't read it."
It's perhaps not that strange that Caldwell had neglected to
read Ponchaud, given that he had already dismissed the Frenchman's credibility
in print. He based his damning opinion on a brief extract of Year Zero which
the Guardian had published and a critique of the book by the American academic,
Noam Chomsky. An icon of radical dissent who continues to command a fanatical
following, Chomsky had questioned the legitimacy of refugee testimony that
provided much of Ponchaud's research. Chomsky believed that their stories were
exaggerations or fabrications, designed for a western media involved in a
"vast and unprecedented propaganda campaign" against the Khmer Rouge
government, "including systematic distortion of the truth".
He compared Ponchaud's work unfavourably with another book,
Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, written by George Hildebrand and Gareth
Porter, which cravenly rehashed the Khmer Rouge's most outlandish lies to
produce a picture of a kind of radical bucolic idyll. At the same time Chomsky
excoriated a book entitled Murder of A Gentle Land, by two Reader's Digest
writers, John Barron and Anthony Paul, which was a flawed but nonetheless
accurate documentation of the genocide taking place.
We can never know if Caldwell would have taken Ponchaud more
seriously had Chomsky not been so sceptical, but it's reasonable to surmise
that the Scotsman, who greatly admired Chomsky, was reassured by the American's
contempt. In any case, the 47-year-old Caldwell arrived in Cambodia untroubled
by the story that Ponchaud and others had to tell. In fact, he had just
completed a book himself that would be posthumously published as Kampuchea: A
Rationale for a Rural Policy, in which he wrote that the Khmer Rouge revolution
"opens vistas of hope not only for the people of Cambodia but also for the
peoples of all other poor third world countries".
With Dudman and Becker, Caldwell was escorted around the
country to a series of staged scenes. Alarmed by the changes she saw and
frustrated by what she was not allowed to see, Becker grew increasingly
combative with her hosts. "It was so clearly awful," says Becker.
"One of the problems was the absence of what I saw. The absence of people.
And that's a different kind of proof to 'I don't see any people being
executed.'"
Caldwell was not unduly bothered. "He preferred to stay
in the car and laugh at the clumsy photo opportunities prepared for us,"
Becker wrote in her book on Cambodia, When The War Was Over.
"He'd travelled to other communist countries," she
tells me now, "and he knew exactly what the PR routine was and he thought
that all governments do PR. He did not know Cambodia, and he didn't speak the
language. If you don't speak the language, don't know the country, you can edit
out a little more easily."
At the end of the tour, the party returned to Phnom Penh,
which Dudman described as "a Hiroshima without the destruction, a Pompeii
without the ashes". They stayed at a guest house near the centre of
Monivong Boulevard, one of the empty city's main thoroughfares. Close by was
the secret facility of Tuol Sleng, a former school that had been turned into an
interrogation centre. Known as S-21, Tuol Sleng specialised in gaining
confessions through torture. Between 14,000 and 16,000 prisoners – men, women
and, most hauntingly, children – passed through its gates, including Hu Nim.
Only seven survived. It was run by Duch.
Nowadays Tuol Sleng
is a genocide museum, and an established part of the southeast Asian
tourist trail. Although they were intent on erasing history, Pol Pot and his
senior cadres were obsessed with the accomplishments of the 12th-century Hindu
dynasty that built the temple complex of Angkor Wat and constructed elaborate
dam and irrigation systems. They considered their own contribution to Khmer
culture to be of a similar, if not greater, significance. It speaks eloquently
of the Khmer Rouge's achievements that, while Angkor Wat remains the country's
main tourist attraction, the next most popular sights for visitors are Tuol
Sleng and the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek, where the prisoners from S-21 were
taken to be "smashed" – usually with an ox-cart axle. A ghost town
under the Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh is now a bustling, sprawling city, dense with
people and commercial activity. In May 1975, one month after the Khmer Rouge
evacuated the capital, the Swedish author Per Olov Enquist wrote: "The brothel
has been emptied and the clean-up is in progress. Only pimps can regret what is
happening."
If that was blatant wishful thinking, it's an unpalatable
truth that the pimps have returned. A potent mix of Developing World poverty,
cheap flights and sexual licence has made Cambodia a magnet for sex tourists
and paedophiles. The upmarket hotels around the riverside are full of western
and Japanese businessmen, and a certain kind of furtive middle-aged traveller,
stubble-chinned and plump-stomached, is a conspicuous presence in the bars and
clubs frequented by young and under-age prostitutes.
Cambodia has just two seasons: wet and dry. It either rains
or it doesn't, a binary climate that may have helped shape the Khmer Rouge
Manichean view of the world – revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, insider
or outsider, good or bad. It was the dry season when I visited in late
November, and a cooling wind blew through the hot, polluted streets. At first
sight, Tuol Sleng's large courtyard, lined with coconut palms, provides welcome
respite from the noise beyond. A respectful silence is maintained by visitors,
including groups of western backpackers, with their cameras and guidebook
glaze. The three-storey buildings have been left pretty much as they were abandoned
in 1979, slightly dilapidated with jerry-built cells, barbed-wire fences and
medieval instruments of torture. The effect is to transport the visitor not
just back in time, but also into the reptilian depths of the imagination, a
merciless place of zero compassion.
In the courtyard of the prison is a poster listing the rules
of the camp. None of them makes for pleasant reading. For example, number 2
states in an imperfect translation: "Don't try to hide the facts by making
pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me." It
vividly articulates the mentality that shaped S-21, and indeed Kampuchea
beyond, the relentless determination to remove every option from the prisoner –
and citizen – to reduce them to absolute compliance. But perhaps the most
disturbing is number 6: "While getting lashes or electrification you must
not cry out at all." Denied every human and judicial right, the inmates
were also refused the one prerogative of the tortured: the right to express
pain.
I visited the archive on the second floor of the building,
where some of the 4,000 files the Vietnamese discovered are housed. Here, I was
brought the "confession" of John Dewhirst, a 26-year-old teacher from
Newcastle who was captured in 1978, while sailing with friends through the Gulf
of Thailand. Intercepted by a Khmer Rouge patrol boat, they were placed in S-21
and tortured over the course of a month. As the weeks passed, Dewhirst made a
series of ever more bleakly surreal confessions. They start out as straightforward
biography – he explains that he had studied at Loughborough University. Then he
admits to being a CIA agent, recruited at Loughborough where the CIA, he is
made to say, maintains one of its covert training bases. It "was housed in
a building disguised as the Loughborough Town Council Highways Department
Surveyor's Office". He also reveals that his father is another CIA agent,
using the cover of "headmaster of Benton Road secondary school".
Dewhirst was murdered by the Khmer Rouge in 1978.
S-21 was not concerned with the truth. Its only aim was to
derive the fullest possible confession in accordance with party requirements.
In his book Voices From S-21, the historian David Chandler quotes Milan
Kundera's phrase (used to describe the Soviet bloc secret police) of
"punishment seeking the crime" to sum up the prison's project. To
this end, the most depraved techniques – electric shocks, rape, the forced
eating of excrement, medical experimentation, flaying, and lethal blood
extraction – were employed. It's hard to comprehend that these agonies were not
just formalities, they were preliminaries. It wasn't a question, on arriving at
the prison, that an inmate would be lucky to get out alive. He or she would be
lucky to get out just dead. A guidebook for interrogators clarified the issue:
"The enemies can't escape from torture; the only difference is whether
they receive a little or a lot."
The precise level of punishment was decided upon by Duch. If
the confession was not sufficiently elaborate, the punishment was increased. In
these situations Duch impressed upon his staff that "kindness is
misplaced". Some interrogators were more disposed to brutality than
others. And some were simply demented sadists. The most sadistic of them all
went by the name of Toy, a pitch-black irony that his English-speaking victims
were in no position to appreciate. In recent testimony, a prison guard recalled
that one of Dewhirst's party (either the young teacher himself or the New
Zealander or Canadian travelling with him) was burned alive in the street. The
order that they be incinerated came directly from Pol Pot.
Just a few months
after that grisly murder, Caldwell prepared himself to meet the man who
commissioned it. The Scotsman knew little or nothing of Dewhirst's fate. Instead
his mind was on agrarian revolution. Caldwell believed that the world was
accelerating towards a global famine and that the answer was Developing World
self-sufficiency. But Cambodia was a strange place to test his theory. As
Professor Ian Brown notes: "This is a part of the world that historically
had not been a food-deficient area, so you wouldn't go looking for a crisis
there. Again, that seems to indicate a more fundamental flaw in his approach:
he comes at it with a theoretical position. And therefore he'd search for an
argument, not necessarily evidence, that will sustain that."
In Pol Pot, Caldwell found someone with an argument that
suited his purposes. Pol's plan was a massive increase in rice production to
finance Cambodia's reconstruction. It required collectivisation and slave
labour, though Caldwell preferred to see the effort in terms of spontaneous
revolutionary spirit. In the event, owing to the shortage of technicians and
experts (who were killed as class enemies) and lack of peasant support,
production fell well short of targets. But terrified of underperforming,
regional commanders still sent their designated contribution to be exported.
The result was the opposite of self-sufficiency: famine. Unable to accept the
shortcomings in his plans, Pol instead blamed spies and
counter-revolutionaries, and that meant that, in the absence of rice, spies and
counter revolutionaries had to be produced. The network of torture camps was
the only area of Democratic Kampuchea's infrastructure that met its targets.
Of these dreadful facts, Caldwell remained ignorant on the
Friday morning in Phnom Penh that he was taken in a Mercedes limousine to see
Pol Pot. The setting for the meeting was the former Governor's Palace on the
waterfront, built during the French colonial period. In a grand reception room
replete with fans and billowing white curtains, the two men sat down and
discussed revolutionary economic theory.
Becker had met Pol Pot earlier the same day, and in When the
War Was Over she writes: "He was actually elegant, with a pleasing face,
not handsome but attractive. His features were delicate and alert and his smile
nearly endearing."
The perennially shabby academic and the fastidious dictator
must have made for an odd couple. In any case, Caldwell left the meeting a
happy man. He returned to the guest house he was sharing with Becker and
Dudman, full of praise for Pol Pot and his political outlook. "We went
over stuff," says Becker. "He thought he had had a good conversation.
He had avoided at all costs any discussion of Vietnam. And he was looking
forward to going home."
That night they all had dinner together and afterwards
Dudman went to his room. Becker and Caldwell "stayed at the table to have
our last argument about Cambodia". He took the longer view and said that
the revolution deserved support. She, on the contrary, was even more convinced
of the refugees' testimonies. "That night," she writes,
"Caldwell tried once more to get me to change my mind."
Becker went to bed at 11pm and was woken a few hours later
by the sound of what she took to be dustbins. Coming to her senses, she
realised there were no dustbins in Phnom Penh. What she had heard was gunfire.
She opened her bedroom door to see a young man pointing a pistol at her. He was
wearing two bands of ammunition and carrying an automatic rifle over his
shoulder. She begged him not to shoot and locked herself in her bathroom.
Meanwhile Dudman had woken up and, looking out of his
window, saw a file of men running along the street. He knocked on Caldwell's
door. The two men spoke briefly and then a heavily armed man approached. The
man shot at the floor and Dudman ran into his room. Two shots were fired
through his door. The two Americans remained hiding in their rooms for the next
hour before an aide arrived and told Becker to stay where she was. Almost
another hour passed before she was allowed to come out. Caldwell, she was told,
had been shot. He was dead.
The Extraordinary
Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) are located in a large,
purpose-built court on the dusty outskirts of Phnom Penh. During the course of
last year, hundreds of Cambodians made the trip out from the city and in from
the countryside to bear witness to a long-overdue reckoning.
The lone defendant in the trial is a slim, well-preserved
67-year-old with small, sensitive eyes. With his thick grey hair and
concentrated expression, he looks like a sprightly grandfather, a little stiff
and formal, but sufficiently attuned to the contemporary world as to be smartly
dressed in a Ralph Lauren shirt or, on another occasion, a cream cashmere
roll-neck sweater. A giant bullet-proof glass screen divides the court from the
auditorium, where 500 or more people sit watching the proceedings. Centre stage
is Duch (pronounced "Doik" in Khmer), seated with his back to the
audience. To his left is a bank of lawyers, and behind them in the corner the
relatives of victims. In front of the defendant sit the judges, on an imposing
two-tier stand. Ten years, some 400 staff, a dozen judges, a battery of
international lawyers, an ongoing legal wrangle, and many millions of pounds is
what it has taken to put Duch on trial.
Following Caldwell's murder, four guards assigned to the
tourist's protection team were arrested and taken to S-21. Owing to the
importance of their alleged crime, the commandant of the prison was instructed
to head their interrogation. So the stories of Caldwell and Duch came together
at the inevitable point of a torture camp. Here, amid bestial squalor, is where
the liberation dream ended.
Two of the "confessions" made by guards referred
to in their S-21 files as "the Contemptible Met" and "the
Contemptible Chhaan", outline a baroque conspiracy involving many other
people. The Contemptible Chhaan gives an explanation for the murder:
"First, we were attacking to ruin the Party's policy, to prevent the Party
from gathering friends in the world… And in attacking the guests on this
occasion, we would not attack them all. It would be enough to attack the
English guest, because the English guest had written in support of our Party
and the Kampuchean people for a long period of time already… Therefore, we must
absolutely succeed in attacking this English guest, in order that the American
guests would write about it."
Whether this was yet another example of innocent men
implicating other innocent men, it's impossible to know. Certainly there must
have been some kind of in-house involvement, as the guests were guarded. But
who instructed the guards, and why they did so, remains a subject of
speculation. Some argue that the Vietnamese were behind the killing, others
that it was a function of an internal party struggle.
Caldwell's brother, David, wrote a letter to the Guardian,
expressing his belief that "Mal" had "discovered the truth about
the Pol Pot regime" but "dared not admit this to either Becker or
Dudman". This seems unlikely. David Chandler told me that he once met the
translator of the meeting between Caldwell and Pol Pot, who remembered a very
pleasant exchange conducted in a spirit of enthusiastic agreement. If that
anecdote suggests Caldwell died a dedicated Pol Potist, it tells us little
about Pol, a man for whom the word "inscrutable" might have been
invented. As his deputy, Ieng Sary, later recalled: "Pol Pot, even when he
was very angry, you could never tell. His face… his face was always smooth. He
never used bad language. You could not tell from his face what he was feeling.
Many people misunderstood that – he would smile his unruffled smile, and then
they would be taken away and executed."
But why would he seek international support by killing one
of his few remaining friends from abroad? It makes no sense. "Don't apply
rational thinking to the situation," Becker cautions. "It was crazy.
Crazy. Malcolm's murder was no less rational than the tens of thousands of
other murders." The journalist Wilfred Burchett claimed to have seen a
Cambodian report not long after Caldwell's death, which stated that he
"was murdered by members of the National Security Force personnel on the
instructions of the Pol Pot government". Burchett theorised that Caldwell
had changed his mind about the regime, but all the available evidence indicates
otherwise. In the end, Becker's conclusion seems to be the most satisfactory:
"Malcolm Caldwell's death was caused by the madness of the regime he
openly admired."
The confessions of Caldwell's alleged killers were completed
on 5 January 1979. Either that day or the following one, the four men were
bayoneted to death in the prison itself. They were very possibly the last
killings to take place at S-21. On 7 January, the Vietnamese army arrived in
Phnom Penh, and Pol Pot and his associates fled into the jungle.
The contrast between
the care taken to observe Duch's legal and human rights and the
indifference with which he dispatched his victims is lost on no one. But as
Philippe Canonne, one of the lawyers representing the relatives of the victims,
said of the urge to inflict on Duch what he had meted out to his prisoners:
"We must give voice to this sentiment, but then have the strength to
transcend it."
It's this sort of resolution that has made the trial a legal
landmark in a nation that has had little experience of the rule of law. That it
was ever staged at all is a major accomplishment. For 20 years after the
Vietnamese invasion, Duch lived at liberty. At first he followed the bulk of
the Khmer Rouge into exile on the border with Thailand. After the fall of the
Khmer Rouge, the US and China refused to accept the Vietnamese puppet
government installed in Phnom Penh. In a shameful version of the principle that
my enemy's enemy is my friend, they instead persuaded the UN to recognise a
coalition resistance movement, of which the Khmer Rouge formed the major
player. Thus Pol Pot was afforded the support of China, the protection of
Thailand, and the indirect recognition of the United States.
For two decades the Khmer Rouge waged guerrilla warfare
against the government in Phnom Penh. Then, in 1997, Pol Pot was placed under
house arrest by his fellow Khmers Rouges. He died peacefully in his sleep on 15
April 1998. A year later the photojournalist Nic Dunlop found Duch working for
a Christian relief agency. An interview was duly published and Duch handed
himself in to the Phnom Penh authorities.
In theory, the trial
is a joint effort between the UN and Cambodia, but the effort has been all the
UN's. The Cambodian People's Party, which has ruled since Pol Pot was
overthrown, is led by onetime Khmer Rouge members who, under threat of purging,
had defected to Vietnam. One of these is Hun Sen, a former revolutionary
soldier, who has been prime minister since 1985. His government was accused by
Amnesty International of widespread torture of political prisoners, using
"electric shock, hot irons and near suffocation with plastic bags".
And for many years, senior former members of Pol Pot's government lived under
protection in Cambodia, some with family links to the government. So there were
several reasons why a major trial with international media coverage was
potentially embarrassing or inconvenient.
After much pressure, in November 2007 the Cambodians finally
arrested the four most senior surviving Khmer Rouge leaders: Nuon Chea, Ieng
Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan. Their trial is scheduled to start in
2011, though few observers will be surprised if it is indefinitely delayed. All
of them claim ignorance of any wrong-doing. Perhaps the most galling example is
a long letter of evasion and self-justification that Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot's
chief ideologue, wrote to Cambodian newspapers in 2001. "I do not see any
importance in bringing up this tragic past. We would be better off to let
everyone be at peace so that all of us can carry on our daily tasks… I tried my
best for the sake of our nation's survival, so that we might enjoy development
and prosperity like other nations. I am so surprised that this turned out to be
mass murder."
In one form or another, this exculpation has been used over
and again by the supporters of communist revolutions, from the Russian via the
Chinese through to the Cambodian. Each new manifestation commanded the fervent
advocacy of a new generation of radicals. Sooner or later the grim reality was
revealed, which, paradoxically, only raised the hope that the next version
would get it right. As the French philosopher Jean-François Revel has remarked:
"Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole
function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what
does not."
Somehow the link between Marxist-Leninist ideology and
communist terror has never been firmly established in the way, for instance,
that we understand Nazi ideology to have led inexorably to Auschwitz. As if to
illustrate the point, earlier last year the ECCC announced that Helen Jarvis,
its chief of public affairs, was to become head of the victims unit,
responsible for dealing with the survivors, and relatives of the dead, of S-21.
Jarvis is an Australian academic with a longterm interest in
the region, who was recently awarded Cambodian citizenship. She is also a
member of the Leninist Party Faction in Australia. In 2006 she signed a party
letter that included this passage: "We too are Marxists and believe that
'the ends justify the means'. But for the means to be justifiable, the ends
must also be held to account. In time of revolution and civil war, the most extreme
measures will sometimes become necessary and justified. Against the bourgeoisie
and their state agencies we don't respect their laws and their fake moral
principles."
Jarvis refused to speak to me about these matters. But Knut
Rosandhaug, the UN's deputy administrator for the tribunal, said that the
administration "fully supports" her. In this sense, although she was
never a Pol Potist herself, Jarvis shows that the spirit of Malcolm Caldwell
has survived the last century. It lives on in the conviction that the ends
justify the means, and in the manner that liberal institutions can house the
most illiberal outlooks.
The means, of course, always become the ends. Duch or
someone like him is the method and the madness, the process and the final
product. At least the man himself claims to grasp what continues to elude too
many who should by now know better. In his deposition to the court, he said:
"I clearly understand that any theory or ideology which mentions love for
the people in a class-based concept is definitely driving us into endless
tragedy and misery."
The following day, his lawyer, Kar Savuth, asked that Duch
be acquitted and set free.
Caldwell didn't
trouble himself with the means in Cambodia. He was too focused on an
imaginary end, which meant that he never glimpsed the deadly real one
approaching.
"He may have been starry eyed," says John Cox.
"But we all do that. Even my local football team I support long after
they've been destroyed match after match. It's a human failing."
A few days after Caldwell's murder, a testimonial was
published in the Guardian.
"Caldwell," the writer said, "was an
irreplaceable teacher and comrade whose work will undoubtedly suffer the
customary fate of being better appreciated after his death."
As it turned out, history has forgotten
Caldwell. But the amiable apologist for tyranny should be remembered, if only
so that we don't forget history.★
50 comments:
The Khmer Rouge Organization (Angkar-leu អង្គការលើ) baptized (Duch) instead of real names (Kaing Guek Eav) is not the revolutionary name as is commonly believed but rather to hide the truth.
The Khmer Rouge Organization (Angkar-leuអង្គការលើ) amplified, and broadcast advertising, the false name (Duch) as the scapegoat to launder their crime against humanity.
The false name (Duch) is copied and repeated Non- Stop by the global media to continue deceive the world and also to attack and dishonor real name famous (Duch) such that (Duch Sidim; Duch Kimhak; Sok Duch) and (Duch Som) grandfather's Ms.Theary Seng etc.
Paris V.February17,2012
This article posting date is Sunday, February 19, 2012?
Is it already Sunday?
What is it that this Bitch EB knows besides serving the interest of the real killers: the Viet!!!
Malcolm Caldwel was killed by Khmer Viet Minh after Malcolm Caldwel met Pol Pot in Phnom Penh .
Some Khmer Viet Minh who worked alongside with Pol Pot between 1975-178 as follow:
1. Heng Samrin.
2. Chea Sim.
3. So Phim.
4. Rhos Nhim.
5. Keo Meas.
6. Ni Sarann.
7. Norn Sourn.
8. And many more.
Yuon not only killed khmers, but killed any foreigner who dares to support Pol Pot. Malcolm Caldwell was killed by Viet Minh. No doubt.
Million khmers were killed by Viet Minh, too.
SOME IDIOTS HERE DON'T LEARN KHMER HISTORY FROM FACTS, ALWAYS YUON, YUON, YUON. SO MUCH VIOLENCE IN KHMER SOCIETY ITSELF, COMITTED BY KHMER P[EOPLE ON THEIR OWN PEOPLE.
Who gave Pol Pot the power to play god and killed 2 millions innocent khmers?
10:31AM បានធ្វើការបែងចែក មិត្ត និង សត្រូវ
ច្បាស់ណាស់ សូមអរគុណ ដែលបានបញ្ជាក់ថា
Malcolm Caldwell ត្រូវបានសម្លាប់ដោយ
ខ្មែរក្រហមយៀកមិញ បន្ទាបើពីលោកគាំទ្រចលនា
ខ្មែរក្រហមរបស់ លោក ប៉ុលពត សូមសាលាក្ដី
ស្វែងរក យុត្តិធម៌ឱ្យ ជនបរទេស Malcolm Caldwell នេះផង វាពិតជាមានការទាក់ទងជា
មួយមេដឹកនាំយួន ចំពោះរបបវាលពិឃាតទាំង
ពីរនេះ។លោក ប៉ុលពត គេសម្លាប់គាត់បំបិទភស្ដុ
តាង ព្រោះគាត់ ការពារ អធិបតេយ្យភាពកម្ពុជា
រីឯខ្មែរក្រហមយៀកមិញសម្លាប់បំបាត់ពូជសាសន៍
ឯង លើកតម្កើងសាសន៍យួន ព្រោះតែអំណាច បុណ្យសក្តិកាមតណ្ហារហូតប្រគល់ទឹកដីខ្លួនឱ្យយួន
ទៀត។រឿងខ្មែរក្រហមទាំងពីរនេះខុសប្លែកគ្នាស្រឡះ
គ្មានអ្វីនឹងពិបាកយល់ទេ បើយើងចង់ដឹងពិត។
ខ្មែរក្រហមប៉ុលពត ការពារ ប្រទេសជាតិ,ខ្មែរក្រហម
យៀកមិញ គឺសម្លាប់ប្រទេសជាតិ៕
Pol Pot,
The man who had strong contribution in protecting Khmer sovereignty from yuon Hanoi agression , in 1976 yuon Hanoi put out the ultimatum to Pol Pot to put pressure on Pol Pot accept a new sea Khmer-youn border line which Pol Pot refused because Khmer would lose a lot of sovereignty to yuoun.
Soon after Pol Pot captured Phnom Penh Pol Pot sent a lot of troops to figth to liberate Koh Trol from yuon Hanoi occupation.
“I have to say that Pol Pot was a patriot.”
- Khieu Samphan said in 2006 interview.
All Dear Khmer,
Please read and judge the following to judge Khieu Samphan had to say that Pol Pot was a patriot.
Pol Pot had fought for the rest of his life to protect Khmer sovereignty from yuon Hanoi aggression or not?
My personal view:
I agree with Khieu Samphan .
ពួកអាខ្មែរក្រហមចោលម្សៀតហើយ ខ្លួនឯងចោលម្សៀតសំលាប់ខ្មែរគ្នាឯង ទៅប្រឹងជំតិតក្ដិតចោទយួនឯណាណុះទៅវិញ។ អស់ពីចោទ CIA KGB .... អីលូវយួនដេញបាញ់រត់ចោលស្រុកអស់ រត់ប្រាស់អាយុទៅនៅដីអាមេរិច លែងហ៊ាន ចោទអាមេរិចទៀត នៅសល់តែយួនទុកចោទ។ ពួកអាបាតដៃប្រលាក់ឈាម ។
Did China know that Yuon Hanoi masters (Pham Van Dong, Ho Chi Minh, and others) involved with Sihanouk to create the Killing Fields?
12:26 PM,
Hey dude, you are supposed to be Yuon. Keep on having your bad mouths about Khmer people and playing the trick, stinky mouths by lying even more, then we Khmer people and foreigners will call you and your Yuon thieves and crooks YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, YUON, ..... in Srok Khmer FOREVER FOR THE NEXT MANY YEARS TO COME. ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THAT WHEN YOU PROTECT YOUR HYPOCRITE YUON THIEVES AND ILLEGAL YUOR SETTLERS IN CAMBODIA?
Maybe you married with your Yuon prostitutes or whores just like Hun Sen who is very stupid and blind.
មហាបុរសមហាត្មៈ គន្ឌីបានមានប្រសាសន៍ថា,
"ខ្ញុំស្អប់អ្នកយកព័ត៌មាន និង អ្នកថតរូបណាស់
ព្រោះពួកគេបំផ្លើសការពិត"។
ចិនជាហ្វាយខ្មែរក្រហម ត្រួតត្រាស្រុកខ្មែរ ទារ
ជំពាក់ពីខ្មែរក្រហម ដឹកស្រូវពីប្រទេសនៅពេល
យប់ក្នុងឆ្នាំ១៩៧៦ ដល់ ឆ្នាំ១៩៧៨។
ចិនចាញ់បោកយួន។ យួនយកប្រទេសខ្មែរវិញ
បានក្នុងថ្ងៃទី ៧ ខែ មករា ឆ្នាំ១៩៧៩។
ក្រោយមកចិនបានវាយយួនដោយកម្រោល។
ចិនស្លាប់ ២០,០០០ នាក់ តែយួនវាងាប់តែ
១០,០០០ នាក់។នេះឬអាចិនខ្លក្រដាស។
អាពាលចិន និង អាពាលយួនស៊ីគ្នា។
what has happend to Cambodia
is mechanically orchestrated by
viet. the result Khmer will no longer be khmer. but many Khmer are stupid, comdemming only the
Khmer Rouge that the product of viet politic.
many khmer are stupid and they continue to be stupid.
កែពាក្យខុសរបស់ខ្ញុំ 11:13PM,
នេះឬអាចិនខ្លាក្រដាស។
Thank KI for making this good article availble.
A lot of Cambodian born Chinese are Patriotic to Khmer cause, Khmer interest.....
To 7:10 PM
I don't think China knew about this.
So, SOV a regular at Khmer440.com eh? We have pretty good idea of who you are... Best of luck to you SOV!
Re:
Elizabeth Becker as a young reporter in the 1970s and author of "When the War was Over"....
Yes, young, naive, if not stupid to be duped and recruited to serve the commy Viet for the rest of her life with no way out...
Listen the khmerpost radio and world Khmer radio every day at www.thekhmerpost.com and www.worldkhmerradioonline.com.
12:46 PM,
You have a bad mouth with such as question because you have followed Viet/Yuon Master-minded footsteps, Yuon/Hanoi Pham Van Dong and Ho Chi Minh. These two push Sihanouk who was a Yuon/Hanoi Playgirl or Yuon prostitutes/whores lover to get involved the Killing Fields in Cambodia. Yuon/Viet master-minded evils have played the trick to mess with Khmer/Cambodia, China and the U.S.
You are still blind like Hun Sen under the Communist Viet/Yuon and you could talk rubbish like Hun Sen.
China and the U.S. did not know that Viet/Yuon who is the major trouble players in the history including Siam/Thai, creating the mess to cause one another to fight each others or war politics between China and the U.S. to protect their fake histories, one was kicked out by China Han and the one was kicked out by Mongol Empire armies (begging Khmer Empire King for helps until Tai/Siam/Thai betrayed Khmer Empire Kings).
Khmer people, please work hard and stay focus to learn and rebuild the country. Get rid the last ones, CPP Yuon and Hun Sen in Cambodia today.
Correction:
12:46 PM,
You have a bad mouth with such A question because you have followed Viet/Yuon Master-minded footsteps, Yuon/Hanoi Pham Van Dong and Ho Chi Minh. These two push Sihanouk who was a Yuon/Hanoi Playgirl or Yuon prostitutes/whores lover to get involved the Killing Fields in Cambodia. Yuon/Viet master-minded evils have played the trick to mess with Khmer/Cambodia, China and the U.S.
You are still blind like Hun Sen under the Communist Viet/Yuon and you could talk rubbish like Hun Sen.
China and the U.S. did not know that Viet/Yuon who is the major trouble players in the history including Siam/Thai, creating the mess to cause one another to fight each others or war politics between China and the U.S. to protect their fake histories, one was kicked out by China Han and the one was kicked out by Mongol Empire armies (begging Khmer Empire King for helps until Tai/Siam/Thai betrayed Khmer Empire Kings).
Khmer people, please work hard and stay focus to learn and rebuild the country. Get rid the last ones, CPP Yuon and Hun Sen in Cambodia today.
7:46 AM
តើអង្គការលើខ្មែរក្រហមជាអ្វី?
គឺដូចសត្វដំរី និងអាខ្វាក់ពីរនាក់។
អាខ្វាក់ទីមួយវាថាសត្វដំរីដូចជាអំបោស
ពីព្រោះវាស្ទាបចំកន្ទុយដំរី។
ឯអាខ្វាក់ទីពីរវាអះអាងថាសត្វដំរីដូចជា
សសរផ្ទះពីព្រោះវាស្ទាបប៉ះជើងដំរី។
អាស្រ័យហេតុនេះហើយទើបខ្មែរល្ងង់ខ្លៅ
ទាំងពីរបក្សនេះឈ្លោះប្រកែកគ្នាយកតែ
ត្រូវរៀងៗខ្លួន។
ប៉ារីស៍ថ្ងៃទី១៨កុម្ភៈ២០១២
ក្រុមកវីខ្មែរ
HEY IDIOT! LET ME SLAUGHTER YOUR WHOLE FAMILY. WILL I BE A PATRIOT THEN.
What is it so patriot when you slaughter 1.7 millions of your own kind? You can't be that ignorant and stupid at the same time. Seek help! Your idiology is the same as those of the KR.
8:44 AM,
What make you so sure that Khmer and Khmer alone killed 1.7 millions of their own people? Had you been there witnessing each and every killing you asserted to?
Would there be a slim chance at all for outsiders' involvment?
Just think about it if you can. No need to resort to any language such as yours...ok?
The Pro-Vietnam political party and party politics Pro-Khmer Rouge are fighting to mislead the public but in reality
they share power because both are descendants of the Khmer Rouge Organization (Angkar-leu អង្គការ លើ).
Paris V. February 18, 2012
People do not support the party's political opposition are accused Pro-Vietnam party and people do not support party's polical Pro-Vietnam are accused the Khmer Rouge.
The two puppets of Khmer Rouge Organization (Angkar-leuអង្គការលើ) Non-Stop terrorizing innocent Khmer.
Paris V. February18,2012
Shut the fuck up! Yes, I was there. I didn't witness of all the killings, but evidence all those massive bones and skulls is appropriate enough to say the least. Isn't that enough evidence for you...... bitch?
You have no fucking saying unless you were there during the KR.
Since you're the expert, care to share with us with your disputed number?
10:08 AM,
Everyone has rights to express their opinion.
Most Khmer were the victim of Pol Pot regime and more than 1.7 million were killed brutetly between 1975-1979 including Malcolm Caldwel.
But what was the real reasons behind those killing ?
We have put our hope and trust in this ECCC since 2006-2012 ( so far 6 years ) what we all hear and see from this ECCC as following:
1. Only Duch case done, for 6 years and cost around 150 million US dollar.
2. Keep drag on and on.
3. Politcal interfering from Hun Sen.
4. Corruption ECCC.
5. So many conflicts in ECCC such as Swiis judge case.
6. Hun Sen say any one want to go ahead with case 003 and 004 should pack up and leave Camnbodia.
7. Hun Sen rather close ECCC rather let it continue with Cases 003 and 004.
So I agree with 10:08 AM because it is so obvious that this ECCC try to cover and turn Youn Hanoi genocide, war cirmes and crimes against humanity.
Look at youn Hanoi genocide as follow:
1.Yuon has killing Khmer since Khmer-Krom till Khmer Kandal.
2. K 5 is war crime against Cambodian people.
3. Exterminate ethnic Cambodians by influxing million of yuon into Cambodia till Khmer less than yuon .
4. ECCC is yuon tool to cover up yuon Genocide , Wars crimes and Crimes against Cambodian people.
So once again What is the real reason behing killing million of Cambodian between 1975-1979?
The answer is all in real Khmer history , in Indochina Federation just look at Khmer-Krom , Lao.
The following are Khmer Viet Minh who became Khmer Rouge between 1975-1978.
1. Heng Samrin.
2. Chea Sim.
3. So Phim.
4. Rhos Nhim.
5. Keo Meas.
6. Ni Sarann.
7. Norn Sourn and many more.
Sihanouk
Ho Chiminh
Mao Zédong
Le Duch Tho
Chou Eng Lay
12:17 PM,
You are brainwashed by your Yuon master minded and following your Viet/Yuon footsteps until your head was slitted by Yuon/Viet if you are Khmer that no longer to be with them.
You need to understand what has been behind all the Killing Fields and don't just jump the conclusion about Pol Pot who are only one. Your Yuon/Viet who were very smarter than your brain and you were manipulated to believe that Viet/Yuon invasion into Srok Khmer/Cambodia to help rescue Khmer people from the Killing Fields under the false statement of TV Medias coming from the Communist Vietnam.
I used to believe that there is only Pol Pot and Khmer Rouges killed their own people. Yes, I was uneducated myself until I have higher educations with my master degree and studied my PhD in University of Ca, and studied and did the deeper researches, finding out are the Khmer Rouges, who were behind all the Killing Fields beyond the Khmer Rouges, why British Journalist was killed, why all of these innocent Khmer people were afraid of saying anything in Cambodia after 1979, why Khmer people were not allowed to learn English in 1979 until the UN came to rescue, why the Khmer students in HS complained about the rules required them to learn Vietnamese language, why Khmer people were not allowed to communicate with the West after 1979, and so on. It is beyond the Killing Fields and war politics under the communist regime in Cambodia controlled by Communist Vietnam.
You need to understand, learn more and do the research if you can. I am very sorry to hear some Khmer people who believe Khmer Rouges killed their people easily and have been manipulated so far.
How many students in Cambodia have been oppressed by government under CPP Yuon officials and Hun Sen, who lost the freedom of speech, freedom to write books and reports about the facts, and so on. There are more to say.
You need to know that it is all about Yuon/Viet influences CPP supporters and Hun Sen.
If you are good enough to learn, then you know. Don't ignore the facts.
Khmer Yeurng.
12:17 PM,
I am sorry for comment for you. It is for 8:44 AM.
ខ្មែរស្ដាយណាស់ ដោយ អង្គការសហប្រជាជាតិ
មានប្រាជ្ញ មិនដល់មេដឹកនាំយួនហាណូយ ក្នុង
ឱកាសដែលបង្កើតសាលាក្ដីកូនកាត់ខ្មែរក្រហម។
ហេតុអ្វីអង្គការសហប្រជាជាតិមិនបង្កើតសាលាក្ដី
នេះនៅទីក្រុងឡាអេ នៃប្រទេសហូឡង់ដ៍?
To my dear friends, I ask five questions: 1.Does you understand Khmer Rouge Organization(Angkar-leu អង្គការលើ)?
2. who are they their leader? 3. Why were they murdered the Cambodian people?
4. When and why were they invented false name (Duch) instead of real name (Kaing Guek Eav)?
5. Who are they spokespersons of the Khmer Rouge organization(Angkar-leu)?
Thank you for your courage.
Paris V. February 2012
Re: "I wanted an institution in Cambodia to have these copies for history.”
EB,
A HISTORY that the Winner - the Viet, the Khmer killer wants you to be a part of, isn't it?
Shame on you EB!
They spared you instead of Caldwell...and you know too damn well why...
Incognito
Incognito
what is the meaning: Shame on you EB!
Why too uncomfortable with these five questions?
Courage!
Paris V. February18,2012
School of Vice,
Thank you for the article.
Pissed off
Pissed off:
You are more than welcome. Thanks for all your thoughtful contributions and educated comments.
5:43 AM,
Hey evil bastard, be nice and stop your stupid language behind your hidden face being Peking Duck when you don't anything to say when you are screwed up yourself by scaring us Khmer people.
You are very dirty and so smart to scare people (or kill people) because of your stupid mentality behind your computer. Oh, so scary, oh. That was how the killing occurred coming Yuon/Viet evil mind like yours.
Youn/Viet like you in Srok Khmer and anywhere will never live in peace for the next many years and decades to come.
School of Vice,
I am very honored by your comment! Thanks.
The article you posted has brought several pieces for the puzzle I am trying finish in term of understanding why Malcom Caldwell was killed in Democratic Kampuchea in 1978.
Obviously the actual truth with no speculation or altered facts may not be found, but somehow I hope it will show up one day.
It is so paradoxical that Malcom died in such a circumstance; he may not even have had a chance to realize that ideology and theory without empirical evidence is tantamount to disaster.
I truly appreciate your writings, those of Dr. Peang-Meth and numerous articles you have posted on this site and Khmerization.
A fight to make Cambodians become vigilant of their leaders' actions, holding them accountable and demanding good governance begins with the writing and reading, which form part of an overall education that, in turn, will move citizens to action and stop leaving their fate in the hands of their leaders whose mistakes, if allowed to continue for a certain period of time, will definitely bring a devastation to a society in which they live.
Slowly, but surely writing will empower and connect people and somehow demand and action for changes will be born among the new generation of Cambodians.
Pissed off
Correction:
"...I am trying to finish in term ..."
Pissed off
People do not support the party's political opposition are accused Pro-Vietnam party and people do not support party's polical Pro-Vietnam are accused the Khmer Rouge.
The two puppets of Khmer Rouge Organization (Angkar-leuអង្គការលើ) Non-Stop terrorizing innocent Khmer.
Paris V. February18,2012
ខ្មែរណាមិនគាំទ្រគណៈបក្សប្រឆាំងត្រូវគេចោទថាៈ
(ខ្លួនខ្មែរក្បាលយួន) ហើយខ្មែរណាមិនគាំទ្រគណៈ
បក្សរណបយួនត្រូវគេចោទថាៈ(ពួកអាខ្មែរក្រហម)។
តាមការពិតគណៈបក្សទាំងនេះបានកើតចេញអំពី
អង្គការលើខ្មែរក្រហមដែលបានសម្លាប់ខ្មែរប្រមាណ
បីលាននាក់ ហើយបន្តឲ្យកូនចៅវាធ្វើនយោបាយ
បោកបញ្ឆោតបំភិតបំភ័យគំរាមកំហែងខ្មែរស្លូតត្រង់។
ប៉ារីស៍ព្រឹកទី១៩កុម្ភៈ២០១២
អក្សរភាសាខ្មែរ
Polpot's visa with Angkor Wat and three stars means that PolPot did not forget Kampuchea Krom, Khmer Surin and Khmer Kandal.
Thanks for sharing with us. I also agree that School of Vice have done a great job is piecing all the puzzles. Pissed off, we also enjoy reading your comments. Our future needs independent writers. Please keep up the good work.
Since we are on this topic, I also enjoy reading Dr. Peang-Meth and Theary Seng, articles.
Anyway, thanks for sharing with you.
Yeah school of mice, really nice!
9:38 AM,
Oh come on, be nice to School of Vice for all of his work.
Learn to say "Thank You" and become a nice Cambodian boy!
Post a Comment