January 7, 1979 and the Forgery of History

CFC/CBC Newsletter January 7, 2007

January 7, 1979 and the Forgery of History

In order to measure the extent and the depth of the Vietnamese domination in Cambodia, even at the present time, one only needs to listen to the CPP leaders and their “subjects,” to whom the invasion and the occupation of Cambodia by Le Duc Tho’s armies on January 7, 1979, was considered as a “liberation” of the Cambodian people from the genocide perpetrated by the Democratic Kampuchea Khmer Rouge. Thus to them, the Vietnamese were the saviors of Humanity.

Sign of first contradiction: Messrs. Chea Sim, Heng Samrin, Hun Sen and other minor Khmer Rouge chiefs, reclaimed by Le Duc Tho, were in fact the executioners of the genocidal regime up to the middle of 1978, before they fled to Vietnam following the internal purge ordered by Pol Pot for other reasons. Furthermore, at the arrival of the Vietnamese “liberators,” the former Khmer Rouge torturers who were arrested or denounced by the population, were sent for a quick “re-education” and returned to the service of the “liberators” to administer anew this same Cambodian population.

At the same time, according to former communist Colonel Bui Tin who remained in Cambodia for three years as an information “expert” (1), the Vietnamese occupiers imposed on Cambodians, starting from the very first days, “special relationships,” i.e. their total domination, from the top to the bottom of the country, and they never hesitated using “terror, torture, and arbitrariness … with methods reminiscing of those used by the Stalinist KGB, and the East-German Stasi” against government employees at all levels, as well as on other people who were denounced as being “too free” in their actions or in their thinking. An example of “highly” publicized case: that of Pen Sovann and his friends who returned from Hanoi – i.e., they never served Pol Pot, and they believed they would find at their return a “liberated” Cambodia – were quickly eliminated or arrested and thrown in jail without any trial.

The International community which followed for several years the situation of the Democratic Kampuchea was never fooled by the Vietnam-Cambodia relationships, or by the preparation of Hanoi’s intervention. On January 13, 1979, the UN Security Council demanded the pullout of “foreign troops” from Cambodia and declared the continuation of its recognition of the Democratic Kampuchea as being the “only legal Government.” On January 21, Thailand took the same course of action. From February 17 to March 16, 1979, the People’s Republic of China launched a military expedition “to give a lesson” to Vietnam. On November 14, 1979, the UN General Assembly voted to approve the condemnation of the invasion and the occupation of Cambodia by Vietnam, and demanded the unconditional pullout from Cambodia of Hanoi’s troops. This International condemnation was renewed every single year for ten years. ASEAN countries and other world superpowers, which decided to support the Cambodian national resistance, were not blind to the claim of so-called Vietnamese “liberation” of the Cambodian people.

The historical reality of Hanoi’s intervention objectives was purely hegemonic. According to Bui Tin, inebriated from their victory over the US, Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, Le Trong Tam, Le Duc Anh and other Vietnamese leaders maintained a disdainful view towards the remainder of the world, including the UN, and they considered Indochina as their “private hunting territory.” The Vietnamese-Khmer Rouge conflict started since April 1975, and found its main roots in the problems of maritime and land borders between Cambodia and Vietnam. Until 1977, Hanoi never spoke out about the genocide perpetrated by Khmer Rouge. In fact, Hanoi returned to the Khmer Rouge, Cambodians who fled to seek refuge in Vietnam – those who were returned to the Khmer Rouge were immediately shot under the eyes of the Vietnamese border guards.

According to US documents and French news media, bloody fighting between Hanoi and Phnom Penh troops occurred in all of 1976, 1977, and 1978, along the Cambodian eastern border zones, extending from Ratanakiri to Kampot. Following the repeated negotiation failures between the two former-“fighting brothers”, Hanoi decided, starting from May 1978, on an invasion plan of the Democratic Kampuchea. The US knew about it, in their negotiations with Nguyen Co Thach, the Vietnamese minister, on the diplomatic normalization with Hanoi, the US opposed the Vietnamese “plan,” and they even proposed to Nguyen Co Thach, in November 1978, to use the “UN means” to resolve the Vietnam-Cambodia conflict. Hanoi simply dismissed the US proposition, and with that, it also rejected the “normalization” with Washington. Thus, on December 25, 1978, it decided to invade Cambodia with the support from the Soviet Union (2).

Therefore, as soon as it completed the “liberation” of Cambodia, Hanoi imposed on the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, its creation regime, on February 18, 1979, its protectorate treaty so-called “Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation.” In effect, the proclaimed objectives of this treaty were “to continually reinforce … the tradition of militant solidarity between the two Vietnamese and Kampuchean people … (and) the friendship cooperation in all fields…” Obviously, it was planned that the border issue between the two countries must be resolved through “peaceful negotiations … in order to sign a treaty (for a new) delineation of the national borders between the two countries…” Cambodia was further opened to a massive colonization by Vietnamese “settlers. This led to some emotional reactions from the part of Cambodian “national liberators” such as Pen Sovann, Heng Samring, Chan Ven, etc… The treaties assigning Cambodian land and maritime territories to Vietnam were hastily written and were successively concluded between Mr. Hun Sen and his “protector,” Nguyen Co Thach.

January 7, 1979 was indeed the happy accomplishment made by Hanoi in the Vietnam-Cambodia border war – a war which in fact started since the pullout of France from Indochina. Therefore, the forgery of history was grossly executed and obstinately maintained up to now by the Vietnamese and their Cambodian “subjects.”
The forgery of history followed by the sublimation of treason acts which led to the enslavement of a people and a country constitute more than mere political crimes, they are crimes against humanity: with the only aim of destroying the collective memory of a nation, placed under submission by force, before its final extinction, to a foreign criminal power, and that of an internal despot.

Paris, January 05, 2007

Sean Péngsè

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(1): Colonel Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh, Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel, University of Hawai Press, Honolulu, Hawai, 1995, ISBN: 0-8247-1673-0

(2): Elizabeth Becker, When the War is Over, The Voices of Cambodia’s revolution and its people, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1986, ISBN : 0-671-41787-8. (Les interlocuteurs US de Nguyen Co Thach, au siège de l'ONU, pour la "normalisation" US-Viet, étaient alors Richard Holbrooke et son adjoint Robert Oakley).

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