Communist Vietnamese-Lao-Khmer meeting (Photo: KR Trial Web Portal)
Stephen J. MORRIS in Public Forum on Khmer Rouge History From stalin to Pol Pot-Towards a Description of the khmer Rouge Regime 25-26 january 2007 Sunway Hotel, Phnom Penh (Picture by: Prim Pilot)By Stephen J. Morris
Source: The Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association
Posted at Khmer Rouge Trial Web Portal
"Hanoi's motives were never humanitarian but only self-interested"
"Forces beyond the control of Vietnam, especially the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist bloc, as well as the pressures of China and ASEAN, eventually caused the Vietnamese to withdraw their forces from Cambodia. But some of Vietnam's political influence upon Cambodia still remains."
- Stephen J. Morris, author of "Why Vietname invaded Cambodia"
INTRODUCTION
In the official mythology of the Khmers Rouges, their military victory in 1975, and the maintenance of their rule over Cambodia from 1975 until 1978 (the rule of Angka Padevat in the state of Democratic Kampuchea), was portrayed as a result of the efforts of Cambodians alone. This is the most ridiculous fantasy. Without the support of the Vietnamese and Chinese communists the regime known as Democratic Kampuchea would never have existed. Moreover, the leading Cambodian communists were deeply enmeshed in the activities of the communist world for most of their lives.
I will show how Vietnam played a vital role in the rise of the Khmers Rouges to power, and how the Vietnamese communist leaders were happy to let the Khmers Rouges do as they wished in power, so long as the regime created - Democratic Kampuchea - did not threaten or embarrass Vietnam. However the irrational belligerence of Pol Pot and his entourage in foreign policy soon became a source of concern for Hanoi, and Democratic Kampuchea's violent behaviour towards its more powerful neighbour pushed Vietnam towards a policy of armed retaliation, invasion and occupation.
VIETNAM AND THE RISE OF CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM
The Vietnamese communists were deeply involved in the inception and formation of the Cambodian communist movement. In 1930 the agent of the Communist International (Comintem) known as Nguyen Ai Quoc -- who in 1943 changed his alias to Ho Chi Minh -- founded the Vietnamese Communist Party at a meeting held in the British colony of Hong Kong. But after filing the founding documents with his employers in Moscow, Quoc was instructed by the Comintem to change the name of the party to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). The Comintem argued that "Not only does Indochina have a geographic, economic and political unity, but above all we have a need for unity of struggle, for a unique direction of all of the Indochinese proletariat opposed to all the forces of reaction in Indochina, to the policy of division of French imperialism." The Comintern's intention was clear: Emancipation of the three different nations of French Indochina was to be carried out not by the independent efforts of each of the three peoples, but rather under Vietnamese Communist tutelage.
As it happened there were no revolutionary movements in Cambodia at this time. And of the 211 founding members of the Indochinese Communist Party, not a single one was from Cambodia or Laos. One finds in the Comintem archives in Moscow, Quoc's actual correspondence about this with his leaders. In September 1930 Nguyen Ai Quoc claimed to have an ICP party membership of 124, of which 120 were Chinese and 4 were Annamites [Vietnamese]. The Party controlled labor union consisted of 300 ethnic Chinese. The French suppressed the communist structures throughout Indochina in 1935, and by March 1935 there were only 9 communists in all of Cambodia. But the ethnic situation in Cambodia remained much the same throughout the 1930s. In 1938 the Cambodian branch of the ICP had a mere 16 members, all of them ethnic Chinese.
After World War II the Vietnamese communists, operating through their front organization popularly known as the Viet Minh, began their offensive against the French colonialists. However they sought to rely heavily upon ethnic Vietnamese for their efforts. Two of the most important Viet Minh leaders during the 1940s were Sieu Heng and Son Ngoc Minh, both of mixed Vietnamese and Khmer ancestry. Armed units of the Viet Minh were stationed in Battambang, where all the units were ethnic Vietnamese, and in southeast Cambodia, where again ethnic Vietnamese were predominant in the revolutionary committees.
In March 1950, at a meeting of Viet Minh and Khmer Issarak leaders held in Ha Tien, Vietnam, Nguyen Than Son, head of the Viet Minh's committee for foreign affairs in southern Vietnam, spoke of the Vietnamese emigre population in Cambodia as a "driving force destined to set off the Revolutionary Movement in Cambodia." Later he seemed to be complaining when he stated that the ICP, which controlled the Cambodian Movement, was composed of mostly Vietnamese and "did not have deep roots among the Khmer people."
In 1951 the underground ICP resurfaced as the Vietnam Workers Party, and simultaneously announced the emergence of two "fraternal" parties for Laos and Cambodia. The latter was called the Revolutionary Cambodian People's Party. According to Bernard Fall the statutes of the Cambodian party had to be translated from Vietnamese into Cambodian, and ethnic Vietnamese dominated the leadership of the party. Over the next three years the Vietnamese tried to recruit ethnic Cambodians into the political and military structures of the party, but with limited success. For example, according to a French intelligence document of 1952, the Phnom Penh cell secretariat had a membership of 34, of whom 27 were Vietnamese, 3 were Chinese, and only four were Cambodians.
In November 1953 Cambodia under the royal government of Sihanouk was given complete independence by the French. After the signing of the Geneva Agreements in 1954, the Viet Minh Sees retreated from Cambodia, taking with them half of the cadres of the Revolutionary Cambodian Party. These cadres were to be given further training in Hanoi, and kept in reserve until history provided an opportune moment for their return.
During this period of the mid 1950s there was influx of younger communists back to Cambodia from a period of study France. Most notable of this group was Pol Pot (then known as Saloth Sar, Jeng Sary, Khieu Samohan, Hou Youn and Hu Nim. Some of these communists had come into contact with the ideas of Marx and Lenin before, they went to France. But they had all developed their communist ideology in France under the influence of the Stalinist French communist party. Some of them, like Pol Pot had fought in the last stages of the Viet Minh war against the French. But we should not make too much of the French experience of Pol Pot and long Sary. because other important members of the future Khmer Rouge inner circle -- notably Nuon Chea and Ta Mok -- never went to France. More important to note is that none of the younger communists exhibited any anti-Vietnamese sentiment at this time.
The returnees from France were able to seize control of the Cambodian communist movement by the ena of the 1950s Yet in 1960 the party's name was changed to Kampuchean Workers Party, to conform with the Vietnamese name, and in 1966 it was changed again to Kampuchean Communist Party In 1963 Pol Pot became secretary general of the party. Throughout the 1960s the Kampuchean communists remained friendly and deferential towards the Vietnamese. In July 1965 Pol Pot traveled to Hanoi and discussed with the Vietnamese politburo the appropriate policy for Cambodia.
It is not exactly clear when the Cambodian communists developed their attachment to Maoism. The imbibing of Maoist ideology by the Khmer Rouge seems to have been quite gradual. And the Vietnamese communists themselves must have played some direct role in assisting that process since they themselves had been under Chinese communist influence during the years 1950-56 and 1963-64, years when Vietnamese communist influence over Cambodian communists was still significant. Pol Pot made his first trip to China in late 1965 and stayed into 1966. This was the beginning o the Maoist terror and ideological campaign known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot visited China again in 1970. Pol Pot's visits to China probably did not initiate, but most likely intensified, Maoist ideological influence upon the Khmer Rouge.
In January 1968 the Kampuchean Communist Party initiated an armed uprising against the royal government of Prince Sihanouk. This would seem to have been in contradiction with the Vietnamese communist policy of recognizing the royal Cambodian government, a government which had allowed the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to use eastern Cambodia as a sanctuary and supply line in their war against the American-backed anticommunist government of South Vietnam. However this Khmers Rouges uprising was mostly confined to the hill dwellers (Khmer Loeu) of the mountainous of northeast Cambodia - Ratanakiri and Mondolkiri - and it did not pose any real threat to he survival of the government of Prince Sihanouk. Hence it did not really threaten the strategy of the North Vietnamese.
During the late 1960s many Cambodians, especially among the Cambodian political and military elites became unhappy with the Vietnamese communist occupation of Cambodian soil. They preferred Cambodia to have a closer relationship with the United States. Sihaniouk slowly and reluctantly changed his policy in this regard, and in 1970 he traveled to China and the Soviet Union to try and persuade the big communist powers to pressure Hanoi to remove its forces from Cambodia, Sihanouk was not successful, and on March 18, 1970, while Sihanouk was still in Moscow, Lon Nol led a bloodless palace coup d'etat. This totally changed Cambodia's situation.
Manv people think that the coup d'etat led by Lon Nol, was the work of the United States and its Central Intelligence Agency (ClA). At the time Hanoi, Beijing and Moscow, and their western friends with the help of Sihanouk, did everything to try to spread that myth. There is absolutely no evidence of that. No evidence has been found even by the most critical western writer, William Shawcross. Of course the Americans welcomed the coup.
Many people also think that it was the US and South Vietnamese invasion of eastern Cambodia on April 30, 1970, that brought Cambodia into the Vietnam war. That is also plainly false. It was me Vietnamese communists who spread the Vietnam war inside Cambodia. One of Lon Nol's first public proclamations was to demand that the Vietnamese communist forces leave Cambodia within 48 hours. They ignored his demand, and at the end of March 1970 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces moved out of their border sanctuaries and began to attack the armed forces and towns of the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. At the same time approximately one thousand of the Khmer Viet Minh, who had been trained in Hanoi, were reinfiltrated back into Cambodia. Their task was to help supervise the areas that would be captured by the Vietnamese communist armies.
On April 30, 1970, exactly six weeks after the Lon Nol coup, and four weeks after the North Vietnamese began their attacks on the Khmer Republic, troops of the United States and South Vietnam began a major attack on the communist sanctuaries inside Cambodia. The Vietnamese communists, anticipating the attack, fled in advance of the allied sweep. However public protests and congressional opposition within the United States precluded the extended American military operations inside Cambodia that any successful pursuit of the communist armies would have required.
When American forces withdrew from the border areas after only two months inside Cambodia, they had successfully cleared most of the base areas that threatened the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. But they had hardly diminished the communist manpower available inside Cambodia as a whole. In the first four months of fighting the Vietnamese communists had seized control of half the territory of Cambodia, In spite of continued American bombing attacks upon them, North Vietnam's battle hardened veterans remained in a good position to deal with the highly motivated but poorly trained and equipped army of the Khmer Republic.
For the next two years of the struggle for Cambodia, it would be Hanoi that would determine the outcome of military events. By the end of 1970 there were four North Vietnamese combat divisions in Cambodia, with some ten thousand of these troops targeting the republican army, and others protecting the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line to the South Vietnam battlefield.
At the beginning of the war it was obvious to both the Vietnamese communist leaders and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge that the latter were not yet strong enough to seize Phnom Penh on their own. If Cambodia was to have a communist government, then the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies would have to play a role. The Hanoi leaders made explicit in their secret meetings that their party's policy was to "strengthen the revolutionary base in Cambodia and lead the country along the path to socialism." And despite their dismay with the general capabilities of the Cambodian insurgency the Vietnamese were optimistic about the prospects of a communist victory in Cambodia. As one captured communist document summarized the Hanoi view: "The Cambodian revolution is entering a new phase ... From a vacillating neutralist regime, Cambodia can now follow a steady policy. When the enemy is defeated, she will become a democratic and independent country and proceed toward socialism."
Between April 1970 and March 1972 it was the battle hardened Vietnamese army which crushed most of the best units of the army of the Khmer Republic. During this period Vietnamese and Cambodian communist forces, after seizing control of an area, set up a political administration controlled by the National United Front (FUNK) and nominally under the authority of Prince Sihanouk's Royal Government (GRUNK) which was based in exile in Beijing. There were three elements in the political coalition opposed to the Khmer Republic. First, the Khmer Viet Minh communists, trained in Hanoi since 1954, and backed by Vietnamese communist army units. Second, the Pol Pot led Khmers Rouges guerrillas. Third, the followers of Prince Sihanouk, who were militarily weak.
FUNK propaganda appeals emphasizing Sihanouk's leadership role in the insurgency were important in the first year of the war, and reflected the influence of the North Vietnamese upon Cambodian insurgent propaganda. It undoubtedly helped the communists to recruit Cambodian peasant support. However sometime in the middle of 1971, as Pol Pot's Khmers Rouges leaders began to consolidate their control within FUNK, they began the process of removing the pro-Sihanouk elements from positions of power in insurgent-controlled areas. Two years later the Khmers Rouges began an intensive propaganda campaign to discredit the Prince in the eyes of the Cambodian peasants.
The Hanoi-trained communists never attained leadership positions within the Cambodian Revolutionary Organization itself. All the top military and political position within FUNK were held by the Pol Pot forces, who identified themselves as members of Angka Padevat (Revolutionary Organization). During 1970 and 1971, in some areas under Vietnamese military control Khmer Viet Minh political cadres held positions of local state power from the village to the tambon (sector) level. As for the Khmer Viet Minh military cadres, upon their return to Cambodia they were given low ranking positions within the insurgency. Eventually they, together with the political cadres, would be liquidated by Pol Pot's security forces.
By late 1971 the Pol Pot leadership of the KCP had become frustrated with Vietnamese attempts to control the insurgency. They decided to try to expel the Vietnamese communists from Cambodia, even though the Khmer Republic was at that time not yet defeated. Fighting broke out between the Pol Pot led guerillas and some Vietnamese units in late 1971 and especially in 1972.
However it was not the actions of Pol Pot's forces, but rather events pertaining to the struggle for South Vietnam, especially the launching of the Easter Offensive in March 1972, that led Hanoi to remove the bulk of its combat forces from Cambodia. The terrible losses suffered by Hanoi in that offensive, and the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements in January 1973, meant that Hanoi could no longer afford to be deeply involved in the struggle for control of Cambodia thereafter. Yet they did allow Chinese military supplies through to the Khmers Rouges until the war ended.
The Hanoi leaders had already laid the foundation for a Khmers Rouges victory. During the two years from March 1970 the North Vietnamese army had severely mauled the army of the Khmer Republic, and Hanoi sponsored cadres had recruited thousands of peasants under the deceptive banner of the politically impotent Sihanouk. Hanoi's actions by themselves did not determine the outcome of the war. But they greatly helped place Pol Pot's forces in a position to seize power in April 1975.
VIETNAM AND DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA
When Phnom Penh surrendered to insurgent forces on April 30, 1975, the Khmers Rouges victors were enthusiastically congratulated by the Vietnamese communists. By the time the North Vietnamese army had marched into Saigon some two weeks later, Phnom Penh and most of the major towns of Cambodia had been emptied of their former inhabitants. Cambodia, now renamed Democratic Kampuchea, had begun its long march towards the hyper Maoist Utopia. But in spite of real differences between the Vietnamese and Cambodian approaches to revolution, there were few public signs of Vietnamese communist dissatisfaction with their neighbour's social experiment.. However, concealed from international view, the tensions that had surfaced during the war years had been exacerbated. The ostensible issue of the dispute was the border between Vietnam and Cambodia.
Between 1870 and 1914 the French had redrawn the borders between Cambodia and Vietnam, by amputating large chunks of Cambodian territory and making them administratively part of their Vietnamese colonial entities. In June 1948, in the Along Bay Agreement, the French recognised their colony of Cochinchina -what had formerly been southern Cambodia (Kampuchea Krom to the Khmers Rouges) - as part of Vietnam. The resentment felt by most Cambodians at this humiliation, combined with the spirit of triumphalism that permeated the Khmers Rouges, fed into an amition for forceful recovery of lost territories. Sihanouk reports that in 1975 the Khmers Rouge had told him "we are going to recover Kampuchea Krom." Yet such ambition of the Khmers Rouges should have been restrained by military realities. The Vietnamese army was ten times the size of the Khmers Rouges army. Vietnam also had a significant air force and navy, which the DK did not.
Nevertheless in early May 1975 the Khmers Rouges attacked Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Thailand, claiming the islands that the French had assigned to their Vietnamese colony, and which had been inherited by South Vietnam. The Vietnamese, though surprised, responded decisively. By the end of May the Vietnamese had recaptured the islands by force, taking 300 prisoners. In early In early June the Vietnamese retaliated further by attacking and occupying the Cambodian island of Puolo Wai. These actions seemed to restrain for a time the Khmers Rouges enthusiasm for military challenges to Vietnam.
On June 2 Pol Pot received Nguyen Van Linh, who was representing the Vietnamese Workers Party (as the Vietnamese communist party was still called). Pol Pot told Linh that the fighting had been due to "ignorance of the local geography by Kampuchean troops." In June 1975 Pol Pot, leng Sary and Nuon Chea led a KCP delegation that secretly travelled to Hanoi for negotiations. In July 1975 a high powered delegation from Vietnam, headed by Communist Party first secretary Le Duan, undertook what was described as a "friendly visit" to Cambodia. In August the Cambodian island that Vietnam had occupied was returned.
Publicly the Vietnamese gave no hint of any problems. The September issue of the official Vietnamese monthly Vietnamese Courier spoke of the talks being held in a "cordial atmosphere full of brotherly spirit." The article went further when it praised Cambodia's new social order without qualification. "Liberated Cambodia is living in a new and healthy atmosphere."
The Vietnamese had retained some of their military forces on Cambodian soil after the joint communist victories of 1975. It took some political effort by the Chinese to convince the Hanoi leaders that the troops should be returned to Vietnam.
Throughout 1976 there were public greetings exchanged on special occasions. For example in April 1976 the first anniversary of the Khmers Rouges victory was hailed by Vietnamese party and government leaders. The Vietnamese media spoke glowingly of the "achievements" of the "Cambodian workers, peasants, and revolutionary army." Various official delegations from Vietnam visited Cambodia in 1976. In July an agreement was signed to open an air link between Hanoi and Phnom Penh. In September 1976 that air service was begun.
Thus by the end of 1976 the outward signs suggested close relations between the communist parties and governments of Vietnam and Cambodia. Yet these outward signs concealed the real feelings of both parties The Vietnamese leaders hoped that some pro-Vietnamese elements would appear within the leadership of the Kampuchean Communist Party. At the same time the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea were possessed by a seething hatred and fear of the rulers of Vietnam - a hatred and fear that threatened to boil over into armed confrontation.
The Vietnamese leaders had a poor grasp of the real political situation within the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea. They felt that Pol Pot and leng Sary were pro-Chinese and therefore bad people but that Nuon Chea was different. On November 6 1976 Pham Van Dong told the Soviet ambassador to Vietnam that "with Nuon Chea we are able to work better. We know him better than the other leaders of Kampuchea." At a meeting with the Soviet Ambassador on November 16, 1976 The Vietnamese Communist Party first secretary Le Duan stated that he was glad that Pol Pot and leng Sary had (apparently) been removed from the leadership, because they constituted "a pro-Chinese sect conducting a crude and severe policy." Le Duan also asserted that Nuon Chea, a member of the Standing Committee and Secretariat of the Kampuchean Communist Party, who had replaced Pol Pot as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea in September, was a person of pro-Vietnamese orientation. Le Duan added that "he is our man and my personal friend." Le Duan was to repeat this opinion in private conversations with Soviet diplomats over the next two years. .
The Cambodian communists had good reason to fear the ambitions of the Vietnamese communists in the long term. But the question arises as to how imminent a threat to the power of the Khmers Rouges the Vietnamese posed. The Vietnamese had devised a strategy for controlling the communist movements of Laos and Cambodia. A key element had been inflitrating the communist parties of these countries with people that Hanoi had trained and indoctrinated. In the case of Cambodia Hanoi had trained and supported the so-called Khmer Viet Minh, whom it assumed would act as its agents. So the Khmers Rouges leaders did have real enemies in Hanoi. But Pol Pot and his supporters had anticipated the Vietnamese strategy, and had preempted it by arresting all the Khmer Viet Minh soon after they returned from Hanoi with the Vietnamese army in the early 1970s, and again after the victory of 1975. Nevertheless Pol Pot and his inner circle still feared that Soviet or Vietnamese agents might still be hidden within the party. Thus Pol Pot conducted a series of bloody purges of the party, guided in his choice of victims by paranoid fears rather than real evidence of disloyalty or conspiracy. Not only did Pol Pot carry out bloody internal purges to crush what he thought were enemies within. He also directed the regime's violence against its neighbours.
In April 1977, on the second anniversary of the "liberation" of Phnom Penh, the government and government controlled media in Hanoi offered their congratulations and praise for the Democratic Kampuchea regime. But this goodwill gesture reaped no beneficial consequences for Vietnam. The Khmers Rouges chose the second anniversary of the communist conquest of South Vietnam to leave a bloody message to their former "elder brothers." On April 30, 1977 DK units attacked several villages and towns in An Giang and Chau Doc provinces of South Vietnam, burning houses and killing hundreds of civilians. The Vietnamese leaders were shocked by this unprovoked attack and could not understand any strategic rationale. Nevertheless they decided upon military retaliation. Throughout 1977 armed clashes occurred between Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea in the border area. Yet when in September 1977 Pol Pot publicly announced that what had previously been known as the Revolutionary Organisation (Angkar Padevat) was in fact the Kampuchean Communist Party, the Vietnamese Communist Party Central Committee sent a message of congratulations, publicly expressing its joy. Interestingly, this message was sent after hundreds of Vietnamese civilians had been killed in Khmers Rouges raids on September 24.
In a conversation with the Soviet ambassador in Hanoi in November 1977 Le Duan indicated that he thought that the anti-Vietnamese behaviour of the DK leaders was because of the outlooks of the “Troskyist” Pol Pot and the “fierce nationalist and pro-Chinese” Ieng Sary. But Le Duan thought that Nuon Chea and Son Sen “have a positive attitude towards Vietnam.” Apparently Le Duan and the other Vietnamese leaders were hoping that the foreign policies of Democratic Kampuchea could be changed by a coup within the Khmers Rouges leadership circles.
In December 1977 the fighting between Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea escalated. Hanoi used warplanes, artillery and about 20,000 men in an attack inside the Parrot's Beak region of Svay Rieng. After inflicting a serious defeat on the army of Democratic Kampuchea, the Vietnamese withdrew, taking with them thousands of prisoners as well as civilian refugees. They might have been in a position to seize Phnom Penh at that point. But they were concerned about what China’s reaction might be, and hoped that their strong but limited military blows would force the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea to negotiate a settlement. Instead the leaders of DK hardened their attitudes. The DK broke diplomatic regions on December 31, 1977. And they declared the Vietnamese withdrawal a major victory for “the Kampuchean revolution.” Despite their losses, and despite the massive disparity between the Vietnamese and Cambodian armies, with the Vietnamese superiority in both numbers (more than eight one) and quality of military equipment, the army of Democratic Kampuchea persisted in launching attacks inside Vietnamese territory. Phnom Penh radio broadcasts exhorted Cambodians to fight and win total victory over Vietnam, with the deranged assertion that one Kampuchean soldier was equal to thirty Vietnamese. The DK leadership was living in a fantasy world.
Upon realising that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea was utterly implacable, Hanoi decided upon a new strategy for changing the DK regime. After two and a half years of pretending that Democratic Kampuchea was a nice regime for Cambodians to live under, they began for the first time to denounce the domestic terror of the DK. Between January and June they slowly changed their description of the DK leadership from :the Kampuchean authorities” to the “Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique.” Hanoi radio called for the need to save the Cambodian people from genocide at the hands of the “Pol Pot-leng Sary clique.”
Vietnam began building a “liberation army" from among the refugees and other civilians that they had brought back from Cambodia. Pol Pot also inadvertently helped the Vietnamese to build their army by conducting his internal terror and purges of the party and army. The brutal terror resulted in many cadres and even units of the DK army fleeing for their lives to Vietnam. These defectors, mostly from the Eastern Zone of Democratic Kampuchea, joined the forces being assembled by Vietnam. But The Vetnamese leaders realised that an insurgency based upon the "liberation army" of Cambodians would not be strong enough to prevail. Sometime in the middle of 1978 the Vietnamese leaders decided that they had to launch a full scale invasion of Cambodia, and install a new regime that would not only not be hostile, but also one that would be friendly to Vietnam.
The Soviets were encouraged to increase their military aid to Vietnam, with the pretense that China was threatening Vietnam’s independence. Throughout the latter half of 1978 the Vietnamese prepared their military forces, and the psychological climate of revulsion for the DK regime. They hoped to achieve an easy victory over their former comrades and face few negative consequences.
On December 25 1978 Vietnam launched an all out invasion of Cambodia, As anticipated, resistance to the invasion collapsed quickly. But that invasion, and especially the Vietnamese refusal to withdraw, turned international public opinion and international political leaders strongly against Vietnam. China countered the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia by launching its own invasion of north Vietnam in February 1979. That attack was not in itself a military success for China. But it forced Vietnam to concentrate troops on its northern border and gave ASEAN confidence to be able to provide support for a coalition of Cambodian forces, including the Khmers Rouges, who were resisting Vietnam's occupation.
After more than a decade of Vietnamese military occupation of Cambodia, the pressures from United Nations Chinese American and Southeast Asian nations, and the cut off of Soviet and Eastern European aid, meant that by 1989 the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia had become untenable. The United Nations Secure Council Permanent Five agreed on a plan whereby the UN would undertake a temporary administration of Cambodia, with the purpose of bringing freedom and a just peace to the Cambodian people.
CONCLUSIONS
For approximately sixty years since the formation of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930, the Vietnamese communists had always considered Cambodia part of an Indochinese Federation of socialist states, under the domination of the more numerous and powerful Vietnamese "elder brothers." The Vietnamese communist strategy was initially to infiltrate the communist movements of the neighbouring countries with ethnic Vietnamese. By the 1950s, the Vietnamese strategy was to infiltrate the Cambodian movement with ethnic Khmer whom Vietnam had trained and indoctrinated. It was certain that those Khmer whom Vietnam had trained would be loyal to Vietnam. This was the first of many misjudgments by the Vietnamese communist leaders. Many of those whom the Vietnamese communists had trained and indoctrinated turned into their enemies.
Nevertheless, based on their misperceptions of the situation, the Vietnamese communists supported the Khmers Rouges revolution. The reasons for the Khmers Rouges coming to power in 1975 were numerous and complex. However we can see from the history of Vietnamese and Cambodian communism that Vietnam played a vital role in laying the foundations for the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea.
After the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea by the Pol Pot led Khmers Rouges, the Vietnamese communists attempted to establish friendly relations with their weaker neighbour. They celebrated what they described as the "liberation" of Cambodia by the Khmers Rouges. However Pol Pot was driven by a self-destructive combination of paranoia and delusions of grandeur. He provoked the Vietnamese into an unfriendly stance by his attacks upon Vietnamese territory and civilians. And Pol Pot also provided the Vietnamese with recruits for their imperial ambition by terrorising and massacring many of his own political and military cadres. Many Khmers Rouges fled for their lives to Vietnam in 1977 and 1978, and provided the personnel for the governments that Hanoi established in Cambodia from 1979 onwards.
Hanoi's motives were never humanitarian but only self-interested. On the one hand we must not forget that the Vietnamese had a legitimate right to self defence, and the 1978 invasion was consistent with that. But the ten year military occupation, and Hanoi's simultaneous refusal to recognise the noncommunist forces or the resolutions of the United Nations, showed that they were also motivated by an imperial ambition.
Forces beyond the control of Vietnam, especially the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist bloc, as well as the pressures of China and ASEAN, eventually caused the Vietnamese to withdraw their forces from Cambodia. But some of Vietnam's political influence upon Cambodia still remains.
Extracted from:
- Stephen J. MORRIS : Speech On the Occasion of Public Forum on Khmer Rouge History at Sunway Hotel, 25-26 January 2007
In the official mythology of the Khmers Rouges, their military victory in 1975, and the maintenance of their rule over Cambodia from 1975 until 1978 (the rule of Angka Padevat in the state of Democratic Kampuchea), was portrayed as a result of the efforts of Cambodians alone. This is the most ridiculous fantasy. Without the support of the Vietnamese and Chinese communists the regime known as Democratic Kampuchea would never have existed. Moreover, the leading Cambodian communists were deeply enmeshed in the activities of the communist world for most of their lives.
I will show how Vietnam played a vital role in the rise of the Khmers Rouges to power, and how the Vietnamese communist leaders were happy to let the Khmers Rouges do as they wished in power, so long as the regime created - Democratic Kampuchea - did not threaten or embarrass Vietnam. However the irrational belligerence of Pol Pot and his entourage in foreign policy soon became a source of concern for Hanoi, and Democratic Kampuchea's violent behaviour towards its more powerful neighbour pushed Vietnam towards a policy of armed retaliation, invasion and occupation.
VIETNAM AND THE RISE OF CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM
The Vietnamese communists were deeply involved in the inception and formation of the Cambodian communist movement. In 1930 the agent of the Communist International (Comintem) known as Nguyen Ai Quoc -- who in 1943 changed his alias to Ho Chi Minh -- founded the Vietnamese Communist Party at a meeting held in the British colony of Hong Kong. But after filing the founding documents with his employers in Moscow, Quoc was instructed by the Comintem to change the name of the party to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). The Comintem argued that "Not only does Indochina have a geographic, economic and political unity, but above all we have a need for unity of struggle, for a unique direction of all of the Indochinese proletariat opposed to all the forces of reaction in Indochina, to the policy of division of French imperialism." The Comintern's intention was clear: Emancipation of the three different nations of French Indochina was to be carried out not by the independent efforts of each of the three peoples, but rather under Vietnamese Communist tutelage.
As it happened there were no revolutionary movements in Cambodia at this time. And of the 211 founding members of the Indochinese Communist Party, not a single one was from Cambodia or Laos. One finds in the Comintem archives in Moscow, Quoc's actual correspondence about this with his leaders. In September 1930 Nguyen Ai Quoc claimed to have an ICP party membership of 124, of which 120 were Chinese and 4 were Annamites [Vietnamese]. The Party controlled labor union consisted of 300 ethnic Chinese. The French suppressed the communist structures throughout Indochina in 1935, and by March 1935 there were only 9 communists in all of Cambodia. But the ethnic situation in Cambodia remained much the same throughout the 1930s. In 1938 the Cambodian branch of the ICP had a mere 16 members, all of them ethnic Chinese.
After World War II the Vietnamese communists, operating through their front organization popularly known as the Viet Minh, began their offensive against the French colonialists. However they sought to rely heavily upon ethnic Vietnamese for their efforts. Two of the most important Viet Minh leaders during the 1940s were Sieu Heng and Son Ngoc Minh, both of mixed Vietnamese and Khmer ancestry. Armed units of the Viet Minh were stationed in Battambang, where all the units were ethnic Vietnamese, and in southeast Cambodia, where again ethnic Vietnamese were predominant in the revolutionary committees.
In March 1950, at a meeting of Viet Minh and Khmer Issarak leaders held in Ha Tien, Vietnam, Nguyen Than Son, head of the Viet Minh's committee for foreign affairs in southern Vietnam, spoke of the Vietnamese emigre population in Cambodia as a "driving force destined to set off the Revolutionary Movement in Cambodia." Later he seemed to be complaining when he stated that the ICP, which controlled the Cambodian Movement, was composed of mostly Vietnamese and "did not have deep roots among the Khmer people."
In 1951 the underground ICP resurfaced as the Vietnam Workers Party, and simultaneously announced the emergence of two "fraternal" parties for Laos and Cambodia. The latter was called the Revolutionary Cambodian People's Party. According to Bernard Fall the statutes of the Cambodian party had to be translated from Vietnamese into Cambodian, and ethnic Vietnamese dominated the leadership of the party. Over the next three years the Vietnamese tried to recruit ethnic Cambodians into the political and military structures of the party, but with limited success. For example, according to a French intelligence document of 1952, the Phnom Penh cell secretariat had a membership of 34, of whom 27 were Vietnamese, 3 were Chinese, and only four were Cambodians.
In November 1953 Cambodia under the royal government of Sihanouk was given complete independence by the French. After the signing of the Geneva Agreements in 1954, the Viet Minh Sees retreated from Cambodia, taking with them half of the cadres of the Revolutionary Cambodian Party. These cadres were to be given further training in Hanoi, and kept in reserve until history provided an opportune moment for their return.
During this period of the mid 1950s there was influx of younger communists back to Cambodia from a period of study France. Most notable of this group was Pol Pot (then known as Saloth Sar, Jeng Sary, Khieu Samohan, Hou Youn and Hu Nim. Some of these communists had come into contact with the ideas of Marx and Lenin before, they went to France. But they had all developed their communist ideology in France under the influence of the Stalinist French communist party. Some of them, like Pol Pot had fought in the last stages of the Viet Minh war against the French. But we should not make too much of the French experience of Pol Pot and long Sary. because other important members of the future Khmer Rouge inner circle -- notably Nuon Chea and Ta Mok -- never went to France. More important to note is that none of the younger communists exhibited any anti-Vietnamese sentiment at this time.
The returnees from France were able to seize control of the Cambodian communist movement by the ena of the 1950s Yet in 1960 the party's name was changed to Kampuchean Workers Party, to conform with the Vietnamese name, and in 1966 it was changed again to Kampuchean Communist Party In 1963 Pol Pot became secretary general of the party. Throughout the 1960s the Kampuchean communists remained friendly and deferential towards the Vietnamese. In July 1965 Pol Pot traveled to Hanoi and discussed with the Vietnamese politburo the appropriate policy for Cambodia.
It is not exactly clear when the Cambodian communists developed their attachment to Maoism. The imbibing of Maoist ideology by the Khmer Rouge seems to have been quite gradual. And the Vietnamese communists themselves must have played some direct role in assisting that process since they themselves had been under Chinese communist influence during the years 1950-56 and 1963-64, years when Vietnamese communist influence over Cambodian communists was still significant. Pol Pot made his first trip to China in late 1965 and stayed into 1966. This was the beginning o the Maoist terror and ideological campaign known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot visited China again in 1970. Pol Pot's visits to China probably did not initiate, but most likely intensified, Maoist ideological influence upon the Khmer Rouge.
In January 1968 the Kampuchean Communist Party initiated an armed uprising against the royal government of Prince Sihanouk. This would seem to have been in contradiction with the Vietnamese communist policy of recognizing the royal Cambodian government, a government which had allowed the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to use eastern Cambodia as a sanctuary and supply line in their war against the American-backed anticommunist government of South Vietnam. However this Khmers Rouges uprising was mostly confined to the hill dwellers (Khmer Loeu) of the mountainous of northeast Cambodia - Ratanakiri and Mondolkiri - and it did not pose any real threat to he survival of the government of Prince Sihanouk. Hence it did not really threaten the strategy of the North Vietnamese.
During the late 1960s many Cambodians, especially among the Cambodian political and military elites became unhappy with the Vietnamese communist occupation of Cambodian soil. They preferred Cambodia to have a closer relationship with the United States. Sihaniouk slowly and reluctantly changed his policy in this regard, and in 1970 he traveled to China and the Soviet Union to try and persuade the big communist powers to pressure Hanoi to remove its forces from Cambodia, Sihanouk was not successful, and on March 18, 1970, while Sihanouk was still in Moscow, Lon Nol led a bloodless palace coup d'etat. This totally changed Cambodia's situation.
Manv people think that the coup d'etat led by Lon Nol, was the work of the United States and its Central Intelligence Agency (ClA). At the time Hanoi, Beijing and Moscow, and their western friends with the help of Sihanouk, did everything to try to spread that myth. There is absolutely no evidence of that. No evidence has been found even by the most critical western writer, William Shawcross. Of course the Americans welcomed the coup.
Many people also think that it was the US and South Vietnamese invasion of eastern Cambodia on April 30, 1970, that brought Cambodia into the Vietnam war. That is also plainly false. It was me Vietnamese communists who spread the Vietnam war inside Cambodia. One of Lon Nol's first public proclamations was to demand that the Vietnamese communist forces leave Cambodia within 48 hours. They ignored his demand, and at the end of March 1970 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces moved out of their border sanctuaries and began to attack the armed forces and towns of the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. At the same time approximately one thousand of the Khmer Viet Minh, who had been trained in Hanoi, were reinfiltrated back into Cambodia. Their task was to help supervise the areas that would be captured by the Vietnamese communist armies.
On April 30, 1970, exactly six weeks after the Lon Nol coup, and four weeks after the North Vietnamese began their attacks on the Khmer Republic, troops of the United States and South Vietnam began a major attack on the communist sanctuaries inside Cambodia. The Vietnamese communists, anticipating the attack, fled in advance of the allied sweep. However public protests and congressional opposition within the United States precluded the extended American military operations inside Cambodia that any successful pursuit of the communist armies would have required.
When American forces withdrew from the border areas after only two months inside Cambodia, they had successfully cleared most of the base areas that threatened the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. But they had hardly diminished the communist manpower available inside Cambodia as a whole. In the first four months of fighting the Vietnamese communists had seized control of half the territory of Cambodia, In spite of continued American bombing attacks upon them, North Vietnam's battle hardened veterans remained in a good position to deal with the highly motivated but poorly trained and equipped army of the Khmer Republic.
For the next two years of the struggle for Cambodia, it would be Hanoi that would determine the outcome of military events. By the end of 1970 there were four North Vietnamese combat divisions in Cambodia, with some ten thousand of these troops targeting the republican army, and others protecting the Ho Chi Minh Trail supply line to the South Vietnam battlefield.
At the beginning of the war it was obvious to both the Vietnamese communist leaders and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge that the latter were not yet strong enough to seize Phnom Penh on their own. If Cambodia was to have a communist government, then the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies would have to play a role. The Hanoi leaders made explicit in their secret meetings that their party's policy was to "strengthen the revolutionary base in Cambodia and lead the country along the path to socialism." And despite their dismay with the general capabilities of the Cambodian insurgency the Vietnamese were optimistic about the prospects of a communist victory in Cambodia. As one captured communist document summarized the Hanoi view: "The Cambodian revolution is entering a new phase ... From a vacillating neutralist regime, Cambodia can now follow a steady policy. When the enemy is defeated, she will become a democratic and independent country and proceed toward socialism."
Between April 1970 and March 1972 it was the battle hardened Vietnamese army which crushed most of the best units of the army of the Khmer Republic. During this period Vietnamese and Cambodian communist forces, after seizing control of an area, set up a political administration controlled by the National United Front (FUNK) and nominally under the authority of Prince Sihanouk's Royal Government (GRUNK) which was based in exile in Beijing. There were three elements in the political coalition opposed to the Khmer Republic. First, the Khmer Viet Minh communists, trained in Hanoi since 1954, and backed by Vietnamese communist army units. Second, the Pol Pot led Khmers Rouges guerrillas. Third, the followers of Prince Sihanouk, who were militarily weak.
FUNK propaganda appeals emphasizing Sihanouk's leadership role in the insurgency were important in the first year of the war, and reflected the influence of the North Vietnamese upon Cambodian insurgent propaganda. It undoubtedly helped the communists to recruit Cambodian peasant support. However sometime in the middle of 1971, as Pol Pot's Khmers Rouges leaders began to consolidate their control within FUNK, they began the process of removing the pro-Sihanouk elements from positions of power in insurgent-controlled areas. Two years later the Khmers Rouges began an intensive propaganda campaign to discredit the Prince in the eyes of the Cambodian peasants.
The Hanoi-trained communists never attained leadership positions within the Cambodian Revolutionary Organization itself. All the top military and political position within FUNK were held by the Pol Pot forces, who identified themselves as members of Angka Padevat (Revolutionary Organization). During 1970 and 1971, in some areas under Vietnamese military control Khmer Viet Minh political cadres held positions of local state power from the village to the tambon (sector) level. As for the Khmer Viet Minh military cadres, upon their return to Cambodia they were given low ranking positions within the insurgency. Eventually they, together with the political cadres, would be liquidated by Pol Pot's security forces.
By late 1971 the Pol Pot leadership of the KCP had become frustrated with Vietnamese attempts to control the insurgency. They decided to try to expel the Vietnamese communists from Cambodia, even though the Khmer Republic was at that time not yet defeated. Fighting broke out between the Pol Pot led guerillas and some Vietnamese units in late 1971 and especially in 1972.
However it was not the actions of Pol Pot's forces, but rather events pertaining to the struggle for South Vietnam, especially the launching of the Easter Offensive in March 1972, that led Hanoi to remove the bulk of its combat forces from Cambodia. The terrible losses suffered by Hanoi in that offensive, and the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements in January 1973, meant that Hanoi could no longer afford to be deeply involved in the struggle for control of Cambodia thereafter. Yet they did allow Chinese military supplies through to the Khmers Rouges until the war ended.
The Hanoi leaders had already laid the foundation for a Khmers Rouges victory. During the two years from March 1970 the North Vietnamese army had severely mauled the army of the Khmer Republic, and Hanoi sponsored cadres had recruited thousands of peasants under the deceptive banner of the politically impotent Sihanouk. Hanoi's actions by themselves did not determine the outcome of the war. But they greatly helped place Pol Pot's forces in a position to seize power in April 1975.
VIETNAM AND DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA
When Phnom Penh surrendered to insurgent forces on April 30, 1975, the Khmers Rouges victors were enthusiastically congratulated by the Vietnamese communists. By the time the North Vietnamese army had marched into Saigon some two weeks later, Phnom Penh and most of the major towns of Cambodia had been emptied of their former inhabitants. Cambodia, now renamed Democratic Kampuchea, had begun its long march towards the hyper Maoist Utopia. But in spite of real differences between the Vietnamese and Cambodian approaches to revolution, there were few public signs of Vietnamese communist dissatisfaction with their neighbour's social experiment.. However, concealed from international view, the tensions that had surfaced during the war years had been exacerbated. The ostensible issue of the dispute was the border between Vietnam and Cambodia.
Between 1870 and 1914 the French had redrawn the borders between Cambodia and Vietnam, by amputating large chunks of Cambodian territory and making them administratively part of their Vietnamese colonial entities. In June 1948, in the Along Bay Agreement, the French recognised their colony of Cochinchina -what had formerly been southern Cambodia (Kampuchea Krom to the Khmers Rouges) - as part of Vietnam. The resentment felt by most Cambodians at this humiliation, combined with the spirit of triumphalism that permeated the Khmers Rouges, fed into an amition for forceful recovery of lost territories. Sihanouk reports that in 1975 the Khmers Rouge had told him "we are going to recover Kampuchea Krom." Yet such ambition of the Khmers Rouges should have been restrained by military realities. The Vietnamese army was ten times the size of the Khmers Rouges army. Vietnam also had a significant air force and navy, which the DK did not.
Nevertheless in early May 1975 the Khmers Rouges attacked Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Thailand, claiming the islands that the French had assigned to their Vietnamese colony, and which had been inherited by South Vietnam. The Vietnamese, though surprised, responded decisively. By the end of May the Vietnamese had recaptured the islands by force, taking 300 prisoners. In early In early June the Vietnamese retaliated further by attacking and occupying the Cambodian island of Puolo Wai. These actions seemed to restrain for a time the Khmers Rouges enthusiasm for military challenges to Vietnam.
On June 2 Pol Pot received Nguyen Van Linh, who was representing the Vietnamese Workers Party (as the Vietnamese communist party was still called). Pol Pot told Linh that the fighting had been due to "ignorance of the local geography by Kampuchean troops." In June 1975 Pol Pot, leng Sary and Nuon Chea led a KCP delegation that secretly travelled to Hanoi for negotiations. In July 1975 a high powered delegation from Vietnam, headed by Communist Party first secretary Le Duan, undertook what was described as a "friendly visit" to Cambodia. In August the Cambodian island that Vietnam had occupied was returned.
Publicly the Vietnamese gave no hint of any problems. The September issue of the official Vietnamese monthly Vietnamese Courier spoke of the talks being held in a "cordial atmosphere full of brotherly spirit." The article went further when it praised Cambodia's new social order without qualification. "Liberated Cambodia is living in a new and healthy atmosphere."
The Vietnamese had retained some of their military forces on Cambodian soil after the joint communist victories of 1975. It took some political effort by the Chinese to convince the Hanoi leaders that the troops should be returned to Vietnam.
Throughout 1976 there were public greetings exchanged on special occasions. For example in April 1976 the first anniversary of the Khmers Rouges victory was hailed by Vietnamese party and government leaders. The Vietnamese media spoke glowingly of the "achievements" of the "Cambodian workers, peasants, and revolutionary army." Various official delegations from Vietnam visited Cambodia in 1976. In July an agreement was signed to open an air link between Hanoi and Phnom Penh. In September 1976 that air service was begun.
Thus by the end of 1976 the outward signs suggested close relations between the communist parties and governments of Vietnam and Cambodia. Yet these outward signs concealed the real feelings of both parties The Vietnamese leaders hoped that some pro-Vietnamese elements would appear within the leadership of the Kampuchean Communist Party. At the same time the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea were possessed by a seething hatred and fear of the rulers of Vietnam - a hatred and fear that threatened to boil over into armed confrontation.
The Vietnamese leaders had a poor grasp of the real political situation within the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea. They felt that Pol Pot and leng Sary were pro-Chinese and therefore bad people but that Nuon Chea was different. On November 6 1976 Pham Van Dong told the Soviet ambassador to Vietnam that "with Nuon Chea we are able to work better. We know him better than the other leaders of Kampuchea." At a meeting with the Soviet Ambassador on November 16, 1976 The Vietnamese Communist Party first secretary Le Duan stated that he was glad that Pol Pot and leng Sary had (apparently) been removed from the leadership, because they constituted "a pro-Chinese sect conducting a crude and severe policy." Le Duan also asserted that Nuon Chea, a member of the Standing Committee and Secretariat of the Kampuchean Communist Party, who had replaced Pol Pot as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea in September, was a person of pro-Vietnamese orientation. Le Duan added that "he is our man and my personal friend." Le Duan was to repeat this opinion in private conversations with Soviet diplomats over the next two years. .
The Cambodian communists had good reason to fear the ambitions of the Vietnamese communists in the long term. But the question arises as to how imminent a threat to the power of the Khmers Rouges the Vietnamese posed. The Vietnamese had devised a strategy for controlling the communist movements of Laos and Cambodia. A key element had been inflitrating the communist parties of these countries with people that Hanoi had trained and indoctrinated. In the case of Cambodia Hanoi had trained and supported the so-called Khmer Viet Minh, whom it assumed would act as its agents. So the Khmers Rouges leaders did have real enemies in Hanoi. But Pol Pot and his supporters had anticipated the Vietnamese strategy, and had preempted it by arresting all the Khmer Viet Minh soon after they returned from Hanoi with the Vietnamese army in the early 1970s, and again after the victory of 1975. Nevertheless Pol Pot and his inner circle still feared that Soviet or Vietnamese agents might still be hidden within the party. Thus Pol Pot conducted a series of bloody purges of the party, guided in his choice of victims by paranoid fears rather than real evidence of disloyalty or conspiracy. Not only did Pol Pot carry out bloody internal purges to crush what he thought were enemies within. He also directed the regime's violence against its neighbours.
In April 1977, on the second anniversary of the "liberation" of Phnom Penh, the government and government controlled media in Hanoi offered their congratulations and praise for the Democratic Kampuchea regime. But this goodwill gesture reaped no beneficial consequences for Vietnam. The Khmers Rouges chose the second anniversary of the communist conquest of South Vietnam to leave a bloody message to their former "elder brothers." On April 30, 1977 DK units attacked several villages and towns in An Giang and Chau Doc provinces of South Vietnam, burning houses and killing hundreds of civilians. The Vietnamese leaders were shocked by this unprovoked attack and could not understand any strategic rationale. Nevertheless they decided upon military retaliation. Throughout 1977 armed clashes occurred between Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea in the border area. Yet when in September 1977 Pol Pot publicly announced that what had previously been known as the Revolutionary Organisation (Angkar Padevat) was in fact the Kampuchean Communist Party, the Vietnamese Communist Party Central Committee sent a message of congratulations, publicly expressing its joy. Interestingly, this message was sent after hundreds of Vietnamese civilians had been killed in Khmers Rouges raids on September 24.
In a conversation with the Soviet ambassador in Hanoi in November 1977 Le Duan indicated that he thought that the anti-Vietnamese behaviour of the DK leaders was because of the outlooks of the “Troskyist” Pol Pot and the “fierce nationalist and pro-Chinese” Ieng Sary. But Le Duan thought that Nuon Chea and Son Sen “have a positive attitude towards Vietnam.” Apparently Le Duan and the other Vietnamese leaders were hoping that the foreign policies of Democratic Kampuchea could be changed by a coup within the Khmers Rouges leadership circles.
In December 1977 the fighting between Vietnam and Democratic Kampuchea escalated. Hanoi used warplanes, artillery and about 20,000 men in an attack inside the Parrot's Beak region of Svay Rieng. After inflicting a serious defeat on the army of Democratic Kampuchea, the Vietnamese withdrew, taking with them thousands of prisoners as well as civilian refugees. They might have been in a position to seize Phnom Penh at that point. But they were concerned about what China’s reaction might be, and hoped that their strong but limited military blows would force the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea to negotiate a settlement. Instead the leaders of DK hardened their attitudes. The DK broke diplomatic regions on December 31, 1977. And they declared the Vietnamese withdrawal a major victory for “the Kampuchean revolution.” Despite their losses, and despite the massive disparity between the Vietnamese and Cambodian armies, with the Vietnamese superiority in both numbers (more than eight one) and quality of military equipment, the army of Democratic Kampuchea persisted in launching attacks inside Vietnamese territory. Phnom Penh radio broadcasts exhorted Cambodians to fight and win total victory over Vietnam, with the deranged assertion that one Kampuchean soldier was equal to thirty Vietnamese. The DK leadership was living in a fantasy world.
Upon realising that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea was utterly implacable, Hanoi decided upon a new strategy for changing the DK regime. After two and a half years of pretending that Democratic Kampuchea was a nice regime for Cambodians to live under, they began for the first time to denounce the domestic terror of the DK. Between January and June they slowly changed their description of the DK leadership from :the Kampuchean authorities” to the “Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique.” Hanoi radio called for the need to save the Cambodian people from genocide at the hands of the “Pol Pot-leng Sary clique.”
Vietnam began building a “liberation army" from among the refugees and other civilians that they had brought back from Cambodia. Pol Pot also inadvertently helped the Vietnamese to build their army by conducting his internal terror and purges of the party and army. The brutal terror resulted in many cadres and even units of the DK army fleeing for their lives to Vietnam. These defectors, mostly from the Eastern Zone of Democratic Kampuchea, joined the forces being assembled by Vietnam. But The Vetnamese leaders realised that an insurgency based upon the "liberation army" of Cambodians would not be strong enough to prevail. Sometime in the middle of 1978 the Vietnamese leaders decided that they had to launch a full scale invasion of Cambodia, and install a new regime that would not only not be hostile, but also one that would be friendly to Vietnam.
The Soviets were encouraged to increase their military aid to Vietnam, with the pretense that China was threatening Vietnam’s independence. Throughout the latter half of 1978 the Vietnamese prepared their military forces, and the psychological climate of revulsion for the DK regime. They hoped to achieve an easy victory over their former comrades and face few negative consequences.
On December 25 1978 Vietnam launched an all out invasion of Cambodia, As anticipated, resistance to the invasion collapsed quickly. But that invasion, and especially the Vietnamese refusal to withdraw, turned international public opinion and international political leaders strongly against Vietnam. China countered the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia by launching its own invasion of north Vietnam in February 1979. That attack was not in itself a military success for China. But it forced Vietnam to concentrate troops on its northern border and gave ASEAN confidence to be able to provide support for a coalition of Cambodian forces, including the Khmers Rouges, who were resisting Vietnam's occupation.
After more than a decade of Vietnamese military occupation of Cambodia, the pressures from United Nations Chinese American and Southeast Asian nations, and the cut off of Soviet and Eastern European aid, meant that by 1989 the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia had become untenable. The United Nations Secure Council Permanent Five agreed on a plan whereby the UN would undertake a temporary administration of Cambodia, with the purpose of bringing freedom and a just peace to the Cambodian people.
CONCLUSIONS
For approximately sixty years since the formation of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930, the Vietnamese communists had always considered Cambodia part of an Indochinese Federation of socialist states, under the domination of the more numerous and powerful Vietnamese "elder brothers." The Vietnamese communist strategy was initially to infiltrate the communist movements of the neighbouring countries with ethnic Vietnamese. By the 1950s, the Vietnamese strategy was to infiltrate the Cambodian movement with ethnic Khmer whom Vietnam had trained and indoctrinated. It was certain that those Khmer whom Vietnam had trained would be loyal to Vietnam. This was the first of many misjudgments by the Vietnamese communist leaders. Many of those whom the Vietnamese communists had trained and indoctrinated turned into their enemies.
Nevertheless, based on their misperceptions of the situation, the Vietnamese communists supported the Khmers Rouges revolution. The reasons for the Khmers Rouges coming to power in 1975 were numerous and complex. However we can see from the history of Vietnamese and Cambodian communism that Vietnam played a vital role in laying the foundations for the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea.
After the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea by the Pol Pot led Khmers Rouges, the Vietnamese communists attempted to establish friendly relations with their weaker neighbour. They celebrated what they described as the "liberation" of Cambodia by the Khmers Rouges. However Pol Pot was driven by a self-destructive combination of paranoia and delusions of grandeur. He provoked the Vietnamese into an unfriendly stance by his attacks upon Vietnamese territory and civilians. And Pol Pot also provided the Vietnamese with recruits for their imperial ambition by terrorising and massacring many of his own political and military cadres. Many Khmers Rouges fled for their lives to Vietnam in 1977 and 1978, and provided the personnel for the governments that Hanoi established in Cambodia from 1979 onwards.
Hanoi's motives were never humanitarian but only self-interested. On the one hand we must not forget that the Vietnamese had a legitimate right to self defence, and the 1978 invasion was consistent with that. But the ten year military occupation, and Hanoi's simultaneous refusal to recognise the noncommunist forces or the resolutions of the United Nations, showed that they were also motivated by an imperial ambition.
Forces beyond the control of Vietnam, especially the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist bloc, as well as the pressures of China and ASEAN, eventually caused the Vietnamese to withdraw their forces from Cambodia. But some of Vietnam's political influence upon Cambodia still remains.
Extracted from:
- Stephen J. MORRIS : Speech On the Occasion of Public Forum on Khmer Rouge History at Sunway Hotel, 25-26 January 2007
55 comments:
KI, thank you for publishig this article. Very informative to the new generation.
What a fantastic article! Cambodia is still under the political influence of the the VN. There are so many similiarities between the current Cambodia state now compare to that of the Pol Pot's regime. As anyone in Cambodia now, how "free" are they? Most fear when spoke against the ruling party. Yeah, one thing for sure, Cambodians are only good at killing Cambodians.
whether the KR trial is going to go forward or not, the WORLD HAS ALREADY BEEN APPRISED ABOUT THE SAVAGE/VICIOUS HANOI GOVERNMENT'S PLANS. Khmer people will not rest until the truth reveal!
LOL, I hardly see the different
between the US in Iraq and this.
How long has it been now since
Saddam regime was toppled?
Give it up, Ah Khmer-Yuons. Vietnam
and Khmer frienship will live on.
You got that, you moron?
That is what khmers try to tell the whole world about the master mind of veit killing field in Cambodia. The Veit trained khmers to kill khmers in the name of "INDOCHINE REVOLUTION", and the end the veit will take all khmers' land for their own beneficial.
Champa, Prey Nokor(Saigon)as for example, and now deep in to Cambodians'land by fake veit investors such as rubber plantation in easthern provinces, Kompong thom, kompong spue, Tole Sap and in Saim Reap. Need not to maintion in Phnom Penh city --cause it was polluted by the many veit prostitute whom, Mr.Hun Sen and Hok Longdy knew well, didn't want to go to vote on that election day. In fact, most of them are illegal immigration back up voting list people for the CPP.
Eh, Ah Choy Maraiy! Your brain is about the size of a crawfish's brain. Every comment you make seems repeating. That's what happened, when Ah pler stay in the foxhole too long. You son of a bitch, you mother understand what you are writing, she probably wishes you had never born, ass hole!
good points, annon. @11:30 AM!
Keep sharing!
Are you saying that the US
masterminded the killing of those
people in Iraq's mass grave also?
Those who wish to know more about the reasons behind Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia can visit the following website and read the section on "Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia, 1978" :http://www.iciss.ca/02_Section_B-en.asp#cambodia.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Hello Dr. LM Hay,
Thank you and Happy New Year to you and your love ones.
2L/PaperChase
So, what do you think about the
Vietnam invasion of Cambodia, Dr.
Lao? Was it an inhumane violation
of the International law?
The US dropped 539,129 tons of bombs over the Cambodian countryside between 1969 and 1973. In terms of destruction it is the equivalent of 40 nuclear bombs of the same size as the one dropped on Hiroshima. No one is without guilt in the Cambodian tragedy. That is why the KR tribunal should be free to call anyone - including Kissinger, the Chinese and the Vietnamese leaders.
Mr.1:59 PM
Please visit the following website and read the section on "Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia,1978" to find answers to your question :
http://www.iciss.ca/02_Section_B-en.asp#cambodia.
Enjoy your reading and new discovery, and let me know your reaction to that piece of writing.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Vietnam did not rescue Cambodia from a serious violation of the human right commited by Pol Pot.
Vietnam acted in self defense, because of Pol Pot invaded Vietnam. It was all possible, because they got some help from some 20,000 troops of the Cambodian National Front? but then don't they leave our land? why stay and hang around? for a vacation? or was it because of this love afair wasn't over,yet. And there came an order for Vietnam to leave Cambodia which they left, but why Vietman is all over Cambodia now? Can our government just say thank you so much! you were great!, but now we need time to be alone and solve our own national problem without you Vietnam in the back ground all the time?
What for Viet? What is it that is so good for you from Cambodia? Can you just get a hell out of our lives?!!!!!!! and To our own government, please learn to walk on your own. Why need someone to hold your hand all the time? After 30 years and more and you are telling us that you are still a baby? and will die without Vietnam?!!! Shame on you!
To Dr. Loa Mong Hay,
I read everything from the web site that you gave out. Thank you kindly Sir!
Ordinary Khmers
Come on, Dr. Lao, that question
was directed to you, not the
corrupted body (UN). I know what
they are already. Are they your
leader or something? Let me
repeat the question: What do you
think about the Vietnam invasion
of Cambodia? Was it an inhumane
violation of the stupid
International law? I bet you will
have two different answers if we
simply substitute the
word "Vietnam" with the
word "American". Would you say
that is an applied Rule-of-Law or
Rule-of-Men? hehehe.
hanoi and top khmer rouge are together dont believe in history 1979-invaded cambodia thy r lying khmer rouge kills intellect ppl to easy control cambodia wtf?wake up cambodians!!!kieu samphan ieng sary are leaving free!!!
and let the vietnamese conquer all market in Cambodia.Foods,transport,doctor etc...
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOk out!!, Vietman is starting to take controll Khmer Market... For an exmaple, 80% of money from tourists in Angkor Wat is going to Vietnam. and most of oil money will goes to Vietnam. and so on...
It is a free market. isn't it?
It is a trick that Morris also cannot measure the strategy of Indochina Federation Movement. Their creation of DK and push DK to kill khmers (same race) because of Vietminh spies in DK.
DK was crazy and stupid to fight with VN in border withouth brain b/c it is VN's trick to invade Cambodia.
VN didn't loss any cent in political game...the victory of Indochina Federation is near for VN
Wake Up Khmers!
That's what happened when a person did not have enough good brain cell to go about formulate and conclude his/her own analysis and conclusion - continue to ask the same stupid ????s!
Svay Rieng, Cambodia
And what do you got against
federation? Are you against the
US also? if so, tell them to break
up into 50+ pieces.
To Anon 11:36 AM;
"That's what happened, when Ah pler stay in the foxhole too long".
The above phrase is reflecting of how your living condition rigth now; And hopefully, you are not a veit's agent fox that stole tons of Khmers'crawfishs from the Tole Sap lake---are you?.
By the way, I was blessed to be born as a good khmer citizen, and am please to tell the true to another khmer generation and the world about an evil fox such as you have done bad things to Cambodia and its people.
Oh! I almost forgot to let you know that this new year don't try to steal khmer's chickens---'cause some of them were contamineted by Veit's bird flu. Happy Khmer New year Evil Fox!.
________
TO Anon 11:59 AM;
The US is way different from the Viet. In both war, the US were providing the freedom and give back all land to whom government by its people belong to, but Veit will swallow all the way without tell a word to anyone. Khmer kampuchea Krom as an example, not even allow them to speak and learn khmer or listing to khmers'song in the public let a lone to practice their khmer's religion there. When those Khmers krom speak their heart out to the world the viet said they are too radicaliism.
___
To: Anon 3:03 AM;
If you let the viet conquer all of those things you have mentioned in your post; Properbly you will be die without a word by a Veit's contamineted bird flu. So to keep you a live, please eat only fish from our Tole Sap OK. And Happy new year to you!
Mr.2:11
In the document I have suggested to you to read, I remenber Vitnam itself and other countries have already provided the answers to your question. There is no need for need to add anything else that would be superfuous.
The text is from the book The Responsibility to Protect. This book is actually the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Members of this commission are from Australia, Algeria,Canada, the US, Russia, Germany, Philippines, Switzerland and India. This commission has nothing to do with the UN. Actually, it was commissioned to study intervention and state sovereignty. It no longer exists. You can find out more by visiting the following website:http://www.iciss.ca/pdf/Commission-Report.pdf.
I know many people have been very critical of the UN. They beat the UN and they wil hurt China when China was behind the Khmer Rouge. In early February 1979 China sent its troops into Northern Vietnam to teach Vietnam a lesson after Vietnam had invaded Cambodia and ousted the Khmer Rouge. I tell you China gave assistance to the Khmer Rouge worth US$1 billion to help them rise to power in 1975 and another US$1billion to help them wage a war against Vietnamse troops in Cambodia. Let's not forget that, as one of our Khmer poets had remarked, the Chinese are stingy. They take note in their head but do not talk. The Khmers let their minds wonder and enjoy themselves thereby destroying their wealth and bringing suffering upon themselves (cheat chen komnanh svet, neuk knong chet min niyeay, cheat khmer chroeun reaymeay, roleay trop aphop khluon.) Push a sword through the UN body and you will cut and hurt China instead.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Everything that had happened to Cambodia base on outsider self-intereste!!!!!Yes! Self interest!!!
One thing that Cambodian leaders continue to make mistake again and again is because these Cambodian leaders misread the self-interest of China, Vietname, and Thailane or any other country!!!
Cambodia has so much to offer to Cambodian people in everything in term of natural resource, arable land, good atmosphere (tropic), plenty of water, culturally friendly Cambodian people,...
Why would Cambodian leaders want to turn any Cambodian people into a madman!!!!!
Why would Cambodian leaders allow themselves to be led by other world leaders who have different self-interest from them???
Why? Why? Why?
Why must I say this???!!!
Cambodian people deserve better than this!!!!Cambodian people have their self-interest too!!!
You! the Cambodian leaders must promote the healing, the stability,and the prosperity for Cambodian people and the time is now!!!!!!No more talking ok! These Cambodian leaders need to stop acting stupid!!!God damn!!I am sicken tired of this!!!!
B-52 bombing killed Cambodia economically!!!Cambodia economy collapsed completely created high inflation rate and Cambodian money became worthless and the worst part poor Cambodian farmers started moving in large number into city to find security and to feed their family but how can they!!!
The doom day is coming!!!
LOL, Dr. Loa, your international
commision vs. vietnam looks like
a bunch of khmers racists vs.
vietnam. I only see the soviet who
is pro-communist. I don't like to
learn anything from that, Dr. Loa.
As for China, it was defending its
security. I am sure China isn't
trill to spend billions, but if it
didn't, the US would have
dominated the region and soon to
move up to its backyard. How can
they just ignored that likely
possibility? Have you had any
background in military strategy.
That's what the super-powers was
competing for.
As for the UN credibility,
regretfully, forget about it.
They are the most hypocrit body
on this planet and will be for
a while. How does putting them
down hurts China? I don't get it?
hehehe.
Mr.5:52PM
China was the main power behind the Khmer Rouge and the UN's continued recognition of Democratic Kampuchea as the legitimate government of Cambodia, Vietnam as the aggressor, and the People's Republic of Kampuchea as an illegitimate government installed by Vietnam (1979-1991). In the future historians may see Vietnam's ousting of the Khmer Rouge and occupation of Cambodia as the turning point of the history of communism leading to the collapse of this ideology and also the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Who can know for sure?
Please, let's not brand people or organisations. That shows our lack of objectivity and integrity, also our partisanship. Let's use our reason and facts in our discourses.
Best wishes.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
I appreciapte your analysis, Dr. LM Hay. If that the case, then it would contradict the theory that has been suggested all a long.
China has been the strong backbone for King Sihanouk for years. And if your analysis is otherwised, "Pus a sword through the UN body and you will cut and hurt China instead", then who had kicked the UN out of Cambodia during the early 1990's?
Have a good day.
Dr. Loa, that is you explaination
for China hurts, when I put down
the UN? To me, that is trivial.
I don't think China is hurts
badly. China keep on gaining
influences in the UN as we speak.
And I don't understand your last
paragraph. I was pointing out fact:
the composition of your
international commission is full
of anti-communist members. If that
is not fact, what is? The
commission should composed of
half pro-communists and half
anti-communists. Is that unfair?
I don't accept such a bias story,
Dr. Lao. Never have been, and I
have made a habbit of rejecting it
on first site, hornestly.
Mr.10:25PM
Nobody has the mononpoly of truth except in totalitarian countries where rulers claim other people, apart from them themselves are ignorant or do not know anything about their countries, and/or tell those people outside their countries not to interfere into their internal affairs. In March 1978 Ieng Sary, Khmer Rouge foreign minister, told the British delegate who intervened at the UN to stop violations of human rights in Cambodia not to interfere in the internal affairs of Cambodia or Democratic Kamopuchea at that time.
So you may or may not believe that report on Vietnan's intervention in Cambodia in 1978. But the report has referred to official Vietnamese statements and other countries' statments also at the UN in Janauary 1979. I believe all these statments can be found at the archives of the UN. Perhaps you can ask our diplomats at the UN to check for you.
Have a good day.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Why just focusing on China and the United Nations???
France,Vietname,United States, Thailane,Soviet Union,...
The dominio theory of the West believed that once communist took over Cambodia and the whole South East Asia with fall on under the communist!!! Cambodia bear the most brunt because of this domino theory and many Cambodian life had been wasted...Now that the Soviet Union is broken up into pieces and the collapse of the communist and what have Cambodia as a country benefitted in any way????
Cambodia never benefit anything since the collapse of the communist because now Cambodia is becoming a slave to the Free World!!
The people of Cambodia are living on borrow time and their economy is still in shamble and the same old communist dictatorship is still in power and more corrupted than ever before!!!Cambodian people are living on $1 to $2 dollars aday!!!The sense of hoplessness is everywhere among Cambodian poeple while the World Bank continue to paint a rosy picture of Cambodian economy!!!
Cambodian leaders are like little children who are waiting to be led,to be told, and to be discipline!
For example,Mr. Pol Pot died in the jungle like a monkey for listen to China. I don't see Chinese military protect Mr. Pol Pot's ass!!!!
If AH HUN SEN think the Vietcong can protect his ass and he better think twice because the day will soon come..
Dr. Lao, I am not denying what was
taking place in the International
Commission. I just don't like
the the condition of the
commission. I am sure people will
be wise enough to form a better
commission in the future to come.
For now, everything that is
connected to the UN and most of
NGOs are assumed guilty until
proven innocent, hehehe.
Continued: Just a quick note on
totalitarian, Dr Lao. There are 3
common types:
1) Monarchy totalitarian where the
ruler owned most of the wealth.
2) There are communist totalitarian
where people owned equal share of
the wealth.
3) and there are capitalist
totalitarians, where people own
whatever they worked for.
And each of the three types are
not all all the same. Pot Pot
totalitarian is not the same as
Vietnamese Totalitarians. Vietnam
is growing while Pol Pot is
declining ... . Moreover, you
can ignore Singapore capitalist
totalitarian. I bet you won't find
many Singaporeans who is not proud
of their dictator Lee Kwan Yew.
The bottom line is you can't
generalized Totalitarian is bad.
Get it?
Mr. 9:04Am
Could you deepen your analysis of the three different types of totalitarianism to show the reasons why one performs very well and the others very badly? And also why Democratic Kampuchea widely known as modelled on China was doing as badly as China, and the People's Republic of Kampuchea which was very much modelled on Vietnam was not doing as well as Vietnam? Lessons can be learned from your anlysis would help us do better.
Thank you in advance, but please do not take this request as an asignment.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
I am glad to hear your ask such a
question, Dr. Lao. Many have shut
down the knowledge of totalitarian
prematurely for various reason
without knowing that they have
shut down knowledges to themself.
In democracy, we preached
pluralistic views and oppinions.
Isn't it a bit hypocrite to shut
down totalitarian's views and
oppinions?
Anyhow, it is beyond the scope of
this post to offer the answer you
are looking for, not to mention
the misused of the word
"totalitarian" itself. In most
cases I preferred to view them as
simply "steward" of the wealth,
and in other cases "crook" or
yet abusive "criminal," hehehe.
Instead, perhaps, I could offer
you some motivation not to shut
Totalitarians down so quickly as
many does.
It is important here to know that
the so called "totalitarian" is
intended to be a solution to a
problem in a society. Sometime
the solution work, and sometime it
doesn't. Not all plans turned out
the way we wanted, no matter how
much effort we put into it. We
are just not as good as we think
we are.
Moreover, it is the imperfection
of Capititalist and Monarchy
totalitarians that give birth
to these others totallitarians
that we have in present days.
It doesn't exist by itself.
You see, in primitive capitalist,
the weath always get accumulated
in the riches and famous over
times. People who born poor has
no opportunity to contribute their
creativity to the society, and that
is plain unfair. It is not their
fault that they were born poor. So
you can't lock up all the wealth
from them. They are entitle to some
opportunity to become something. So,
communist is a mean to level the
wealth from the rich back to the
people. How else would you do this?
The riches will never give in to
your demand until they learn the
consequence, hehehe.
Even in modern Capitalist, we have
not solved the problem completely.
there are still some imperfection
from the fact that excessive wealth
is still getting accumulated in
the weathly and riches, and many who
is born poor still have no
opportunity to share there
creativity. Thus, communist will be
with us a while longer until such
problem is addressed fully.
I hope that motivate you to look
for answer yourself. Sorry! hehehe.
Damn why take something so simple and make it so complicate!!!
Communism make everybody equal!ahah
It doesn't matter how much you put your energy to do anything and you are still the same as other people such lazy people, stupid people, crazy people, disable people,smart people,...Gee man! If everybody is equal why need a fucken leader for??ahahahhah There is no such thing as pure communism!!!To prove my point, China is good example of mix communism with capitalism!!!
Socialism make the state own every fucken thing and if you are working and the chance are you are working for the state or the government!!!!For example, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union and tell me what happen to these two countries!!!ahahahh Soviet Union and Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore!!!ahahhahah Many of the socialist countries government officials in socialist country are fucken corrupted and spoil themselves with red wine, women and luxury! Oh no! Is this what AH HUN SEN Vietcong slave had been trying to emulate????ahahahha
Capitalism make people compete in everyday life!!Competition is the essence of capalism! If you want to be rich and why not open your own business and work harder and smarter than anyone else and definitely you will be rewarded at the end for your effort!!!You don't need the government to tell you what to do because you are your own boss and you can work 24 hours aday if you want!!!ahahahah
There are plenty of school and the know how to go around for any people who want to learn and to compete to be successful!!!By the way, there is no such thing as pure Capitalism!!!To prove my point, United States the most powerful country on Earth doesn't practice a pure form of Capitalism because United States government still support and give hand out to those unfortunate people who can't compete!!!I mean not every people can become a doctor or engineer and of course these people who can't make it in society need some help!!!This is what you called a "safety net" ahahahah. Simply put, every people deserve to live as a decent human being!!!!! At the same time Capitalism never encourage people to depend so much on their government because the government don't have all the answer and the resource!!!
The is no such thing as a perfect system but the Capitalism seem at this moment serve the American people well!!Now I know why so many people want to come to United States!!!
The other day I was driving and I saw this sticker on white American truck and the sticker said " 300 million, the pool is full with United States map." ahahaha
Hey, I didn't say anything about
equally rich. Yes, it will make you
equally poors because of lack
of motivation and innovation, but
it is still a relief from extreme
poverty with no future in site.
As for why people want to go to
the US is no mystery. They are
driven by nature to seek a richer
and weathier place to raised their
family, not because of the US
ideology. Hypothetically, if the
US and China is equally wealthy,
I am willing to bet that more
people will chose China over the
US.
BTW, modern capitalist today is
really a mixture of primitive
capitalist and communist, and that
goes for modern communist as well.
It is only differ in the mixture.
To 11:09AM ahahahahhah!
I think you have lost the bet already!!!You need to understand something here! The whole world can't become Chinese!!!But the whole world can become American!!!
Do you know that are over a billion Chinese live in China and do you know how crowded it is???aha
How about United States there are only 300 million people living in United States!!!Now you know why the world want to come to United States including Chinese!!!
Beside the whole world can become American but the whole world can't become Chinese!!!!I had been living in United States for along time and I can assure that there are such thing as Chinese-American,Cambodian-American,Vietnamese-American,Korean-American,Japanese American...
Now I want you to go to China and tell me if China has such thing as American???
Mr.4:12AM
Do you mean that communist will be with us a while longer in our country until the problem of accumulation of wealth in the hands of the powerful and the rich is addressed fully? But many of the powerful are former communist and the rich are their supporters.
We were all equally poor from 1975 to 1979. Because of accumulation of weath, the powerful and the busisnessmen who are supprting thes powerful are very rich and thare are a lot of fellow Cambodians (one third of the population) are living under the poverty line.
The way the powerful and the rich together with Khmer vat thugs to beat peaceful demonstrators, for instance against land grabbing, gives a fascist flavour to the present regime
I'm very much confused now. Please explain all this to me.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
I agree w/12:02a.m. America is the land of choise. You choose to live your life however you want and what ever way you like so long as you don't hurt or offense someone.
Your goal in life is to fullfill by you and you alone if you like or making it comes true on your own. You are the owner of your life. You are a free person! You are not a prisoner or The sky is your only limit.
Try that w/ China. That won't happen. In china, you live to bey the nastiest and merciless of the damm communist government for the rest of your life. Your is equal to a machine. You are not a man or a woman anymore. That is the different between America and China.
People follow China by force. It wasn't their choise to choose China. No one want to be China,except may be some poor and desperate soul like Pol Pot, whom he thought China would be great. Wrong! he lives only to find out that he was nothing more but a stupid fool who will follow and devote his life to nobody and for nothing and who will die alone in alonely forrest. Like China and admire China? Go for it, buddy! and good luck! I'm going to tell you right now that i'm going to stay as far as I can and away from this ugly monster-communist regime. I don't care how glory it looks and sounds. They are poop and not flower like you think it is. I have tasted it and it's nasty! I will never forgot how rotten it is.
In this life time, I will never ever want to be associated with or be near those poeple again! Bad Luck regime and bad luck people that is all I have to say. So long!
That was a hit below the belly,
12:02. I was talking hypothetical.
And you talk about fact, but unfair
comparison. First, China don't
accept immigration. So how
can an American become a Chinese
citizen.... And being about 30
times poorer than the US, no nature
is going to drive anyone toward
China. Thus, to have a fair
comparison, you must have a fair
and equal condition. Okay, here's
another one, hypothetically: We
know China got some allied even
as poor as they are today. Do you
think the US will have as much
allied as China has if they were
as poor as China? I bet no one
care about the poor slob, hehehe.
Dr. Lao, I am not talking about
Cambodia, though communist could
still come back, and the
vietnamese and chinese communist
will have a change of heart toward
our rich and famous as they did
with Somdach Euv.
Right now, Cambodia is okay. True
there are some rich and famous
there, but there are no wealth.
LOL, how much wealth do you think
we have, and where it all came
from? I have done an estimate
a couple years ago, and I have
concluded that even if you were to
get rid of all those riches and
famous and take all their wealth
and distributed to the people, it
aint going to relief much hardship
to anyone. We all will still live
under the poverty line. Nothing
worth spilling blood for, hehehe.
As for the era of 1975-1979, I
don't understand your question.
Would you mind clarified?
As for the land grabbing issues,
I agree with your perception of it,
but the truth is it was exagerated.
Yes, there some greedy idiots who
is trying to take advantage of
poor people, but there are also
some poor people who accidently
living on some innocent rich
people who ligitimately own their
land. Hey, if you bought a property
in Cambodia, that could happened
to you too if you don't mark your
land clearly or have someone
guarding your land for you.
Mr.1:50PM
In the 1975-1979 period all Cambodian people were equally poor, except the communist cadres. These cadres fled or continued to work with the new government. Then instead of delivering properties to their owners before 1975, the new set of communists occupied and finally owned them. True liberators? Cr true conquerors of the old days who expropriated the conquered people and sold these people as slaves?
Communist ruling elite in Vietnam and China are not rich, or at least are not as rich as our ruling elite.
I would like to know what kind of impression Vietnamese and Chine officials would have after being received by our ruling elite at their residences when these residences are more like royal palaces and when our ruling elite were once revolutionaries fighting to abolish feudalism and the exploitation of the poor by the rich and the powerful.
Food for thought again!
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
LOL, sorry Dr. Lao, I am still not
quite sure of what you are telling
me and asking me. First, which
communist cadres are you refering
to? And what do you mean by either
they fled OR work for the new
govenment? don't you know which?
and what properties are you
referring to. And what are you
telling be about liberators?
and I don't know what "Cr" is...
I am having trouble with language
here, please give me more
description of what you are telling
me. Don't assume that I know
everything that you are refering
to. Try to write it as though you
are writing to someone in France
or something, will ya? LOL.
Are you trying to tell me that
everyone is equally poor, but
the leaders is filty rich? If so,
I don't think the leaders are
filty rich, but rich like any other
leader. They must have the capacity
to administrate and look after the
wealth. How can a poor person does
all that.
Continue:
As for your 2nd paragraph, I agree
with you, Dr. Lao.
As for your 3rd paragraph, I don't
know what the chinese and
vietnamese official can do about
our rulers being much richer than
themselve, but as I said earlier,
if there were another communist
uprising, both China and Vietnam
will likely to supported the
rebels as usual. That is my
prediction.
I like to answer Dr. Lao's third paragraph by saying that those communist people were born brain- washed "Non- Materialistic People ". They don't care and we don't affect or impress them anything. In fact, they probably could not stand us, but have no choise. They cann't see anything good or great can come out of those luxuries or they probably dying to have those materials too, but how? Each and everyone of them are prisoner living inside of the prison that doesn't have any wall.
Do you really believe that their top officers would allow them to foat their imagination and dream freely? and allow them to bring it to reality like they would want it too?
I don't think so. Therefore, I have dismised any ambitious or impression or any admiration that will be made by The Communist Elites. THEY HAVE LOST AND FORFIETED THEIR RIGHT TO BE LIKE ONE OF US A VERY VERY LONG TIME AGO.
I'm saying it, because I have firm- belief that This Communist People's mental state are not like ours. They are trained to destroy what we have and not like " us " want to be and no matter how good and rich or successful, we are individually. We are no good to them. They cann't appreciate our material world and have pleasure of seeing it would do any good to them. Nop, I don't believe so.
If i'm wrong, I like to see Those Communist World change their attitude sooner and not 50 years later.
Right now, my group are entertaining The Chinese's Communist Elites in our marvelous town. If you wouldn't mind saying that we are only entertaining the rich and the fabuluos and King or Queen.
Those Communist People look like stone and their smiling face are fake. Very very scary, but I have a job to do. We are in no position to cross or expose them, but just so you know that I rather not living in the dream world of trying to impress them. My time will be wasting. They need drug or some serious professional people to change their Mental Communist State. IT'S NO USE IN TRYING TO IMPRESS CRAZY PEOPLE.
I beg for your pardon for some grammers mistake.
too= to etc...
Thank you
7:07p.m.
Those communist elites are self inflated- people. They think they are God to evryone, but instead they are hurting them more than they can imagine possible. They brought nothing, but hell.
Look at 2 millions of us that are disappeared without any cause of their own. We hope, those death souls will bring those communist crap down sooner rather than later.
Mr.4:43PM
I'm sorry you could not get my message. In the old days, Kings sent troops to conquer neighbouring countries. In their conquest they and their troops would plunder the conquered people and take everything valuable to their countries as their own and they would share some of the war booties to their people to keep them happy. They also enslaved the conquered people and sold them as slaves.
Liberators of people would not touch the belongings of those people or they would return to those people the belongings they had lost.
In Cambodia, our so called liberators did not return houses and lands to people that had owned them before the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. Many of those liberators occupied other people's houses and villas and have since made their own. The owners were their enemies or the conquered people, or were they? Those houses and villas were not war booties. This kind of plunder was repeated in the " coup " in July 1997 when victorious soldiers plundered shops and took away the merchandise in there. Some ransacked people's houses or houses of their "enemies" and took away their belongings. A colleague and I witnessed such a plunder and intervened with the commander in chief to stop it, and he did. God bless him, our dear commander in chief.
I hope it is clearer now.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Dr. Loa, I appreciate every word you said and hope other see and have the same appreciation.
To answer whomever asked, why China has more friends than United States? In my humble and honest opion, I certainly think that there are too many poor-unfortunate souls on this earth and too small percentage of the rich.
Those poor souls look to China as their savior is sure enough.
Mr.06PM
What can China do to help the poor? I know for sure China helped the Khmer Rouge to kill my fellow Cambodians. It owes at least an apology to the Khmer nation. It is not much different from all other imperialists the world over. Their own interests first and foremost.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Dissagree, Dr. Lao, China did not
told Pol Pot how to run Cambodia.
That was their policy then, and it
is their policy now. Their
interest was solely to keep their
enemy out of their backyard. They
don't like to spend money on it,
but their freedom of choice was not
free. Many people extrapolated this
way beyond reality, and the more
you do this, the more truth you
are hiding from yourself, and you
wont be able to render any reliable
prediction in the future from it.
And thanks for clariying your
message in post 8:32. Yes, indeed
we were once winners, but I can't
say that I am proud of it though.
If I have my choice, I will teach
our children to condemn such
action with the understanding that
people was a bit savage in those
days. As for sharing conquered
goods, LOL, I think the only reason
for that is because they have no
more place to store it, hehehe.
I see what you say about
liberators now; however, I don't
fully agree with you . The problem
after the felt of the KR regime
was proving who own what. We never
even got to do that. It was chaos.
People looting and grabing
whatever they can. No law can be
enforced. People was exited, fear,
and confused. Thus I don't think
it is possible to return everything
back to the original owner.
However, a few of my relatives did
get back their orginal homes, but
I personnally was not as fortunate
though.
Mr.4:11AM
There was ample evidence to show that China was helping the Khmer Rouge to kill Cambodians. This one of the reasons why the Chinese have never wanted and supported the Khmer Rouge trial. So far China has contributed no sinple Yuan to the Khmer Rouge trial funds. (No have the Vietnamese for fear the trial would reveal a lot of secrets about their invasion of Democratic Kampuchea and further arouse Khmer nationalism).
Just one example of Chinese that killed Cambodians: Kompong Chhnang airport. There was and is no econimic justification for the construction of that airport. Who helped build it and for the interest of whom? (the answer is provided beliow). And how many Cambodians died there forced to build that airport? Have you been to that airport? I have led a group of ordinary fellow Cambodians to visit it.
The conflict in Cambodia was a circle within a number of circles: (1)Democratic Kampuchea vs the Socilatist Republic of Vitenam due to (a)historical enmety, (b) territorial disputes and (c) different ideological and strategic alliance: Vietnam allied istself with the Soviet Union and turning its back against China which had provided assistance worth US$22billion plus some personnel to Vietnam to fight against the US, while the Khmer Rouge allied itself with China;
(2) Vietnam vs China due to (a) historical enmity; (b) territorial disputes (China seized the Paracels islands off the Vietnamses coast before the end of the Vietnam War; disputes over the Spratleys islands in the South China Sea leading to naval clashes; (c) Vietnam massive persecution and expulsion of Vietnamses of Chinese origin (this Vietnamese persecution of the Chinese was extended to the People's Republic of Kampuchea);
(3) The Soviet Union vs China due to (a) ideological differences; (b) territorial disputes; (c) continued Soviet military threat along the common borders;
(5) the Cold War: The West (US) vs Communism (the Soviet Union). Though the US had pursued a policy of containment of China, the US seized the opportunity created by the open conflict between DK+China and VN+USSR to support China and ASEAN to fight VN+USSR expansion in the region. The Soviet Union was so much overstretched that its failing economy could not sopprt its expansion in Sotheast Asia, Afghanistan, Africa and Central America.
Communism collapsed in 1989 creating conditions favourable to the holding of the Paris Peace Agreement in the same year. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 leading to the end of the China vs USSR conflict in the year; and this end led further to the end of the China vs Vietnam conflict; and further to the end of conflict in Cambodia in the same year also. Then we had the Paris Peace Agreementts in October 1991.
Cambodians were and still are so much isolated and inward-looking for so many centuries that they haven't paid much attention to what is happening in the region and in the worlder world. Language was and still is a barrier too. Lack of reading habit is also another barrier.
As regards plunder, whether it was caused by confusion or not it is always plunder. A crime always remains a crime.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
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