Cocktails with Khmer Rouge killers
By
Angus MacSwan
July 30, 2010
Cocktails with Khmer Rouge killers | Global News Journal
By Angus MacSwan
The sentencing of Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav this week and the forthcoming trial of former leader Khieu Samphan by a United Nations-backed court has brought renewed attention to their murderous rule of Cambodia in the 1970s — and a certain amount of satisfaction in the “international community” for its role in seeing justice done.
But there was a time when you could meet Khmer Rouge officials at cocktail parties in Phnom Penh, with the drinks provided by the United Nations.
It was one consequence of a Faustian pact between the Khmer Rouge and the United States, Britain and other countries following the Pol Pot regime’s overthrow by Vietnamese troops in 1979.
The relationship illustrates the sometimes bizarre nature of Cold War politics and is one that today’s governments probably hope is forgotten.
I found myself next to Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot’s right hand man, at a party at the U.N. mission’s headquarters in Phnom Penh at the end of 1991. Standing behind him was Son Sen, who had run the Khmer Rouge’s torture apparatus during their “Killing Fields” rule from 1975-79, in which at least 1.5 million Cambodians had died.
They had just returned to Phnom Penh after years in jungle camps and friendly foreign capitals and were in the decrepit city as the representatitves of the Party of Democratic Kampuchea — as they prefered to be known — in a new national council set up under a peace accord aimed at ending decades of war.
How had the Khmer Rouge survived and prospered in the decade since their reign of terror was ended by the Vietnamese invasion?
Their main supporter was China — an enemy of both Vietnam and its backer the Soviet Union despite their shared communist beliefs. The United States was still smarting from its defeat in the Vietnam War and saw China as an indispensable regional ally with a bright future.
Thus a coalition government was formed, dominated by the Khmer Rouge and including two non-communist factions, even though they controlled hardly any territory other than border enclaves. Its nominal head was Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who actually spent most of his time in North Korea of all places, but despite this fig leaf the military muscle in the bush war was provided by the Khmer Rouge.
Throughout the 1980s, this body held Cambodia’s seat in the United Nations, supported by the United States, Britain and other European nations, China and pro-Western Asian countries. The Vietnamese-backed government — which included Khmer Rouge defectors — was recognised only by the Soviet bloc.
Denied international aid and trade, Phom Penh was one of the most forlorn places on earth as war raged in the Cambodian countryside.
Thailand played a crucial role in supporting the coalition and Thai officials got rich through timber and gems deals with the Khmer Rouge based in the border enclaves.
U.S. officials in Bangkok and Washington would play a game of smoke-and-mirrors when asked about Washington’s support for an alliance spearheaded by some of the 20th Century’s worst mass murderers.
Arms and other other aid only went to the non-communist groups, they said. The Khmer Rouge had changed and was now genuinely popular in some areas, they ventured. While the film “The Killing Fields” made many people aware of the horrors of Khmer Rouge rule, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told a British children’s TV show in 1988 “There’s a much, much reasonable grouping within that title, Khmer Rouge…who will have to play some part in the future
government.”
The British elite military unit the SAS were later revealed to have trained their fighters.
The guerrilla factions also ran the vast refugee camps on the Thai border, so the Khmer Rouge were able to keep tens of thousands of people in their grip with generous helpings of United Nations aid. With the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia in 1989 and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, a peace agreement was painstakingly hammered out.
All four parties joined the national council pending elections and a huge U.N. peacekeeping mission swept into the country.And so the Khmer Rouge came back to Phnom Penh.
Khieu Samphan was run out of town by an angry crowd at his first attempt to return in October 1991. A few months later, though he was back and looking relaxed.At the U.N. party, he was dressed in a neatly-pressed grey safari suit and looked well-manicured — quite different to the black pyjamasand checkered scarves of the iconic Khmer Rouge image. After a few pleasantaries, I asked him about their bloody rule. Nonplussed, he replied almost by rote that yes, some mistakes were made but that most of the accusations were just
propaganda. Cambodia’s real problem was Vietnam’s plan to annex
the country, he said with a smile.
With Son Sen lurking sinisterly in the background, I thought the conversation had probably run its course.
This accommodation with killers threw up many other surreal situations. A few months after the cocktail party encounter, I was in the town of Kompong Thom when Indonesian peacekeepers arrived to police the area. For some reason, they sang the old British army song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” as they marched down the street.
A Khmer Rouge general, Men Ron, stood by the roadside, smiling as if this was the jolliest knees-up this side of the Emerald Isle. That night, he dined at a lakeside restaurant with a British envoy and an Australian general.
The next day, refugees were fleeing down the highway outside the city from Khmer Rouge attacks to the north.
An election to bring peace and democracy to Cambodia was held in 1993. The Khmer Rouge boycotted it and went back to war, but without the backing they previously enjoyed, they dwindled.
Son Sen was killed in 1997 in an internal power struggle and Pol Pot died the next year in mysterious circumstances. Khieu Samphan was arrested in 2007 and the next year was charged in court with crimes against humanity and war crimes.
I’ve not been back to Phnom Penh since 1993 but I’m told its a very different place, with bistros, night clubs and fast cars for the new rich elite. Its a favourite destination for Western youths on gap years.
The angy reaction from ordinary Cambodians to what they saw a light sentence for Kaing Guek Eav showed many of them still want atonement for the past. In some quarters though, the past will probably remain a closed chapter.
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Butcher of Cambodia set to expose Thatcher's role
Butcher of Cambodia set to expose Thatcher's role | World news | The Observer
Ta Mok, one of Pol Pot's genocidal henchman, who faces trial, tells Jason Burke in Phnom Penh he will expose the West's part in training the Khmer Rouge
In a small, dark, heavily guarded cell in Phnom Penh's main military prison sits a man of 74, wizened, white-haired, one-legged. He is in good health and surprisingly high spirits, given his grim future and grimmer past.
He is Ta Mok, also known as the Butcher or Chhit Chouen - possibly the cruellest and most violent of the Khmer Rouge commanders who turned Cambodia's green countryside into the killing fields.
The Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen, has hopes to try Ta Mok for his crimes next month. Many in his shattered country are happy at the prospect. Others, including many of the political leadership and bureaucracy, fear his testimony will unveil their own roles during the time of Pol Pot's genocide.
The unease is not restricted to the small, desperately poor, swampy country of 10 million that is modern Cambodia. For when Ta Mok takes the stand, his lawyers promise, no one will be spared - least of all the Western leaders who, they say, supported the Khmer Rouge despite the Maoist extremists' atrocities being widely known.
The most damaging element, for Britain at least, of Ta Mok's court appearance will be new evidence about how British troops and diplomats helped the Khmer Rouge in their fight for power.
Contacted in his prison cell through an intermediary last week, he confirmed to The Observer that the extent to which London and Washington helped the Khmer Rouge in their fight to control Cambodia would be revealed during his trial. The evidence will contradict statements made by Margaret Thatcher's Government - which authorised the operation at the time.
Ta Mok's lawyer, Benson Samay, said the court would hear details of how, between 1985 and 1989, the Special Air Service (SAS) ran a series of training camps for Khmer Rouge allies in Thailand close to the Cambodian border and created a 'sabotage battalion' of 250 experts in explosives and ambushes. Intelligence experts in Singapore also ran training courses, Samay said.
To allow Ministers to deny helping the Khmer Rouge, the SAS was ordered to train only soldiers loyal to the ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and the liberal democrat former Prime Minister, Son Sann, who were fighting alongside Pol Pot's Communists. However, Samay said the court would be told the Khmer Rouge benefited substantially from the British operation.
'All these groups were fighting together - but the Khmer Rouge were in charge. They profited from any help to the others. If they had won the war outright, then Pol Pot would have been back in charge,' Samay said.
The Khmer Rouge and their allies were fighting against the Vietnamese-backed puppet regime Hanoi had installed after ousting Pol Pot's extremist Communists and exposing the horrors of the killing fields.
In a classic piece of Cold War realpolitik, Britain - prompted by the Americans - appears to have given military assistance to the Khmer Rouge-led coalition, despite knowing of Pol Pot's atrocities, in an attempt to limit the power of the Soviet-backed Vietnamese.
'Thatcher, Reagan, Kissinger - they should all be on trial along with Ta Mok,' Samay said last week. He said the court would also hear that humanitarian supplies for Cambodian refugees in Thailand were diverted to the Khmer Rouge with, he claims, the knowledge of the Americans and the British. The court would also hear, he said, how the diplomatic support offered by London and Washington to the coalition led by the Khmer Rouge was 'a great help and morale booster' for Pol Pot's troops. The coalition retained the Cambodian United Nations seat throughout the Eighties.
Ta Mok's journey from jungle hideout to power to hideout and eventually to prison last May is a powerful symbol of the political tides that have washed over Cambodia in the past decades. In April it will be 25 years since Pol Pot's Chinese-backed Maoist revolutionaries defeated a weak pro-US government and entered Phnom Penh. They themselves were ousted by the Soviet-backed Vietnamese four years later and for 15 years a vicious civil war - fuelled by Cold War politics - racked the country.
The trial of Ta Mok and his Khmer Rouge colleague Kaing KhekIev (nicknamed 'Deuch') - who ran the regime's most notorious torture centre - is a litmus test for this deeply scarred nation. Arguments over the format of proceedings have yet to be resolved - the United Nations and human rights groups fear the trial will be used by the government for political ends or be a sham, or both. But it seems likely it will go ahead nevertheless. Few feel, however, that anyone will be pleased by the outcome.
Not far from the prison where its former commander is being held, the Tuol Sleng torture centre still stands. Its iron beds, manacles and electric cables are intact, though tourists and groups of school children now walk wide-eyed through its cells.
Overlooking the rusting barbed wire are the garish villas of the nouveaux riches who have successfully exploited Cambodia's recent shift towards a new, hugely corrupt, free-market economy. Outside its gates loiter half a dozen beggars - dirty children and disabled victims of the mines that still litter Cambodia's countryside - hoping to beg a few riels (Cambodia's virtually worthless currency) from wealthy farang (tourists).
They know what should happen to Pol Pot's henchmen. 'They should all be punished,' said Pheach Yui, 35, who lost his leg to a mine while fighting against the Khmer Rouge 12 years ago. 'They should all be rounded up and judged and punished for their sins. They should be in jail until they die.'
Yui is likely to be disappointed. There are thought to be 50,000 former Khmer Rouge fighters in government positions. At least five are Cabinet Ministers. Others have been effectively pardoned and live well. They include Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge number three and Pol Pot's brother-in-law, Nuon Chea, who was known as 'Brother Number Two' and Khieu Samphan, the movement's one-time Prime Minister.
Even Ta Mok says that they should face punishment. 'I know about only a fraction of what happened,' he told The Observer through an intermediary. 'You should ask Ieng Sary and the others too.' Several key Khmer Rouge commanders are gen erals in the Cambodian army and look untouchable. Even the Prime Minister himself was a Khmer Rouge cadre until being recruited by the Vietnamese.
Ta Mok and 'Deuch' may end up being the only senior Khmer Rouge brought to justice for their crimes. Pol Pot, the architect of the the massacres, died in 1998 and no one else has been arrested or is likely to be.
Though some argue that 'national reconciliation' means forgetting the past, to many the failure to bring the Khmer Rouge killers to justice merely emphasises the cheapness of human life in Cambodia today.
The psychological scars of genocide and war are obvious everywhere. The smallest incident can provoke extreme violence. The crime columns in the press are almost grotesque: three men blow themselves, and a café, to bits playing Russian roulette with an anti-tank mine; a man is murdered in a row over whether the millennium bug is a hoax; a syphilitic farmer kills five children and drinks their blood in the hope of being cured; a chess game ends with one dead, two badly injured. Arguments over land regularly lead to murder.
Attacks with acid have become more common. Last month a government official's wife hideously burnt her husband's mistress by pouring five litres of nitric acid over her while bodyguards held the screaming woman down. Such 'crimes of jealousy' are increasing. Last summer Cambodia's most famous actress was shot dead in the street. The press reported that her murderers had been hired by the wife of the Prime Minister - her alleged lover.
'There is an ingrained culture of might is right,' said one Western diplomat. 'It needs very little to spark off appalling violence.' Armed robbery is common and, as the police are corrupt and ineffectual, people take the law into their own hands. Vigilante killings are rou tine, with even novice monks and art students beating suspected robbers to death. The customs and the military, often with the co-operation of senior members of the government, collude in massive smuggling - of beer, drugs, people, tropical hardwood and the country's archaeological heritage.
Cambodia has lost half its forests in the past 30 years, and the trees are still falling fast. Last year soldiers used heavy equipment to break up 30 tonnes of stone carvings from 1,000-year-old archaeological sites before loading them into army trucks and driving them to Thailand to sell to dealers with rich Western clients. The military have even been reported to have been extorting 'protection money' from those trying to conserve Angkor Wat - Cambodia's world-famous jungle temple complex.
The level of development is appallingly low. Average life expectancy is 52, one in five children dies before reaching the age of five, more than a third of the population live below the poverty line and half the children show the effects of malnutrition. Aids killed 6,000 people last year. The elite's exclusive golf course, on the outskirts of Phomh Penh, charges $20,000 (£12,000) for membership, 80 times the average income.
Even the international community's well-meaning interventions often come unstuck. The UN peacekeeping operation hugely boosted Aids in the country and created a parallel dollar economy. A senior French aid worker was reported to be pimping the orphans in his care.
Recently the partly British-funded Cambodian Mine Action Centre was found to have been clearing land for former Khmer Rouge warlords. They included Chhouk Rin - the commander who, in 1994, kidnapped and killed three Western tourists including a Briton.
Khieu Phen is, like Ta Mok, an old man. He was 30 when the Khmer Rouge came to power and lost his brothers, sisters and brother-in-law in the massacres. He survived the killing fields - where he was forced to work 'day and night' and watched 'sons forced to murder their fathers' - by working harder than everyone else. Now he rides a scooter around Phnom Penh hoping to pick up a passenger and earn enough for a bowl of noodles.
'Sometimes I think we are cursed,' he said. 'Everybody takes from this country. So few people give anything. Everybody betrays us in the end.'
