Pol Pot (103 page)

Yi Tan Kim Pho,

p.113.

310

Picq,

pp. 9—11.

Ponchaud,

pp. 31–2; Haing Ngor,

p. 100. Both describe goods being sent to the Eastern Zone (which they assumed, wrongly, meant they were taken to Vietnam). That plunder was also sent to other Zones is clear from the discussions between Zone leaders on how the ‘booty’ should be shared out.

311

This account of B-1 is drawn largely from Picq,

312

Ieng Sary and Phi Phuon (interviews); Pâng, confession, May 28 1978.

Ieng Sary, interview.

313

Father Ponchaud remembered having been told by an elderly colleague when he had arrived in Cambodia in 1965 that, to Khmers, the Phnom was a site of mystical power, ‘the religious and spiritual nexus, assuring the community of Heaven and Earth’. ‘If ever this country gets a nationalist government,’ the old priest had added,’the Cathedral will be the first thing to go’ (interview). But it was solidly built and took many months to demolish (In Sopheap, interview; Ong Thong Hoeung,

p. 31).

Szymusiak,

p. 50;Yi Tan Kim Pho,

p. 227; PinYathay,

p. 76; Martin,

p. 358; Y Phandara,

p. 67.

314

–15

Long Nârin, interview. According to Laurence Picq, two students were allowed to return in December 1972 and fifteen more a month later. A third group returned in December 1973. Suong Sikoeun left Beijing in May 1974 (interview).

315

Long Visalo, interview.

316

Ong Thong Hoeung,

p. 10.

Long Visalo, interview.

316

–17

Ibid.

317

–18

Picq,

pp. 241; Ong Thong Hoeung,

pp. 20–1.

319

Martin,

p. 349. See also Yi Tan Kim Pho,

pp. 74–5; PinYathay,

pp. 100 and 130. There was also severe hunger in Siem Reap (Schanberg,

p. 45), Preah Vihear (De Nike et al., p.95) and no doubt other areas. Laurence Picq at B-I heard reports of starvation for the first time in the spring of 1976 (

p. 67), Sihanouk a few months earlier (

pp. 46–7).

320

Chandler et al.,

p. 7; see also Kiernan,

p. 52.

Szymusiak,

p. 95; Kiernan and Boua,

p. 354; PinYathay,

pp. 102, 131–2 and 140; Schanberg,

p. 45.

Pol Pot,

p. 188.

321

‘The rice ration should be two milk cans per person per day . . . If there is a shortage it will affect people’s health, and then the workforce will be reduced’ (minutes of the CPK Standing Committee meeting, Feb. 28 1976, DC-Cam). See also Pol Pot,

(pp. 111–12), which sets the ration at between 1.5 and 3 milk cans per person. Given that these documents, especially Standing Committee minutes, which were circulated to fewer than ten people, were highly restricted and never intended to go further, one may assume that the views Pol expressed were those he genuinely held.

.

June 1976; Pol Pot,

p. 127.

Pol Pot,

p. 112. See also Criddle and Butt Mam,

p. 158; PinYathay,

p. 89; Stuart-Fox,

p. 45; Haing Ngor,

p. 274; and Kiernan,

p. 65.

Pol Pot,

p. 158.

322

Quoted in Martin,

pp. 167–8.

Locard,

p. 175. Keng Vannsak argued that the phrase was intended to be taken literally—‘man was reduced to an object of profit and loss’ (quoted in Burchett,

p. 94).

323

Quoted by Long Visalo, interview.

Forest,

p. 493.

324

Minutes of CPK Standing Committee meeting, June 1 1976, DC-Cam.

Ponchaud,

17, pp. 4–5.

This citation is from Pin Yathay but I have misplaced the reference to the text in which it occurs.

325

George Orwell,

Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1970, pp. 45–6.

Pol Pot,

p. 158.

326

Dossier L01045, Nov. 30 1975, in which an Eastern Zone official complained to Pol that the ‘dispersal strategy’ was being obstructed by Northern and North-Western Zone leaders who were ‘refusing to accept Islamic villagers’ (DC-Cam). See also Stuart-Fox,

p. 87, and Kiernan,

pp. 39—41. It may be argued, of course, that ‘dispersal’ was itself a form of racism; but in that case the same label must be accepted for such measures as school bussing in the United States to achieve desegregation. That, too, involved the dispersal of pupils of one race among those of another.

Serge Thion makes this point well in his essay, ‘Genocide as a Political Commodity’, in Kiernan,

171–2.

327

I owe this detail to Michael Vickery.

Prasso, p. 4. In the same spirit, when Samphán was teaching in the 1960s, he was puzzled that one of his students, an Indian girl from Pondicherry, stayed in Cambodia rather than ‘going home to India’ (I owe this anecdote to Henri Locard).

Nath,

24. See also Smith,

5; Ben Kiernan, ‘Letter to the Editor of

Aug. 11 1977, in

vol. 7, 1977, p. 547, quoting Peang Sophi as saying that working conditions in Cambodia in 1975—6 were less arduous than in his Melbourne factory.

327

–8

Pin Yathay,

p. 47; Stuart-Fox,

p. 46; Haing Ngor,

p. 269; Ponchaud,

183, and

236–7; Edwards,

145.

329

Transcript of Mao’s meeting with Khieu Samphân, Ieng Sary, Sihanouk and Penn Nouth, Apr. 2 1974, Chinese Central Archives, Beijing.

Transcript of Mao’s meeting with Sihanouk, Penn Nouth, Khieu Samphân and Khieu Thirith, Aug. 27 1975, Chinese Central Archives, Beijing. According to Sihanouk (

Part 2, Ch. 1, p. 3), Kim II Sung also raised with the Cambodians the issue of his return.

331

Ong Thong Hoeung,

p. 9.

Osborne,

p. 230. See also Sihanouk,

pp. 17–18, for his account of similar discussions with his family in Europe in December.

Sihanouk, ibid, pp. 18–19.

333

‘Speech by the Party Secretary to the Council of Ministers’, Apr. 22 1976, in Dossier D695, DC-Cam.

Sihanouk,

pp. 41, 66 and 70; see also pp. 32–3.

334

Sihanouk,

pp. 82 and 85.

334

–5

Ibid., pp. 88–9; Minutes of CPK Standing Committee meeting, Mar. 11 1976, Dossier D7562, DC-Cam. Sihanouk referred in particular to the accreditation of Meak Touch, the new DK Ambassador to Vientiane, whose arrival to take up his post was reported by Radio Phnom Penh on Mar. 6. The timing, while not conclusive, supports the view that the credentials issue was an important factor.

334

These comments were made at a Standing Committee meeting on Mar. 30 1976 (Doc. 32(N442)/T8322,VA: this version gives details not contained in the Khmer-language text, Dossier D693, at DC-Cam).

336