Said there are three main entry

Points for relief — by ship to

_Ompongsom, by ship up the
Mekong to the capital and by air

om Penh. ‘‘We welcome all
Teal aid,’ he said, “‘But a so-

Called ‘land bridge’ from Thailand
’ 4S nothing but an effort to help Pol

t's soldiers, not our people.”’
* * *

__ An international tribunal was

held last summer in Phnom Penh,

ta

‘attended by jurists and news-

_ Paper people from many lands.

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ere the full story of Maoism’s
€xperiment came out.
= € evidence and testimony
showed that the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary.
Tegime advanced their Maoist
theory of ‘100% high-level Socia-
ist Revolution” to “build a coun-
ty without cities or country-

side’. In several visits made to
Peking by the Kampuchean Mao-
ists during the. four-year experi-
ment, the Chinese leaders highly
praised this policy and its results.
And they gave more than
praise. China armed and equip-
ped Pol Pot’s army which was
quickly boosted to 130,000 men
and launched it against Vietnam.
Peking sent advisers, built air-
fields, roads and bridges to facili-
tate military pressure on Vietnam
from the south while China itself
pressed from the north. re
The ‘100% high-level Socialist
Revolution’’ theory was im-
plemented with a. vengeance —
and the result was mass genocide
and total dislocation which will
take years to overcome. The
international indictment listed

; Pol Pot banned currencey in his terrible experiment. Photo: Blown up
: Central bank building.

nine crimes of genocide by Pol
Pot’s regime:

e systematically carrying out a
planned massacre of people of dif-
ferent strata on an increasingly
savage scale; é

e forcibly driving out the popu-
lation from the cities and systemat-
ically mixing the rural population
causing many deaths in the pro-
cess;

e herding the population into
‘communes’? where they were
forced to work until complete
exhaustion, turned into slaves and
destroyed physically and morally;

e abolishing all social relations,
turning a person into a solitary
slave dependent on the Angkar

(Khmer word for party organiza- .

tion);

e systematically exterminating
Buddhist priests, religious be-
lievers, intellectuals; abolishing re-
ligion and national culture; -

e massacring children, morally
poisoning the youth and trans-
forming them into thugs devoid of
all human feelings;

e destroying them national
economy and driving rf people to
starvation; — :

@ use of savage torture, killings
and terror tactics against an entire
people; ,

e committing new crimes (after
Pol Pot’s overthrow in Jan. 1979)
of killing people who refused to fol-
low the remnants of his forces in
flight; burning granaries and caus-
ing mass famine. .

understanding why

nt
I

Peep Se

~ Ae LA OES PS rw ad PE Be at

‘porter slips out of the room ana
Stands stiffly catching his breath.

We are taken to exhibit rooms
with walls lined with photos of
Prisoners. Their faces show signs
of beatings, their eyes stare at us
in silence, hundreds of eyes of
People now dead. On one side is
Clothing piled to the ceiling. We
See the bright orange of a buddhist
robe in the colorless heap.

Now the torture instruments:
an axe, a hoe, crude wire whips,
pliers, rods, shackles ... Over

_ there are rusty pans for food. Be- |

Side them is a rough wooden box
where prisoners were drowned.

_ The only sounds are the guide’s

_ Voice and the snapping of camera

Shutters. ‘‘Who has any ques-
tions?’’ Questions? Nobody re-
Sponds. The ghastly scene says it

all. We file out and someone turns

for one last photo.
Minutes later we are seated ina

small building which served as the

office of the camp. A small man

begins to speak, and as he does
we see his fingernails are missing.
“Tam one of the eight survivors. I
am now the director of this place
and I welcome you here ...’’
Cameras snap and we lean for-
ward to catch his words which are
barely audible over the rumbling
air conditioner.’

“I spent four years here,”’ he
says, ‘‘and so did these others.”
A tall man steps forward. ‘‘He
was an artist before he came
here,’’ we’re told. Another man
joins him. ‘‘He is a carpernter’’.
The director then points over our
heads. ‘‘He was found here. His
parents were killed.”’

The camp director (L) and three other survivors. Only eight humans

» were left, 20,000 were murdered.

We hadn’t heard the woman
enter carrying a small child, He
was sleeping cradled in her arms.
‘*He’s ill,’ the director explains,
“‘but he will recover.”’

We are given figures: the place
held 1,600 at a time and 20,000
died. We are shown photos of the
camp director and the killer
guards — all long since gone, but

_ who in their haste left behind their

images.

We ask the three men, now
joined by. another survivor, .a
boy of nine, to come into the
courtyard for the cameras. They
oblige quietly and unsmilingly.
It’s our final action in this place.

A Portuguese newsman and I
are the last to leave. Fernando
turns to me and says, ‘‘Jesus!”’

Another survivor, today an

orphan.

These charges, an attempt to
sum up the entirety of the crimes,
run the risk of being hard to grasp.
I know I had difficulty realizing
the totality of what happened be-
cause logic and morality rejects
such a picture of complete de-
humanization and death.

But when it was reduced to per-
sonal stories (some of which are
on these pages) and a hundred
glimpses of children’s faces, the
bent forms of old people, the’
sounds and smells — -‘‘mass
genocide’ meant three million in-
dividual murders and ‘‘mass star-
vation’’ became the gaunt cheek-
bones of-a woman leaning against
a tree in the blazing sun.

lated from a theoretical debating
point to a blueprint for murder
and retrogression.

And Maoism, for me, has esca-

facility.

One of thousands of orphans,
this boy is now a student at a new

Only my brother
and me are left

PHNOM PENH — She sat

quietly on the edge of her chair
waiting for the first question. It
wasn’t a question, but an apol-
ogy for talking about the last
four years. We knew it would be
painful because we were told
she and her younger brother
are all that remain of a family
of nine children and an uncle. '
_ Som Kim Suor is 30 now and
works for Radio Kampuchea.
Her soft-spoken manner and de-
licate gestures belie her
strength. She was a student of fine arts and languages, a category
earmarked for extermination by the Pol Pot regime.
_ “At 7 a.m. on April 17, 1975,” she began, “I was at home
preparing to leave for school. It was to be the morning of liberation
as Lon Nol’s soldiers fled and our capital was free. Guns were fired
in the air and people cezebrated the victory. We didn’t have a flag
and hung a bedsheet outside our window.

“But at 9 a.m. Pol Pot’s troops began telling the people to clear
the city. We were told that U.S. planes would launch an air attack.
They said to take a few things as we would just be away three days.
We carried only a small bag of rice and a few clothes.

“We began walking, my family and I heading north along High-
way 5 with thousands of others. Those who argued were shot as
agents. They told us to march 10 kilometers, but the truth soon
became obvious. They prevented us from stopping or turning back.
Many died of hunger and exhaustion. We walked day and night and

Despite her ordeal, she was
camera-shy.

"after a week covered 15 kilometers. We slept only two or three

hours a night.

_ “The soldiers then told us that students, civil servants, teachers,
specialists and tradesmen could return to Phnom Penh. I decided
not to go because I didn’t want to leave my family and this decision
saved my life. Those who accepted the offer were taken away and
killed. This was one method of sifting the population according to
occupation in preparation for Pol Pot’s horrible experiment.”

Som Kim Suor shifted in her chair and her voice became softer

as she recalled what happened next. ‘“We stayed at the roadside
doing nothing for one month. Each day people were taken away and
not seen again. I now decided to flee because they knew I was a
student. My little brother, uncle and I slipped away one night and
that was the last time I saw my family.

‘“‘After one week we arrived at a place in the country and the
people advised me to tell the authorities I, was married. Single
people my age were suspected of being agents. My uncle pretended
he was my husband and my brother became my son.

“‘After some time we were put to work. We were housed -sepa-
rated from the local people and worked from 4 a.m. until 6 p.m.
with an hour for lunch. I spent four years planting rice and we were
fed one milk tin of rice per day for five people. This was prepared in
pig troughs. Many died from hunger, malnutrition and intestinal
diseases. Some died each day. ... ime

‘‘After liberation from Pol Pot’s troops I was to learn
everyone in the region I had fled from that night four years ago,
including my entire family, were killed. The soldiers also killed my
uncle. Only my brother and me are left...” — .

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 11, 1980—Page 5

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