Khieu Samphan—ideologist for genocide In the next two weeks, the Gen- eral Assembly of the UN will be voting on the accreditation of the ousted Pol Pot government — now headed by former president Khieu Sampham — of Kampu- medical treatment was available. The refusal of ‘“‘leftist’’ intel- lectual groups in various parts of - the world — because of their own chea (Cambodia). Last year, Pol - Pot was able to get that accredita- tion with the backing of the west- ern bloc of countries including Canada, despite the unparalleled record of atrocities committed by the regime against its own people, atrocities which ultimately led to its overthrow by the Kampuchean Front for National Salvation which now governs the country Srom the capital, Phnom Penh. The role of the genocidal regime of Pol Pot, both past and present, has still to be fully com- prehended — as these articles at- test. The first is by internationally known author and journalist Wil- Sred Burchett who addressed aud- iences in this province earlier this year. It is the last of an eight-part series based on his latest trip to Vietnam and Kampuchea. The second is a news summary of a lengthy article which appeared Aug. | in the British New States- man by Daily Mirror writer John Pilger, the winner of the Journal- ist of the Year award for 1979. By WILFRED BURCHETT In three visits to Kampuchea since the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime on January 11, 1979, and in extensive interviews with refugees who had fled the torture and killer squads prior to that overthrow, I have still heard no agreed version as to why the main activity,of the Khmer Rouge. administration in the last years of, its existence was the systematic extermination of its own people. Nor the reason for the attempted liquidation of everyone — except for the handful of family mem- bers of the ruling clique — with education from primary school upwards. What happened is well docu- mented. In my experience it is im- possible to find a single Khmer family — inside or outside the country — which did not have some of its members wiped out by execution,- torture, starvation, overwork or disease for which no ideological options — to recog- nize what happened is offset by the testimony of virtually all of those who have visited Kampu- chea since the Khmer Rouge re- gime was overthrown. These in- clude representatives of interna- tional aid organizations whose ideologies include the whole range of the political spectrum, but who are engaged in coping with the horrifying consequences of auto-genocide and cultural obliteration almost unprece- dented in the history of mankind. Genocidal towards their. own race, with an extermination pol- icy towards their own ethnic mi- norities, the Khmer Rouge lead- ers outdid Hitler in his abomin- able gas-chamber policies for li- quidating Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and other minority groups. It is as difficult to find precedents or par- allels for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge leaders, as it is to discover on what doctrines, dogmas or id- eologies such crimes against hu- manity — their own compatriots in all walks of life — were based. Cambodia’s former head of state, Prince Norodom Sihan- ouk, described Pol Pot, the Kh- mer Rouge leader during the worst of the excesses, as a ‘‘meg- alomaniac whose madness ex- ceeded that of Hitler.’’ Of Pol Pot’s closest associates in crime, Ieng Sary, Sihanouk wrote that he was-perhaps not ‘“‘medically . _mad”’ but that his paranoia was such that he could “‘not tolerate the slightest opposition or mildest criticism.’’ The reaction to both was to physically liquidate any opponents — even those who had been their closest collaborators — or potential opponents. In the conduct of the country’s affairs, Sihanouk referred to the two as a “‘diumvirate.’’ Some Cambodians who worked for a time within the Khmer Rouge leadership said Sihanouk should have referred to a ‘‘triumvirate’’ of which the most dangerous ele- ment was ‘‘a snake,”’ Khieu Sam- phan, the philosopher and ideol- ogist who has succeeded — at Peking’s insistence — the discred- ited Pol Pot as the official Khmer Rouge leader. In lectures to high-level Khmer Rouge cadres Khieu Samphan stressed the need to destroy all ex- isting values and create a new peasant-led society. Kampuchea should not adopt any existing models of a Communist society, - not the Soviet model, not even a Chinese model — despite the in- fatuation of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary for China’s ‘‘Cultural revo- lution.’’ Kampuchea had to de- velop its own ‘“‘pure’’ values which would serve as a model for the ‘‘world revolution.’’ Man’s ‘‘fall’’ had started, ac- cording to Khieu Samphan, when he left the fields for industry and was accelerated when he adopted a money economy. He would be ‘‘purified”’ only when he got back to working exclusively on the land. ““When. you have rice you have everything.”’ Some who studied with, or un-" der, Khieu Samphan, say that he idolized Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century French anarchist and that through half-digested as- similation of Rousseau’s writings plus the enthusiasm he shared _ with Pol Pot and Ieng Sary for China’s ‘‘Cultural Revolution,” he developed his contempt for in- dustry, education, the arts and sciences and all institutions ex- isting prior to the Khmer Rouge accession to power. Khieu Samphan’s hostility to industry and urban life coincided with the savage racist concepts of | Pol Pot and Jeng Sary, and thus was born the theory of a Kam- puchea without a working class. Because of a lag in Kampuchea’s socio-economic development which was an impediment to - French colonialist interests, the country’s industrial workers were essentially- Vietnamese and Chi- nese. To accept the idea of a worker-peasant alliance would be. contrary to the racist-chauvinist prejudices of Pol Pot, who ac- cording to Sihanouk, is a fervent admirer of Hitler. Thus an element in the forced evacuation of Phnom Eek and WILFRED BURCHETT ... other cities was the dispersal of the working class which went hand-in-hand with the oppression of the Vietnamese and Chinese minorities, leading to their virtual extermination. Khieu Samphan’s theoretical contempt for existing institutions, including religion, tradition and education, coincid- ed also with the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary analysis of the results of the evac- ’ uation of urban centres. Samphan, was _ ideological mentor for the genocidal re- gime. The brutality with which the evacuation of Phnom Penh, for instance, was carried out with people left to die on the roadsides prompted the evacuees to go to the pagodas and ask the bonzesif - all this was in accord with Budd- hist doctrine. Traditionally peo- ple went to the pagodas for advice in troubled times. The replies of the bonzes-.could not but be un- favorable for the regime. So the _ pagodas had to be.closed and the bonzes exterminated. The people turned to intellectuals, school teachers and others. The replies had to be the same. So intellectu- als, anyone capable of reasoning, were potentially dangerous. They had to be eliminated. . Khieu Samphan provided a © : Pol | Pot’s new “premier,” Khieu theory, partly based on his philo- sophical concepts and partly on what he considered the ‘‘glories”’. of the Angkorian slave society, to lay the ideological basis for a modern system of slavery. This is precisely what the Pol Pot regime introduced: a 20th century slave society. It was sufficient for the ‘masses to work and produce rice and under such conditions that they would have notimeto reason or reflect. An intellectual elite would suffice to do their thinking for them. It would be sufficient to give orders in very simple, prim- itive phraseology and have robot security forces to ensure they were’ obeyed and dissidents extermin- ated. Gradually the ruling class could be reduced in numbers to eliminate any 6pposition born of reason, which is why such pioneer * Khmer Rouge leaders as Hu Nim and Hou Young, the closest com- rades of Khieu Samphan, had to be killed after barbarous torture. Finally, left at the top was Pol Pot and his wife Khieu Ponnary who is a half-sister (by her father’s concubine) of Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, sister of Khieu Pon- _ Mary and Khieu Samphan himself. Pol Pot, after eliminat- ing all Khmer veteran revolution- aries of the anti-colonialist strig- gle and all genuine patriots of the anti-Lon Nol struggle, played one Khmer Rouge faction against an- other until virtually only a family | dynasty. survived at leadership evel. The above represents partial and incomplete elements of an at- tempt to explain the criminal madness of the Khmer Rouge. A commission has been set up in Phnom Penh to delve more pro- foundly into the matter and can be expected to come up with more complete answers to one of the greatest political aberrations of all time. A still greater scandal on the| international front is that the remnants of this most murderous regime continue to represent Kampuchea’s place at the United} Nations and to be diplomatically! recognized by the United States, a/ majority of western powers and many non-aligned countries. British journalist bares U. S. ‘aid’ strategy International aid from such agencies as the Red Cross and UNICEF which is going to the ‘Cambodian border areas has ‘‘re-_ stored (Pol Pot’s) Khmer Rouge and helped to mould them into an effective fighting force now esti- mated at 30,000 troops,’ John Pilger, a staff writer on the British Daily Mirror charged in an article published last month following an extensive tour to Kampuchea (Cambodia). Moreover, said Pilger, that aid is being overseen by the Kampu- chean Emergency Group (KEG) which was set up by a decision of U.S. national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and: whose operatives ‘‘are attached to the U.S. embassy in Bangkok.and re- port variously to the state depart- ment, USAID, the CIA and am- bassador Morton Abramowitz. ‘The mission of KEGis. . . to oversee the distribution of West- ern supplies, which are funded largely by the U.S. and the EEC, including Britain, to the proxies in the latest Indochina war: the ‘guerrilla forces’ with a haven on the border, namely the Khmer Rouge, proportionately the most thorough mass murderers in modern times. . .”’ he said. Pilger’s article, entitled ‘‘Am- erica’s second war in Indochina . only the allies are new,”’ ap- peared Aug. 1 in the influential British journal New Statesman. In his story, Pilger reported on his own journey into the camps on the border area, notably the - one at Phnom Chat, a journey which, he said, ‘‘produced a spec-. tacle of proof of how UNICEF _ and the Red Cross have restored the Khmer Rouge.”’ Along with the policy of direct- ing much of the western aid to the Khmer Rouge, the article said, PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPT.-12,.1980—Page 10 there is “‘an insidious propa- ganda’’ campaign based on stories of the ‘diversion of aid by the Phnom Penh authorities” and ‘‘Vietnamese atrocities. . ‘The distortion in the west of events in Indochina, which has al- lowed Washington to play its ‘China card’ and western govern- ~ ments (and the relief agencies) to cast themselves as saviors and the Vietnamese and the Phnom Penh government as wicked and ob-- structionist has effectively com- plemented the destabilizing ac- tivities along the border.’’ But the main strategic thrust of the aid policy and the propaganda campaign which accompanies is to create circumstances for re- newed U.S. military involvement - in Southeast Asia, with China’s assistance, the article warned. According to Pilger’s story that is the strategy of Brzezinski and one of the chief figures- now. carrying it out is Lionel A. Rosen- blatt, formerly of the U.S. em- bassy in Saigon, and now “‘refu- ‘gee co-ordinator’ for KEG. Pilger quoted him in his story: “T feel that what we’re doing (said Rosenblatt) is an ap- propriate’extension of our war in Vietnam. I think it’s important for America to remember its re- sponsibilities in this region. . . I . think that actually the only prob- lem with America in this part of — the world is that, having fought the Vietnam war, most people'at ~ home have retired completely in terms of involvement. Well, the people who are working here with us. . .areinterestedin seeing that _ humanitarian. effort continue, who are concerned about the life- threatening processes here. Okay, _so the general inclination is forget - Southeast Asia, that was the-six- ties, early seventies. Now we say 223% MWS 2 we need to be nen and there will be increasing U.S. involve- ment in the Southeast Asia in the 1980s. And the new line, if you like, is right here in Thailand, okay?”’ bi The article also pointed to the accreditation vote expected at the UN this month, noting that Pol Pot’s representative at the UN “who occupies a luxurious suite in the Beekman Tower hotel”’ ex- pects to get a vote in favor of the legitimacy of his government with backing from Washington and Peking. “So the pieces are fitting to- gether,” the article concluded. “China, having rejected a lunar new year peace, has moved three new divisions to its border with Vietnam, now in its 35th year of siege and suffering. As Deer Hunter Rosenblatt would say, another ‘humanitarian effort’ i is under way.”’