With regard to the end of the Cambodian Civil War, or ragtag struggle for “national liberation” for any Marxist-Leninist-Whateverists who may be reading, for years many have still mistakenly associated certain people captured on film during the fall of Phnom Penh, displaying a symbol of distinctive design, with the Khmer Rouge. After a dry-season offensive which began on January 1 1975, finally on a Glorious April 17, their silent armies sullenly marched in Indian File, or rolled, into Cambodia’s capital city, on captured American-made military vehicles. On that morning of defeat for the Khmer Republic, to weary but cheering crowds black-clad soldiers (looking too clean-cut to have been out on the battlefield) confidently made their way through the city’s streets, riding atop trucks and jeeps, waving a flag. A red and blue flag, the colours split equally and diagonally from top right to bottom left. Superimposed upon this background there was what looked to be a white cross. It was not, however, representative of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, itself hiding behind a dead letter united front. It was the banner of another small and not well-known organisation, hatched from a desperate plan cooked up by some inside the Khmer Republic’s top civil service. The Monatio or National Movement (Mouvement National) was a pathetic attempt by members of the country’s soon-to-be defunct elite, to present themselves as friends to a tattered but heavily-armed foe, who were every bit determined that it would be they, and they alone who would dictate the peace.
The reader may be aware of a particular image reproduced here, the shot of an angry-looking young man in black garb, brandishing a pistol and threatening someone out of sight. A Khmer Rouge solider in a bit of a bad mood? Or perhaps he is Hem Keth Dara, the son of Khmer Republic official Hem Keth Sana, although elsewhere he has been identified as a FANK general. Dara, whatever he looked like and whatever daddy really was, led this group of poseurs and manipulated saps, in turn directed from on high by former classmates of some in the GRUNK leadership, and who had found themselves in a bit of a pickle, being on the losing side of a bitter armed conflict. Those among them, included Lon Nol’s younger brother, Lon Non. Lon Nol himself had scarpered by that time, first to Indonesia then onto Hawaii. Not forgetting, of course, after helping himself to a draft for one million US dollars from the country’s National Bank. The bank building would soon be detonated by explosives, a Khmer Rouge cliché and act of iconoclasm. On that fateful day, by early afternoon in the midst of confusion, the stooge Dara and his chums managed to make use of the city’s radio station, seized by them during their antics in the morning. In a pre-recorded message broadcast to its inhabitants, his taped voice announced that the “National Movement” welcomed the incoming troops, proposing that a nice chat should be had on the details of surrender. Then the real Khmer Rouge broke in, unimpressed, announcing: “We are not here to negotiate! We are entering the city by force of arms.”
Ragged and thin KR zonal troops had entered the city from different directions, with school teacher turned military commander Koy Thuon’s forces among them, setting up base at the Hotel Monorom, seen to the right, in the Claude Juvenal photo at the top. There, they organised a committee for the ‘wiping out’ of enemies, to sort out the identification and execution of high-level personnel of the Lon Nol civil and military administrations. On the subject of terror, Thuon would be among the earliest to go during the Communist Party’s centralisation drive (with accompanying internal purges) in the Democratic Kampuchea period. His 1976 departure was from a region of the country which throughout the regime could not provide a surplus of rice for the central government’s development needs. Increased pressure made a difficult task much worse with the second forced migration of labouring people, driven by the KR from the South West (the Pot-Mok powerbase) northwards. He drew the short straw when it came to the Party’s regional secretaryship, the North being one of the least hospitable and undeveloped zones. Back on topic though, Lon Non was not spared; along with the likes of Sirik Matak and Long Boret dying in undecided circumstances, at least some bits of him were probably spattered across a lawn of the smart, exclusive country club, the Circle Sportif. The Monatio students on the streets were broken up and disarmed, these fakers neither seen as friends or much of a threat in acting out this piece of tragicomic relief during the final collapse of the Republic. This small example of folly showing just how out of touch with reality some had become, even beyond the earlier “Third Force” position of finding a not-so bloody settlement to the fighting. The Khmer Rouge after 1973 in particular weren’t going to give up on a sure thing.
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Dara certainly made an impression on English hack Jon Swain, who recalled that his black pyjamas looked like they’d been tailored by “Yves Saint Laurent”. What Lon Non must have been thinking when organising all this is anyone’s guess.
Yes, this was commented on by Philip Short in his biography of Pol Pot. As for Lon Non and his mates, they must have felt some degree of uncertainty as to their well-being close to surrendering. Before Dara’s brief radio announcement, The KR had used a mobile radio station set up on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, to broadcast to its inhabitants details of their imminent entry into the city, but according to Short, hardly anyone noticed it. Also, many people, including those fighting on the same side knew little of how the Communist’s politics had developed since the early 1970s, other than assumptions of their harshness being a result of the exigencies of the war. Refugees who had fled from the fighting and the increasingly coercive changes occurring in the liberated areas, gave accounts of life in these places; but many still thought that after the war things would resume as normal, minus the repression of the Sihanouk era and the corruption of the Lon Nol government. Some of the politically literate urban people would have included those with hopes of at least some approximation of a social democratic direction the country could travel in.
People inside the rural areas and the towns had supported the FUNK for patriotic or nationalist reasons, not knowing that the Communists had thoroughly out-manoeuvred the Sihanouk-supporters early on in the life of this front organisation, and its accompanying GRUNK government, or much of real substance about them at all. Only that an organisation, members of which were slagged off and bullied by Sihanouk in the late 1960s had allied itself with the man and his coterie, and were providing most of the fighting muscle. People who knew of them, were perhaps confident things would be okay, because of the involvement of three leftist former National Assembly officials: Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon and Hu Nim. They were known to be part of this group after fleeing earlier government repression. Holding government portfolios, they had enjoyed some considerable popular admiration and support, due to their genuine concerns and work for their poor constituents, against the ills of Sihanouk’s Sangkum.
It just goes to show how little most Western commentators (with the exception of a couple of specialists) really know about internal Cambodian politics in this period. There were some very odd alliances between former socialists (or at least ‘leftists’) like Hang Thun Hak and Penn Yuth, some of whom even joined the laughable ‘Socio-Republican Party’. Perhaps they were just making the best of the duff hand they’d been dealt, or perhaps they really believed they could achieve something.
It’s interesting to speculate on what the average educated resident of Phnom Penh might have believed about what was likely to happen; I always found James Fenton’s description of his ex-Khmer Rouge associate who “seemed to have just remembered” something as a fair indication.
But as you said, no-one knew very much about the Angkar – not even the non-CPK members of the GRUNK.
Yes, the proposed “third force” I referred to earlier, an attempt at trying to enable a line of communication (and perhaps compromise) with Sihanouk, by high-level civil servants who regarded themselves as neutralists in the Lon Nol government; although here it is viewed as a ruse by the Chinese, to bide time.
Several of these neutralists, however, later fled the country and in exile helped organise the non-Communist resistance. Important among these was Son Sann, who later headed the volatile alliance between disparate and squabbling Republican and Sihanoukist armed groups, who had carried on the fight against the KR from the borderlands after 1975. They joined together against the occupying Vietnamese under the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front.
And then of course the volatility reached another level in the alliance formed between the above and the deposed DK administration, and a sizeable regrouped chunk of its army.
Where has the translation of Pol Pot’s 1977 speech disappeared to?
The Liberator Press issue? It’ll reappear. I’m tidying it up first, as well as other articles, and then converting them into PDF format for this blog. I’ll post it up eventually.
I note Dara appears in the film footage about 26 seconds in.
Hem Keth Sana was a former provincial governor and the Republic’s Minister of the Interior & Religion, based on the few references I can find. Of course he may well have been a general as well – I think many senior-grade civil servants were simply handed out commissions in 1953/4, and the PSR was infested with FANK officers as I’m sure you know.
If it is actually Dara, then he does indeed appear in the video. Thanks for the info with regard to clearing up the possible position or positions held by his father, although it is interesting what you say about the 1950s. I guess you are referring to what happened after the conference at Geneva, negotiating the end of the First Indochina War.
In the Sihanouk era people who had traditionally been represented in the conservative provincial and urban elite, whether commercial or military, became angered by, among other things, the lack of an increased foreign inflow of western money, but were kept off balance rather than nakedly repressed, like the left. While the nationalisation of certain sectors of industry looked “socialist” on the surface, it was merely an easier way of ensuring the personal enrichment of those close to Sihanouk, particularly the clique surrounding his wife Monique. The army, too, was angered that during the 1960s, Phnom Penh had lost effective administrative control of some areas of the country, whether it be to the Vietnamese or home-grown maquisards. This was part of a wider situation which was out of Sihanouk’s control, not least the escalation of war in the country next door. During the Khmer Republic’s brief and shrinking life, the fake pluralism of the 1972 elections would have been attractive to these kinds of people. It is too tangled I know, but if the disruption in the region caused through the competition of two rival world blocs had not reached Cambodia as it did, and Sihanouk had not frustrated the rightist elements of the same elite, then it perhaps would have been the same trough, just more room made for a different set of pigs to put their snouts in. Maybe in the 1960s it was possible that a KR insurgency could have been contained; an irritation, but no serious threat. After all, armed rebels have been a perennial problem, whether they be apolitical bandits, or people like the Thanhists. Sihanouk losing a grip on his alienated rivals, the coup and the bombing changed that of course.
Yes, as I’ve read it -unfortunately, I can’t remember where, right now – Sihanouk needed to create FARK pretty quickly after the French transferred power (indeed, the French military stayed on after the settlement, though Sihanouk covered this fact up to his neighbours). In order to create an instant officer class, a large number of civil servants were put on training courses and given commissions – including people like Sirik Matak and (I think, although I’m not certain in the latter case) In Tam.
This is, of course, part of the reason that, in later years, many FANK officers were spectacularly inept, or (as in the case of Tam) loathed by much of the army of which they were a part. It also helps to explain (beyond the influence of Lon Nol, anyway) the semi-military character of the Khmer Republic; the line between public servant and soldier was rather blurred. The presence of military ‘socialists’ like Keo Meas’s old mate Penn Yuth blurred it still further.
And yes, I agree with the rest of your assessment above.
Ineptness could also be matched by spectacular bravery. There were the likes of Norodom Chantaraingsey among the better FANK generals, adored by his men. A veteran of the anti-French struggle, he renounced his princely title in 1970, and led resistance after the Communist victory. Among many officers that rightly feared immediate execution upon surrender, he decided to continue fighting on, after first fleeing to the Cardamom mountains. According to Justin Corfield in his short history of the non-Communist resistance, his FANK 13th Brigade consisted of up to two thousand men, and fought the KR up to as late as 1977, making daring raids. James Fenton, who you referred to in an earlier comment, wrote a poem about his surreal battlefield dinner date with Chantaraingsey in 1973, called Dead Soldiers.
The ineptness of the FANK can also be explained by the state of the army’s lack of standardisation. In his account of the war Sak Sutsakhan had complained that the KR were generally using Soviet and Chinese weaponry and equipment, or similar from Socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, making it relatively easy for them to train their forces in whichever part of the country they operated. Aside from what was captured or even bought from corrupt FANK officers. In contrast the FANK had a mishmash of old French, newer Russian and then American equipment; a result of Cambodia’s receipt of aid from shifting international donors: firstly due to Sihanouk’s leftward foreign policy and then the rightward direction of the Khmer Republic. This meant delays in sending troops to other parts of the country when losses demanded their transfer. The time needed to train solders trained in one type, in the use of another. Or similarly if equipment was lost or destroyed, then units received new supplies they weren’t trained to use, or weren’t compatible with what they had already.
You’re right about the absurdity of the FANK in general during the war, and with regard to that Lon Nol’s Neo-Khmerisme, with its superstitions, talismans and marijuana. According to Philip Short, he even ordered soldiers to draw a line of supposedly magical and coloured sand around the perimeter of the capital city, to help ward off the Khmer Rouge armies. It seems there had been little thought given to the dependence on US air strike power helping to swell the enemy’s ranks.
Keo Meas had a very good “Communist” background within a Cambodian context, and although being close to Pol’s age had been tipped as a future leader. As well as involvement in the underground he headed the Pracheachon in the interests of Khmer Viet Minh veterans left without much protection following Geneva, unlike the Viet Minh and Pathet Lao. Of course the sham democracy of the Sihanouk era meant the Pracheachon’s banner became increasingly tattered. Penn Yuth had been present at the founding of the KPRP, if I remember correctly, and was involved in the above and legal “party of the plough.”
You not at uni yet?
I’m not going unfortunately. I just wouldn’t be able to afford it, and a change in circumstances means I have to work full-time now anyway, so …
I understand but you could at least try and find some other way. It is much more difficult for those on low incomes, where you don’t have the help you would have if unemployed and on benefits. I guess voluntary unemployment as a path into academia is not an option with the little one. Shite and unfair. You going back over there soon tho?
Yes, but further afield. Call centres in Moscow don’t provide the most satisfying of jobs or reasonable pay. As for the other stuff, yeah I had some clueless middle class prannet suggest that I should think about becoming unemployed. Of course, a great idea. Sees it as a lark or game. I don’t have a degree in Russian by the way, so with no formal acknowledgement, I am unqualified to speak it. But I do sometimes, on the sly, with my tongue in my cheek. I know who you are too.
I can still hope:
wink
Well with your family circumstances I agree. It’s always underneath eh? Middle class idiots, out of touch.
Isn’t that the truth.
Where’s Ib? Has he/she not made any more visits?
snigger
Ha, fuck off you Moscow “Patrice Lumumba University” undergrad wannabe.
You bad mannered so and so.
I’m still around, just waiting for the next instalment.
I know I’m new here so please pardon me asking: Pineapple Are you actually in Moscow and actually speak Russian?
I am Russian and I got highly surprised! And to repeat what I just said in another comment, thanks for your blog!
I am English, but visit Russia when money and time allows. When it comes to the language, I could be what is loosely termed a dilettante. I want/need to learn it properly. As for your recent comment about the 1978 Yugoslav documentary, I am not aware of the full film being available on-line, nor have I been able to obtain a copy from elsewhere. But, footage from it has been used in other programmes and documentaries. A French television programme from the late 1970s discusses the Yugoslav film, uses plenty of footage, and a small piece of it can be viewed at the French national archives website, click here. However, to view the whole thing a purchase has to be made in order to download a protected copy. You can see about three and half minutes for free.
Thanks for the response! I can’t believe I found it (well, you found it). Well now I’m officially glad that I still remember some French
.
No problem, although I think you’re ahead of me in the language department.
If you want to view the whole French television programme on the Yugoslav film Kampuchea 1978, then I am happy to help you out and share. Firstly you need to download the free DivX player, then download this file. Note the video will only play in the DivX player, and only when on-line. If this doesn’t work, then I don’t how else I can be of help.
Thanks! I actually already paid for this on Friday though downloading it only now. It was my birthday this week-end so I figured I can spend 4 euros as a present to myself
. I am not familiar how exactly it’s going to work (since I never dealt with .tix files before) but hope that I will actually get the file on my computer.
SuperJohnny you can check my blog in Russian, though it’s not entirely about DK it is based mainly on Kampuchea and related experiences.
There might be some part of this Cambodge 78 movie on YouTube it seems, there’s earlier French newprograms some from Lon Nol times. A user cppcanada has lots of those. I’m yet to watch all of this, I understand French very little, I hate Frenchmen in fact, but so many information on Cambodia in French and in French exclusively that I started to learn French.
Regarding the picture. Where is it? It’s on Monivong boulevard near the intersection with Kampuchea Krom street. Oh, old days I miss you!
I haven’t read the comments beneath your main article but have to comment on the main part. I was recently in Cambodia and read Swain’s, Bizot’s, Short’s and Luong Ung’s book’s on let’s face it one of the greatest tragedies in a century not exactly short of tragedy. Yet you title your article “Silly Bunch of Twats” as if you’re commenting on some footballers being caught en flagrante in a nightclub. To be honest I don’t know much on the Monatio group, I Googled them and found this website, but until I have stared at death while everything I valued was about to go down the plughole I would not have the flippancy to use your words as you do. Maybe you can share your views on say the Warsaw Uprising? Were the instigators merely a bunch of wankers?
Read the comments, and then try engaging your brain before deciding to put your fingers to use on the keyboard. I’d also bet that I’m far better read than you are on the subject. Which Warsaw uprising are you referring to exactly? Two spring to mind, but of course I know enough to see the complete historical irrelevancy of those events to a desperate and cynical last-ditch political move made by a section of the old Khmer elite. That is, to ingratiate themselves with an enemy they’d been all too happy to see blown to smithereens ‘officially’ for three years of the civil war. It is laughable to know about the antics of a few poseurs in Phnom Penh on the morning of April 17 1975, and then place them intro the same context in which the Polish anti-fascist resistance operated during WWII. It’s quite possible that the intense March 1973 aerial bombardment by the US Air Force to halt the Khmer Rouge offensive on the capital provided quite impressive firework displays for government ministers, while they sipped drinks on their Phnom Penh verandas.
The Sangkum may have forced them out to the countryside but the Khmer Republic’s very existence, Lon Nol’s incompetency and the Republic’s ill-thought out alignment with the leading power of the old capitalist world bloc (which sought to get out of Indochina as quickly as possible, and in doing so provided a bomb panacea for Cambodia) helped bring the Khmer Rouge to town. And those behind the Monatio must have been utter fools to think that, in sending a few students and soldiers dressed in Khmer Rouge garb to parade around the streets during the fall of Phnom Penh, they could have been viewed by the in-coming poor peasant army as representing a genuine friendly tendency within the Republican government. “Hey, fellas, it wasn’t us who went along with a strategic decision to drop thousands of tons of bombs on rural areas, destroying whole villages and embittering the traumatised survivors. No siree. Look, see, we’re your friends!” I stand by what I’ve said. Those on the streets that morning were unwitting clowns providing a show for some very angry chickens that had come home to roost. Where do you think the Khmer Rouge came from? That they just appeared out of the forests like some aberration from the norms of a ‘peaceful’ country? Why did once moderate people among them become militarised, doctrinaire and paranoid extremists armed with a mutant form of Leninism? Look back, farther than the Cambodian Civil War. The forms in which their radicalism took shape weren’t just rooted in a perhaps peculiar interpretation of an imported foreign political ideology.
“I’d also bet that I’m far better read than you are on the subject.”
And there’s the rub. You think because you have a library card you are qualified to judge a foolhardy but desparate action with a title like that. Regarding your qualifications can you expand on them please? Have you ever lived in an environment such as described above? What should they have done to stop the holocaust about to hit them? Did the Republic, the government and the “new” people somehow deserve what happened to them for aligning themselves with the US, for being incompetent and sipping cocktails from the verandha as you say?
You place great emphasis on the bombings yet Short argues that the policies would have been the same without the bombings. And it wasn’t a mutant form of Leninism, it was taking it to its logical end. Furthermore you mention nothing of Sihanouk’s influence.
I digress to your level. My original point before your Pol Pot for Dummies lesson was why title it with such a flippant remark? These people were murdered, oops sorry liquidated, just a few hours after the photos above.
Have you been to Cambodia? I was in S21 a few months ago and a strange sensation reached me as I entered the rooms with the mug shots in. As most of them were probably ex-Khmer Rouge I felt a sense of tough justice, the animal you helped create has swallowed you too. Yet it soon went and I felt pity for those people staring death in the face. I didn’t think they were silly twats.
And I meant the 1944 uprising. As I type this there’s a story on BBC news about the Polish PM dying on the way to Katyn. Maybe he shouldn’t have bothered, load of twats ingratiating themselves with the NKVD got what they deserved.
Oh dear. You got your willy out and started waving it. Of course If you’d read Short’s book closely then you’d be aware of the ‘Leninism’ of the Khmer Communists. Such a thing has been researched much more thoroughly elsewhere, and although he says their extreme radicalism can’t be fully explained by the terrible exigencies of the war, the bombing was vitally important. The raids which ruined the Cambodian countryside also destroyed the conditions that had sustained a way of life among many peasants, making it much easier for the Khmer Communists (as well as being oriented to the poorest among them) to influence their placing into their forced ‘cooperative’ system which would be filled with urban evacuees from April 1975. And, which would be later used, in Leninist fashion, to try and thrust the country into the modern world. Indeed Short goes into detail, borrowed from William Shawcross, on the effects the bombing had on peasant conscripts, regarding a military ‘rule of thumb.’ That combat units can only sustain a certain amount of losses until irreversible psychological damage to the combatants is done. He briefly mentions the experiences of two all-female Khmer Rouge battalions which suffered sixty percent losses during the war. How many troops make up a battalion, perhaps 400-600? I suppose it depends on the size of an army, but they must have seen some serious fighting. Utterly horrific. And, lastly, for a non-academic book it is actually brave in that Short believes the DK regime was not genocidal in intent.
Of course I mentioned Sihanouk, for his repressive Sangkum government saw no place for any kind of real political opposition before his ousting, and the Khmer Republic which emerged was a highly corrupt mess. Not something I’d defend, nor some of the hacks who were actually there. And who has referred to the entire population of Phnom Penh as silly twats? Or even Khmer Communist cadre sent to their deaths. How can the ordinary urbanites and peasant refugees be seen as also bearing responsibility that the Khmer Republic elite partly had for helping bring ruin to the country through grave political error regarding limited support and aid from the United States? Think about the logic you’re using. It’s almost as if they were to blame also, and that the Khmer Communist policies against them were justified. My mention of sipping drinks and Phnom Penh verandas is a reference to Michael Vickery and his writing on the bombing in his book Cambodia 1975-82. Given the circumstances and the bitterness of the war, how else would those high-ranking military leaders and civil servants of the Republic have been treated by the victors? The Monatio weren’t all slaughtered were they? They were broken up and disarmed by peasant troops.
You’ve been to Cambodia, paying a visit to the former S-21 political prison. And? What makes you some kind of moral authority because you’ve done a spot of ‘dark tourism.’ I really couldn’t care less what you felt, it was never about you. The Cambodian tragedy is far more important than clichéd self-referential musings from someone who likes to launch an attack, but doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.
I see you were mentioning the 1944 uprising. What has that got to do with Cambodia or specifically the Monatio? Diddly squat. And here we go, yet more ahistorical nonsense. Why should I cry pretend tears for Kaczynski, who in life with his brother, was quite happy to align himself with people who would be happy to execute homosexuals, deny pogroms and express anti-semitic views? Although, this has got me thinking: just what has the Katyn massacre got to do with the Monatio, and the end of the Cambodian Civil War… Ah, yes, nothing.
Christ you really are an arrogant cunt. Who the fuck are you? Have you ever been laid or do you sit in your parent’s bedroom satisfying yourself how you, The Great Pineapple, would have done this or that in Cambodia? What type of human being (English gimp of course) spends so much time on dissecting the Khmer Rouge? Maybe you should be working for the State Department, your analyses based on books is illuminating.
Arrogant? That’s a fine word to use. You come here casting aspersions, and then get all nasty when I offer a defence. Quite adequately if I do say so myself.
Nurse!
Because I’m a naive, middle class indentikit gapper who likes travelling thousands of miles across the world in order to look at poor people, and also because of my aversion to reading books, I watched a documentary on the telly the other night. It was called Communism Is, LIke, Really Bad. It featured the Pol Pot regime. With a posh voice-over. I almost cried.
There’s a lot of controversy about Katyn, http://katyn.ru/and http://katyn.ru/index.php?go=Pages&in=view&id=936 where Kaganovich and Molotov name only 3.000 people “fuckers, gangsters and killers” quoting Kaganovich. This is just to the question of contemporary propaganda which tries to make the black look white.
And Sangkum started terror against Khmer communists first. So they were in defense. Many people in S21 were targeted for some reasons too, nobody studied their files personally, Angkar would not order arrest for the sake of arrest and “killings” for the sake of “killing” there were crimes and undobtedly there were agents of CIA, direct or inderect, there’s some evidence, that CIA planned sabotage after liberation, KR seized radio stations, weapons stored in Phnom Penh. Especially now we can see that many fears of CIA involvement here and there are actually true, they got more than it seems. They got shitloads of money they could’ve created 10 communist parties if they wanted to and they indeed created some fake parties.
The NKVD security forces murdered many more than that. As for the Sangkum, political intolerance helped push the Khmer Communists towards violent confrontation by the mid-late1960s. As for the Khmer Republic there were informant networks for the CIA in Phnom Penh, but emptying the city after victory and sending the population to the rural cooperatives the Communists controlled effectively destroyed this threat. There were genuine fears of infiltration, either by the CIA or Vietnamese/Russians, but many people who were tortured and killed in the political prisons never worked for either. The confessions that were extracted weren’t of much real ‘use.’ But, there was also the cynical use of counter-revolutionary charges against rivals in the zones, and their removal meant the Pol Pot line could be more effectively put into practice in the way the central government wanted it. After all, the process of strict centralisation was never completed.
Here’s a picture of a man meeting Sydney Schanberg, and who claimed to be Hem Keth Dara, leader of a Khmer Rouge unit inside Phnom Penh on April 17 1975. This of course being that fake Khmer Rouge unit, or rather the Monatio. Whether it was really him or not …
The group he led on that morning:
Hi I’ve come across this website and find it interesting. Do you recommend any interesting material to read up on? Also were threre, in your opinion, any positive social benefits from the Khmer Rouge years ie were there anymore hospitals etc.
You tell me Comrade Secretary General. After all, you were in charge of taking over what little medical care the Khmer Republic had to offer ordinary people, and then exacerbating an inherited set of dire problems which any government would have faced after the war.
Here, on this blog tons of interesting material to read, just have to start from beginning, reading the comments too. And of course Searching the truth magazine which contains tons of information. I would suggest to post under another nickname, less pretentious, modesty, you know.
DK didn’t have sufficient time to offer any social change, that’s clear, at least to me. DK had born though many scientists and researchers dedicating their work to that or another aspect of DK, including this blog. If you would try to search material on 3 years of Democratic Kampuchea you will come with more studies then 50 years of Albanian socialism, let’s say. Or 35 years of Laotian socialism, even history of Cambodian politics much more clear to me then let’s say Vietnamese politics, I can’t come with the good study on that one. And back to the DK accomplishments. There’s must be left many dikes and channels which were built during DK this I know for sure, there’s some articles or studies on this, but I will try to post later on this when I get some free time. There’s a whole new aspect of human relationship which DK tried to introduce, not much written on this, I read the Platonov’s Chevengur which foreshadows pretty much the DK regime. Then it should be interesting to try to lay out some ideas on new society.
Pineapple- now I see why in that stupid Killing Fields movie KR wear their scarves tied around the head, and jump with their AK 47 in some kind of an idiotic monkey dance. A poor school of Monatio.
You described everything with more precision that I could, and obviously in S21 were innocent, though unknown to what extent.
From about six minutes into this clip:
Too much criticism has been aimed at the Khmer Rouge. Look what they achieved? One can’t make an omelette without cracking a few skulls.
If we can have that kind of revolution here in Britain…with Tony Blair as Sirik Matak. And surely nobody would complain if John Prescott, Gordon Brown and Jack Straw were guests at S-21. And for Youns read “Afro-Carribean community”, for Chams read “Islamic” ie escort them to the ports or just liquidate them.
Like the Khmers we had a great civilisation which we need to reclaim from the reactionary Nu Labour.
The future is bright, the road is tortuous, as the Chinese Communist Party once said.
As for what you’ve said, I doubt a peasant-based revolution built upon specific Southeast Asian conditions in a country with pre-capitalist social relations could really be a compatible model for emulation here in the UK. After all, there are no peasants here for starters.
The British government and business had dealings with the Khmer Rouge. For example, there’s the Reng Fung trading house established in Hong Kong, in order to find international outlets for rice and rubber produced in Democratic Kampuchea. And when the Pol Pot regime was overthrown and later entered a coalition with former enemies in a borderland government, this was recognised by the UN, including the United Kingdom, as the legitimate government of Cambodia. Deliberately isolating the pro-Soviet People’s Republic of Kampuchea and punishing the ordinary people of the country because it was on the wrong side of the Cold War. The British government even provided military training to KR guerillas who fought the PRK and its successor for a decade and more. When it was expedient to do so, it appears people such as the Khmer Rouge were acceptable bedfellows, and the worst excesses of their regime could be whitewashed.
If you want to be a political satirist, then it’s irrelevant to the content found here at this site in pretending to be the leader of a post-modern, Trojan Horse fascist organisation, and perhaps it requires a little more careful Googling or reading of inaccurate articles found at Wikipedia. If you could at least try and grow some politics then please come back, so I can knock you down again.
No peasants? Are you joking me, my area is full of them. Watching Jeremy Kyle on their 50 inch plasmas, all courtesy of the capitalist taxpayer. They are bigger poncing leeches than the orange robed monks. A few months in black pyjamas digging irrigation stuff would correct their reactionary attitudes.
The UK is ripe for a revolution, well advanced proletariat (although beginning to get overwhelmed by the peasants). Let’s have a Soviet style revolution then, the body count is the same.
As for fascism call it want you want. Mussolini was a self-proclaimed fascist but wasn’t interested in anti-semitism or indeed genocide. Same for Franco. They were against capitalism, for the resurrection of the Nation, leader principle, seizure of power, centralised political power, hated the metropolitan elite, believed hard labour was good for the people, xenophobic. if that’s fascism (without the genocide) then what shall we call the Democratic Kampuchea? Super-fascist?
Then you must be living in a parallel universe where the shift to a large-scale taking of land, the emergence of capitalism and eventual industrialisation never occurred in western Europe. Actually I am probably wrong, and the ‘peasants’ that do live here will perhaps be refugees from home countries in the developing world. Whether Chav was and still is a genuine working class subculture, or its worst aspects merely the middle class prejudiced mind running wild, is perhaps still a matter of debate. But then again, it isn’t 2003 any more. Which also brings me to this unproven concept of a large and recalcitrant lower-class social layer of ‘parasites’ and ‘lumpens,’ which even the Department for Work and Pensions of the British government acknowledge is but tiny section of the claimant population receiving some form of assistance from the welfare state. And most taxpayers are not ‘capitalist,’ including myself.
And are you also expressing the arrant nonsense, coming from a superficial knowledge of Buddhism, that this religion is somehow immune from being co-opted by elites and then used as a way to justify an unjust social order and the power of those elites? That the accumulation of wealth and power in this life has been conditional on a decently-led previous one. Or rather, the cosmic balance sheet can be skewed to favour the rich and powerful. A rite of passage for many a young male of diverse social backgrounds was and perhaps still is spending time as a bonze. And exclusion from this activity, due to poverty, will have made poor peasant youths understandably resentful, and it is perhaps little wonder that these youths came away from 1960s socialist meetings filled with a confidence and sense of self-worth that in other social situations was denied them, while cleaning up the shit of other people’s animals. After all, they had been bad persons in another life and so were reaping the consequences of past misdeeds. And should I also remind you that one of Pol Pot’s most fervent allies, and a supporter of some of the DK government’s most radical policy decisions, was Ta Mok, who was once a Buddhist monk and lay teacher. As was Cambodia’s first Communist guerilla leader and at one time the country’s closest thing to an authentic home-grown one at that, his name of course being Pham Van Hua, or Son Ngoc Minh, and lastly also known as Achar Mean. While there is little evidence to support the Communist decision to abolish religion and outlaw its following as being popular, the roles played by monks and former monks in politics have been varied and ambiguous.
Moving on, the UK, or indeed western Europe as a whole isn’t exactly bubbling with revolution of the type you’re on about, in fact the only bubbles I’ve noticed recently were in the bath yesterday evening. I farted twice before getting out. But yet again you’re displaying a level of ignorance here that is causing me to become embarrassed for you. A ‘Soviet style’ revolution as you put it, i.e. a voluntarist takeover of state power by a vanguard party in the Bolshevik mould (which today could be deemed an anachronism), has never occurred in the advanced and industrialised centres of the capitalist world but tellingly at their peripheries. And this diverging from a classical Marxist schema, in making ‘socialist’ revolution on social terrain far removed from what the man himself would have thought a transitional shift conceivable, has seen regimes appear over the last century claim, with differing degrees of accuracy, to base their way of doing things on Marx’s analysis, often, or even mostly, in places where the conditions for it barely applied, or didn’t apply at all.
Which brings me to the Khmer Communists and their state. Aside from the old and uniform French school syllabus, certain ideas or societal models may have been passed to them from Marx, and perhaps more importantly the realisable political programmes developed by Lenin, Stalin and Mao, but the Cambodian Revolution didn’t follow either Soviet or Chinese examples in a linear fashion. Influences are evident, but they don’t fully explain how or why Democratic Kampuchea became the way it did. The DK leaders neither sought nor received Soviet recognition for their state, the whole short period of time they were in power. And the Cambodian Revolution didn’t resemble the one that occurred in Russia, except that an organisation which claimed to be a ‘Communist Party’ won state power, and did so in the different circumstances and conditions of a peasant society arguably more peasant than Russia was. And with at least being inspired by ‘Marxism-Leninism,’ they used a peculiar interpretation of this in their attempt to create a socialist society (and for the hard of thinking I refer to the term socialism within a Leninist context). I don’t agree that they could have achieved this genuinely, for I am not a Marxist nor a Leninist along with its 57 varieties. I do believe however that their intentions were sincere and this attempt at creating a socialist society was genuine. Power for power’s sake, killing for killing’s sake … This kind of analysis, if you can call it that reveals nothing of value. Their vast infrastructural program was intended to lay the foundations for an industrialisation of the country within a compressed timescale. Their methods, which they deemed necessary for this prodigious jump into modernity, were abhorrent and ghastly, but that does not mean they didn’t believe they were creating the above. Understanding that is vital for understanding their failure, and a recognition of this does not mean ipso facto a defence of the Khmer Rouge. The Mao quote at the beginning of my previous comment seems to have gone over you head. There are several cliched quotes you could come out with regarding this mindset of justifying present suffering for a future where such things have been completely abrogated. And this can be subject to Party postponement of course. With your less than tentative connections between a hastily thought-out idea of what fascism is, or rather was (a form of capitalism without liberal bourgeois ‘rights’) and Communism, the Khmer Communists were never anything of the sort. Personally, although I still need to familiarise myself much more with the idea, is that the Marxist notion of an Asiatic Mode of Production seems to fit in nicely with the changes that occurred in Democratic Kampuchea. Far from the transition to socialism they envisaged, and sincerely believed they were attempting. We won’t be seeing anything like this again, Soviet-inspired or not. Nor the fascism of old.
Oh, and try harder sunshine, and would it be rude of me to call you Mark? And I nearly forgot to add, today is the 35th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh.
Who is this naive pain in the backside?
Fall? Shouldn’t that be liberation?
As for your earlier remark about the nefarious British Government (Maggie of course) doing business dealings with the satanic KR the flip side is of course, from a glorious socialist angle, the sellout KR doing business with the capitalist imperialist warmongering etc British. Where were the KR’s morals or was it a tactical manuever which only the Commies are permitted to use? After all this site is about the KR. Beams and motes comrade.
PS Mau get a better job rather than being a poor wannabe. Shelf stacking does not make you part of the proletariat.
“Who is this naive pain in the backside?”
Mau, he’s been to Tuol Sleng. He got a t-shirt and everything.
The Hong Kong-based Reng Fung trading house was established in, I think, 1976. Thatcher didn’t become Prime Minister until 79. You’ve been trounced here Mark. Give it up. In the attempt to appear knowledgeable you seem to be labouring under the illusion that this is a pro-Khmer Communist site. It’s nothing of the sort. While myself and others who contribute seriously to this site are concerned with the nature and horrific failure of perhaps the only victorious peasant revolution in modern times, am I too clever for a prole?
It’s Pineapple who works in a supermarket, Mark. (And what has that got to do with anything discussed here?) So far all I’ve read from your contributions are the increasing hysterics of someone who knows little about the subject on which he speaks, and when frustrated by the responses he gets resorts to throwing childish insults around. It’s a garbled mess of conflating Bolshevism with Fascism, industrial European working class people with Southeast Asian peasants, and then some lame take on the old Victorian-era trope of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.
“Digging irrigation stuff.” Did you mean the centralised state control of a countrywide irrigation system intended for the mass production of rice? Albeit with such a rough understanding of Khmer Communist aims, why did you earlier state that such Leninism was never what they were about, indeed just “taking it to its logical end.” I don’t think anyone here believes that a “socialist” revolution simply by fiat, and the forced quasi-military organisation which led to a disastrous mismanagement of the economy, is something to defend. Lots of people died, or lived in unnecessary pain and suffering. For nothing? They just did, so ner?
I recently bought a pair of Rhoda Buchanan glasses, and when I put them on and looked through them into a mirror this is what I saw:
What’s the point of this website? Is it just a forum for a few nerds who can’t get laid to discuss Democratic Kampuchean agrarian reform? Tell me that’s not how you get your kicks. Cambodia has a tragic history, for you to debate the small print like this is pretty vulgar. Like sanitising Hitler because he built the autobahn. You’re obviously like those silly women who write love letters to incarcerated serial killers. Enjoy your intellectual maturbation comrades.
I can’t speak for everyone who contributes to this blog, but myself and Tong are married, and Pineapple has a young family. And as far as I’m aware, none have done any dark tourism. That’s for ghouls.
Shot of a pile of sun-bleached skulls and fade out.
But you haven’t been reading this blog have you. You’ve been clocked spending up to four hours on this site, at this post only, sitting here waiting for responses to your childish flailing. Yes, you’ll find posts on the roots and practice of Khmer Communist agricultural reform, rather than the wrongly-applied and utopian agrarian primitivism rubbish that’s been written about them. There are also posts relating to the civil war, relations with Vietnam, Son Ngoc Thanh in the 1940s and also his general influence on Cambodian nationalism, a colourful personality of the Khmer Republic, Sihanouk and the KR, even the early Chinese soviet movement. And please, show me on this site where there is a defence or support of the KR. This site was only set up as an amateur interest, and contributors have merely been bringing to general readers writing which we hope is informative but not dry, and can give the people who have no narrow academic interest in this stuff some bits and pieces which will help their understanding of the murderous Khmer Rouge phenomenon – to fit arguably the most radical movement of modern times into several historical, political and ideological contexts. As well as writing there are videos (which seem to be popular) and other media too, including articles and whole books, which are downloadable and all for free. Get a grip, the last few days have been embarrassing.
I like the way this pathetic uninformed trolling became an issue of social class. Must piss middle class student wankers right off, when they can’t beat their social inferiors in an argument. Especially unskilled manual workers. What the fuck has that got to do with anything? It was almost as if Mark thought he was clever by default. Vacuous Gap Year prannet.
Indeed. It was funny how he thought he could somehow transform his ignorance into erudition by asking the question “Have you been to Cambodia? ” Ooh, so he visited a Japanese-owned tourist concern, like the thousands before him, perhaps even fired an old AK-47. That’s some deep shit. There was definitely an ulterior motive (to simply make trouble) behind it though. Thought he could have a pop based on some connection to an Orwell-reading sixth former who ended up being rejected by Cambridge University.
Read Orwell.
Snigger.
To whom it may concern;
The picture of an angry-looking young man, brandishing the pistol was absolutely not Hem Keth Dara.
Nevertheless, in the 38 Pineapple, the picture of a man meeting Sydney Schanberg in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on April 17th, 1975 that man was positively Hem Keth Dara.
I am Hem Keth Sunda, the son of the late Hem Keth Sana and the younger brother of the late Hem Keth Dara. I have been living in New York City since before April 1975.
Thank you very much
Thanks for visiting here. I won’t amend the blog post, as the comments can tell the story. Do you have any information to share on the Monatio group? Who founded it? Do you know why your brother decided to lead the group on the streets of Phnom Penh on that fateful morning?
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