Comments on: Encirclement of Phnom Penh

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:39:59 +0000

I’ve managed to find this image of what are presumably members of the Monatio, taken on April 17 1975. You can see the distinctive flag. Might place it into my old post on them.

By: tong reasathea

tong reasathea — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:15:09 +0000

Thank you for your offer, I will gladly accept it and will start to translate some stuff from my Russian blog into English and I will definitely send you an email with the sample too. So it will not be that shocking.. let’s say so. You can always edit or delete, we have to be opened to criticism anyways, not the bullshit one like Tuol Sleng guards breaking the pencils! So, don’t be shy to say what you will not like or not accept. I will omit it then or will re-arrange it.

LB
Thank you for purchasing the book, too. I’m ready from my side to keep scanning more and more, just when I get home and when I get to the library since I work away from home.

Ith Sarin – The suffering for a Khmer soul is not a full version, it’s a relatively short book. I wish I could translate it, maybe one day. Is there exist an English translation? Otherwise, I guess I can commit myself to translate it, in future. Without setting any specific date.

Those note books are a quite surprise to me, I’ve read many contents of that website but it’s so unorganized I’ve never seen them. Amekkhmer is a Youn hater same as KI media, maybe he is one of those who runs that blog too. I like the calligraphy of the 13th page, by the way Nechaev had calligraphic handwriting so his letters to the Tsar did not have to be copied by professional copiers such easy to read they were. I’ve never seen even a single line written by Pol Pot not even his signature, unfortunately, maybe we could read a lot from it..

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:42:06 +0000

Also, Kiernan notes that at the time Lon Nol had ordered aircraft to bomb and strafe the rebel areas, without the knowledge and authorisation of Sihanouk, indicating that the Prince was losing his grip on the Cambodian right.

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:13:59 +0000

As for the Samlaut Rebellion, the fledgling Khmer Rouge armed movement did cash in on it; so for the purposes of their own historiography, it would have been useful (and untruthful) for them to portray this at-first spontaneous rebellion as being a milestone of the revolutionary movement, and proof of peasant desire for radical change. So at some point they were wanting to be associated with it. After all, it was the most serious outbreak of home-grown popular violence since the anti-French rebellion in the 1880s. Thousands of peasants left their villages for the forest. A sizeable chunk of them returned, but several stayed on, becoming guerillas. As an expression of frustration and discontent, then it did fail yes, as it was incoherent, and the crack-down against it was brutal (you know about the beheadings). But it was successful in giving some momentum to the inadequate Khmer Rouge movement, and the Communists brought a sympathetic ideology to the peasants, structure, and sophisticated organisational skills for propaganda and to coordinate attacks by those willing to fight the government after the first flare up. Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn had fled to the countryside in 1967, following the outbreak of violence, and were involved in organising rebels.

Unless, what you mean is that they wanted to cynically distance themselves from it temporarily, when part of that ‘united front’ with an exiled Sihanouk.

By: lb

lb — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:46:43 +0000

Well, I’ll get something together over the next few days, then…

Yeah, I wondered if it was the same guy. The Ith Sarin text has some very interesting elements – I note an early appearance by Comrade Deuch in there, as well as the phrase “the events at Samlaut were prepared in advance”, which as Kiernan pointed out in his book, is directly contradicted by the later KR line – they no longer wanted to be associated with a failed rebellion.

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:21:26 +0000

It’s okay, you need not bother about sending me a sample, for I’d be unqualified to pass judgement anyway! I only started this blog as an amateur interest, and as you can see most of the content here consists of a few bits and pieces of commentary on material produced by other people. It’s up to you, the offer is open. I trust that you’re not a new-generation spambot using artificial intelligence …

“Semi-demented.”

I think the guy who has uploaded this material is the same who posts interesting videos on YouTube, but appears to be an utterly bonkers chauvinist. Hates the Vietnamese. Brilliant stuff by the way. I believe this is what is lacking from what was sent to me by a bookseller stroke con merchant.

By: lb

lb — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:05:21 +0000

By the way, thanks for the offer – I’d be very interested, perhaps I could put together a few things on the background of the Sangkum period etc. I’ll send you a sample first, though, to see what you think.

By: lb

lb — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:02:14 +0000

If you go up to the directory that document is held in, there's actually a lot of interesting material (semi-demented filenames aside). Here, for example, are two translated notebooks containing Khmer Rouge political lessons "captured on 16 August 1971 by FANK": they are particularly interesting for dating from a period when the public line was still heavily Sihanoukist. "Peace can settle everything", writes the notebook's nameless owner, who no doubt had a rather less peaceful time of it at the hands of FANK.

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:50:02 +0000

If either you or Tong fancy the idea of becoming contributors to this blog, then send me a desired username and password to (removed), and I’ll manually add you. Then you can access the site and publish your own posts.

By: Pineapple

Pineapple — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:13:53 +0000

Ah, silly me. Thanks.