Pol Pot (106 page)

p. 164), but most remained on the ground and were captured by the Vietnamese, along with the rest of the Democratic Kampuchean air force.

Long Visalo, interview, and Y Phandara (

pp. 179—89) both say they saw Ieng Sary aboard the train. He himself claims to have travelled to Battambang by road with Khieu Samphân (

but Samphân has denied this (interview).

399

–400

Mey Mak, interview.

400

An American, Michael Deeds, was among the last to be interrogated atTuol Sleng. His final confession was dated Jan. 5 1979 (

Apr. 15—16 2000). See also Deuch, interview with Nate Thayer.

Kân, interview.

401

Ong Thong Hoeung,

p. 163.

402

Nikán, interview; In Sopheap, interview; Henry Kamm,

Arcade, New York, 1998, pp. 153—6.

In Sopheap, ibid.

402

–3

The following account is drawn mainly from the summary of Ieng Sary’s meeting with Deng and Geng Biao on Jan. 13 in Doc. 32(N422)/T 10.622,

403

Sihanouk,

pp. 342–5 and 365–71. See also Chanda,

pp. 363–9; and the summary of Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua’s meeting with Ieng Sary on Jan. 15 in Doc. 32(N422)/Tio.622,

404

Doc. 32(N422)/Tio.622,

405

Ibid. Lee Kwan Yew also noted that Kriangsak was ‘prone to worrying, especially over the fall-out from Cambodia’ (

p. 297).

This account combines Geng’s report of Kriangsak’s remarks with additional details of their talks provided by Han Nianlong to Ieng Sary at their meeting on Jan. 18.

406

‘Report of the Conference on Feb. 1 and 2,1979’ in Doc. 32(N442)/T724,VA.

406

–8

This account is drawn from Yun Shui,

pp. 504—19.

409

Chanda,

pp. 370–1.

410

Stuart-Fox,

pp. 173–4.

Heder,

p. 31; Someth May,

p. 266. Michael Vickery disputes Heder’s account of the looting of Cambodian rice stocks (

p. 235), but he agrees that this was what most Khmers believed and politically that is what counted.

410

–11

By far the best account of the famine and the refugee exodus is Shawcross’s meticulously researched

Chs. 5–10. His judgement that the extent of the famine was exaggerated in the West (where alarmist headlines spoke of’two million dead by Christmas’) does not invalidate the conclusion that it was worse than in the 1975–8 period. The death toll in the Khmer Rouge years was due primarily to a combination of overwork, lack of food and lack of medical treatment. In 1979, the main cause of death was hunger.

411

Phi Phuon visited Office 131 for the first time for a meeting with Pol in July (interview). The area was also known as Châ-2 and 505. The description that follows is taken from interviews with Kong Duong, Kan, Mey Mak and Suong Sikoeun—all of whom worked there—and from an interview with Phann, who was with one of the groups hiding in the forest in the Eastern Zone.

Kong Duong, Chor Sokhan, interviews.

Mey Mak, interview.

411

–12

Shawcross,

p. 170. Stephen Heder (

pp. 70 and 115) and Serge Thion and Ben Kiernan (

Albin Michel, Paris, 1982, p. 299), relying on refugee interviews in Thailand, put the civilian population under Khmer Rouge control at 500—800,000, and suggest that as many as half may have died. On the basis of interviews with surviving Khmer Rouge officials, it seems more likely that the civilian population was of the order of 200,000, of whom perhaps a quarter died.

412

Picq,

pp. 441, 445 and 453–4. See also her description of the ‘chubby faces’ of Ieng Sary and other leaders in July 1979 (ibid., pp. 466—9), and photographs taken of Sary at the meeting of the non-aligned movement in Colombo the same month. The earliest photographs of Pol, taken by Chinese journalists, date from December 1979. They, too, show him looking plump and overweight.

413

Kamm,

pp. 178–81.

414

Ibid., pp. 181–2. I have taken the liberty of changing Kamm’s rendering,’we abandon,’ to ‘we are abandoning’, since Sary does not speak English and the phrase must therefore have been translated from French or Khmer.

Mey Mak said categorically that ‘after 1980 there was no more killing’ (interview). Deuch, who dated the change to October 1979, said they stopped for a time but then resumed (interview with Nate Thayer). See also Peschoux,

pp. 25–6 and 168–71.

415

Picq,

pp. 478—9.

415

–16

This account is from Mey Mak, interview. Ieng Sary accompanied them to Bangkok, but neither he nor any other senior CPK leader went with Pol to Beijing.

417

Martin,

p. 470.

Kan, interview.

418

Peschoux,

pp. 141 and 180—5.

Kan, Mey Mak, interviews.

From a document circulated in March 1993, quoted by Nate Thayer in ‘Whither the Khmer Rouge?’,

June 6–12 1993.

Chandler,

163.

420

Kong Duong, Mey Mak and Suong Sikoeun, interviews.

421

Apr. 1990.

   A   Khmer Rouge diplomat explained to Henry Kamm why the sharpened bamboo stakes the guerrillas placed in man-traps did not have poisoned tips.’That would kill them,’ the diplomat said. ? wounded man takes four others to carry him and then he cries and cries and cries. It makes the others begin to think.’ ‘So much,’ Kamm commented, ‘for the finesse of Khmer Rouge diplomacy’ (

179). Yet that was the US strategy in Cambodia. By wounding the Vietnamese, America hoped to make the Russians think.

Interview with Saut, a Jarai medical assistant who treated Pol, at Pailin, 21 Nov. 2001; Thiounn Thioeunn, interview.

422

Ieng Sary, Mey Mak, Kong Duong, interviews.

Kân, Kong Duong, Moeun, Mey Mak and Phann, interviews. All five worked at K-18 or House 20, or visited the area, between 1985 and 1990.

422

–3

Phann, interview.

423

Moeun, interview. She was among those present at K-18 that day.

425

The Khmer Rouge strategy for the reconquest of the villages in the second half of the 1980s is discussed at length by Christophe Peschoux in

Ch. 5.

From a speech to the Democratic Kampuchea Women’s Association in December 1988, cited in Heder,’Were the KR Serious about the elections?’,

Mar. 24-Apr. 6.

427

—8

This is drawn from my own recollections of Sihanouk’s return, which I covered as the BBC’s Far East correspondent.

428

Phann, who was an aide to Son Sen at the time, believed he had failed to take the reports seriously (interview). Stephen Heder’s understanding is that Son Sen did report the rumours of trouble, but Pol Pot said no action should be taken (private communication). Either way, Sen was blamed for what happened. Phi Phuon recalled Pol speaking at a seminar at Phnom Chhat in July 1993 about ‘an internal problem in the movement’ that came to the surface when Samphán was attacked. He said this was taken at the time as being a reference to Son Sen (interview).

430

Brown and Zasloff,

137–8.

431

Mey Mak, interview. According to In Sopheap (interview), Pol hoped ‘right up to the last minute that the Paris accords would be applied correctly—correctly, that is, from the Khmer Rouge point of view’.

433

Phi Phuon, interview.

434