Son Ngoc Minh
(
c.
1910–72), real name allegedly Pham Van Hua, alias Achar Mean, Kim Bien: Born in South Vietnam of mixed Khmer-Vietnamese
parentage, became the first authentic Cambodian communist. Inducted into the ICP in 1949. Leader of the PRPK from its formation in 1951. After the Geneva accords, withdrew to Vietnam. Elected in absentia to the CPK CC in 1960. Died in Beijing after a stroke.
Son Ngoc Thanh
(1908–77): Early Cambodian nationalist. Co-founder of the first Khmer-language newspaper,
Nagaravatta,
in 1936. Prime Minister in August 1945. Arrested and exiled by the colonial authorities. Returned in triumph to Phnom Penh in 1951. Led a right-wing rebel group, the Khmer Serei, initially against the French, then against Sihanouk. Afterwards based in Thailand and South Vietnam. Prime Minister under Lon Nol 1972–73. Died under house arrest in Vietnam.
Son Sen
(1927–97), alias Khieu, Khamm, Aum: Schoolteacher. Member of the Cercle Marxiste in Paris. CPK CC member from 1963. With Pol Pot at Office 100 in Ta Not and Ratanakiri. CPK North-Eastern Zone Secretary 1970–71, then Chief of the General Staff of the Khmer Rouge army Minister of Defence from August 1975. Alternate Standing Committee member, responsible for the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre. Chosen by Pol Pot as his successor in the 1980s but then fell from favour. Killed as a traitor on Pol’s orders near Kbal Ansoang.
Suong Sikoeun
(b. 1937): Member of the Cercle Marxiste in Paris in the 1960s. Joined Sihanouk in Beijing after the 1970 coup. Inducted into the CPK by Ieng Sary, with whom he was associated throughout his career. After 1975, head of the press section of the Democratic Kampuchea Foreign Ministry. Defected to Hun Sen in 1996. Now lives as a private citizen in Malay.
Thiounn Mumm
(b. 1925): The second of four brothers from one of Cambodia’s wealthiest aristocratic families, all of whom espoused the Khmer Rouge cause. The eldest,
Thiounn Thioeunn,
became Minister of Health.
Thiounn Chum
was notional Finance Minister 1979–81.
Thiounn Prasith
was Ambassador to the UN. In Paris, Mumm was co-founder of the Cercle Marxiste and its head throughout the 1960s. Joined Sihanouk in Beijing following the 1970 coup and returned with him to Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge victory. Notional Minister of Science 1979–81. He and Chum then returned to France. Mumm now holds French citizenship and lives near Rouen; Chum lives just outside Paris; Prasith lives in New York State; Thioeunn, who defected to Hun Sen in 1998, lives in Phnom Penh.
Tiv Ol
(1933–77), alias Penh: Student activist, then secondary school teacher, in the 1950s and ‘60s. Joined Pol Pot in Ratanakiri in 1968. From 1970, Deputy Minister of Information in the GRUNC. Purged and killed at Tuol Sleng.
Tou Samouth
(
c.
1915–62): Former Buddhist preacher. Ex-Issarak. Founder member of the PRPK in 1951. Head of the Urban Committee of the communist movement from 1954. Elected CPK Secretary at the founding congress in 1960. Detained and killed on the orders of Lon Nol.
Vorn Vet
(
c.
1934–78), real name Pen Thuok, alias Sok, Mean, Te, Kuon, Veth and Vorn: Joined the Khmers Viet Minh in 1954 after dropping out of secondary school. CPK CC member and head of the Phnom Penh CPK Committee from 1963. CPK Secretary of the Special Zone from 1971. Member of the Standing Committee. After 1976, Vice-Premier for the Economy. Purged and killed at Tuol Sleng.
Yun Yat
(
c
.1937–97), alias Ath: Schoolteacher. Married to Son Sen. From the early 1970s, responsible for the Party journal,
Tung Padevat.
In 1976, Minister of Culture, Education and Propaganda. Spent the 1980s in Beijing as director of the Khmer Rouge radio station. Killed as a traitor with her husband on Pol Pot’s orders near Kbal Ansoang.
Notes and Sources
This book is based in large part on primary sources, notably several hundred hours of interviews with former members of the Khmer Rouge movement—anging from Khieu Samphân, the Head of State of Democratic Kampuchea, and Ieng Sary, the Foreign Minister, to bodyguards and cooks—s well as original documents in Chinese, Khmer, French, Russian and Vietnamese, held in state and Party archives in Aix-en-Provence, Beijing, Hanoi, Moscow, Paris and Phnom Penh. The aim has been to tell the story of the Cambodian nightmare, to the extent that that is feasible, from the vantage point of those who created it, rather than solely from that of the victims. Such an endeavour would have been impossible without the substantial body of scholarship on the Khmers Rouges and their antecedents produced over the past quarter-century by historians like David Chandler, Stephen Heder, Ben Kiernan, Serge Thion and Michael Vickery. Many others have also put their shoulders to the wheel. The bibliography that follows is far from comprehensive. It is intended essentially as a
vade mecum
for the notes, detailing those works which are referred to so frequently as to make the use of a short title desirable. Other titles, to which reference is made more rarely, are cited as they occur. Most have been quoted for the primary source material they contain. With few exceptions, works of analysis based on secondary sources are not listed, even though in some cases they may offer illuminating insights.
The notes which follow provide sources for citations and give an overview of the reference materials and arguments which underpin the narrative. Complete archival and source notes may be obtained on request by e-mail from
.
Ablin, David A., and Hood, Marlowe (eds.),
The Cambodian Agony,
M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, 1987 (
Agony
)
Allman, T. D.,‘Anatomy of a Coup’, in Grant et al.,
Widening War
(
Anatomy
)
Ang Chouléan,
Les êtres surnaturels dans la religion populaire khmère,
Cedoreck, Paris, 1986 (
Etres surnaturels
)
Annotated Summary of Party History,
issued by the Eastern Zone Military-Political Service, n.d. but 1973, translated in Jackson,
Rendezvous,
Appendix A.
Ayres, David, ‘The Khmer Rouge and education: beyond the discourse of destruction’,
History of Education,
vol. 28, no. 2, 1999 (
Education
)
Becker, Elizabeth,
When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution,
Simon & Schuster, New York, 1986 (
When the War
)
Bektimirova, N. N., Dementiev, Yu. P., and Kobelev, E.V.,
Noveishaya Istoriya Kampuchii,
Nauka, Moscow, 1989 (
Istoriya
)
Bilan de Norodom Sihanouk pendant le Mandat Royal de 1952 à 1955
, n.d., n.p. but Phnom Penh, 1955 (
Bilan
)
Bizot, François,
Le Portail,
La Table Ronde, Paris, 2000
Black Paper: Facts and Evidences of the Acts of Aggression and Annexation of Vietnam against Kampuchea,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Democratic Kampuchea, Sept. 1978 (reprinted by the Group of Kampuchean Residents in America, New York)
Brown, David E., ‘Exporting Insurgency: The Communists in Cambodia’, in Zasloff and Goodman,
Conflict
(
Exporting Insurgency
)
Brown, MacAlister, and Zasloff, Joseph J.,
Cambodia Confounds the Peacemakers, 1979–1998,
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1998 (
Cambodia Confounds
)
Bunchan Mol,
Kuk Niyobay,
Phnom Penh, 1971
—
Charek Khmer,
Editions Apsara, Paris, n.d.
Burchett, Wilfred,
Mekong Upstream,
Red River Publishing, Hanoi, 1957
—
The China Cambodia Vietnam Triangle,
Zed Books, London, 1981 (
Triangle
)
Caldwell, Malcolm, and Lek Tan,
Cambodia in the Southeast Asian War,
Monthly Review Press, New York, 1973
Carney, Timothy M.,
Communist Party Power in Kampuchea (Cambodia): Documents and Discussion,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, Jan. 1977 (
Communist Party Power
)
Chanda, Nayan,
Brother Enemy: the War after the War,
Macmillan, New York, 1986
Chandler, David P.,
The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945
, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1991 (
Tragedy
)
—
A History of Cambodia,
2nd edn., Silkworm Books, Bangkok, 1993 (
History
)
—
Facing the Cambodian Past: Selected Essays, 1971–1994
, Silkworm Books, Chiangmai, 1996 (
Facing
)
—
Brother Number One,
Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1999 (
Brother
)
—
Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison,
Silkworm Books, Bangkok, 2000 (
Voices
)
Chandler, David P., and Kiernan, Ben (eds.),
Revolution and its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays, Yale
University South-East Asia Studies, no. 25, New Haven, CT, 1983 (
Aftermath
)
Chandler, David P., Kiernan, Ben, and Boua, Chanthou (eds.),
Pol Pot Plans the Future,
Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph no. 33, New Haven, CT, 1988 (
Pol Pot Plans
)
Chandler, David P., Kiernan, Ben, and Muy Hong Lim,
The Early Phases of Liberation in Northwestern Cambodia: Conversations with Peang Sophi,
Monash Working Paper no. 10, Clayton, Victoria, 1976 (
Peang Sophi
)
Chhang Song,
Buddhism under Pol Pot,
1996, unpublished ms (
Buddhism
)
CWIHP,
77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,
ed. Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tonnesson, Nguyen Vu Tung and James G. Hershberg, Woodrow Wilson Center Working Paper no. 22, Washington, DC, May 1998 (
77 Conversations
)
Corfield, Justin,
Khmers Stand Up! A History of the Cambodian Government, 1970–1975,
Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 1994 (
Stand Up!
)
Criddle, Joan D., and Teeda Butt Mam,
To Destroy You Is No Loss,
Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1987 (
Destroy
)
Deac, Wilfred P.,
Road to the Killing Fields: The Cambodian War of
1970–1975, Texas A & M University Press, College Station, TX, 1997 (
Road
)
Debré, François,
Cambodge: La Révolution de la Forêt,
Flammarion, Paris, 1976 (
Revolution
)
Delvert, Jean,
Le Paysan Cambodgien,
Mouton, Paris, 1961 (
Paysan
)
De Nike, Howard J., Quigley, John, and Robinson, Kenneth J. (eds.),
Genocide in Cambodia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2000
Ebihara, May M.,
Svay: A Khmer Village in Cambodia,
Columbia University PhD dissertation, 1968 (
Svay
)
—‘Revolution and Reformulation in Kampuchean Village Culture’, in Ablin and Hood,
Agony
(
Revolution and Reformulation
)
—’A Cambodian Village under the Khmer Rouge’, in Kiernan,
Genocide and Democracy
(
Village
)
Ebihara, May M., Mortland, Carol A., and Ledgerwood, Judy (eds.),
Cambodian Culture since 1975: Homeland and Exile,
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1994 (
Cambodian Culture