on Mar. 1, 15 and 22 1958. The first printed use of the term ‘Khmer Rouge’ appears to have been in
Neak Cheatniyum
of July 30 1960 (see Gorce to MAE, No. 380 AS/CLV. Aug. 3 1960, c. CLV 20; and
Les Echos de Phnom Penh,
Aug. 4 and 11 1960, quoting Sihanouk’s speech of Aug. 2 at Thnal Rokar, Kompong Speu).
Initially the group . . . serving foreign masters
:
Gorce to MAE, No. 130/CX, Mar. 28 1956, c. CLV 7; No. 248/R, June 14 1956, c. CLV 112; No. 618/CX, Sept. 21 1956, c. CLV 8; Direction Genérale des Affaires Politiques, ‘Situation Politique au Cambodge’, Feb. 16 1957,0. CLV 112, QD; and Chandler,
Tragedy
, pp. 85–7. In May 1956, the Pracheachon also set up a ‘Support Committee for Cambodian Neutrality’, whose members included Hou Yuon — who had returned from France that spring—and Sâr’s brother Chhay. It proposed a government of national union, including the Sangkum, the Pracheachon and the Democratic Party (‘La Subversion au Cambodge’, Nov. 7 1956, c. CLV 20, QD).
116
After his return . . . from Paris
:
Ping Sây, Thiounn Mumm and Mey Mann, interviews. For another description of the swamp areas of Phnom Penh in the 1950s, see Chhang Song, interview, Phnom Penh, Oct. 25 2001.
Even Non Suon
:
Keo Meas (Oct. 7 1976), Non Suon (Nov. 7 1976) and Ney Sarann (Oct. 1 1976), confessions.
Black Citroën
:
Keng Vannsak, interview. Ping Sây was less impressed, describing the car as ‘a heap of old iron’ (interview).
116
–17
It enabled him . . . to marry
:
Keng Vannsak, interview.
117
‘Dances very well’
:
Suong Sikoeun, interview.
She dumped him . . . equal to his own
:
Keng Vannsak, interview.
Sâr and Khieu Ponnary . . . married
:
This account relies on Ping Sây (interview), especially concerning Ponnary’s role as an intermediary with the maquis; see also Keng Vannsak and Ieng Sary, interviews.
117
–18
‘Made in heaven’
:
‘Rapport [oral] du camarade Khieu Minh . . . le 10 Mai 1980’, Doc. 32(N442)/T8243, VA.
118
Very odd union . . . scars
:
Chandler (
Brother
, p. 50); Keng Vannsak (interview) says she was nicknamed in French ‘la vieille fille’.
Yet marry . . . Ponnary’s family
:
Mey Mann, Ping Sây, interviews.
As the high point . . . No one could understand
:
Ieng Sary, interview.
One of her students
:
Long Nârin, interview at Malay, June 18 2000 and May 4 and 5, 2001.
‘They lived . . . appreciate that’
:
Ieng Sary, interview.
119
More outgoing . . . on her behalf
:
Lim Keuky, quoted in Chandler,
Brother,
p. 50.
Cancer
:
Thiounn Thoeunn, interview; Moeun, interview at Anlong Veng, Dec. 12 2001.
120
I still remember
:
Quoted in Chandler,
Brother,
p. 52 (translation modified).
‘Lifelong friend’
:
You Sambo, quoted in ibid., p. 51.
121
‘It gave us the chance’
:
Pol Pot,
Cai Ximei interview.
Judging by the situation in neighbouring Laos, where the Vietnamese had remained in force in the Pathet Lao zone, this assessment was correct. A French intelligence report, quoting a senior Pathet Lao defector in 1955, gives a vivid picture of the extent to which the Vietnamese dominated the Laotian revolution: ‘All important posts, bith civil and military, are held secretly by Viet Minh [although] they are kept out of sight as much as possible . . . The Viet Minh advisers are all-powerful . . . The Pathet Lao [leaders] can decide nothing without their approval . . . Radio reports from Pathet Lao battalion commanders are sent . . . to Hanoi, which sends back orders by the same channel. Souphanouvong and his ministers are frequently kept in ignorance of these exchanges.’ (Guibaut to Etassociés, No. 1618/CAB, Vientiane, Oct. 20 1955, c. A-O-I 166, QD).
Ieng Sary claimed
:
Ieng Sary interview. I am grateful to Chris Goscha for helping to make the connection between Hay So and Nguyen Van Linh. The
Black Paper
(pp. 7, 20–21 and 70) states merely that in 1970 Hay So was one of the seven members of the COSVN and that by 1978 he had become a member of the VWPCC. The same source identifies Linh’s deputy in Phnom Penh, Teur Kam (or Tu Kun), as Nguyen Da Giang.
Angker
:
Ping Sây, interview.
122
We used to meet
:
Suong Sikoeun, interview.
He organised . . . political stance
:
You Sambo, quoted in Chandler,
Brother
, p. 51; Ping Sây, interview.
124
‘Sulfurous’
:
Quoted in Chandler,
Tragedy,
p. 99.
This time he beat . . . immediate recall
:
Ibid., p. 100;
Daily Mirror,
London, June 7 and 17,
Sunday Pictorial,
June 15 1958 and Keng Vannsak, interview. Vannsak identified her as Soeung Son Maly and said her role in the scandal was well known in Cambodia. British newspapers, however, gave her name as lv Eng Seng and said she was 22 years old, considerably younger than Maly at that time.
126
Six months later . . . South Vietnam
:
Mathivet de la Ville de Mirmont to MAE, Telegram Nos. 696—7, Sept. 1, and
idem,
No. 420/AS, Sept. 7 1959, c. CLV 12, QD. See also Chandler (
Tragedy,
pp. 106—7), who states incorrectly that the parcel was addressed to Sihanouk; and Tran Tim Kuyen’s recollection in Cao De Thuong,
Lam te . . . ton,
Saigon, 1970, p. 313.
127
Most serious of all . . . it was lifted
:
The best overview is again that of David Chandler, who has combed the US archives and, as a US diplomat, based in Phnom Penh in the early 1960s, was able to watch from the inside the two countries’ slow divorce (
Tragedy,
pp. 93, 98—9 and 101—7). See also Jennar,
Clés,
pp. 58—63. On the blockade, see Gorce to MAE, ‘Rapport sur l’évolution de la situation politique au Cambodge du 13 Janvier au 20 mai 1956’, A/S No. 248/R, June 14 1956, pp. 21—2, c. CLV 112, QD Sihanouk himself wrote at length about the incoherence of US policy in
RC
on Mar. 29 1958, well before Washington’s decision to resort to extra-legal means to try to bring him down.
128
‘Bleus’
:
Sihanouk used the term ‘bleu’ in
RC
of Mar. 15 and 22 1958, but it may well have had currency earlier.
131
Celebrated incident
:
See Gorce to MAE, Nos. 75 AS/CLV, Feb. 22; 90 AS/CLV, Feb. 26; and 566 AS/CLV, Dec. 12 i960, c. CLV 13, QD. Sihanouk himself unwittingly cast light on what had really happened, when he explained that the young man, Reath Vath, had been found carrying a pistol and a hand-grenade at a rally where he was to speak at the end of 1959 (Sihanouk,
My War,
p. 113). He turned up at the US Embassy in Feb. 1960.
132
Chinese empress
:
Zhou Enlai and Pham Van Dong, Beijing, Apr. 10 1967, CWIHP archives, Washington, DC.
He was always punctual
:
Someth May,
Cambodian Witness,
p. 88.
His younger brother
:
Quoted in Laura Summers’s introduction to Khieu Samphân,
thesis, p.
12.
133
French girl
:
The portrait relies on my own meetings with Khieu Samphân in Pailin, on the recollections of Suong Sikoeun (interview) and of other former Khmers Rouges who prefer to remain anonymous. For the French girlfriend, recollection of Nghet Chhopininto’s first wife, Nicole Bizeray, quoted in Sher,
thesis,
p. 143.
134
‘Thirsty for power’
:
Gorce to MAE, No. 41 AS/CLV, Jan. 29 1960, c. CLV 13, QD.
135
Charcoal burners
:
Keng Vannsak, interview.
136
The issue . . . proletariat
:
Engelbert and Goscha,
Falling,
esp. pp. 129—30 and 136—8. Asked why the Party focused its efforts on the peasantry, Ping Sây gave the obvious response:’Because [in 1960] there were very few workers. There was no industry and there were no factories’ (interview).
137
Two weeks . . . smell
:
Ieng Sary, Ping Sây, Nghet Chhopininto, interviews;
Tung Padevat,
Sept.—Oct. 1976, pp. 1—32.
The feudal ruling class’ . . . suppress [us]
:
Engelbert and Goscha,
Falling,
pp. 125—42.
139
‘Excluded themselves’
:
Ping Sây, interview.
Reapply
:
Ping Sây, interview; ‘Recherche sur le Parti Cambodgien’, Doc. 3KN. T8572, VA.
141
Who betrayed
:
In July 1977, Ros Mao alias Sây, who had been one of Samouth’s bodyguards in the early 1960s, confessed under torture at Tuol Sleng that he and five others—including Sieu Heng—had kidnapped the Party leader and taken him to Lon Nol’s house (confession, undated but July 1977). Another of the five, Som Chea alias Sdoeung, gave an almost identical description of the circumstances in a confession dated May 4 1978. However, both men remained loyal Party members for the next fifteen years and it is hard to see why either should have obeyed a traitor (Sieu Heng) to act against a Party leader who, by all accounts, was well-liked and respected. Interrogators at Tuol Sleng sometimes showed prisoners previous confessions in order to pressure them to admit their own guilt; if Sdoeung was shown Sây’s confession, it would explain why the two coincide so exactly (too exactly, in fact, for unconnected recollections of events sixteen years earlier). Nuon Chea later described Samouth’s death in terms consistent with, if not drawn from, the Tuol Sleng confessions (Mey Mann, interview), as did Pol Pot in his interview with Nate Thayer. Sieu Heng himself, questioned about Tou Samouth’s death by an American diplomat in 1972, replied, ‘Lon Nol knows what happened’ (US Embassy, Phnom Penh, airgram A-2, Feb. 17 1972, quoted in Chandler,
Tragedy,
p. 338 n.98)—which, if it confirms Lon Nol’s involvement, does nothing to clarify Heng’s own role. In Sopheap says that Pol Pot and Nuon Chea told him in the 1990s that Tou Samouth s courage in keeping silent during his interrogation had saved the urban movement from destruction (interview), and Khieu Samphân (interview) makes a similar claim. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that allegations of Sieu Heng’s involvement began to circulate within the Party between 1973 and 1978—precisely the time when the Party’s history was being rewritten to make it appear that the Pol Pot leadership had been its driving force ever since its foundation. In 1979, shortly after the overthrow of the Democratic Kampuchea regime, Vietnamese officials suggested that Saloth Sâr himself had been responsible for Samouth’s death (Kiernan,
How Pol Pot
, pp. 198 and 141 n. 135). The claim does not withstand close scrutiny.
Sâr argued
: