Pol Pot Read online

  Also by Philip Short

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  Pol Pot

  POL POT

  Anatomy of a Nightmare

  PHILIP

  SHORT

  Owl Books

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  Copyright © 2004 by Philip Short

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in Great Britain in 2004 by John Murray

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Short, Philip.

  Pol Pot : anatomy of a nightmare / Philip Short—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A John Macrae book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8006-3

  ISBN-10: 0-8050-8006-6

  I. Pol Pot. 2. Genocide—Cambodia. 3. Political atrocities—Cambodia. 4. Cambodia— Politics and government—1975—1979. 5. Prime ministers—Cambodia—Biography. I.Title.

  DS554.83.P65S53 2005

  959.604’2—dc22

  2004054080

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  First published in hardcover in 2005 by Henry Holt and Company

  First Owl Books Edition 2006

  Printed in the United States of America

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  For Mao Mao

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  List of Illustrations

  Note on Pronunciation

  Maps

  Prologue

  1. Sâr

  2. City of Light

  3. Initiation to the Maquis

  4. Cambodian Realities

  5. Germinal

  6. The Sudden Death of Reason

  7. Fires of Purgation

  8. Men in Black

  9. Future Perfect

  10. Model for the World

  11. Stalin’s Microbes

  12. Utopia Disbound

  Afterword

  Dramatis Personae

  Notes and Sources

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  History is to a great extent detective work. Contemporary documents, the statements of witnesses, their later recollections, compared and combined with other sources, provide essential clues as to the nature of the ‘crime’ — that is to say, the historical truth — concealed beneath. The biographer strives to draw from this amorphous mass of detail a credible portrait of the hero, or anti-hero, of his tale.

  Many people helped me to assemble the mosaic of fragments of truths, half-truths and lies, related by the perpetrators of the Cambodian nightmare as well as by its victims, on which this book is based. Caroline Gluck gave me the first pointers. Bill Herod and Michael Vickery offered early encouragement. David Ashley, Ben Kiernan, Henri Locard, William Shawcrosss, Sacha Sher and Serge Thion shared documents. Christopher Goscha allowed me to translate the Vietnamese-language copies of dozens of original Khmer Rouge texts which he had been authorised to transcribe by hand at the Military Library in Hanoi. Others assisted with Chinese archival materials. Nil Samorn, my Khmer research assistant, spent two years accompanying me across Cambodia, reading and translating, with undented good humour, thousands of pages of opaque Khmer Rouge internal journals, CPK Standing Committee minutes and prison confessions, which form much of the documentation for the later chapters. Stephen Heder and David Chandler generously read the typescript, offering pithy and often pungent comments which gave me much food for thought even if, on certain points, we continue to differ.

  Several of the leading protagonists of the Khmer Rouge revolution told me their life stories, often at length over a period of months. They include the former Head of State, Khieu Samphân; Pol Pot’s brother-in-law, the Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister, Ieng Sary; Nikân, whose brother, Son Sen, was Defence Minister; Phi Phuon, the Chief of Security at the Khmer Rouge Foreign Ministry; and two other former officials, Suong Sikoeun and In Sopheap, as well as a host of lower-ranking individuals. Their motives were mixed. Some were more truthful, others less so. But like interviewees everywhere, the more they talked the more of themselves they revealed. Without their co-operation, this book would not have been possible.

  Some historians argue that anything the former Khmer Rouge leaders say should be disbelieved on principle. I take a different view. If the interviewee has no obvious interest in lying, if his story is plausible and if there is no convincing evidence to the contrary, I tend to believe that he is telling if not the truth then at least his version of it. The same applies — although with many more caveats — to confessions obtained under torture at Khmer Rouge interrogation centres. The information they contain cannot be dismissed out of hand simply because the source is nauseous.

  Several of the Cambodian students who were with Pol Pot during his years in Paris in the early 1950s, notably Keng Vannsak, afterwards a staunch anti-communist; Thiounn Mumm, who became a Khmer Rouge minister, Ping Sây and the late Mey Mann, also shed light on hitherto unsuspected aspects of his life. Vannsak and Mumm kindly provided previously unpublished photographs from their private collections, as did Bernard Hamel, former Reuters correspondent in Phnom Penh. Youk Chhang and his colleagues at the Documentation Center of Cambodia allowed me access to their holdings of Khmer Rouge documents and pictures. I am grateful to Serge Corrieras, Chris Goscha, Michael Hayes of the Phnom Penh Post, Ben Kieman, Roland Neveu and Kathleen O’Keeffe for help in obtaining other illustrations.

  My thanks go too, as always, to my editors, Roland Philipps in London and John Macrae in New York; to my agents, Jacqueline Korn and Emma Sweeney; and to Jane Birkett, without whose eagle eye for repetitions, mixed metaphors, lapsed commas and other punctual misdemeanours, this would be a poorer book.

  Phnom Penh — La Garde-Freinet,

  July 1 2004

  List of Illustrations

  Section One

  1. Saloth Sâr as a young man

  2. Ieng Sary and Keng Vannsak in Paris

  3. Rath Samoeun, co-founder of the Cercle Marxiste

  4. Portrait of Son Ngoc Minh carried by militants

  5. Tou Samouth

  6. Keo Meas, leader of the Pracheachon group

  7. Khieu Ponnary, her sister Thirith and Madame Collineau

  8. Sihanouk beneath a palanquin

  9 & 10. 2500th anniversary of the birth of Buddha

  11. Son Sen as Director of Studies at Phnom Penh Teacher Training College

  12. Jacqueline Kennedy, Queen Kossamak and Sihanouk

  13. Government-sponsored mob sacks the North Vietnamese Embassy

  14. Lon Nol, army commander

  15. Public execution of captured Khmer Serei

  16. Government troops carrying the heads of communist soldiers

  17. Saloth Sâr in Ratanakiri

  18. CPK’s Third Congress

  19. Sihanouk and Monique at Mount Kulen

  20. Sihanouk and others at Stung Treng

  21. Sihanouk inspects soup kitchen

  22. Khmer Rouge women’s battalion

  23. Khmer Rouge banknotes

  24. Khmer Rouge and Chinese diplomats at jungle’ embassy

  25. Chinese government passport issued to Ieng Sary

  26. Deng Xiaoping and Sihanouk

  27. Nuon Chea holds Pol Pot’s daughter Sitha

  28. Pol Pot poses with the children of his aides

  29. Pol Pot and his wife Meas

  30, 31 & 32. Colleagues of Pol Pot later executed

  33. Hen
g Samfin, installed by Vietnam as Cambodian Head of State

  34. Pol Pot in Southern China

  35. Khieu Samphân, beaten by a mob sent by Hun Sen’s government

  36 & 37 Ke Pauk and Mok, the principal military supporters of Pol Pot

  38. Pol Pot’s trial

  Illustration Credits

  1, 2, 3, 7 and 11, personal archive of Keng Vannsak; 4 and 5, Vietnamese Revolutionary Museum, Hanoi; 6, courtesy of Ben Kiernan; 8, 12, 13 and 14, personal archive of Bernard Hamel; 9 and 10, personal archive of Thiounn Mumm; 14, AP; 16, UPI; 17, 18, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 and 37, archives of Phnom Penh Post; 19, 20, 21 and 26, Xinhua News Agency; 23, author’s collection; 24, private collection; 25, 29 and 36, courtesy of the Documentation Center of Cambodia; 35, Serge Corrieras; 38, Nate Thayer/Tom Keller Associates

  Note on Pronunciation

  There is no standard system of romanisation for the Khmer language. Thus the village described on maps as Samlaut calls itself Samlot; Kamrieng, on the border with Thailand, is also Kamrean; the port of Kampâng Saom is Kompong Som, and so on. This book employs, wherever possible, either the most commonly used variants or those which approximate best to English pronunciation. None the less, the following basic rules may be helpful:

  ‘a’ is intermediate between the English short ‘a’and short ‘o’: thus Saloth is pronounced Soloth, and Samphân, Somphân.

  ‘â’ lies between the English short ‘o’ and ‘or’: Sâr is pronounced Sor, Samphân is Samphorn.

  ‘au’, as in Pauk, is sounded as in lock; ‘ay’, as in Chhay and Sây, rhymes with sigh.

  ‘eo’, as in Keo, rhymes with cow; ‘eu’ as in Deuch, with book; ‘ey’, as in Mey, with may; ‘ê’, as in Chhê, with tie.

  ‘Ch’, ‘P’ and ‘T’ followed by ‘h’ are aspirated. Chham is pronounced Cham (whereas Cham, unaspirated, is like Jam). Phem is Pem and Thirith, Tirit. Terminal -ch is pronounced -ck, making Pach rhyme with Pack.

  Cambodian names, like those in China and Vietnam, are in the reverse order to English. Khieu Samphân’s family name is Khieu, his given name, Samphân. However, unlike in China, the polite form of address is Mr Samphân — or simply Samphân — not Mr Khieu. The only exceptions are names which originated as revolutionary aliases. For example, Long Bunruot took the alias Nuon, to which he subsequently added the name Chea. He is therefore Mr Nuon, not Mr Chea. Similarly Pol Pot is addressed as Pol, Vorn Vet as Vorn, and so on. The same distinction applies in Vietnam, where given names are used in formal address because there is such a narrow range of family names that to employ them would be confusing: hence Ho Chi Minh (a revolutionary alias) is President Ho, but Vo Nguyen Giap (a real name) is General Giap.

  Pol Pot

  Acknowledgements

  History is to a great extent detective work. Contemporary documents, the statements of witnesses, their later recollections, compared and combined with other sources, provide essential clues as to the nature of the ‘crime’ —that is to say, the historical truth — concealed beneath. The biographer strives to draw from this amorphous mass of detail a credible portrait of the hero, or anti-hero, of his tale.

  Many people helped me to assemble the mosaic of fragments of truths, half-truths and lies, related by the perpetrators of the Cambodian nightmare as well as by its victims, on which this book is based. Caroline Gluck gave me the W rst pointers. Bill Herod and Michael Vickery oVered early encouragement. David Ashley, Ben Kiernan, Henri Locard, William Shawcrosss, Sacha Sher and Serge Thion shared documents. Christopher Goscha allowed me to translate the Vietnamese-language copies of dozens of original Khmer Rouge texts which he had been authorised to transcribe by hand at the Military Library in Hanoi. Others assisted with Chinese archival materials. Nil Samorn, my Khmer research assistant, spent two years accompanying me across Cambodia, reading and translating, with undented good humour, thousands of pages of opaque Khmer Rouge internal journals, CPK Standing Committee minutes and prison confessions, which form much of the documentation for the later chapters. Stephen Heder and David Chandler generously read the typescript, o Vering pithy and often pungent comments which gave me much food for thought even if, on certain points, we continue to diVer.

  Several of the leading protagonists of the Khmer Rouge revolution told me their life stories, often at length over a period of months. They include the former Head of State, Khieu Samphân; Pol Pot’s brother-in-law, the Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister, Ieng Sary; Nikân, whose brother, Son Sen, was Defence Minister; Phi Phuon, the Chief of Security at the Khmer Rouge Foreign Ministry; and two other former oYcials, Suong Sikoeun and In Sopheap, as well as a host of lower-ranking individuals. Their motives were mixed. Some were more truthful, others less so. But like interviewees everywhere, the more they talked the more of themselves

  Prologue

  THE NEWS REACHED leng Sary in Hanoi soon after 10 a.m.

  A messenger arrived with a ciphered telegram, transmitted in morse code from Khmer Rouge headquarters north-west of Phnom Penh. When the first few words had been decoded, Sary telephoned the office of the Vietnamese Workers’ Party Central Committee and asked to be put through to Le Due Tho, the Politburo member who the previous year had shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger for ending the war in Vietnam. Tho had ultimate responsibility for relations with the Cambodian communists.

  ’We have taken Phnom Penh,’ he announced proudly.

  A quarter of a century later, Sary still smarted at the memory of the Vietnamese leader’s response. ‘Be careful not to be misled by false reports!’ Tho said acidly. ‘Remember what happened when you told us that Takeo had fallen’ — a reference to a conversation they had had a week earlier, when Sary had informed him, prematurely, that a town south of the capital had surrendered.

  Ieng Sary was then one of the six members of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), the Khmer Rouge supreme leadership. He was fifty years old and balding, with an incipient paunch. A devious, manipulative man, crafty rather than clever, his smooth domed forehead, pale complexion and part-Chinese ancestry gave him a striking resemblance to an ultra-leftist Chinese Politburo member named Yao Wenyuan, one of the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ headed by Mao Zedong’s widow, Jiang Qing. Sary was capable of singular vindictiveness but also of loyalty to useful subordinates, who repaid him with lifelong devotion. He concealed insincerity beneath a calculated ability to make himself agreeable. A British Ambassador who, many years later, attended a lunch with Sary and his wife, Khieu Thirith, likened the experience to having tea with Rosemary West and her husband, two murderous sexual deviants whose names became a byword in Britain for grisly perversion. But that was the distaste of hindsight, at a time when the image of the Khmer Rouge leaders had become inseparable from the abominations their regime had committed. In the early 1970s, the heroic age of Indochinese communism, Sary and his comrades were riding the wave of the future, symbolising for radicals everywhere and for millions of sympathisers in the West hopes of a more just and democratic world.

  Sary’s chagrin was short-lived. A few hours later, Tho arrived in person, wreathed in smiles, accompanied by aides bearing enormous bouquets of flowers — with a request, slipped in deftly between the Vietnamese leadership’s congratulations, that the new Cambodian authorities allow free passage across their territory to Vietnamese troops coming south for the final offensive against the American-backed regime in Saigon.

  The request was granted. That day, April 17 1975, the Khmers Rouges could afford to be generous as they savoured a triumph that was all the more gratifying because it had been achieved ahead of their disdainful Vietnamese allies.

  They had captured Phnom Penh, as they would never tire of repeating, without outside help. US officials claimed that the final assault on the Cambodian capital was spearheaded by regular Vietnamese units backed by heavy artillery, but, like much else the Americans said at that time, this was false. No Vietnamese main-force unit had fought in Cambodia since 1973. The US had
dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodian resistance bases and had spent hundreds of millions of dollars propping up the corrupt and incompetent anti-communist regime of Marshal Lon Nol, who had seized power in 1970 from the country’s hereditary ruler, Prince Sihanouk. But it had been to no avail. The Khmers Rouges told themselves proudly that their ill-educated peasant troops had defeated all that the mightiest military power on earth had been able to throw in their direction.

  Hubris is the besetting sin of despotisms everywhere. In later years, Khmer Rouge officials, including Ieng Sary himself, contemplating the ruins of the Utopian vision to which they had devoted their lives, would argue that the very speed of their victory in 1975 had held the seeds of their undoing. As a Khmer Rouge village chief put it: ‘The train was going too fast. No one could make it turn.’

  But even to the extent that it is true, such reasoning is self-serving. There were many causes of the egregious tragedy that befell Cambodia in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and many actors amongst whom responsibility must be shared. The overconfidence of the country’s new leaders, above all of its principal leader, the man who would become Pol Pot, was but one element among them and, at the time of the Khmer Rouge victory, it was artfully dissembled.

  * * *

  Another full year would pass before the reclusive figure who had guided the Cambodian communists to victory would emerge from clandestinity and take the name by which his compatriots, and the rest of the world, would remember him.

  Even then, he did so reluctantly. For two decades he had operated under multiple aliases: Pouk, Hay, Pol, ‘87’, Grand-Uncle, Elder Brother, First Brother — to be followed in later years by ‘99’ and Phem. ‘It is good to change your name,’ he once told one of his secretaries. ‘The more often you change your name the better. It confuses the enemy’ Then he added, in a phrase which would become a Khmer Rouge mantra: ‘If you preserve secrecy, half the battle is already won.’ The architect of the Cambodian nightmare was not a man who liked working in the open.