Who is Hun Sen?

Vietnamese best for Cambodia, minister says
VICTORIA BUTLER
30 September 1981
The Globe and Mail

PHNOM PENH - Acknowledging Cambodia's small size and weakness, the Phnom Penh Governent's Foreign Minister says his country must have foreign protection. "Our people have opted for defence by the Vietnamese," said Hun Sen in a Sept. 23 interview.

The Foreign Minister, 30, said Vietnam was the best power to back Cambodia because the Vietnamese Communist Party had struggled jointly with the Khmer and Lao revolutionaries to overthrow first the French and then the Americans in Indochina. Moreover, he pointed out, the Vietnamese helped to topple the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea.

Hun Sen, the world's youngest foreign minister, condemned the United Nations' decision this month to once again seat Pol Pot's so-called Democratic Kampuchea. The general assembly voted 77 to 35 to recognize the Khmer Rouge.

"By behaving in this way, the United Nations has not helped to bring peace and stability to Southeast Asia. It has not helped to bring peace to Kampuchea. it has encouraged the world to accept a brutal, genocidal regime," Hun Sen said. "This can only lead to more confrontation."

Hun Sen understands the battlefield as well as most foreign ministers twice his age. He began his career 11 years ago in the jungles fighting for Pol Pot. Rising through the guerrilla ranks to become a regimental commander, he led his troops into Phnom Penh in 1975. The Khmer Rouge won, but the victory cost Hun Sen his left eye.

Pol Pot launched a savage social revolution, unleashing a bitter war with Vietnam. Worse, the regime steadily purged itself, executing thousands upon thousands of its cadres. Hun Sen defected to Vietnam in 1977.

There, he joined a group of Hanoi-trained Cambodians who had joined the Communist movement in the early 1950s. As disenchantment with Pol Pot grew, more Khmer Rouge fled to Vietnam throughout 1978.

They returned in Vietnamese tanks in 1979, backed by about 20,000 Vietnamese. Hun Sen, 28 at the time, was one of the leaders of the joint command that took Phnom Penh on Jan. 7, 1979.

Hun Sen, who is also a member of the powerful central committee of Cambodia's Communist Party (the People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea) , says the People's Republic of Kampuchea is an independent nation despite the massive presence of Vietnamese troops and advisers. Because of the constant threat posed by 30,000 Pol Pot's troops, armed by the Chinese, "the Vietnamese forces help keep Kampuchea independent."

He said there is nothing the United Nations can do to enforce last year's resolution calling for the withdrawal of Vietamese troops from Cambodia followed by an internationally supervised general election. "There is not even a faint dream of a UN-supervised general election," he said. "We are the only ones who have the right to hold elections here. And we did that last May. The UN resolution can have no effectiveness without our approval."

Slight and good-looking despite the scar across his forehead, Hun Sen dismissed the proposed coalition Government between the Khmer Rouge and the non-Communist resistance led by Son Sann and Prince Norodom Sihanouk. "Pol Pot is ultra-left," he said, "and Son Sann is ultra-right. It's like trying to put tigers, elephants and horses in the same cage."