By REUTERS
Published: December 8, 2009
Filed at 9:55 a.m. ET
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Thai engineer was jailed in Cambodia for seven years for spying on Tuesday after he obtained flight details of fugitive former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a ruling likely to prolong a bitter row between the two countries.
The court said Siwarak Chutipongse, 31, had breached national security when he leaked the flight details to Thai diplomats ahead of Thaksin's visit to Cambodia last month.
Thaksin, who lives in exile after skipping bail last year ahead of a prison sentence for graft, caused a diplomatic uproar when he visited Cambodia to begin work as an economic adviser to its government.
The move was widely dismissed as a publicity stunt staged by Thaksin and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to boost the billionaire's profile and discredit the Thai government.
"Thaksin is Cambodia's adviser, so the government of Cambodia has an obligation to protect his life," Judge Ke Sakhan said in reading the verdict. "If anything happens to him, we would be blamed and that could lead to rocky relations with Thailand."
Siwarak denied leaking the information and said he obtained the flight details because he wanted to know when his former prime minister would arrive.
PARDON SOUGHT
Chavanond Intarakomalasut, a senior Thai Foreign Ministry official, told reporters in Bangkok that the government would submit a formal request for Siriwak's pardon if he chose not to appeal.
His arrest on November 10 prompted Cambodia to take temporary control of Thai-operated Cambodia Air Traffic Services (CATS) and suspend all Thai expatriates at the company.
The ruling is likely to ramp up diplomatic tensions that reached boiling point when Cambodia refused to extradite Thaksin or recognise his conviction on the grounds that he was a victim of a vendetta by his political rivals.
The extradition snub and Cambodia's offer of a home and a job to Thaksin led to the recall and expulsion of diplomats and the freezing of bilateral agreements, including a pact to jointly develop untapped energy reserves in the Gulf of Thailand.
The downgrade of diplomatic ties has prompted concerns about a possible military confrontation along their disputed frontier and fears the border would be closed. Neither has happened.
If the border was closed, traders say Thailand's economy would suffer most because Cambodia imports more goods from Thailand, which relies on its neighbour for just 0.05 percent of total imports.
(Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Showing posts with label Thailand-Relations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thailand-Relations. Show all posts
December 08, 2009
November 12, 2009
Hun Sen: Cambodia Strongman
Spotlight: Checkmate
By Nate Thayer
1 October 1998
Far Eastern Economic Review
FEER
He was a Khmer Rouge military officer in the 1970s, and became the prime minister of Cambodia's communist government in the 1980s. Observers may have expected Hun Sen's rise to stall, however, when his Cambodian People's Party lost the United Nations-run elections in 1993. Instead -- five years, three coups, hundreds of politically motivated killings and a questionable election later -- he appears to be in complete control.
After losing the 1993 election, Hun Sen refused to accept the result and ordered out the military, forcing a power-sharing arrangement with the victorious Funcinpec party. Like the expert chess player that he is, he has methodically -- and often brutally -- outmanoeuvred all his challengers since. He forced out competition within his CPP, and created a large personal army to spearhead attacks against critics, culminating in his coup d'etat in July 1997.
When the international community balked, he threatened to overrun embassies with pro-government protesters, kick out the UN, and withdraw Cambodia's request to join Asean. The July 1998 elections failed to give him the majority he needed to form a government alone, forcing him to negotiate with opposition leaders. When that failed to produce a coalition, he banned elected parliamentarians from leaving the country and threatened opposition leaders with arrest.
In the end, the opposition essentially gave up. A new government with a five-year mandate and Hun Sen in the top job was expected to be formed soon. King Sihanouk told opposition parties: "In a Cambodia that is not a state of law and not a full-fledged democracy, I have no other choice than to advise the weak to choose a policy that avoids misfortune for the people, the motherland, and themselves."
By Nate Thayer
1 October 1998
Far Eastern Economic Review
FEER
He was a Khmer Rouge military officer in the 1970s, and became the prime minister of Cambodia's communist government in the 1980s. Observers may have expected Hun Sen's rise to stall, however, when his Cambodian People's Party lost the United Nations-run elections in 1993. Instead -- five years, three coups, hundreds of politically motivated killings and a questionable election later -- he appears to be in complete control.
After losing the 1993 election, Hun Sen refused to accept the result and ordered out the military, forcing a power-sharing arrangement with the victorious Funcinpec party. Like the expert chess player that he is, he has methodically -- and often brutally -- outmanoeuvred all his challengers since. He forced out competition within his CPP, and created a large personal army to spearhead attacks against critics, culminating in his coup d'etat in July 1997.
When the international community balked, he threatened to overrun embassies with pro-government protesters, kick out the UN, and withdraw Cambodia's request to join Asean. The July 1998 elections failed to give him the majority he needed to form a government alone, forcing him to negotiate with opposition leaders. When that failed to produce a coalition, he banned elected parliamentarians from leaving the country and threatened opposition leaders with arrest.
In the end, the opposition essentially gave up. A new government with a five-year mandate and Hun Sen in the top job was expected to be formed soon. King Sihanouk told opposition parties: "In a Cambodia that is not a state of law and not a full-fledged democracy, I have no other choice than to advise the weak to choose a policy that avoids misfortune for the people, the motherland, and themselves."
Cambodia: Dying Breath
Cambodia: Dying Breath: The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created
By Nate Thayer in Preah Vihear province
30 April 1998
Far Eastern Economic Review
As Pol Pot's body lies bloating 100 metres away in a spartan shack, exhausted Khmer Rouge leaders gather in a jungle-shrouded ammunition depot filled with home-made mines and crude communications equipment. Explosions of heavy artillery and exchanges of automatic-weapons fire echo in the mountains as the Khmer Rouge's remaining guerrillas hold off government troops.
Ta Mok, the movement's strongman, vows to fight on, and blames his longtime comrade-in-arms for the Khmer Rouge's desperate plight. "It is good that Pol Pot is dead. I feel no sorrow," he says. Then he levels a bizarre accusation against the rabidly nationalistic mass murderer: "Pol Pot was a Vietnamese agent. I have the documents."
A young Khmer Rouge fighter, his leaders only metres away, leans close to a visiting reporter and whispers in Khmer: "This movement is finished. Can you get me to America?"
Besieged in dense jungles along the Thai border, the remnants of the Khmer Rouge are battling for survival in the wake of three weeks of chaotic defections and the loss of their northern stronghold of Anlong Veng. Having lost faith in the harsh leadership of Ta Mok, several commanders are negotiating to defect to the guerrilla forces loyal to deposed Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh.
Ta Mok's growing paranoia and isolation were only some of the revelations to come out of an exclusive tour of shrinking Khmer Rouge-held territory north of Anlong Veng the day after Pol Pot's death. Khmer Rouge cadres and Pol Pot's wife recounted the last, ignominious days of his life, as he was moved through the jungle to escape advancing troops.
There was no visible evidence that the former Cambodian dictator was murdered. Cadres say he died of a heart attack on the night of April 15. In the days after his death, Khmer Rouge envoys held secret peace talks in Bangkok with Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh, and had their first direct contact with U.S. officials in more than two decades. Yet at the same time, Khmer Rouge holdouts were joining up with Ranariddh's rebel forces, making it likely that the insurgency will continue as Cambodia prepares for crucial elections in July.
The Khmer Rouge weren't trying to expose their shaky future when they allowed a REVIEW reporter to enter their territory, but to prove to the world that the architect of Cambodia's killing fields was indeed dead. Leading the way to Pol Pot's house to display the ultimate proof, a cadre warns against stepping off the path. "Be careful, there are mines everywhere."
The sickly-sweet stench of death fills the wooden hut. Fourteen hours have passed since Pol Pot's demise, and his body is decomposing in the tropical heat. His face and fingers are covered with purple blotches.
Khmer Rouge leaders insist that Pol Pot, aged 73, died of natural causes. Already visibly ill and professing to be near death when interviewed by the REVIEW in October, he had been weakened by a shortage of food and the strain of being moved around to escape the government offensive. "Pol Pot died of heart failure," Ta Mok says. "I did not kill him."
That night, Ta Mok had wanted to move Pol Pot to another house for security reasons. "He was sitting in his chair waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sound of dying. When she touched him he had passed away already. It was at 10:15 last night."
There are no signs of foul play, but Pol Pot has a pained expression on his face, as if he did not die peacefully. One eye is shut and the other half open. Cotton balls are stuffed up his nostrils to prevent leakage of body fluids. By his body lie his rattan fan, blue-and-red peasant scarf, bamboo cane and white plastic sandals. His books and other possessions have been confiscated since he was ousted by his comrades in an internal power struggle 10 months earlier. Two vases of purple bougainvillea stand at the head of the bed. Otherwise, the room is empty, save for a small short-wave radio.
Pol Pot listened religiously to Voice of America broadcasts on that radio, but the April 15 news on the Khmer-language service may have been too much to bear. The lead story was the REVIEW's report that Khmer Rouge leaders-desperate for food, medicine and international support-had decided to turn him over to an international tribunal to face trial for crimes against humanity. "He listened to VOA every night, and VOA on Wednesday reported your story at 8 p.m. that he would be turned over to an international court," says Gen. Khem Nuon, the Khmer Rouge army chief-of-staff. "We thought the shock of him hearing this on VOA might have killed him."
A week earlier, Nuon had said that Pol Pot knew of the decision, but now he says the ageing leader had not been fully informed. "We decided clearly to send him" to an international court, says Nuon, "but we only told him that we were in a very difficult situation and perhaps it was better that he go abroad. Tears came to his eyes when I told him that."
Perched nervously by the deathbed is Pol Pot's wife, a 40-year-old former ammunition porter for the Khmer Rouge named Muon. Clutching her hand is their 12-year-old daughter, Mul. A peasant woman, Muon says she has never laid eyes on a Westerner before. She corroborates Ta Mok's account of Pol Pot's death. "Last night, he said he felt dizzy. I asked him to lie down. I heard him make a noise. When I went to touch him, he had died."
Pol Pot married her after his first wife went insane in the 1980s as the Khmer Rouge tried to survive in the jungle after their reign of terror was ended by invading Vietnamese troops. Muon seems oblivious to her husband's bloodstained past, caught only in the anguish of the present.
"He told me a few weeks ago: 'My father died at 73. I am 73 now. My time is not far away,'" she says. "It was a way of telling me that he was preparing to die." Reaching down to caress his face, she bursts into tears. "He was always a good husband. He tried his best to educate the children not to be traitors. Since I married him in 1985, I never saw him do a bad thing."
Asked about his reputation as a mass-murderer, her lips quiver and she casts a terrified glance at senior Khmer Rouge cadres hovering nearby. "I know nothing about politics," she says. "It is up to history to judge. That is all I want to say."
She has reason to be terrified. "As to what I will do with his family, I haven't decided," says Ta Mok. "If I let them go, will they say anything bad about me? Maybe they might be used by Hun Sen," he says, referring to his nemesis, the Cambodian premier.
Outside the front door is a small vegetable garden tended by Pol Pot's wife and daughter; next to it, a freshly dug trench where Pol Pot and his family were forced to cower as artillery bombarded the jungle redoubt in recent weeks.
Pol Pot's last days were spent in flight and fear of capture -- a humiliating end for the man who ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. According to his wife and Khmer Rouge leaders, he dyed his hair black on April 10 in a desperate attempt to avoid capture by mutinying Khmer Rouge troops as he fled to the Dongrek mountains north of Anlong Veng. "Pol Pot feared that he could be caught. By dying his hair he was trying to disguise himself. For such a person to do that, it showed real fear in his mind," says Gen. Nuon.
The guerrillas had been unable to provide their ousted leader with sufficient food since being forced from their headquarters in late March. "For the last few weeks he had diarrhoea and we haven't had much food because of the fighting with the traitors," recounts Ta Mok.
As Pol Pot fled, the remnants of the movement he created 38 years ago crumbled before his eyes. A few days before his death, he was being driven with his wife and daughter to a new hideout by Gen. Non Nou, his personal guard. From his blue Toyota Land Cruiser, Pol Pot saw Khmer Rouge civilians-cadres say around 30,000 -- who had been forced from their fields and villages by government troops and Khmer Rouge defectors.
"When he saw the peasants and our cadres lying by the side of the road with no food or shelter, he broke down into tears," says Non Nou. His wife echoes the account, and quotes Pol Pot as saying: "My only wish is that Cambodians stay united so that Vietnam will not swallow our country." Pol Pot never expressed any regrets, she says. "What I would like the world to know was that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father."
Asked how she wanted her father remembered, Pol Pot's only child stands with her head bowed, eyes downcast and filled with tears. "Now my daughter is not able to say anything," interjects Muon. "I think she will let history judge her father."
History will have to, because death has deprived the world of the chance to judge the man responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million people.
Although Pol Pot has cheated justice, other leaders of that regime remain at large, including Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, who are sheltering with Ta Mok. Others, such as Keo Pok, Mam Nay and Pol Pot's former brother-in-law, Ieng Sary, have defected with their troops to the government side since 1996.
Although Pol Pot's life will stand as the darkest chapter in Cambodian history, his death is likely to be just a historical footnote. What's more likely to affect Cambodia's future is the continuing disintegration of the Khmer Rouge. This is prompting desperate attempts by what's left of the movement to find security.
The day after Pol Pot died, senior Khmer Rouge officials travelled to Bangkok, where they held secret negotiations with Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh. There, they offered for the first time to cooperate with elements of the Cambodian government. "Yes, we are prepared to negotiate. We are in the process," says Ta Mok. "But I am not going to be a running dog of Vietnam like Ieng Sary. In a nutshell, we want to dissolve the Hun Sen government and establish a national government that includes all national forces."
Interviewed on April 18, one of the chief Khmer Rouge negotiators, Cor Bun Heng, said of the unprecedented meeting: "It was a good beginning and cordial. But these things take time." Added the other senior negotiator, Gen. Nuon: "We believe that the only way out is national reconciliation between all the parties. We know that the entire Cambodian population wants peace."
What's more, Nuon and Cor Bun Heng said they met secretly on April 17 with American officials in Bangkok, and laid out their demands for a political settlement. It was the first official, direct contact between the United States and the Khmer Rouge for at least two decades. U.S. officials wouldn't comment.
In the jungles, Ta Mok knows that his capture and trial is sought by the international community. He wants to use Pol Pot's death to wipe the slate clean. "The world community should stop talking about this now that Pol Pot is dead. It was all Pol Pot. He annihilated many good cadres and destroyed our movement. I hope he suffers after death," he says. He then asks a visiting reporter to get hold of a satellite telephone for him, sketching a collapsible phone he has seen. "I want a good telephone. One that I can call anywhere in the world."
But working the phone will not prevent Ta Mok from rapidly losing the loyalty of his own commanders. Privately, many of his top officers and cadres hold him responsible for the collapse of the movement since he seized control from Pol Pot last July. "He is very tired," says a senior Khmer Rouge official. "No man can shoulder all the political, diplomatic and military burdens by himself." Others are less kind. "He has no more support from many of his own people," whispers one cadre. "But we don't know where to go. Cambodia has no good leaders."
Fear was in the faces of many leaders and cadres still holed up near the Thai border-and for good reason. "There may be more traitors, it is normal. But in the end they will all die," Ta Mok says. He's a man of his word: Three top commanders arrested with Pol Pot last year were executed in late March because some of the fighters who mutinied were loyal to them. "It was a decision made by the people," Ta Mok shrugs.
He gives the impression of being increasingly out of touch with reality, seeing enemies everywhere and unwilling to compromise. His brutal tactics are also a source of unease among his remaining loyalists. "Our movement will only get stronger. We have sent our forces close to Phnom Penh and hey have carried out their tasks successfully," he says. The "task" he boasts of was the recent massacre of 22 ethnic Vietnamese, including women and children, in a fishing village in Kompong Chhnang province.
The REVIEW has learned that many of the estimated 1,600 guerrillas still nominally under Ta Mok's command have pledged allegiance to the forces loyal to Ranariddh's Funcinpec party, who occupy nearby jungles. Cadres say that in negotiations with Funcinpec's Gen. Nyek Bun Chhay, they have pledged loyalty to Ranariddh's party and agreed to force Ta Mok into "retirement."
Scores of uniformed Funcinpec troops, including senior commanders, are fighting alongside Ta Mok loyalists north of Anlong Veng. Gen. Meas Sarin, a Funcinpec commander and governor of Preah Vihear province before Hun Sen's coup in July, is present at Khmer Rouge headquarters. He says 600 Funcinpec troops are fighting government forces alongside Ta Mok's commanders. The heavy fighting nearby is audible during the interview.
This presents a political dilemma for Ranariddh. He has pledged to abide by a Japanese peace plan that aims to create conditions for Funcinpec to campaign freely ahead of the July elections -- something Hun Sen has resisted. The Japanese plan specifically calls for the severing of links between Funcinpec troops and Ta Mok's guerrillas. For the moment, Ranariddh is choosing denial. "I do not have any cooperative relations with the Khmer Rouge," he said on April 17. "Rumours currently circulating to the effect that forces loyal to me are supporting the Khmer Rouge forces in Anlong Veng are not true."
That's not the only obstacle facing Japan and Asean as they try to find a formula that would allow Ranariddh to return home to campaign for the polls. The job was already hard enough for the Thai, Philippine and Indonesian foreign ministers who met King Norodom Sihanouk in Siem Riep in mid-April. But then Sihanouk made it harder by telling them Ranariddh should pull out of the elections -- and Cambodian politics altogether -- and instead prepare to be king, according to furious Funcinpec members.
Meanwhile, Cambodia's neighbours are becoming increasingly exasperated by the seemingly endless war. Interviewed in Bangkok, Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan expresses optimism that elections could be held in Cambodia, but also voices a warning. "Without a resolution to the Cambodian conflict, the region is being perceived as insecure, unstable. That prevents further cooperation and development for Asia," he says, pointing to plans to develop the Mekong basin that are now delicately poised.
China, previously hesitant about taking part in the Mekong's development, is now willing to participate, Surin says. That means that Cambodia, at the heart of the Mekong Basin, is now the major remaining obstacle. "The region is being denied this development by the existing Cambodian conflict," says Surin. "Certainly, there is a sense of Cambodia fatigue in the international community. Cambodians should realize that."
By Nate Thayer in Preah Vihear province
30 April 1998
Far Eastern Economic Review
As Pol Pot's body lies bloating 100 metres away in a spartan shack, exhausted Khmer Rouge leaders gather in a jungle-shrouded ammunition depot filled with home-made mines and crude communications equipment. Explosions of heavy artillery and exchanges of automatic-weapons fire echo in the mountains as the Khmer Rouge's remaining guerrillas hold off government troops.
Ta Mok, the movement's strongman, vows to fight on, and blames his longtime comrade-in-arms for the Khmer Rouge's desperate plight. "It is good that Pol Pot is dead. I feel no sorrow," he says. Then he levels a bizarre accusation against the rabidly nationalistic mass murderer: "Pol Pot was a Vietnamese agent. I have the documents."
A young Khmer Rouge fighter, his leaders only metres away, leans close to a visiting reporter and whispers in Khmer: "This movement is finished. Can you get me to America?"
Besieged in dense jungles along the Thai border, the remnants of the Khmer Rouge are battling for survival in the wake of three weeks of chaotic defections and the loss of their northern stronghold of Anlong Veng. Having lost faith in the harsh leadership of Ta Mok, several commanders are negotiating to defect to the guerrilla forces loyal to deposed Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh.
Ta Mok's growing paranoia and isolation were only some of the revelations to come out of an exclusive tour of shrinking Khmer Rouge-held territory north of Anlong Veng the day after Pol Pot's death. Khmer Rouge cadres and Pol Pot's wife recounted the last, ignominious days of his life, as he was moved through the jungle to escape advancing troops.
There was no visible evidence that the former Cambodian dictator was murdered. Cadres say he died of a heart attack on the night of April 15. In the days after his death, Khmer Rouge envoys held secret peace talks in Bangkok with Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh, and had their first direct contact with U.S. officials in more than two decades. Yet at the same time, Khmer Rouge holdouts were joining up with Ranariddh's rebel forces, making it likely that the insurgency will continue as Cambodia prepares for crucial elections in July.
The Khmer Rouge weren't trying to expose their shaky future when they allowed a REVIEW reporter to enter their territory, but to prove to the world that the architect of Cambodia's killing fields was indeed dead. Leading the way to Pol Pot's house to display the ultimate proof, a cadre warns against stepping off the path. "Be careful, there are mines everywhere."
The sickly-sweet stench of death fills the wooden hut. Fourteen hours have passed since Pol Pot's demise, and his body is decomposing in the tropical heat. His face and fingers are covered with purple blotches.
Khmer Rouge leaders insist that Pol Pot, aged 73, died of natural causes. Already visibly ill and professing to be near death when interviewed by the REVIEW in October, he had been weakened by a shortage of food and the strain of being moved around to escape the government offensive. "Pol Pot died of heart failure," Ta Mok says. "I did not kill him."
That night, Ta Mok had wanted to move Pol Pot to another house for security reasons. "He was sitting in his chair waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sound of dying. When she touched him he had passed away already. It was at 10:15 last night."
There are no signs of foul play, but Pol Pot has a pained expression on his face, as if he did not die peacefully. One eye is shut and the other half open. Cotton balls are stuffed up his nostrils to prevent leakage of body fluids. By his body lie his rattan fan, blue-and-red peasant scarf, bamboo cane and white plastic sandals. His books and other possessions have been confiscated since he was ousted by his comrades in an internal power struggle 10 months earlier. Two vases of purple bougainvillea stand at the head of the bed. Otherwise, the room is empty, save for a small short-wave radio.
Pol Pot listened religiously to Voice of America broadcasts on that radio, but the April 15 news on the Khmer-language service may have been too much to bear. The lead story was the REVIEW's report that Khmer Rouge leaders-desperate for food, medicine and international support-had decided to turn him over to an international tribunal to face trial for crimes against humanity. "He listened to VOA every night, and VOA on Wednesday reported your story at 8 p.m. that he would be turned over to an international court," says Gen. Khem Nuon, the Khmer Rouge army chief-of-staff. "We thought the shock of him hearing this on VOA might have killed him."
A week earlier, Nuon had said that Pol Pot knew of the decision, but now he says the ageing leader had not been fully informed. "We decided clearly to send him" to an international court, says Nuon, "but we only told him that we were in a very difficult situation and perhaps it was better that he go abroad. Tears came to his eyes when I told him that."
Perched nervously by the deathbed is Pol Pot's wife, a 40-year-old former ammunition porter for the Khmer Rouge named Muon. Clutching her hand is their 12-year-old daughter, Mul. A peasant woman, Muon says she has never laid eyes on a Westerner before. She corroborates Ta Mok's account of Pol Pot's death. "Last night, he said he felt dizzy. I asked him to lie down. I heard him make a noise. When I went to touch him, he had died."
Pol Pot married her after his first wife went insane in the 1980s as the Khmer Rouge tried to survive in the jungle after their reign of terror was ended by invading Vietnamese troops. Muon seems oblivious to her husband's bloodstained past, caught only in the anguish of the present.
"He told me a few weeks ago: 'My father died at 73. I am 73 now. My time is not far away,'" she says. "It was a way of telling me that he was preparing to die." Reaching down to caress his face, she bursts into tears. "He was always a good husband. He tried his best to educate the children not to be traitors. Since I married him in 1985, I never saw him do a bad thing."
Asked about his reputation as a mass-murderer, her lips quiver and she casts a terrified glance at senior Khmer Rouge cadres hovering nearby. "I know nothing about politics," she says. "It is up to history to judge. That is all I want to say."
She has reason to be terrified. "As to what I will do with his family, I haven't decided," says Ta Mok. "If I let them go, will they say anything bad about me? Maybe they might be used by Hun Sen," he says, referring to his nemesis, the Cambodian premier.
Outside the front door is a small vegetable garden tended by Pol Pot's wife and daughter; next to it, a freshly dug trench where Pol Pot and his family were forced to cower as artillery bombarded the jungle redoubt in recent weeks.
Pol Pot's last days were spent in flight and fear of capture -- a humiliating end for the man who ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. According to his wife and Khmer Rouge leaders, he dyed his hair black on April 10 in a desperate attempt to avoid capture by mutinying Khmer Rouge troops as he fled to the Dongrek mountains north of Anlong Veng. "Pol Pot feared that he could be caught. By dying his hair he was trying to disguise himself. For such a person to do that, it showed real fear in his mind," says Gen. Nuon.
The guerrillas had been unable to provide their ousted leader with sufficient food since being forced from their headquarters in late March. "For the last few weeks he had diarrhoea and we haven't had much food because of the fighting with the traitors," recounts Ta Mok.
As Pol Pot fled, the remnants of the movement he created 38 years ago crumbled before his eyes. A few days before his death, he was being driven with his wife and daughter to a new hideout by Gen. Non Nou, his personal guard. From his blue Toyota Land Cruiser, Pol Pot saw Khmer Rouge civilians-cadres say around 30,000 -- who had been forced from their fields and villages by government troops and Khmer Rouge defectors.
"When he saw the peasants and our cadres lying by the side of the road with no food or shelter, he broke down into tears," says Non Nou. His wife echoes the account, and quotes Pol Pot as saying: "My only wish is that Cambodians stay united so that Vietnam will not swallow our country." Pol Pot never expressed any regrets, she says. "What I would like the world to know was that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father."
Asked how she wanted her father remembered, Pol Pot's only child stands with her head bowed, eyes downcast and filled with tears. "Now my daughter is not able to say anything," interjects Muon. "I think she will let history judge her father."
History will have to, because death has deprived the world of the chance to judge the man responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million people.
Although Pol Pot has cheated justice, other leaders of that regime remain at large, including Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, who are sheltering with Ta Mok. Others, such as Keo Pok, Mam Nay and Pol Pot's former brother-in-law, Ieng Sary, have defected with their troops to the government side since 1996.
Although Pol Pot's life will stand as the darkest chapter in Cambodian history, his death is likely to be just a historical footnote. What's more likely to affect Cambodia's future is the continuing disintegration of the Khmer Rouge. This is prompting desperate attempts by what's left of the movement to find security.
The day after Pol Pot died, senior Khmer Rouge officials travelled to Bangkok, where they held secret negotiations with Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh. There, they offered for the first time to cooperate with elements of the Cambodian government. "Yes, we are prepared to negotiate. We are in the process," says Ta Mok. "But I am not going to be a running dog of Vietnam like Ieng Sary. In a nutshell, we want to dissolve the Hun Sen government and establish a national government that includes all national forces."
Interviewed on April 18, one of the chief Khmer Rouge negotiators, Cor Bun Heng, said of the unprecedented meeting: "It was a good beginning and cordial. But these things take time." Added the other senior negotiator, Gen. Nuon: "We believe that the only way out is national reconciliation between all the parties. We know that the entire Cambodian population wants peace."
What's more, Nuon and Cor Bun Heng said they met secretly on April 17 with American officials in Bangkok, and laid out their demands for a political settlement. It was the first official, direct contact between the United States and the Khmer Rouge for at least two decades. U.S. officials wouldn't comment.
In the jungles, Ta Mok knows that his capture and trial is sought by the international community. He wants to use Pol Pot's death to wipe the slate clean. "The world community should stop talking about this now that Pol Pot is dead. It was all Pol Pot. He annihilated many good cadres and destroyed our movement. I hope he suffers after death," he says. He then asks a visiting reporter to get hold of a satellite telephone for him, sketching a collapsible phone he has seen. "I want a good telephone. One that I can call anywhere in the world."
But working the phone will not prevent Ta Mok from rapidly losing the loyalty of his own commanders. Privately, many of his top officers and cadres hold him responsible for the collapse of the movement since he seized control from Pol Pot last July. "He is very tired," says a senior Khmer Rouge official. "No man can shoulder all the political, diplomatic and military burdens by himself." Others are less kind. "He has no more support from many of his own people," whispers one cadre. "But we don't know where to go. Cambodia has no good leaders."
Fear was in the faces of many leaders and cadres still holed up near the Thai border-and for good reason. "There may be more traitors, it is normal. But in the end they will all die," Ta Mok says. He's a man of his word: Three top commanders arrested with Pol Pot last year were executed in late March because some of the fighters who mutinied were loyal to them. "It was a decision made by the people," Ta Mok shrugs.
He gives the impression of being increasingly out of touch with reality, seeing enemies everywhere and unwilling to compromise. His brutal tactics are also a source of unease among his remaining loyalists. "Our movement will only get stronger. We have sent our forces close to Phnom Penh and hey have carried out their tasks successfully," he says. The "task" he boasts of was the recent massacre of 22 ethnic Vietnamese, including women and children, in a fishing village in Kompong Chhnang province.
The REVIEW has learned that many of the estimated 1,600 guerrillas still nominally under Ta Mok's command have pledged allegiance to the forces loyal to Ranariddh's Funcinpec party, who occupy nearby jungles. Cadres say that in negotiations with Funcinpec's Gen. Nyek Bun Chhay, they have pledged loyalty to Ranariddh's party and agreed to force Ta Mok into "retirement."
Scores of uniformed Funcinpec troops, including senior commanders, are fighting alongside Ta Mok loyalists north of Anlong Veng. Gen. Meas Sarin, a Funcinpec commander and governor of Preah Vihear province before Hun Sen's coup in July, is present at Khmer Rouge headquarters. He says 600 Funcinpec troops are fighting government forces alongside Ta Mok's commanders. The heavy fighting nearby is audible during the interview.
This presents a political dilemma for Ranariddh. He has pledged to abide by a Japanese peace plan that aims to create conditions for Funcinpec to campaign freely ahead of the July elections -- something Hun Sen has resisted. The Japanese plan specifically calls for the severing of links between Funcinpec troops and Ta Mok's guerrillas. For the moment, Ranariddh is choosing denial. "I do not have any cooperative relations with the Khmer Rouge," he said on April 17. "Rumours currently circulating to the effect that forces loyal to me are supporting the Khmer Rouge forces in Anlong Veng are not true."
That's not the only obstacle facing Japan and Asean as they try to find a formula that would allow Ranariddh to return home to campaign for the polls. The job was already hard enough for the Thai, Philippine and Indonesian foreign ministers who met King Norodom Sihanouk in Siem Riep in mid-April. But then Sihanouk made it harder by telling them Ranariddh should pull out of the elections -- and Cambodian politics altogether -- and instead prepare to be king, according to furious Funcinpec members.
Meanwhile, Cambodia's neighbours are becoming increasingly exasperated by the seemingly endless war. Interviewed in Bangkok, Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan expresses optimism that elections could be held in Cambodia, but also voices a warning. "Without a resolution to the Cambodian conflict, the region is being perceived as insecure, unstable. That prevents further cooperation and development for Asia," he says, pointing to plans to develop the Mekong basin that are now delicately poised.
China, previously hesitant about taking part in the Mekong's development, is now willing to participate, Surin says. That means that Cambodia, at the heart of the Mekong Basin, is now the major remaining obstacle. "The region is being denied this development by the existing Cambodian conflict," says Surin. "Certainly, there is a sense of Cambodia fatigue in the international community. Cambodians should realize that."
KR Peace Deal
27 August 1998
Far Eastern Economic Review
Khmer Rouge Peace Deal
The Cambodian government and the remaining Khmer Rouge guerrillas holed up in the northern jungle near Thailand are nearing a settlement in quiet negotiations to end nearly two decades of warfare. Questions over the fate of several senior Khmer Rouge officials wanted for crimes against humanity during their rule in the late 1970s are the only unresolved issue. Military officials from both sides acknowledge that they have been in constant contact; before the July elections, secret meetings between Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh and senior guerrilla leaders almost resulted in a deal.
Officials say the rebels have agreed to lay down their guns and to live in and administer their former territory, with guerrilla troops formally integrated into the government army. But the Khmer Rouge are wary of calls by Phnom Penh, opposition leaders and the international community -- led by the United States -- for the arrest of two senior leaders: military commander Ta Mok and former Khmer Rouge No. 2 Nuon Chea. Khieu Samphan, political leader of the Khmer Rouge, is likely to be offered amnesty, but not the other two men, widely believed to have participated in mass murders during their rule. "They say peace one day and they want to arrest us the next day and send us to court," says a senior guerrilla official. "Before we join with the government we just want to know whether we will be safe." Scores of other guerrilla officials implicated in similar crimes have already been given senior government and army positions. But government leaders are extremely sensitive to recent calls for an international tribunal to judge the remaining architects of the so-called killing fields, led by Pol Pot, who died in April. A team of United Nations-sponsored legal experts will arrive in Phnom Penh in September to assess the evidence for the formation of such a court. Both sides say they expect a deal to be cut before the end of the year, after the international spotlight dims.
Far Eastern Economic Review
Khmer Rouge Peace Deal
The Cambodian government and the remaining Khmer Rouge guerrillas holed up in the northern jungle near Thailand are nearing a settlement in quiet negotiations to end nearly two decades of warfare. Questions over the fate of several senior Khmer Rouge officials wanted for crimes against humanity during their rule in the late 1970s are the only unresolved issue. Military officials from both sides acknowledge that they have been in constant contact; before the July elections, secret meetings between Cambodian Defence Minister Tea Banh and senior guerrilla leaders almost resulted in a deal.
Officials say the rebels have agreed to lay down their guns and to live in and administer their former territory, with guerrilla troops formally integrated into the government army. But the Khmer Rouge are wary of calls by Phnom Penh, opposition leaders and the international community -- led by the United States -- for the arrest of two senior leaders: military commander Ta Mok and former Khmer Rouge No. 2 Nuon Chea. Khieu Samphan, political leader of the Khmer Rouge, is likely to be offered amnesty, but not the other two men, widely believed to have participated in mass murders during their rule. "They say peace one day and they want to arrest us the next day and send us to court," says a senior guerrilla official. "Before we join with the government we just want to know whether we will be safe." Scores of other guerrilla officials implicated in similar crimes have already been given senior government and army positions. But government leaders are extremely sensitive to recent calls for an international tribunal to judge the remaining architects of the so-called killing fields, led by Pol Pot, who died in April. A team of United Nations-sponsored legal experts will arrive in Phnom Penh in September to assess the evidence for the formation of such a court. Both sides say they expect a deal to be cut before the end of the year, after the international spotlight dims.
Cambodia ASEAN Membership
Spotlight: Awkward Admission
By Michael Vatikiotis
24 December 1998
Far Eastern Economic Review
Cambodia's admission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has proven almost as tortuous a process as the long and still-not-assured process of bringing peace and stability to the country. In the run-up to the December 15-16 Asean summit in Hanoi, it seemed likely that newly installed Prime Minister Hun Sen would fail in his bid to become the 10th and final member of the association. Singapore was strongly opposed, as was Thailand and the Philippines: Their diplomats needed convincing that the new government in Phnom Penh was stable. But a surprise was in store.
Vietnam, supported by Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma and Laos, pushed hard for Cambodia's entry. Not only is Hun Sen an old friend of Hanoi -- dating back to his 1977 defection to Vietnam from the Khmer Rouge -- but also Vietnam wanted to make its mark on Asean history by cementing the unity of Southeast Asia at this meeting, diplomats say. Hun Sen also lobbied hard, telling one senior Western diplomat that if Asean had no trouble admitting Burma, which is governed by an unelected junta, then Cambodia's elected civilian government should not pose a problem.
The impasse was broken by Vietnam's uncompromising style of diplomacy. Emerging from an informal leaders' dinner on the eve of the summit, Vietnamese officials announced that Cambodia was in. Astonished Thai officials denied this was the case. Yet the following day, Indonesia's President B.J. Habibie and Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai both "welcomed" Cambodia as Asean's 10th member in their formal opening speeches. "There was a clear and definite decision by the Asean leaders, meaning that Cambodia is the 10th member of Asean," Vietnam's foreign minister, Nguyen Manh Cam, told a press conference after the first day of the summit.
In reality, it was a fudge, a face-saving compromise that gave Vietnam the role of shepherding in its neighbour as an Asean member -- yet leaving the formal admission to a later and as-yet unspecified date. Cambodian officials are confidently predicting that formal admission will take place early in the new year. But the experience has left a bad aftertaste. Vietnam's forceful manner and protective stance towards Cambodia recalled for many veteran observers an era when Hanoi played tough with Asean mediators in negotiations over its withdrawal from Cambodia, which it invaded in late 1978.
By Michael Vatikiotis
24 December 1998
Far Eastern Economic Review
Cambodia's admission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has proven almost as tortuous a process as the long and still-not-assured process of bringing peace and stability to the country. In the run-up to the December 15-16 Asean summit in Hanoi, it seemed likely that newly installed Prime Minister Hun Sen would fail in his bid to become the 10th and final member of the association. Singapore was strongly opposed, as was Thailand and the Philippines: Their diplomats needed convincing that the new government in Phnom Penh was stable. But a surprise was in store.
Vietnam, supported by Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma and Laos, pushed hard for Cambodia's entry. Not only is Hun Sen an old friend of Hanoi -- dating back to his 1977 defection to Vietnam from the Khmer Rouge -- but also Vietnam wanted to make its mark on Asean history by cementing the unity of Southeast Asia at this meeting, diplomats say. Hun Sen also lobbied hard, telling one senior Western diplomat that if Asean had no trouble admitting Burma, which is governed by an unelected junta, then Cambodia's elected civilian government should not pose a problem.
The impasse was broken by Vietnam's uncompromising style of diplomacy. Emerging from an informal leaders' dinner on the eve of the summit, Vietnamese officials announced that Cambodia was in. Astonished Thai officials denied this was the case. Yet the following day, Indonesia's President B.J. Habibie and Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai both "welcomed" Cambodia as Asean's 10th member in their formal opening speeches. "There was a clear and definite decision by the Asean leaders, meaning that Cambodia is the 10th member of Asean," Vietnam's foreign minister, Nguyen Manh Cam, told a press conference after the first day of the summit.
In reality, it was a fudge, a face-saving compromise that gave Vietnam the role of shepherding in its neighbour as an Asean member -- yet leaving the formal admission to a later and as-yet unspecified date. Cambodian officials are confidently predicting that formal admission will take place early in the new year. But the experience has left a bad aftertaste. Vietnam's forceful manner and protective stance towards Cambodia recalled for many veteran observers an era when Hanoi played tough with Asean mediators in negotiations over its withdrawal from Cambodia, which it invaded in late 1978.
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."
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."
Cambodia After Vietnamese Invasion (1980's)
Cambodian Crossroads Guerrillas Still No Match for Vietnamese NEWS ANALYSIS
William Branigin
14 January 1985
The Washington Post
BANGKOK, Jan. 13-Facing the most aggressive Vietnamese offensive along the Thai-Cambodian border since 1979 and unable to defend its large settlements, Cambodia's main anticommunist resistance group appears to be reaching a turning point in its struggle against Hanoi's six-year-old occupation of Cambodia.
Since mid-November, the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, led by Son Sann, has lost six camps along the border to Vietnam's dry-season onslaught, and another has been largely evacuated in expectation of an imminent Vietnamese attack.
The latest to fall was the Ampil camp, a showcase settlement of 23,000 Cambodians about 40 miles northeast of the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet. The camp also was the site of the front's military headquarters.
The loss of Ampil showed that while the front has made great progress since 1979, when it started with virtually nothing, its approximately 15,000 fighters are still no match for the Vietnamese and remain militarily a junior partner in a resistance coalition with the widely hated but powerful Khmer Rouge communists.
The defeat also underscored a necessity for the Khmer front to adapt to guerrilla tactics and try to avoid being pinned down on the border by superior Vietnamese forces drawn from the estimated 160,000 to 180,000 occupation troops in Cambodia.
But the front evidently faces a major and daunting task in attempting to push its struggle into the Cambodian interior with guerrilla methods.
Guerrilla struggle is largely alien to the front's military leadership, made up mostly of officers who served under the Lon Nol government that took power in a 1970 coup and was toppled by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. They and the camp leaders who have emerged as local warlords seem to value their settled life styles in the resistance bases, where they acquired-considering the circumstances-relatively comfortable homes with such amenities as video players and gardens.
There they were also saddled with the defense of large, concentrated populations of refugees, totaling more than 150,000 of the estimated 250,000 Cambodians who live along the border under the control of the three anti-Vietnamese resistance groups.
What to do with these 150,000 people, who are both a strength and a liability for the Khmer front, remains a major problem. Most are now encamped on the Thai side of the border after having been evacuated from their settlements in the face of the Vietnamese offensive.
Other difficulties impeding the front's development as a guerrilla force in Cambodia include shortages of arms and ammunition and intensified Vietnamese efforts to stop guerrilla infiltration. The efforts include the construction of a defensive barrier inside Cambodia parallel to the border, for which the Vietnamese reportedly have mobilized thousands of Cambodian civilians.
A major dilemma for the front is that, although it enjoys western diplomatic support and lends acceptability to the three-party coalition, it lacks a committed arms donor willing to keep it well supplied. Most of the front's weapons have come from China, but Peking always has shown more generosity to the communist Khmer Rouge, whose 30,000 to 40,000 guerrillas pose the greatest military threat to the Vietnamese.
The third party in the resistance coalition, a faction loyal to former chief of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, is a relatively negligible military force with 5,000 to 8,000 fighters and has not yet come under attack in the current Vietnamese offensive.
In fact, there have been indications that Hanoi would like a separate deal with Sihanouk that would give credibility to the Vietnamese-installed Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh and undermine the resistance coalition. When Sihanouk was visiting Paris recently, according to Cambodian and western sources, the Phnom Penh government's foreign minister, Hun Sen, attempted to see him, but the prince refused a meeting.
The Khmer front, apparently the primary target in the current offensive, is bearing the brunt of a Vietnamese strategy evidently aimed at discrediting the organization as a political threat to Hanoi's proteges in Phnom Penh and buying time for the government to consolidate its hold. To counter the Vietnamese strategy, western diplomats say, the Khmer front must be able to operate in Cambodia and raise the cost of Vietnam's occupation of the country. Combined with the international isolation and the resultant economic costs brought on by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, the diplomats say, increased military hardship there might induce Hanoi eventually to negotiate a political settlement.
In the short term, western diplomats say, much depends on how Thailand reacts to the Khmer front's losses.
Front officials, including Son Sann, have complained that the group's guerrillas were hampered in defending Ampil and other camps by shortages of arms and ammunition, deliveries of which are controlled by the Thais.
Western diplomats say Thai authorities may have perceived a defense of Ampil as hopeless and wished to cut guerrilla losses. While the guerrillas managed to hold off a Vietnamese drive against the camp last April, this time the Vietnamese committed three or four times more troops, tanks and artillery to the battle and apparently overcame previous logistics problems.
As it happened, according to Son Sann, the Ampil defenders suffered only six killed and 83 wounded, 20 seriously, and managed to pull out of the camp with their weaponry largely intact.
In a press conference on the border Friday, the 73-year-old former prime minister under Sihanouk also said that his guerrillas destroyed eight tanks and armored vehicles and damaged six others before withdrawing in the face of four Vietnamese regiments totaling up to 4,000 infantrymen backed by heavy artillery.
Another factor in the Vietnamese success was a short and relatively mild rainy season in which the guerrillas were unable to harass the Vietnamese forces in the interior as they had previously.
The current offensive began earlier than expected in November, and the Vietnamese have plenty of time left to strike at the resistance groups until the dry season ends around May.
William Branigin
14 January 1985
The Washington Post
BANGKOK, Jan. 13-Facing the most aggressive Vietnamese offensive along the Thai-Cambodian border since 1979 and unable to defend its large settlements, Cambodia's main anticommunist resistance group appears to be reaching a turning point in its struggle against Hanoi's six-year-old occupation of Cambodia.
Since mid-November, the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, led by Son Sann, has lost six camps along the border to Vietnam's dry-season onslaught, and another has been largely evacuated in expectation of an imminent Vietnamese attack.
The latest to fall was the Ampil camp, a showcase settlement of 23,000 Cambodians about 40 miles northeast of the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet. The camp also was the site of the front's military headquarters.
The loss of Ampil showed that while the front has made great progress since 1979, when it started with virtually nothing, its approximately 15,000 fighters are still no match for the Vietnamese and remain militarily a junior partner in a resistance coalition with the widely hated but powerful Khmer Rouge communists.
The defeat also underscored a necessity for the Khmer front to adapt to guerrilla tactics and try to avoid being pinned down on the border by superior Vietnamese forces drawn from the estimated 160,000 to 180,000 occupation troops in Cambodia.
But the front evidently faces a major and daunting task in attempting to push its struggle into the Cambodian interior with guerrilla methods.
Guerrilla struggle is largely alien to the front's military leadership, made up mostly of officers who served under the Lon Nol government that took power in a 1970 coup and was toppled by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. They and the camp leaders who have emerged as local warlords seem to value their settled life styles in the resistance bases, where they acquired-considering the circumstances-relatively comfortable homes with such amenities as video players and gardens.
There they were also saddled with the defense of large, concentrated populations of refugees, totaling more than 150,000 of the estimated 250,000 Cambodians who live along the border under the control of the three anti-Vietnamese resistance groups.
What to do with these 150,000 people, who are both a strength and a liability for the Khmer front, remains a major problem. Most are now encamped on the Thai side of the border after having been evacuated from their settlements in the face of the Vietnamese offensive.
Other difficulties impeding the front's development as a guerrilla force in Cambodia include shortages of arms and ammunition and intensified Vietnamese efforts to stop guerrilla infiltration. The efforts include the construction of a defensive barrier inside Cambodia parallel to the border, for which the Vietnamese reportedly have mobilized thousands of Cambodian civilians.
A major dilemma for the front is that, although it enjoys western diplomatic support and lends acceptability to the three-party coalition, it lacks a committed arms donor willing to keep it well supplied. Most of the front's weapons have come from China, but Peking always has shown more generosity to the communist Khmer Rouge, whose 30,000 to 40,000 guerrillas pose the greatest military threat to the Vietnamese.
The third party in the resistance coalition, a faction loyal to former chief of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, is a relatively negligible military force with 5,000 to 8,000 fighters and has not yet come under attack in the current Vietnamese offensive.
In fact, there have been indications that Hanoi would like a separate deal with Sihanouk that would give credibility to the Vietnamese-installed Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh and undermine the resistance coalition. When Sihanouk was visiting Paris recently, according to Cambodian and western sources, the Phnom Penh government's foreign minister, Hun Sen, attempted to see him, but the prince refused a meeting.
The Khmer front, apparently the primary target in the current offensive, is bearing the brunt of a Vietnamese strategy evidently aimed at discrediting the organization as a political threat to Hanoi's proteges in Phnom Penh and buying time for the government to consolidate its hold. To counter the Vietnamese strategy, western diplomats say, the Khmer front must be able to operate in Cambodia and raise the cost of Vietnam's occupation of the country. Combined with the international isolation and the resultant economic costs brought on by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, the diplomats say, increased military hardship there might induce Hanoi eventually to negotiate a political settlement.
In the short term, western diplomats say, much depends on how Thailand reacts to the Khmer front's losses.
Front officials, including Son Sann, have complained that the group's guerrillas were hampered in defending Ampil and other camps by shortages of arms and ammunition, deliveries of which are controlled by the Thais.
Western diplomats say Thai authorities may have perceived a defense of Ampil as hopeless and wished to cut guerrilla losses. While the guerrillas managed to hold off a Vietnamese drive against the camp last April, this time the Vietnamese committed three or four times more troops, tanks and artillery to the battle and apparently overcame previous logistics problems.
As it happened, according to Son Sann, the Ampil defenders suffered only six killed and 83 wounded, 20 seriously, and managed to pull out of the camp with their weaponry largely intact.
In a press conference on the border Friday, the 73-year-old former prime minister under Sihanouk also said that his guerrillas destroyed eight tanks and armored vehicles and damaged six others before withdrawing in the face of four Vietnamese regiments totaling up to 4,000 infantrymen backed by heavy artillery.
Another factor in the Vietnamese success was a short and relatively mild rainy season in which the guerrillas were unable to harass the Vietnamese forces in the interior as they had previously.
The current offensive began earlier than expected in November, and the Vietnamese have plenty of time left to strike at the resistance groups until the dry season ends around May.
Rocket Attack Suspects Flee
Ranariddh, Sam Rainsy flee in wake of grenade attack.
26 September 1998
South China Morning Post
The country's top two opposition leaders fled the country yesterday and a third went into hiding as police moved against Hun Sen's political opponents after what his supporters said was an assassination attempt on him the day before.
Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy, taking advantage of the apparent lifting of a travel ban, boarded a charter flight in Siem Reap for Bangkok along with Yim Sovann, a senior member of the Sam Rainsy Party.
Another opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was in hiding, claiming police had surrounded his house in Phnom Penh.
A source said Prince Ranariddh and Mr Sam Rainsy left as they feared being arrested and framed for ordering the attack in Siem Reap on Thursday as they and Mr Hun Sen travelled to a swearing-in ceremony for the new Parliament.
"If they leave, they can choose to come back," the source said. "If they don't leave, they might not get the chance."
Prince Ranariddh and Mr Sam Rainsy said they expected to return for the first full session of the National Assembly next week.
A boy, 13, was killed and three relatives wounded when the rocket-propelled grenade detonated.
A government spokesman said eight suspects remained in custody in Siem Reap, but backtracked on police statements the previous day that Prince Ranariddh and Mr Sam Rainsy were the prime suspects.
"All possibilities are open," spokesman Khieu Kanharith said.
"It's difficult to say the suspects are opposition members ... but they are members of political parties. It's better not to focus on (Prince Ranariddh's) Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party. It's better to let the police do their investigation."
Mr Khieu Kanharith said police were searching for another suspect, believed to be the ringleader, who was allegedly seen in the area 10 minutes before the explosion.
He declined to say if Mr Kem Sokha, leader of the Son Sann Party, was the suspect still at large.
Mr Kem Sokha, reached briefly by mobile phone, said he was staying in a "safe place", and his situation "was not so good".
The rocket was detonated less than 700 metres from the residence of King Norodom Sihanouk, who was preparing to host a meeting of party leaders.
Some witnesses said Mr Hun Sen's vehicle had already arrived at King Sihanouk's residence when the explosion happened.
But government officials and members of the ruling Cambodian People's Party insist the rocket exploded just in front of Mr Hun Sen's motorcade in a failed assassination attempt.
26 September 1998
South China Morning Post
The country's top two opposition leaders fled the country yesterday and a third went into hiding as police moved against Hun Sen's political opponents after what his supporters said was an assassination attempt on him the day before.
Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy, taking advantage of the apparent lifting of a travel ban, boarded a charter flight in Siem Reap for Bangkok along with Yim Sovann, a senior member of the Sam Rainsy Party.
Another opposition leader, Kem Sokha, was in hiding, claiming police had surrounded his house in Phnom Penh.
A source said Prince Ranariddh and Mr Sam Rainsy left as they feared being arrested and framed for ordering the attack in Siem Reap on Thursday as they and Mr Hun Sen travelled to a swearing-in ceremony for the new Parliament.
"If they leave, they can choose to come back," the source said. "If they don't leave, they might not get the chance."
Prince Ranariddh and Mr Sam Rainsy said they expected to return for the first full session of the National Assembly next week.
A boy, 13, was killed and three relatives wounded when the rocket-propelled grenade detonated.
A government spokesman said eight suspects remained in custody in Siem Reap, but backtracked on police statements the previous day that Prince Ranariddh and Mr Sam Rainsy were the prime suspects.
"All possibilities are open," spokesman Khieu Kanharith said.
"It's difficult to say the suspects are opposition members ... but they are members of political parties. It's better not to focus on (Prince Ranariddh's) Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party. It's better to let the police do their investigation."
Mr Khieu Kanharith said police were searching for another suspect, believed to be the ringleader, who was allegedly seen in the area 10 minutes before the explosion.
He declined to say if Mr Kem Sokha, leader of the Son Sann Party, was the suspect still at large.
Mr Kem Sokha, reached briefly by mobile phone, said he was staying in a "safe place", and his situation "was not so good".
The rocket was detonated less than 700 metres from the residence of King Norodom Sihanouk, who was preparing to host a meeting of party leaders.
Some witnesses said Mr Hun Sen's vehicle had already arrived at King Sihanouk's residence when the explosion happened.
But government officials and members of the ruling Cambodian People's Party insist the rocket exploded just in front of Mr Hun Sen's motorcade in a failed assassination attempt.
Rocket Attack in Siem Riep
Rocket attack terrifies Hun Sen.
5 October 1998
BBC Monitoring Service: Asia-Pacific
Source: `Sapordarmean Neak Prayut', Phnom Penh, in Cambodian 28 Sep 98 p1
Excerpt from report by the Cambodian newspaper `Sapordarmean Neak Prayut' on 28th September
Following the meeting of the new members of parliament in the historic city of Angkor last week that coincided with the remote control detonation of a B-40 rocket which was originally aimed at opposition leaders but which zoomed pass Hun Sen's motorcade instead, Hun Sen tried to put on a brave face and hide his deceitful nature.
A high-ranking official of the Cambodian People's Party [CPP] who asked to remain anonymous told this newspaper that Hun Sen was not a brave person. After the explosive barely missed his car, Hun Sen was scared nearly to death and, fearing the magical power of Angkor, he refused to drink the oath water at the ceremony in front of Angkor Wat. Hun Sen even suspected that certain fellow CPP members were behind the rocket attack.
According to the same source, the troops that were summoned to protect Hun Sen numbered more than 6,000, both in uniforms and in civilian clothes operating under the auspices of the Royal Government...
5 October 1998
BBC Monitoring Service: Asia-Pacific
Source: `Sapordarmean Neak Prayut', Phnom Penh, in Cambodian 28 Sep 98 p1
Excerpt from report by the Cambodian newspaper `Sapordarmean Neak Prayut' on 28th September
Following the meeting of the new members of parliament in the historic city of Angkor last week that coincided with the remote control detonation of a B-40 rocket which was originally aimed at opposition leaders but which zoomed pass Hun Sen's motorcade instead, Hun Sen tried to put on a brave face and hide his deceitful nature.
A high-ranking official of the Cambodian People's Party [CPP] who asked to remain anonymous told this newspaper that Hun Sen was not a brave person. After the explosive barely missed his car, Hun Sen was scared nearly to death and, fearing the magical power of Angkor, he refused to drink the oath water at the ceremony in front of Angkor Wat. Hun Sen even suspected that certain fellow CPP members were behind the rocket attack.
According to the same source, the troops that were summoned to protect Hun Sen numbered more than 6,000, both in uniforms and in civilian clothes operating under the auspices of the Royal Government...
November 11, 2009
Hun Sen Demands Sok Yoeun Back
Cambodia says Thais should extradite plot suspect.
22 December 1999
Reuters News
PHNOM PENH, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Cambodian premier Hun Sen said on Wednesday an opposition party activist accused of involvement in an alleged plot to kill him should be sent back from Thailand where he has sought United Nations protection.
Hun Sen said Cambodia and Thailand have an extradition treaty and anyone who protected Sok Yoeun, an activist from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, would be branded a "terrorist".
Sok Yoeun recently fled to Thailand after police named him in connection with the case. Hun Sen said the man was being looked after by the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but that he should not be considered a political refugee.
"We have an extradition treaty...and there's no reason for Thailand and the UNHCR to consider that person a political refugee," Hun Sen told reporters when asked if his government would seek the man's return.
"Anyone who protects Sok Yoeun will be known as a terrorist or a member of an international terrorist network," he added, saying Phnom Penh would raise the issue with the U.N. secretary general.
A UNHCR official in Bangkok declined to comment, saying the organisation could not discuss individual cases.
Sok Yoeun has been accused of involvement in a rocket attack in September last year on a convoy of cars carrying political leaders, including Hun Sen.
A rocket-propelled grenade exploded beside a road as leaders of the country's three main parties were travelling to the swearing in of parliament in the northern town of Siem Reap.
One bystander was killed in the attack, which the government said was an attempt on Hun Sen's life. Some opposition politicians said at the time they believed the attack was staged by Hun Sen supporters to justify a crackdown but authorities dismissed that speculation.
Two other Sam Rainsy Party activists were arrested in September in connection with the rocket attack and accused of plotting to kill Hun Sen.
Former finance minister Sam Rainsy has denied that he or any members of his party were involved in any plot to kill Hun Sen and the accusations were an attempt to discredit his party.
"(Sok Yoeun) was accused, groundlessly, of being involved in the so-called rocket attack in Siem Reap," Sam Rainsy told reporters on Wednesday. "This is ridiculous."
"He was going to be arrested and he escaped. It's unfair to the man and dangerous to the party because Hun Sen wants to discredit the Sam Rainsy Party."
22 December 1999
Reuters News
PHNOM PENH, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Cambodian premier Hun Sen said on Wednesday an opposition party activist accused of involvement in an alleged plot to kill him should be sent back from Thailand where he has sought United Nations protection.
Hun Sen said Cambodia and Thailand have an extradition treaty and anyone who protected Sok Yoeun, an activist from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, would be branded a "terrorist".
Sok Yoeun recently fled to Thailand after police named him in connection with the case. Hun Sen said the man was being looked after by the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but that he should not be considered a political refugee.
"We have an extradition treaty...and there's no reason for Thailand and the UNHCR to consider that person a political refugee," Hun Sen told reporters when asked if his government would seek the man's return.
"Anyone who protects Sok Yoeun will be known as a terrorist or a member of an international terrorist network," he added, saying Phnom Penh would raise the issue with the U.N. secretary general.
A UNHCR official in Bangkok declined to comment, saying the organisation could not discuss individual cases.
Sok Yoeun has been accused of involvement in a rocket attack in September last year on a convoy of cars carrying political leaders, including Hun Sen.
A rocket-propelled grenade exploded beside a road as leaders of the country's three main parties were travelling to the swearing in of parliament in the northern town of Siem Reap.
One bystander was killed in the attack, which the government said was an attempt on Hun Sen's life. Some opposition politicians said at the time they believed the attack was staged by Hun Sen supporters to justify a crackdown but authorities dismissed that speculation.
Two other Sam Rainsy Party activists were arrested in September in connection with the rocket attack and accused of plotting to kill Hun Sen.
Former finance minister Sam Rainsy has denied that he or any members of his party were involved in any plot to kill Hun Sen and the accusations were an attempt to discredit his party.
"(Sok Yoeun) was accused, groundlessly, of being involved in the so-called rocket attack in Siem Reap," Sam Rainsy told reporters on Wednesday. "This is ridiculous."
"He was going to be arrested and he escaped. It's unfair to the man and dangerous to the party because Hun Sen wants to discredit the Sam Rainsy Party."
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