Nate Thayer

No More Creampuff Journalism-Readers react to Nate Thayer's article in Phnom Penh Post

 No More Creampuff Journalism

(Below are a series of reader reactions to an interview I did with Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan. It wasn't pretty, but it was witty (mostly). Included is the article that sparked the outrage, The response of Michael hayes Publisher of the PPP, and my response)

Phnom Penh Post

Letter to the Editor

Friday, 29 January 1993

I was spending some vacation time in Phnom Penh when I picked up your paper and read the "interview" with Khieu Samphan. What's going on? This guy is a mass murderer and is single-handedly blocking a U.S. $2 billion international peace effort. Yet your "reporter" Nate Thayer treats Samphan like he was some kind of elder statesman, asking him what he thinks of the current political situation. Why didn't he ask him what it feels like to kill 1,000,000 Cambodians? I've read PR handouts that hit harder than this piece of marshmallow.

Do your readers a favor-next time you interview the Khmer Rouge, send a real professional reporter-not a cream puff like this Thayer guy.

Bill Shuller, United States

Editor's Response

Phnom Penh Post

 Letter to the Editor

Friday, 29 January 1993

 

Schuler has a point. Thayer faxed the raw transcript of the text of Khieu Samphan interview from Bangkok without his questions. While the text accurately reflected the content of the interview, it did not accurately reflect the questions posed. The interview should have been presented under topical categories rather than as a question and answer. We regret the editing error.

Thayer responds:

"I've been called a puppet lackey, an intelligence operative, a right wing jerk, a communist sympathizer, and a hopeless drunk, but I have never been called a creampuff and I resent it."

- The Post welcomes comments from our readers.

 

 

Sour Creampuffs

Phnom Penh Post

Letter to the Editor

Friday, 12 February 1993

 

As a long-term resident of Cambodia who has been subjected to Mr. Thayer's Errol Flynnish style of journalism for most of that time, I must take exception to the use of the word "creampuff." It is extremely difficult to make a good creampuff in the tropics.

The term one should apply to this journalist is lightweight twerp.

Bill Lohan, Cambodia

Gentle Journalism

Phnom Penh Post

Letter to the Editor

Friday, 09 April 1993

I feeling so sorry for your reporter Kate Thayer called Gream Puff and Light Weight Werp in letters. So unfair! I read her interview with Mr. Khieu Samphan so interesting. Mr. Khieu Samphan of course is very bad man hates Vietnam people but reporter did no thing wrong. She just write down everything what she told very obedient and polite and not ask rude questions of important man her superior. Why call Gream Puff and Eroll Fling? My friends and I in the Ho Chi Minh Ladies Sewing Circle say, carry on Kate! Keep writing in your own gentle and lady like way!

Ho Chi Minh Ladies Sewing Circle

Khmer Rouge Chic 

Phnom Penh Post

Letter to the Editor

Friday, 26 February 1993

The Post editor was kind enough to take the heat of poor Nate Thayer in answer to Phil Schuler's accusation of 'cream puff journalism' (Feb. 3 Post 2/3), But I fail to see why inclusion of the questions would have mitigated the impression. Didn't Thayer write the piece as published?

In addition to the list of names Thayer says he has been called, there was 'Khmer Rouge-chic' which I applied to some of his writing (see Indochina Issues 93, August 1991), and he attracts those names because of a persistence in treating the Khmer-Rouge as just ordinary guys with good intentions.

He asks for it again in his photo (Post, same issue, p.6) of a gentle Khmer Rouge soldier tenderly offering a smoke to a Vietnamese soldier, presumably a prisoner, when there is good information that the usual fate of captured Vietnamese was death.

In his latest article, "What role for Khmer Rouge", he quotes Pol Pot's talk of February 1992, in which he should have seen that Khmer Rouge obsession with the 'Youn' was a major theme. The Khmer Rouge imagine (and since it was a secret talk to his own cadres I assume it is what Pol Pot believes, not propaganda for affect) that the 'Youn' control Cambodia, that a 'Youn' army is what they are fighting, that there is now a U.S.-'Youn' alliance with the U.S. pressuring China, through human rights issues, to join the 'Youn', and that the object of the Khmer Rouge is to liberate Cambodia from the 'Youn'.

Those are the paranoid schizophrenics who are causing such international hand-writing over how to bring them into the 'peace process'. The present Khmer Rouge leadership should be kept out and isolated until they are no longer a threat, in particular because of their Vietnam policy which promises to keep Indochina in conflict for years ahead. This is not what the international community likes to think of, for anti-Vietnamese prejudice is widespread, not only among Khmer chauvinists, and the Khmer Rouge have played a useful role which several great powers may think should not go unrewarded.

Some heat should nevertheless be taken off Nate Thayer, for he is only following a trendy line which parallels the 'peace process' and is clearly reflected in the Paris Accords and the draft documents which preceded them, all designed to treat the Khmer Rouge as ordinary people in order to use them against the State of Cambodia. Observant readers like Schuler should focus their attention and ire on the entire UNTAC operation which is destroying Cambodia and giving new opportunities to an unreconstructed Khmer Rouge leadership, precisely as Pol Pot predicted in his remarks of February 1992.

 

Khieu Samphan:Gloomy Prospects for Khmer Elections

Friday, 06 November 1992

By Nate Thayer

The following interview with Khieu Samphan, president of the Partie of Democratic Kampuchea, was conducted at the Khmer Rouge compound in Phnom Penh.


Phnom Penh Post: What's your assessment of the status of the peace process, one year after the signing of the Paris peace accords?

Khieu Samphan: Two key agreements have yet to be implemented. First, [there's] no control or verification of the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia. Secondly, agreements on the role of the Supreme National Council (SNC) have not been implemented.

We know that these two issues are interrelated. We have to have the SNC play a role; if the SNC has no role to play UNTAC will cooperate with the Phnom Penh regime. That is why UNTAC uses the phrase "pragmatic necessity," which means UNTAC relies on the Phnom Penh regime to implement the Paris accords.

How can UNTAC exercise the control and verification of the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces under these circumstances? Actually the Vietnamese forces, soldiers, officers, advisors and experts are the ones who maintain this regime in place. These Vietnamese forces are now in place to maintain the puppet army, secret police, and administrative apparatus.

If UNTAC relies on the Phnom Penh regime, UNTAC will not be able to find these forces, so this is the cause of the current deadlock. If we do not tackle the root cause of the current deadlock, we will not be able to break this deadlock.

Post: UNTAC may decide to hold the elections without the participation of the Partie of Democratic Kampuchea. What will it take for the PDK to join in the electoral process?

Khieu: As far as the election is concerned, if they have a plan to hold the election without the PDK (Partie of Democratic Kam-puchea), is this in accordance with the Paris agreements? What will the result of such elections be? The Vietnamese forces are still in Cambodia.

Such elections would offer Cambodia to the Vietnamese; this [all] the Cambodian people in Cambodia and living abroad will not accept.

So the question is whether UNTAC is going to hold the election without the participation of the PDK or implement the Paris agreement in its entirety. Such elections without the participation of the PDK run counter to the Paris agreement and we will oppose it.

Post: How do you assess the economic and security situation in Cambodia at present?

Khieu Samphan: Now everybody is talking about the corruption of [the Phnom Penh] regime being on the increase, and the riel has lost its value. The devaluation of the riel has created problems within all strata of the Cambodian people-between the poor and the Phnom Penh regime, state employees and the Phnom Penh regime, and soldiers of their own regime.

When UNTAC is trying to come to the rescue of the riel, this will only create problems between the Cambodian people and UNTAC.

[With] corruption and the devaluation of the riel spreading, this is a situation that creates more problems.

The Cambodian people are suffering. What will their reaction be to a situation where they see no hope? Anarchy perhaps, but the situation is they oppose the Vietnamese regime.

Let me turn to a specific problem: banditry. There are indeed elements not under any control. There are elements of the Phnom Penh army they cannot control. But [also], there is organized banditry by the Vietnamese and the Phnom Penh party.

How can we resolve this problem of banditry if the SNC continues to be denied its role? If the SNC is given its role, the Cambodian people [would] join the SNC in opposing banditry. Otherwise it will increase.

I think in any country where you have a government that is not supported, you will not be able to control banditry.

Post: How do you respond to charges that the Khmer Rouge blew up two bridges in Kompong Thom last month and is launching a dry season offensive?

Khieu Samphan: These accusations are not true.

Last year during the 14th dry season, during the whole dry season, the Vietnamese launched military operations against our forces-now they are doing the same in Battambang, Pursat, route 6, 21, 7.

During the 15th dry season there might be complicated problems. As the Vietnamese launch military attacks against our forces we will be compelled to fight back.

Post: Do you think that the peace accords are in danger of collapsing, returning Cambodia to a state of civil war?

Khieu Samphan: There is no peace now-the situation is the same as before [the signing of the Paris accords].

If they [UNTAC] have no political objective to get rid of the PDK, they will implement the Paris accords on the role of the SNC. Other measures to try to avoid giving the role to the SNC would not resolve the problem, and would be tantamount to trying to get rid of the PDK.

I am speaking very frankly here; if they try to do this, it is an abandonment of the Paris accords. We will not accept this. We should not underestimate or overlook the reaction of the Cambodian people.

I have told Akashi very clearly, if you try to paint a situation [of optimism that the peace plan is succeeding], you won't change the situation. I also try to convey that I am trying to cooperate with UNTAC.

I agree with you that we are on very dangerous ground. We are at an unpredictable juncture. I cannot say I am optimistic or not, [but] whoever does not implement the Paris agreements will encounter problems. They will increase the problems themselves.

There might be the possibility of anarchy by Cambodian people who might explode against the Vietnamese settlers themselves because of land stolen from the Cambodian people.

To sum up, UNTAC alone cannot control and verify the withdrawal of the Vietnamese forces and resolve the problem of crime in the cities, because of lack of support from the Cambodian people.

So far, [UNTAC] has tried to help the Phnom Penh party. As to when they will see that what they are doing is not working, I hope it will be soon. We hope that UNTAC will [realize that] before it is too late.

Foot Soldiers from Rival Armies Share cynicism About Leader By Nate Thayer

Foot Soldiers from Rival Armies Share cynicism About Leader

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 07 August 1992

NORTH OF HIGHWAY SIX, Cambodia--From a trench in abandoned ricefields in Kompong Thom province, young conscripts of Phnom Penh's army peered wide eyed from their foxholes as two journalists and a score of heavily armed guerrillas emerged from enemy controlled jungles and approached them.

Popping up from camouflaged foxholes, they grabbed automatic rifles, and curiously approached the group. The soldiers-from rival factions-greeted each other warily.

For the guerrilla fighters, it was the first time they had spoken to the enemy in more than 13 years of war, although some knew each other by reputation.

A soldier was dispatched to seek a superior's approval for a request for the journalists to pass into Phnom Penh territory. While waiting, the young men exchanged cigarettes and asked about each other. It turned out a guerrilla and his government counterpart came from the same village in the far away province of Prey Veng.

"You see what the war has done to us," said Meas, a guerrilla fighter, pointing to the Phnom Penh soldier. "We could be related and we wouldn't know it."

Meas had fled Cambodia's turmoil to the Thai border more than a decade before, eventually joining the guerrilla faction led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh. The Phnom Penh soldier had been drafted into the army some three years earlier and sent to the jungle.

Another Phnom Penh soldier said that he had recently found out that his brother, who had been missing since the Vietnamese invasion in l979, was a soldier with the guerrillas.

"Do you know my brother and if he is well?" he asked the guerrilla.

Another young fighter said, "Now in Cambodia, a whole generation must ask our elders if we are related, because we don't even know who we are since the war split us apart."

"In Cambodia, all our leaders are getting rich while we suffer," another soldier added. Everyone nodded in agreement. It was a theme we heard everywhere.

A photographer from Impact Visuals photo agency and I had rented a Soviet jeep in Phnom Penh and set off alone on a 15-day journey that would take us through nine provinces, across dozens of minefields and frontlines to territory under the control of all four Cambodian factions.

Many Cambodians living under the control of, or working for each of the four factions expressed deep cynicism and resentment towards their leaders whom they blame for incompetence, corruption, and continuing a conflict largely for personal gain. Soldiers from all four factions said they had not been paid for months, and worried about what would happen to them in a post-war Cambodia.

No commanding officer could be found that day, and after some debate, we were allowed to pass, for the 100 kilometer trip back to Kompong Thom city.

Soon after our arrival, two Phnom Penh interior ministry police officials arrived at our guesthouse. Initially, they were not happy.

"My job is to protect the party," the young intelligence officer announced rather cheerfully. "You have no permission to be here and I have to ask you some questions."

After an hour of interrogation, the intelligence officer asked whether we could talk as friends. "I hear that maybe I will not have a job after cantonment and demobilization," he said, "Is journalism a good job? How is the pay? I think we have similar jobs. We both have to ask a lot of questions and find out what is going on."

In Banteay Meanchey province, large tracts of land have been made uninhabitable by mines planted during heavy fighting for control of the area.

Soldiers guided us through oxcart paths snaking through mined ricefields, across frontlines, delivering us to forward checkpoints of their erstwhile enemies.

During more than a score of such transfers, we would request a couple of soldiers from a forward position to accompany us for security until we reached another faction's base.

There was never a shortage of volunteers, most eager for a break from the boredom of isolated outposts. Because of the abundance of mines and bandits, it was good to have guides with weapons who were familiar with the terrain.

Killings and robberies were daily events in the area where rogue bands of former soldiers from each of the four factions routinely ambush anyone with valuables.

The young fighters in the guerrilla zones would pepper us with questions: Are there a lot of Vietnamese in Phnom Penh? Are there jobs for people like me? Do you think we will be safe and welcomed back now that the war is over?

It was not unusual for our Soviet jeep, which we rented from an army officer in Phnom Penh, to be filled with a half dozen fully armed uniformed soldiers from different factions. We would discuss politics but mostly their fears for the future and being able to provide for their families after years of living in the jungle.

In scrubland north of the district capital of Banteay Meanchey, we drove to isolated villages under the control of the Khmer Rouge, where villagers and Khmer Rouge cadre spoke about their hopes for the future.

"We must rid the country from the Vietnamese first before the war can stop," said one Khmer Rouge cadre. "But we all want peace. Everyone has suffered enough."

"I don't know why so many people died when we were in power," said one young Khmer Rouge fighter, who seemed genuinely perplexed by the issue.

A Khmer Rouge medic we met at a Khmer Rouge division headquarters near the Dongrek mountain escarpment asked if we could give him a ride south so he could pick up some medical supplies.

"You are American," he said cheerfully. "Do you know my sister? She lives in New York." He said that he had spent three years in China training as a medic, and was proud of his skills.

"I can do any kind of operation, but mostly amputations," he said.

I asked him how many amputations he had performed. "Oh, too many to count," he said, "At least 200."

In the bustling market town of Tmar Pouk, under control of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, government soldiers in uniform mingled easily with their former enemies.

"We don't have any problems with each other," one said. "We are just regular soldiers. It's our leaders who can't get along."

One KPNLF soldier asked whether he could accompany us back to Phnom Penh controlled town of Sisophon. He could not cross the frontlines by himself, but he said with foreigners he had a chance. He wanted to catch a bus from Sisophon to visit his mother near Siem Reap, whom he hadn't seen in ten years.

"I left home to join the KPNLF when I was 12," he said. Quickly removing his jungle fatigues and switching to civilian clothes, he got in the back of the jeep, sharing the seat with an elderly woman who was returning to her government-controlled village after visiting her son, a KPNLF officer.

A guerrilla fighter guided us to an oxcart path. "Just drive along the tracks of the oxcart," he said, "Don't leave the path. Both sides are mined."

Further down Highway 69, where hundreds died in recent years' fighting for control, rogue soldiers piled mortars on the road in a crude roadblock. Soldiers with grenades in one hand and assault rifles in the other, stopped the rare vehicle demanding money.

"They don't get paid enough to eat," said the soldier in the back, after we passed.

"I'm glad I'm with you," the mother said, "They would have taken everything I had if I was alone."

We left the two passengers in Sisophon. "I don't even know if my mother is still alive," the soldier said.

 

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians:Vietnam Era Renegade Army Discovered By Nate Thayer

(Two story package in Phnom Penh Post. An earlier cover story appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review. PPP publisher Michael Hayes and I travelled to the remote NE Cambodian jungles near VN by helicopter to find an army literally lost in time. Eventually all 398 FULRO fighters and families were given political asylum in the U.S. and settled in North Carolina)

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 25 September 1992

MONDULKIRI - Accompanied by a chorus of crickets and the steady drumming of rain on the leaf roofs of their huts, scores of Montagnard fighters and their families gather in the jungle darkness each night to pray and sing.

Having long ago fled ideological restrictions in Vietnam for a religious sanctuary deep in the forest, the soldiers are members of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-which has fought for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

Lamps fueled by chunks of slow-burning tree resin give light to the few shared tattered bibles and hymnals as Christian songs of worship echo through the otherwise uninhabited forest. Familiar gospel hymns are sung in the tribal dialects of the mountains.

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely was a main motivation to flee their villages in Vietnam's central highlands 17 years ago.

"The communists will not let us pray. They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle," said Lt.-Col. Y Hinnie. "In our land under the communists, people pray at home secretly or in the ricefields. They cannot worship together like we do in the jungle. Here we are free."

Each of the five jungle encampments in the FULRO rear base area have an Evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp. Nearly 40 people share a single bible for the daily Catholic Mass and at weekend services. The church consists of pews of wooden logs lined neatly in a clearing, a towering rough-hewn cross behind the altar.

Similar Evangelical churches, cut into clearings surrounded by 30-meter high hardwood trees, are packed with more than 350 worshippers for the daily two-hour evening service and brief early morning prayers. Each church has its own pastor, and worshippers bring large green leaves as hassocks to kneel on the damp forest floor.

These believers are the legacy of Christian missionaries who lived in the Central Highlands until 1975, when the last of them were expelled by the current government in Viet-nam. Many of the missionaries had mastered the local dialects, translating Bibles and hymnals into the region's Rade, Jarai and Koho languages.

The guerrillas also tune into weekly radio sermons delivered in their native languages by a powerful shortwave radio station in Manila operated by the Christian Missionary Alliance.

A guerrilla congregation reels off the names of "their" missionaries like a litany: "In Pleiku, Mr. Long and Mr. Fleming and in Dalat, Helen Evans, she is from America too. Ken Swain from Darlac, he preaches in our language on the radio every Saturday now."

FULRO officials say some of the missionaries' involvement with the Montagnards went beyond simply bringing the scriptures to the area. They said some of them were active in the waning days of U.S. involvement in the early 1970s in running guns to the guerrillas.

Following the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime in 1975, FULRO leaders say, the communists set about systematically dismantling Christian churches. Many of the Montagnards' religious leaders were arrested and killed after the communist victory in 1975, they say.

"They take our pastors, preachers and Christians and put them in jail," said FULRO's military Commander-in-Chief Col Y Peng Ayun. "We don't hate any one man because we are Christians, but we can never trust the communists," he added.

Two prominent Montagnard pastors from Ban Me Thuot, Y Ham Nic Hrah and Y Lico Nie, died in the early 1980s after many years of harsh conditions in prison, according to the guerrillas. "Here, we worship no matter what," said Pastor Budar Su Khong, 52, from Dalat. "Jesus said 'Come to me whoever is tired, and I will bring you rest.' We are very tired. Please take a message to Christians in other countries to pray for us, and we will pray for them."

(On Sept. 19, UNTAC deployed three soldiers from Sector IV headquarters in Stung Treng to FULRO' encampment. They will be permanently based there to provide protection until the U.N. decides how to respond to FULRO's requests for help.)

Montagnard Army Seeks U.N.Help:Vietnam War Era Renegade Army Discovered In Mondulkiri

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Saturday, 12 September 1992

MONDULKIRI, Cambodia-Abandoned for years by their own leaders and former foreign military backers, an anti-Hanoi Montagnard army based in northeast Cambodia has approached the United Nations with a plea for protection.

The military combatants of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-have waged a lonely battle for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

The recent discovery of the Montagnard army in Mondulkiri province prompted Phnom Penh's Interior Ministry to inform U.N. peacekeeping forces that unless the group-formerly given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge-is disarmed they would attack them.

On Sept. 4 a joint mission of officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) met with the fighters to discuss their request for sanctuary.

"We have to be very cautious because they may be in danger," said UNHCR Press Officer Annick Roulet.

Previous discussions with UNTAC military officials at their remote jungle camp near the Vietnamese border have resulted in conflicting impressions as to whether or not FULRO troops want to give up their struggle and apply for refugee status or continue to wage war against Vietnam.

Under threat from the Phnom Penh regime, expelled by the Khmer Rouge, and a thorn in the side to Vietnam, FULRO is presenting an interesting if not painful dilemma to U.N. officials in Phnom Penh.

UNTAC-mandated to verify the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Cambodia-may be obligated to ensure the return of the group to Vietnamese soil if they insist on continuing to wage war.

But UNHCR-responsible for protecting people with a "well founded fear of persecution"-may have to offer asylum to the fighters if they are in danger of being sent back to Vietnam, where they certainly would face imprisonment.

That, in turn, could open the floodgates to thousands of requests for political asylum from Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

"We have enough problems in Cambodia dealing with the four factions, and now this army we never even heard of turns up," said one UNTAC military official.

American diplomats in Phnom Penh and U.N. military officials in Cambodia are urging that UNHCR grant the group refugee status to begin the process of third country asylum, and give them temporary protection from military attack.

But FULRO Commander-in-Chief Y Peng Ayun and his forces are reluctant to accept giving up their fight without first getting U.N. protection.

"If we give up our weapons, they will take us back to Vietnam or the Vietnamese will come get us," Ayun said. "If I go to the U.S., I don't want to stay a long time there, because I have responsibility to liberate my country."

Frozen in Time

When two correspondents from the Phnom Penh Post visited FULRO's remote guerrilla headquarters last month, they found an army unaware of the world around them and desperately seeking instructions and resupply from their leadership.

Col. Ayun and his lieutenants gathered around the Post reporters, hungrily seeking information.

"Please, can you help us find our president, Y'Bham Enuol?" Colonel Ayun asked. "We have been waiting for contact and orders from our president since 1975. Do you know where he is?"

Neither Ayun nor his troops, who gathered around to meet the first journalists to find them since they fled to the jungles after the American defeat in Indochina in 1975, knew that their leader was executed 17 years before by the Khmer Rouge.

They fell silent when informed; some wept quietly.

Situated in a string of five villages carved out of dense forest along a raging river, the group of 407 guerrillas and their families have no access to even the smallest luxury items except from fighters returning from Vietnam.

There is no medicine or schools, and many of the soldiers and their families have only the clothes they wear and rifles. Bamboo huts with roofs of leaves provide shelter.

"The food we get from the forest. The forest belongs to FULRO." said Lt. Col. Y Hinnie. "We don't have food or medicine, so it is difficult. But with food and medicine the jungle is a very nice place. We are used to it."

The rivers nearby abound with crocodiles, huge catfish, and fresh water porpoises and the surrounding jungle-thick with mosquitos-is home to elephants and a host of deadly snakes.

The combatants and their families are traditionally rice eating people, but they are unable to farm rice here with the enemy constantly forcing movement.

A staple of corn, with jungle cucumbers, pumpkins, and hot green peppers are all they have. For part of the year they survive on poisonous potatos that must be carefully processed for five days to extract a deadly toxin.

"We must eat it slowly until our bodies get used to it or it will kill you," Hinnie said, "But the poison is also the medicine we use to cure snakebites." Nearby a soldier lay paralyzed from a snakebite he received three months before.

"This tree has the medicine we use for malaria and this one here we can use to treat diarrhea," Hinnie said, pointing.

The army has no maps or compasses. "But we can guide ourselves by stars and winds of the seasons. We can tell by which side of the tree is wet during different months exactly which direction we are going," he said.

Hinnie spoke credible English from his days as a young boy with Christian missionaries, as well as Khmer, Vietnamese, and French, and several tribal dialects, and translated for others who spoke in Rade. His skills have given him the title of "the FULRO Military Delegation's Representative of Foreign Affairs."

But his knowledge of world events is spotty. "We would like you to take a message to U Thant," he said, referring to the former U.N. Secretary-General. Asking about the cold war, he said, "I hear that President George Bush now contacts with the Russians."

He is charged with listening to the shortwave radio each morning, tuning in VOA, BBC, Christian radio, and Radio Vietnam to keep the group abreast of foreign developments.

Hinnie told amazed fighters of the fax machine: "You take a letter and put it in a telephone and it comes out in one minute in America," he explained.

The Forgotten Army

A number of soldiers appeared to introduce themselves in English as having fought with the Americans.

"You are the first foreigner I have seen since 1975," said Bhong Rcam, 47, "The Americans usually call me Tiny."

Like many of the fighters of FULRO, he worked with the U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War. After the U.S. withdrawal he was jailed by Hanoi, before joining FULRO in the jungle in 1976.

During the Vietnam War FULRO was supplied with millions of dollars of U.S. equipment, and before that, used as allies to further the objectives of the French and various Vietnamese regimes.

When the North Vietnamese launched decisive offensives in March 1975, FULRO leaders say that senior U.S. officials in Saigon promised continued support for the Montagnards and pledged to covertly support their fight.

Well equipped with American weapons and promises of more as South Vietnam crumbled in the spring of 1975, FULRO waited for the Americans who never returned, eventually re-grouping in the jungle.

"The Montagnard people and the Americans are like one family," said Lt. Col. Hinnie. "I am not angry, but very sad that the Americans forgot us. The Americans are like our elder brother, so it is very sad when your brother forgets you."

FULRO continued to launch attacks on Vietnam for four years after the U.S. withdrawal, fielding a fierce army of 10,000 fighters. But by 1979 they were running low on ammunition and had suffered huge casualties, with more than 8,000 of their fighters killed or captured.

In 1979 FULRO abandoned their bases in Vietnam and moved to the jungles on the Cambodian side of the Vietnamese frontier, switching to underground networks and small guerrilla strikes in their four regions of operations in Vietnam-Quang Duc, Darlac, Pleiku, and Kon Tum.

Previously given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge in areas under their control, FULRO was expelled from Khmer Rouge zones in January to a remote area of Mondulkiri province. Khmer Rouge officials in Phnom Penh say they had given FULRO sanctuary since 1979, despite having fallen out with their leadership in 1986.

"They had no political vision. Their fighters are very, very brave, but they had no support from any leadership, no food, and they did not understand at all the world around them," said one senior Khmer Rouge official.

Jungle Christians

Col. Ayun complained bitterly of the treatment of his people by the Hanoi government.

"My people suffer terribly under the Vietnamese communist regime," he recounted from a thatched hut in the forest. "They came and took our land, and made it theirs. They try to erase our language and force us to speak Vietnamese. They have taken our fertile land and forced us to the bad land.

"They say they have come to build progress for my people, but they have come to kill, arrest, and oppress my people."

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely and practice Christianity was a main motivation to flee Vietnam. Each of the five villages in the FULRO area have an evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp.

"The Communists will not let us pray," Col. Hinnie said. "They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle."

Col. Ayun requested to meet with the American ambassador to seek advice on whether his group would get the aid he said was long promised and to seek proof of the death of their leader.
"We are the troops of President Y Bham Enuol," he said.

"If he has died, we want proof from the United Nations. The Americans had a whole plan for Indochina. I want to meet face to face with the American ambassador. I have a plan for the future, and they should know clearly our position for the revolutionary struggle. We want to know whether they will help us or not."

But the chances of U.S. support for Ayun and his forces are dim, and FULRO faces a whole new series of difficulties.

Montagnard leaders now living in the U.S. appealed to Col. Ayun to give up the fight. "Due to unfavorable circumstances, I suggest it is time to stop fighting, to find different ways to reach our ultimate goal," said Pierre K'briuh in a recent message to the FULRO fighters.

K'briuh is a leader of the former FULRO troops now in the United States and he himself was jailed by Hanoi until the early 1980s.

"President Y-Bham Enuol and his entourage were executed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975," he wrote.

"Therefore, based on common sense, lay down your weapons and appeal at once to the U.N. for political asylum to join us here. We don't have any other choice."

Col. Ayun and his troops say that if they have proof that Y Bham Enuol is indeed dead, they will consider going to the U.S.

"But even if we go to another country, our resistance will continue until we get our own land, until we get back the land that belonged to us before," Ayun said.

"I don't want to go to a free nation," he added. "I want to stay here because this is my battlefield. It is my responsibility. But I have no supplies or help from free countries."

- Michael Hayes contributed to this report.

Thai Border: A Wild West of Anarchy By Nate Thayer

Thai Border: A Wild West of Anarchy

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 20 November 1992

BANGKOK, Thailand-Thai officials, black market traders, and U.N. workers who have operated on the Thai-Cambodian border for years say U.N. efforts to impose economic sanctions against the Khmer Rouge will be virtually impossible to enforce.

The U.N. hopes to pressure the Khmer Rouge into rejoining the deadlocked peace process, in part by sealing the 830-kilometer border, where Khmer Rouge timber and gem concessions add millions of dollars a year to the coffers of the powerful guerrilla faction.

Except for a strip of only a few kilometers near the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet, the central government is not in control of most of the border, from the Gulf of Thailand to Laos.

Aside from the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian-Thai frontier is home to a powerful plethora of shady businessmen, rebel groups, warlords, fortune seekers, gangsters, and assorted bad guys who have operated without serious hindrance for generations.

Since the days of the anti-French resistance in the 1940s, Khmer rebels and outlaws have used the sanctuary of the mountain and jungle escarpment to fight whoever was in power in Phnom Penh. Scores of other warlords have maintained small armies that control trading routes.

Since 1979 the border has been home to the three Khmer resistance factions. The signing of peace accords in October 1991 resulted in the factions' foreign backers cutting off all supplies, forcing the groups to seek revenue elsewhere.

Now that there is "peace" in Cambodia, some of the rebel armies have embarked on an orgy of lucrative trading. No longer under the control of their nominal commanders, dozens of separate military units are carving out control of their own plots of Cambodia, selling everything from toothpaste to surface-to-air missiles. While some of the trading ends up in the central coffers of these groups, most is controlled by loosely-monitored bands of independent operators.

With the peace plan mandating that the Cambodian armies disarm and turn their weapons over to the United Nations, many of the soldiers have opted for a more profitable alternative. The frontier has turned into one of the biggest arms bazaars in Asia, with thousands of weapons being sold in recent months.

Arms traders recently offered the Phnom Penh Post a selection of SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles at 280,000 Baht (U.S. $11,200) each. Tanks, helicopters, artillery, and assorted light weaponry and ammunition are also available.

Intelligence officials and black market arms dealers say that the border has attracted representatives of a number of groups from around Asia looking for weapons. They say that the notorious Burmese drug warlord Khun Sa recently purchased two surface-to-air missiles, as did anti-Burmese Karen rebels. Anti-government guerrillas from the Philippines and Sri Lanka have also made inquiries, as have representatives from Sikh separatist organizations in India and Muslim separatists from the Burmese-Bangladeshi border.

"I think you should buy them," said the arms dealer with a look of alarm. "Some of the people I am dealing with seem to be very dangerous people. It is better that you have them all.''

Black market traders on the Thai border, who operate easily with Cambodian guerrillas as well as Thai officials, say that processed heroin is available for sale, as are ancient Khmer artifacts looted from temples, and even uranium.

The border has also turned into a freeway for cars stolen in Thailand and slipped over the border, where hundreds of vehicles have showed up in Phnom Penh to be openly sold in the markets. Some are seen with military license plates of the Phnom Penh regime attached to make transport across western Cambodia less difficult at checkpoints.

Across from southeast Thailand, more than a 100,000 Thais and Burmese have crossed the border to seek their fortune in Khmer Rouge-controlled ruby mines, a major source of income for the faction. The miners say that they can carry out handfuls of gems worth millions of baht in their pocket, and they laugh at the thought that the blue-bereted UN peacekeepers will be able to stop them.

Thai Minister of Parliament Thanit Traivut, who represents the border province of Trat adjoining the Khmer Rouge-controlled gem mines, told the Post that 57 Thai companies now operate in the ruby area, with nearly 1,000 earth-moving vehicles. He said that U.N. sanctions could cause the companies, which have invested more than 3 billion Thai baht on equipment, to lose their shirts.

One rai (1,600 square meters) of earth is leased to the mostly small companies at a cost of 2 million baht (U.S. $40,000). Whole divisions of Khmer Rouge fighters have turned into "economic cadre" to provide security, build roads, and check permission papers of the Thai miners. The miners say that no Cambodians are allowed to work in the area.

On the northern borders, controlled by the notorious one-legged Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok, Thai logging companies said to be linked with senior members of the Thai military have paid millions of dollars for the right to cut logs in Cambodia.

The Thai government has sold the rights to 17 entry points to Thai companies who in turn are given the right to tax logs coming into Thailand. Senior Thai officials are reportedly on the receiving end of some of the profit.

According to traders, the highly-secret Thai intelligence unit known as 838, which was responsible for covert liaison and weapons supplies to the Khmer Rouge during the 13-year war against the Vietnamese, receives 40 baht (U.S. $1.60) for each cubic meter of wood that crosses into Thailand.

Through a complicated procedure of payoffs, Thai loggers pay fees of around 5,000 baht (U.S. $197) per cubic meter for soft wood, and considerably higher for hardwoods. Several Thai companies, known to be controlled by Thai organized-crime groups, are involved in the logging concessions, with the sanction of several well-known Thai political figures.

Thanit Traivut, in an interview with the Post, said that UNTAC officials have asked Thailand to be prepared to close the border by the end of the year. He said that Thailand "will request to postpone [implementation of sanctions] until next year in order to allow Thai companies to recoup their losses.''

Furthermore, the Phnom Penh regime is involved in buying logs from their enemies-the Khmer Rouge-paying fees to the Khmer Rouge in many areas in order to transport logs through Cambodia, often to the port at Kompong Som. This adds further complications to the effectiveness of U.N. sanctions, which are not directed at the Phnom Penh regime.

In case U.N. officials are looking for reference points to study in their effort to impose the sanctions, they need look no further than the Thai border to the west with Burma.

There Khun Sa, reputed to be the world's number one opium trader and with a U.S. arrest warrant à la Manuel Noriega on his head, controls a section of Burma from which he exports the drug through Thailand.

Despite the efforts of hundreds of U.S. drug and intelligence agents, and with the stated support of both the Thai government and military, the flow of opium and its derivative heroin continues virtually unabated.

One Thai weapons trader, reflecting on the reaction of the Khmer Rouge if the United Nations attempts to cut its purse strings, said: "Right now the Khmer Rouge do not hurt the U.N. But if the U.N. does that, they will have to kill them. You know, they don't like foreigners anyway."

Another Thai arms dealer, with long experience running weapons through Thai borders with several neighboring countries, said: "It will be easy to order sanctions, but impossible to enforce. The order just comes from air-conditioned rooms. But in the field, too many people are making money."

Marxists' stand threatens Cambodian peace--By Nate Thayer

Marxists' stand threatens Cambodian peace

By Nate Thayer

June 11, 1992

Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The head of the UN mission on Wednesday accused the Khmer Rouge guerrillas of undermining Cambodia's peace accord and warned that widespread fighting could erupt again. Yasushi Akashi, who leads the biggest UN peacekeeping operation, condemned the radical Marxist group for refusing to disarm as required by the peace treaty signed by Cambodia's four warring factions in October. He said the Khmer Rouge also was barring UN troops from territory it controls. "The position of the Khmer Rouge constitutes a clear breach of the peace agreement and is totally unacceptable," Akashi told reporters.

Despite the lack of cooperation from the Khmer Rouge, he said UN officials planned to begin disarming two other rebel factions and troops of the Vietnamese-installed government as scheduled Saturday. Akashi promised that UN forces would not allow the Khmer Rouge to gain an advantage over the other factions, but it was unclear whether the groups would go along.

Prince Norodom Rannariddh, head of one of the guerrilla armies, told reporters Friday that he would not allow his troops to be disarmed as long as the Khmer Rouge refused to do so. "How can we?" Ranariddh said. "If one of the parties does not agree, then I cannot go alone."

Akashi said that if the Khmer Rouge did not begin disarming within a month — the scheduled time for this stage of the peace plan — then the entire accord might collapse and reignite the 14-year-old civil War. Some fighting has been reported in several areas of Cambodia in recent days, and the United Nations has accused the Khmer Rouge of making attacks this week in the northern province of Preah Vihear.

The leader of the Khmer Rouge, Khieu Samphan, told an emergency meeting of the four factions and UN officials Wednesday that he refused to disarm because the United Nations had not implemented other aspects of the peace accord, such as ensuring all Vietnamese troops are removed from Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge says Vietnam secretly has thousands of soldiers in Cambodia who are attacking it. Vietnam claims it withdrew its last troops in 1989, and the United Nations says it has no evidence that Vietnamese soldiers are still in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge also said the Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh should be dismantled before UN officials proceed with disarmament.

U.N. begins disarming Cambodian soldiers-By Nate Thayer

U.N. begins disarming Cambodian soldiers

By Nate Thayer

June 14,1992

Associated Press Writer

PREY VENG PROVINCE, Cambodia — The Khmer Rouge refused to take part in the U.N.- directed disarmament of Cambodia's four fighting factions that began Saturday. The disarming of government soldiers and three guerrilla groups is a critical element of the peace plan that all sides agreed to last year. The Khmer Rouge said other aspects of the plan were not being adhered to, so it would not lay down its weapons.

The Khmer Rouge position raises the possibility of a new surge in fighting because other factions have warned that they will respond in kind to any aggression. The Khmer Rouge has attacked several government positions during the past few weeks. Troops of the Phnom Penh government turned over guns and ammunition on Saturday and reported to sites for cantonment, or temporary quartering, in several areas of the country, including this eastern province.

At cantonment sites in Prey Veng and near the capital, Phnom Penh, more than a ton of ammunition was turned over to the United Nations. Gen. John Sanderson, the military commander of the U.N. operations, told reporters that no Khmer Rouge guerillas showed up at the sites. Yasushi Akashi, the overall leader of the U.N. mission, said, "Time is very much running out. The door is gradually being closed."

It could not immediately be determined whether any weapons had been turned over by fighters of the two noncommunist guerrilla factions: the Khmer People's National Liberation Front and fighters loyal to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who now leads the reconciliation council that is guiding Cambodia through the transitional period until free elections are conducted.

The U.N. Security Council on Friday appealed to the Khmer Rouge to rejoin the peace process. The statement, released in New York, said, "Any delay could jeopardize the whole peace process."

Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan reiterated Friday that his faction would refuse to cooperate until the U.N. force first verified that Vietnamese troops had left the country and that the Phnom Penh government was stripped of most of its powers. Vietnam said it withdrew its last troops in September 1989, and the U.N. mission said it had no evidence that any Vietnamese soldiers remained in the country.

Cambodia has suffered 22 years of warfare and turmoil, sparked by a 1970 coup by pro-U.S. military officers. A Vietnamese invasion in late 1978 brought down the Khmer Rouge government, which led a three-year reign of terror over the country. More than 1 million of Cambodia's 8 million people died under Khmer Rouge rule — by execution, in civil unrest and from starvation.

A representative for the rebel National Liberation Front vowed to join with the government to battle Khmer Rouge forces if they would not cease their fighting.

Cambodian peace may depend on UN troops - Chicago Sun-Times

Cambodian peace may depend on UN troops

Chicago Sun-Times

January 2, 1992 | Nate Thayer

1

PHNOM PENH Cambodia could return to war if the United Nations does not send peacekeeping troops and administrators quickly to oversee the fragile peace accord, a U.S. congressman warned Wednesday.

"So far the peace agreement has succeeded in bringing an end to the fighting, but it could very easily fail if UN forces do not arrive soon," said Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.), who is on a congressional fact-finding mission to this country.

The Vietnam-installed government and three rebel groups signed a peace accord in October that created a Supreme National Council to work with the United Nations to administer the country until elections in 1993.

All the parties called Monday to speed up the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeepers.

Officials said a void in political leadership since the peace plan was signed threatens to plunge the country back into conflict.

An inaugural meeting of the reconciliation council was aborted twice by mob violence and instability in the capital.

A crowd beat and nearly killed Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan on his arrival from 13 years of exile on Nov. 27, forcing him to flee the country. The mob was enraged by the Khmer Rouge killing of hundreds of thousands of people during its fanatical Communist rule in 1975-78.

Last month, anti-government riots left at least eight people dead and 16 others wounded.

The government sent troops to regain control of the streets and banned any demonstrations.

Foot soldiers from rival armies share cynicism about leaders

Friday, 07 August 1992

Phnom Penh Post

By Nate Thayer

NORTH OF HIGHWAY SIX, Cambodia. From a trench in abandoned ricefields in Kompong Thom province, young conscripts of Phnom Penh's army peered wide eyed from their foxholes as two journalists and a score of heavily armed guerrillas emerged from enemy controlled jungles and approached them.

Popping up from camouflaged foxholes, they grabbed automatic rifles, and curiously approached the group. The soldiers-from rival factions-greeted each other warily.

For the guerrilla fighters, it was the first time they had spoken to the enemy in more than 13 years of war, although some knew each other by reputation.

A soldier was dispatched to seek a superior's approval for a request for the journalists to pass into Phnom Penh territory. While waiting, the young men exchanged cigarettes and asked about each other. It turned out a guerrilla and his government counterpart came from the same village in the far away province of Prey Veng.

"You see what the war has done to us," said Meas, a guerrilla fighter, pointing to the Phnom Penh soldier. "We could be related and we wouldn't know it."

Meas had fled Cambodia's turmoil to the Thai border more than a decade before, eventually joining the guerrilla faction led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh. The Phnom Penh soldier had been drafted into the army some three years earlier and sent to the jungle.

Another Phnom Penh soldier said that he had recently found out that his brother, who had been missing since the Vietnamese invasion in l979, was a soldier with the guerrillas.

"Do you know my brother and if he is well?" he asked the guerrilla.

Another young fighter said, "Now in Cambodia, a whole generation must ask our elders if we are related, because we don't even know who we are since the war split us apart."

"In Cambodia, all our leaders are getting rich while we suffer," another soldier added. Everyone nodded in agreement. It was a theme we heard everywhere.

A photographer from Impact Visuals photo agency and I had rented a Soviet jeep in Phnom Penh and set off alone on a 15-day journey that would take us through nine provinces, across dozens of minefields and frontlines to territory under the control of all four Cambodian factions.

Many Cambodians living under the control of, or working for each of the four factions expressed deep cynicism and resentment towards their leaders whom they blame for incompetence, corruption, and continuing a conflict largely for personal gain. Soldiers from all four factions said they had not been paid for months, and worried about what would happen to them in a post-war Cambodia.

No commanding officer could be found that day, and after some debate, we were allowed to pass, for the 100 kilometer trip back to Kompong Thom city.

Soon after our arrival, two Phnom Penh interior ministry police officials arrived at our guesthouse. Initially, they were not happy.

"My job is to protect the party," the young intelligence officer announced rather cheerfully. "You have no permission to be here and I have to ask you some questions."

After an hour of interrogation, the intelligence officer asked whether we could talk as friends. "I hear that maybe I will not have a job after cantonment and demobilization," he said, "Is journalism a good job? How is the pay? I think we have similar jobs. We both have to ask a lot of questions and find out what is going on."

In Banteay Meanchey province, large tracts of land have been made uninhabitable by mines planted during heavy fighting for control of the area.

Soldiers guided us through oxcart paths snaking through mined ricefields, across frontlines, delivering us to forward checkpoints of their erstwhile enemies.

During more than a score of such transfers, we would request a couple of soldiers from a forward position to accompany us for security until we reached another faction's base.

There was never a shortage of volunteers, most eager for a break from the boredom of isolated outposts. Because of the abundance of mines and bandits, it was good to have guides with weapons who were familiar with the terrain.

Killings and robberies were daily events in the area where rogue bands of former soldiers from each of the four factions routinely ambush anyone with valuables.

The young fighters in the guerrilla zones would pepper us with questions: Are there a lot of Vietnamese in Phnom Penh? Are there jobs for people like me? Do you think we will be safe and welcomed back now that the war is over?

It was not unusual for our Soviet jeep, which we rented from an army officer in Phnom Penh, to be filled with a half dozen fully armed uniformed soldiers from different factions. We would discuss politics but mostly their fears for the future and being able to provide for their families after years of living in the jungle.

In scrubland north of the district capital of Banteay Meanchey, we drove to isolated villages under the control of the Khmer Rouge, where villagers and Khmer Rouge cadre spoke about their hopes for the future.

"We must rid the country from the Vietnamese first before the war can stop," said one Khmer Rouge cadre. "But we all want peace. Everyone has suffered enough."

"I don't know why so many people died when we were in power," said one young Khmer Rouge fighter, who seemed genuinely perplexed by the issue.

A Khmer Rouge medic we met at a Khmer Rouge division headquarters near the Dongrek mountain escarpment asked if we could give him a ride south so he could pick up some medical supplies.

"You are American," he said cheerfully. "Do you know my sister? She lives in New York." He said that he had spent three years in China training as a medic, and was proud of his skills.

"I can do any kind of operation, but mostly amputations," he said.

I asked him how many amputations he had performed. "Oh, too many to count," he said, "At least 200."

In the bustling market town of Tmar Pouk, under control of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, government soldiers in uniform mingled easily with their former enemies.

"We don't have any problems with each other," one said. "We are just regular soldiers. It's our leaders who can't get along."

One KPNLF soldier asked whether he could accompany us back to Phnom Penh controlled town of Sisophon. He could not cross the frontlines by himself, but he said with foreigners he had a chance. He wanted to catch a bus from Sisophon to visit his mother near Siem Reap, whom he hadn't seen in ten years.

"I left home to join the KPNLF when I was 12," he said. Quickly removing his jungle fatigues and switching to civilian clothes, he got in the back of the jeep, sharing the seat with an elderly woman who was returning to her government-controlled village after visiting her son, a KPNLF officer.

A guerrilla fighter guided us to an oxcart path. "Just drive along the tracks of the oxcart," he said, "Don't leave the path. Both sides are mined."

Further down Highway 69, where hundreds died in recent years' fighting for control, rogue soldiers piled mortars on the road in a crude roadblock. Soldiers with grenades in one hand and assault rifles in the other, stopped the rare vehicle demanding money.

"They don't get paid enough to eat," said the soldier in the back, after we passed.

"I'm glad I'm with you," the mother said, "They would have taken everything I had if I was alone."

We left the two passengers in Sisophon. "I don't even know if my mother is still alive," the soldier said.

Hotel Renakse - a Post Script

Hotel Renakse- a Post Script

The Phnom Penh Post

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

By Michael Hayes

The Phnom Penh Post was born in the Hotel Renakse in 1992. As the latter moves towards an uncertain future, Post founding editor Michael Hayes looks back at a shared past

The Hotel Renakse may be sadly headed the way of too many historic buildings in Phnom Penh, but it will at least be remembered by this reporter for the role it played during the creation of the Phnom Penh Post.

On January 1, 1992, I arrived at Pochentong airport with a letter for then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk in his capacity as Head of State and President of the Supreme National Council requesting his permission to start a newspaper.

Right at the visa counter I was approached by a young man named Pok Essaravuth offering to take me to his sister-in-law's hotel. I told him I needed to find Nate Thayer, who was running the Associated Press bureau at that time. Essa, a Cambodian returnee from Long Beach, said:  "Oh Nate, he's staying with us at the Renakse."
And that was the beginning of my three-month sojourn at the idyllic hotel just across from the Royal Palace.

Nate, whom I had only met once before, said the paper was a great idea and that he'd help me in any way he could. We became fast friends.

I delivered my letter to the Palace and then with nothing to do but wait for a response tagged along with Nate as he moved about meeting sources, attending press conferences and cranking out the wire copy.  I knew nothing about journalism, so it was a perfect introduction to the new profession I was trying to get off the ground.

By January 16, I was getting restless so I sent another letter to Sihanouk.
Finally, on January 21, an official letter from Sihanouk was delivered to me at the Renakse in which he said I could start a paper immediately.

I remember thinking to myself: "Oh God, what do I do now?"
It was during this time that I met Sara Colm at the Renakse. She had worked for a paper in San Francisco called The Tenderloin Times which was published in Khmer, Vietnamese, Lao and English, and was looking for work in Phnom Penh. I offered her a job as managing editor and Sara thankfully became the paper's first employee.

Sihanouk's permission letter had a caveat. It said that I also had to "comply with the administrative formalities of the State of Cambodia", which meant getting the green light from the Cambodian People's Party.

I sent off a letter to the Foreign Ministry which told me I needed to deal with the municipality. After a letter to them, I was told that I had to deal with the Foreign Ministry. The back and forth was tedious as I didn't even have a computer or a printer or letterhead or anything. I'd sit on the veranda of the Renakse hand-writing letters and then scramble around to find a computer to use to produce final copy.

The Paris Peace Accords had been signed in October, 1991, and by late January UN civilians, police and soldiers were starting to trickle into Phnom Penh.

Covering my first conflict
The first new restaurant and bar to open to cater to all the new foreigners was a place called The No Problem Cafe on Street 178. Like any good journalists, Nate and I found ourselves there nightly. 

On one evening I got into a heated discussion with an American Vietnam vet named David who was working for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.  He'd asked me who my paper was going to endorse for president before the elections, and when I tried to explain that it was unlikely there would be presidential elections, the message didn't seem to penetrate the booze. The conversation disintegrated from there.

David had lost both legs during the war, but that didn't prevent him from eventually getting out of his chair and punching me five times in the face before I could even blink an eye. A crowd of soldiers prevented the situation from getting worse.

Later, back at the Renakse, I thought it would be good to capture this small bit of history so I took a whole bunch of photos of my bruised face in the mirror before collapsing in bed, only to wake up in the morning and discover that my camera had no film in it.

A small lesson in journalism learned at the Renakse!

BY MICHAEL HAYES, PHNOM PENH POST EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Thai Border: A Wild West of Anarchy

Thai Border: A Wild West of Anarachy

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 20 November 1992

By Nate Thayer

BANGKOK, Thailand-Thai officials, black market traders, and U.N. workers who have operated on the Thai-Cambodian border for years say U.N. efforts to impose economic sanctions against the Khmer Rouge will be virtually impossible to enforce.

The U.N. hopes to pressure the Khmer Rouge into rejoining the deadlocked peace process, in part by sealing the 830-kilometer border, where Khmer Rouge timber and gem concessions add millions of dollars a year to the coffers of the powerful guerrilla faction.

Except for a strip of only a few kilometers near the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet, the central government is not in control of most of the border, from the Gulf of Thailand to Laos.

Aside from the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian-Thai frontier is home to a powerful plethora of shady businessmen, rebel groups, warlords, fortune seekers, gangsters, and assorted bad guys who have operated without serious hindrance for generations.

Since the days of the anti-French resistance in the 1940s, Khmer rebels and outlaws have used the sanctuary of the mountain and jungle escarpment to fight whoever was in power in Phnom Penh. Scores of other warlords have maintained small armies that control trading routes.

Since 1979 the border has been home to the three Khmer resistance factions. The signing of peace accords in October 1991 resulted in the factions' foreign backers cutting off all supplies, forcing the groups to seek revenue elsewhere.

Now that there is "peace" in Cambodia, some of the rebel armies have embarked on an orgy of lucrative trading. No longer under the control of their nominal commanders, dozens of separate military units are carving out control of their own plots of Cambodia, selling everything from toothpaste to surface-to-air missiles. While some of the trading ends up in the central coffers of these groups, most is controlled by loosely-monitored bands of independent operators.

With the peace plan mandating that the Cambodian armies disarm and turn their weapons over to the United Nations, many of the soldiers have opted for a more profitable alternative. The frontier has turned into one of the biggest arms bazaars in Asia, with thousands of weapons being sold in recent months.

Arms traders recently offered the Phnom Penh Post a selection of SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles at 280,000 Baht (U.S. $11,200) each. Tanks, helicopters, artillery, and assorted light weaponry and ammunition are also available.

Intelligence officials and black market arms dealers say that the border has attracted representatives of a number of groups from around Asia looking for weapons. They say that the notorious Burmese drug warlord Khun Sa recently purchased two surface-to-air missiles, as did anti-Burmese Karen rebels. Anti-government guerrillas from the Philippines and Sri Lanka have also made inquiries, as have representatives from Sikh separatist organizations in India and Muslim separatists from the Burmese-Bangladeshi border.

"I think you should buy them," said the arms dealer with a look of alarm. "Some of the people I am dealing with seem to be very dangerous people. It is better that you have them all.''

Black market traders on the Thai border, who operate easily with Cambodian guerrillas as well as Thai officials, say that processed heroin is available for sale, as are ancient Khmer artifacts looted from temples, and even uranium.

The border has also turned into a freeway for cars stolen in Thailand and slipped over the border, where hundreds of vehicles have showed up in Phnom Penh to be openly sold in the markets. Some are seen with military license plates of the Phnom Penh regime attached to make transport across western Cambodia less difficult at checkpoints.

Across from southeast Thailand, more than a 100,000 Thais and Burmese have crossed the border to seek their fortune in Khmer Rouge-controlled ruby mines, a major source of income for the faction. The miners say that they can carry out handfuls of gems worth millions of baht in their pocket, and they laugh at the thought that the blue-bereted UN peacekeepers will be able to stop them.

Thai Minister of Parliament Thanit Traivut, who represents the border province of Trat adjoining the Khmer Rouge-controlled gem mines, told the Post that 57 Thai companies now operate in the ruby area, with nearly 1,000 earth-moving vehicles. He said that U.N. sanctions could cause the companies, which have invested more than 3 billion Thai baht on equipment, to lose their shirts.

One rai (1,600 square meters) of earth is leased to the mostly small companies at a cost of 2 million baht (U.S. $40,000). Whole divisions of Khmer Rouge fighters have turned into "economic cadre" to provide security, build roads, and check permission papers of the Thai miners. The miners say that no Cambodians are allowed to work in the area.

On the northern borders, controlled by the notorious one-legged Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok, Thai logging companies said to be linked with senior members of the Thai military have paid millions of dollars for the right to cut logs in Cambodia.

The Thai government has sold the rights to 17 entry points to Thai companies who in turn are given the right to tax logs coming into Thailand. Senior Thai officials are reportedly on the receiving end of some of the profit.

According to traders, the highly-secret Thai intelligence unit known as 838, which was responsible for covert liaison and weapons supplies to the Khmer Rouge during the 13-year war against the Vietnamese, receives 40 baht (U.S. $1.60) for each cubic meter of wood that crosses into Thailand.

Through a complicated procedure of payoffs, Thai loggers pay fees of around 5,000 baht (U.S. $197) per cubic meter for soft wood, and considerably higher for hardwoods. Several Thai companies, known to be controlled by Thai organized-crime groups, are involved in the logging concessions, with the sanction of several well-known Thai political figures.

Thanit Traivut, in an interview with the Post, said that UNTAC officials have asked Thailand to be prepared to close the border by the end of the year. He said that Thailand "will request to postpone [implementation of sanctions] until next year in order to allow Thai companies to recoup their losses.''

Furthermore, the Phnom Penh regime is involved in buying logs from their enemies-the Khmer Rouge-paying fees to the Khmer Rouge in many areas in order to transport logs through Cambodia, often to the port at Kompong Som. This adds further complications to the effectiveness of U.N. sanctions, which are not directed at the Phnom Penh regime.

In case U.N. officials are looking for reference points to study in their effort to impose the sanctions, they need look no further than the Thai border to the west with Burma.

There Khun Sa, reputed to be the world's number one opium trader and with a U.S. arrest warrant à la Manuel Noriega on his head, controls a section of Burma from which he exports the drug through Thailand.

Despite the efforts of hundreds of U.S. drug and intelligence agents, and with the stated support of both the Thai government and military, the flow of opium and its derivative heroin continues virtually unabated.

One Thai weapons trader, reflecting on the reaction of the Khmer Rouge if the United Nations attempts to cut its purse strings, said: "Right now the Khmer Rouge do not hurt the U.N. But if the U.N. does that, they will have to kill them. You know, they don't like foreigners anyway."

Another Thai arms dealer, with long experience running weapons through Thai borders with several neighboring countries, said: "It will be easy to order sanctions, but impossible to enforce. The order just comes from air-conditioned rooms. But in the field, too many people are making money."

 

 

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians

Lighting the darkness: FULRO's jungle Christians     

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 25 September, 1992

By Nate Thayer

MONDULKIRI - Accompanied by a chorus of crickets and the steady drumming of rain on the leaf roofs of their huts, scores of Montagnard fighters and their families gather in the jungle darkness each night to pray and sing.

Having long ago fled ideological restrictions in Vietnam for a religious sanctuary deep in the forest, the soldiers are members of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-which has fought for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

Lamps fueled by chunks of slow-burning tree resin give light to the few shared tattered bibles and hymnals as Christian songs of worship echo through the otherwise uninhabited forest. Familiar gospel hymns are sung in the tribal dialects of the mountains.

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely was a main motivation to flee their villages in Vietnam's central highlands 17 years ago.

"The communists will not let us pray. They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle," said Lt.-Col. Y Hinnie. "In our land under the communists, people pray at home secretly or in the ricefields. They cannot worship together like we do in the jungle. Here we are free."

Each of the five jungle encampments in the FULRO rear base area have an Evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp. Nearly 40 people share a single bible for the daily Catholic Mass and at weekend services. The church consists of pews of wooden logs lined neatly in a clearing, a towering rough-hewn cross behind the altar.

Similar Evangelical churches, cut into clearings surrounded by 30-meter high hardwood trees, are packed with more than 350 worshippers for the daily two-hour evening service and brief early morning prayers. Each church has its own pastor, and worshippers bring large green leaves as hassocks to kneel on the damp forest floor.

These believers are the legacy of Christian missionaries who lived in the Central Highlands until 1975, when the last of them were expelled by the current government in Viet-nam. Many of the missionaries had mastered the local dialects, translating Bibles and hymnals into the region's Rade, Jarai and Koho languages.

The guerrillas also tune into weekly radio sermons delivered in their native languages by a powerful shortwave radio station in Manila operated by the Christian Missionary Alliance.

A guerrilla congregation reels off the names of "their" missionaries like a litany: "In Pleiku, Mr. Long and Mr. Fleming and in Dalat, Helen Evans, she is from America too. Ken Swain from Darlac, he preaches in our language on the radio every Saturday now."

FULRO officials say some of the missionaries' involvement with the Montagnards went beyond simply bringing the scriptures to the area. They said some of them were active in the waning days of U.S. involvement in the early 1970s in running guns to the guerrillas.

Following the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime in 1975, FULRO leaders say, the communists set about systematically dismantling Christian churches. Many of the Montagnards' religious leaders were arrested and killed after the communist victory in 1975, they say.

"They take our pastors, preachers and Christians and put them in jail," said FULRO's military Commander-in-Chief Col Y Peng Ayun. "We don't hate any one man because we are Christians, but we can never trust the communists," he added.

Two prominent Montagnard pastors from Ban Me Thuot, Y Ham Nic Hrah and Y Lico Nie, died in the early 1980s after many years of harsh conditions in prison, according to the guerrillas. "Here, we worship no matter what," said Pastor Budar Su Khong, 52, from Dalat. "Jesus said 'Come to me whoever is tired, and I will bring you rest.' We are very tired. Please take a message to Christians in other countries to pray for us, and we will pray for them."

(On Sept. 19, UNTAC deployed three soldiers from Sector IV headquarters in Stung Treng to FULRO' encampment. They will be permanently based there to provide protection until the U.N. decides how to respond to FULRO's requests for help.)

Montagnard Army Seeks U.N. Help:Vietnam War Era Renegade Army Discovered In Mondulkiri

Montagnard Army Seeks U.N. Help

Vietnam War Era Renegade Army Discovered In Mondulkiri

Phnom Penh Post

Saturday, 12 September 1992

By Nate Thayer

MONDULKIRI, Cambodia-Abandoned for years by their own leaders and former foreign military backers, an anti-Hanoi Montagnard army based in northeast Cambodia has approached the United Nations with a plea for protection.

The military combatants of FULRO-the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races-have waged a lonely battle for a separate homeland in Vietnam for their hilltribe people since 1964.

The recent discovery of the Montagnard army in Mondulkiri province prompted Phnom Penh's Interior Ministry to inform U.N. peacekeeping forces that unless the group-formerly given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge-is disarmed they would attack them.

On Sept. 4 a joint mission of officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) met with the fighters to discuss their request for sanctuary.

"We have to be very cautious because they may be in danger," said UNHCR Press Officer Annick Roulet.

Previous discussions with UNTAC military officials at their remote jungle camp near the Vietnamese border have resulted in conflicting impressions as to whether or not FULRO troops want to give up their struggle and apply for refugee status or continue to wage war against Vietnam.

Under threat from the Phnom Penh regime, expelled by the Khmer Rouge, and a thorn in the side to Vietnam, FULRO is presenting an interesting if not painful dilemma to U.N. officials in Phnom Penh.

UNTAC-mandated to verify the withdrawal of all foreign forces in Cambodia-may be obligated to ensure the return of the group to Vietnamese soil if they insist on continuing to wage war.

But UNHCR-responsible for protecting people with a "well founded fear of persecution"-may have to offer asylum to the fighters if they are in danger of being sent back to Vietnam, where they certainly would face imprisonment.

That, in turn, could open the floodgates to thousands of requests for political asylum from Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

"We have enough problems in Cambodia dealing with the four factions, and now this army we never even heard of turns up," said one UNTAC military official.

American diplomats in Phnom Penh and U.N. military officials in Cambodia are urging that UNHCR grant the group refugee status to begin the process of third country asylum, and give them temporary protection from military attack.

But FULRO Commander-in-Chief Y Peng Ayun and his forces are reluctant to accept giving up their fight without first getting U.N. protection.

"If we give up our weapons, they will take us back to Vietnam or the Vietnamese will come get us," Ayun said. "If I go to the U.S., I don't want to stay a long time there, because I have responsibility to liberate my country."

Frozen in Time

When two correspondents from the Phnom Penh Post visited FULRO's remote guerrilla headquarters last month, they found an army unaware of the world around them and desperately seeking instructions and resupply from their leadership.

Col. Ayun and his lieutenants gathered around the Post reporters, hungrily seeking information.

"Please, can you help us find our president, Y'Bham Enuol?" Colonel Ayun asked. "We have been waiting for contact and orders from our president since 1975. Do you know where he is?"

Neither Ayun nor his troops, who gathered around to meet the first journalists to find them since they fled to the jungles after the American defeat in Indochina in 1975, knew that their leader was executed 17 years before by the Khmer Rouge.

They fell silent when informed; some wept quietly.

Situated in a string of five villages carved out of dense forest along a raging river, the group of 407 guerrillas and their families have no access to even the smallest luxury items except from fighters returning from Vietnam.

There is no medicine or schools, and many of the soldiers and their families have only the clothes they wear and rifles. Bamboo huts with roofs of leaves provide shelter.

"The food we get from the forest. The forest belongs to FULRO." said Lt. Col. Y Hinnie. "We don't have food or medicine, so it is difficult. But with food and medicine the jungle is a very nice place. We are used to it."

The rivers nearby abound with crocodiles, huge catfish, and fresh water porpoises and the surrounding jungle-thick with mosquitos-is home to elephants and a host of deadly snakes.

The combatants and their families are traditionally rice eating people, but they are unable to farm rice here with the enemy constantly forcing movement.

A staple of corn, with jungle cucumbers, pumpkins, and hot green peppers are all they have. For part of the year they survive on poisonous potatos that must be carefully processed for five days to extract a deadly toxin.

"We must eat it slowly until our bodies get used to it or it will kill you," Hinnie said, "But the poison is also the medicine we use to cure snakebites." Nearby a soldier lay paralyzed from a snakebite he received three months before.

"This tree has the medicine we use for malaria and this one here we can use to treat diarrhea," Hinnie said, pointing.

The army has no maps or compasses. "But we can guide ourselves by stars and winds of the seasons. We can tell by which side of the tree is wet during different months exactly which direction we are going," he said.

Hinnie spoke credible English from his days as a young boy with Christian missionaries, as well as Khmer, Vietnamese, and French, and several tribal dialects, and translated for others who spoke in Rade. His skills have given him the title of "the FULRO Military Delegation's Representative of Foreign Affairs."

But his knowledge of world events is spotty. "We would like you to take a message to U Thant," he said, referring to the former U.N. Secretary-General. Asking about the cold war, he said, "I hear that President George Bush now contacts with the Russians."

He is charged with listening to the shortwave radio each morning, tuning in VOA, BBC, Christian radio, and Radio Vietnam to keep the group abreast of foreign developments.

Hinnie told amazed fighters of the fax machine: "You take a letter and put it in a telephone and it comes out in one minute in America," he explained.

The Forgotten Army

A number of soldiers appeared to introduce themselves in English as having fought with the Americans.

"You are the first foreigner I have seen since 1975," said Bhong Rcam, 47, "The Americans usually call me Tiny."

Like many of the fighters of FULRO, he worked with the U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War. After the U.S. withdrawal he was jailed by Hanoi, before joining FULRO in the jungle in 1976.

During the Vietnam War FULRO was supplied with millions of dollars of U.S. equipment, and before that, used as allies to further the objectives of the French and various Vietnamese regimes.

When the North Vietnamese launched decisive offensives in March 1975, FULRO leaders say that senior U.S. officials in Saigon promised continued support for the Montagnards and pledged to covertly support their fight.

Well equipped with American weapons and promises of more as South Vietnam crumbled in the spring of 1975, FULRO waited for the Americans who never returned, eventually re-grouping in the jungle.

"The Montagnard people and the Americans are like one family," said Lt. Col. Hinnie. "I am not angry, but very sad that the Americans forgot us. The Americans are like our elder brother, so it is very sad when your brother forgets you."

FULRO continued to launch attacks on Vietnam for four years after the U.S. withdrawal, fielding a fierce army of 10,000 fighters. But by 1979 they were running low on ammunition and had suffered huge casualties, with more than 8,000 of their fighters killed or captured.

In 1979 FULRO abandoned their bases in Vietnam and moved to the jungles on the Cambodian side of the Vietnamese frontier, switching to underground networks and small guerrilla strikes in their four regions of operations in Vietnam-Quang Duc, Darlac, Pleiku, and Kon Tum.

Previously given sanctuary by the Khmer Rouge in areas under their control, FULRO was expelled from Khmer Rouge zones in January to a remote area of Mondulkiri province. Khmer Rouge officials in Phnom Penh say they had given FULRO sanctuary since 1979, despite having fallen out with their leadership in 1986.

"They had no political vision. Their fighters are very, very brave, but they had no support from any leadership, no food, and they did not understand at all the world around them," said one senior Khmer Rouge official.

Jungle Christians

Col. Ayun complained bitterly of the treatment of his people by the Hanoi government.

"My people suffer terribly under the Vietnamese communist regime," he recounted from a thatched hut in the forest. "They came and took our land, and made it theirs. They try to erase our language and force us to speak Vietnamese. They have taken our fertile land and forced us to the bad land.

"They say they have come to build progress for my people, but they have come to kill, arrest, and oppress my people."

For many at FULRO's scattered guerrilla bases, the ability to pray freely and practice Christianity was a main motivation to flee Vietnam. Each of the five villages in the FULRO area have an evangelical church, while there is a lone Catholic church in the main guerrilla camp.

"The Communists will not let us pray," Col. Hinnie said. "They say that Christianity is an American and French religion, so we came to live in the jungle."

Col. Ayun requested to meet with the American ambassador to seek advice on whether his group would get the aid he said was long promised and to seek proof of the death of their leader.
"We are the troops of President Y Bham Enuol," he said.

"If he has died, we want proof from the United Nations. The Americans had a whole plan for Indochina. I want to meet face to face with the American ambassador. I have a plan for the future, and they should know clearly our position for the revolutionary struggle. We want to know whether they will help us or not."

But the chances of U.S. support for Ayun and his forces are dim, and FULRO faces a whole new series of difficulties.

Montagnard leaders now living in the U.S. appealed to Col. Ayun to give up the fight. "Due to unfavorable circumstances, I suggest it is time to stop fighting, to find different ways to reach our ultimate goal," said Pierre K'briuh in a recent message to the FULRO fighters.

K'briuh is a leader of the former FULRO troops now in the United States and he himself was jailed by Hanoi until the early 1980s.

"President Y-Bham Enuol and his entourage were executed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975," he wrote.

"Therefore, based on common sense, lay down your weapons and appeal at once to the U.N. for political asylum to join us here. We don't have any other choice."

Col. Ayun and his troops say that if they have proof that Y Bham Enuol is indeed dead, they will consider going to the U.S.

"But even if we go to another country, our resistance will continue until we get our own land, until we get back the land that belonged to us before," Ayun said.

"I don't want to go to a free nation," he added. "I want to stay here because this is my battlefield. It is my responsibility. But I have no supplies or help from free countries."

- Michael Hayes contributed to this report.

An Interview with Khmer Rouge Leader Khieu Samphan

An Interview with Khmer Rouge Leader Khieu Samphan

Phnom Penh Post

Thursday, 27 August 1992

By Nate Thayer

The following are excerpts from an interview in early August between Khieu Samphan, president of Democratic Kampuchea, and the Phnom Penh Post.

On Working with UNTAC

Our position remains clear. As long as the fundamental issues are not resolved, other issues cannot be resolved. If we do not implement the Paris agreement to force Vietnam to withdraw, there will be no peace in Cambodia, there will be no national reconciliation, and there will be no neutral political environment necessary to hold elections.

We have clearly said that the most important thing is the implementation of the Paris agreement in regard to the SNC [Supreme National Council]-the sole legitimate source of authority in Cambodia. If the SNC remains without power and means, then UNTAC-either consciously or unconsciously-is cooperating with the Phnom Penh regime and the elections will certainly be held within the framework of the regime set up by the Vietnamese. There can be no neutral political environment under such conditions to hold an election-the result of which would be to rubberstamp the Vietnamese occupation.

We will never accept this and cannot participate in elections or political activity under such conditions. If these two key provisions are not implemented, then the Party of Democratic Kampuchea cannot have a neutral political environment in order to have elections. If such a situation continues, we will continue to do as we are doing now.

I also told Akashi clearly that our own proposal is only one proposal. We would consider any proposal that would allow the SNC to play its role. We continue to believe that through consultation and dialogue, we will be able to break the current deadlock.

No Desire to Return to Power

If we look at the past nine months, we can see that this is the main trend: the western powers' thinking is now to get rid of the forces of the party of Democratic Kampuchea. They try to keep in place the Phnom Penh regime and the Vietnamese forces, to use these forces to try to get rid of the Khmer Rouge.

Allow me to inform the western powers that we do not entertain any idea whatsoever to return to power. If we look at the provisions of the Paris agreement, there is no provision to allow us to return to power.

The Paris agreement calls for the withdrawal of foreign forces and entrusts UNTAC to organize and supervise elections in a neutral political environment. We will respect these elections and have no desire to return to power.

The big western powers should ask [the opinion of] Cambodians, including those living in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Those Cambodians will tell them that, while they do not agree with the policies between 1975 and 1978, they do not agree that the Khmer Rouge should be eliminated.

All Cambodians want national reconciliation, and on this point they support the Democratic Kampuchea party. This does not mean they join our party; but they don't want us eliminated.

Relations with China

In concrete terms we no longer receive assistance from China. I have seen [Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xu Dunxin] a few days ago. He conveyed to me the position of China, and tried to impress upon me that we should enter into Phase II. He said that [Democratic Kampuchea's] two key provisions are reasonable and correct, but that we should enter into Phase II and discuss the matter at the same time. I conveyed to China that we want the two key provisions implemented first.

I think you understand that China has no interest in supporting the party of Democratic Kampuchea in violation of the peace agreement. China needs to have good relations with the west in all fields-trade, diplomatic, and economic. China also wants to have good relations with Vietnam, now that there is no more Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and in a situation where the socialist community is disappearing.

On Vietnamese Settlers

Recently [U.S. Chief-of-Mission] Charles Twining spoke of his worst nightmare, seeing Vietnamese corpses floating down the Mekong River in Phnom Penh. UNTAC must understand the urgency of resolving the problem of the Vietnamese settlers, who are part of Vietnam's occupation plan, which continues to swallow Cambodia.

If the Cambodian people cannot see a peaceful resolution to the problem, they will seek other means. So the nightmare that Twining was talking about might become a reality. What are the consequences, we cannot foresee.

If we raise these issues, people blame us for creating the problem. But the problem exists, it is not us who invented it. It is very clear that as long as Vietnamese forces are not withdrawn, the Cambodian people will never accept this.

As long as Vietnamese settlers continue to plunder the land of the Cambodian people, the Cambodian people will never accept such a situation. Vietnam continues to occupy Cambodia through the regime they set up. At this point the western powers do not see this-the Vietnamese experts on overt and covert warfare in all fields continue to direct Phnom Penh.

We agree that the question of the Vietnamese settlers should be left for the new Cambodian government, after elections, to tackle.

 

 

Khmer Rouge Seeks To Strengthen Hold Before U.N. Peacekeeping Force Arrives

Khmer Rouge Seeks To Strengthen Hold Before U.N. Peacekeeping Force Arrives

By Nate Thayer

Friday, March 13, 1992

AP

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - At least 10 Cambodian soldiers have been killed and 40 wounded in a truce-breaking Khmer Rouge offensive to grab land before U.N. peacekeepers arrive.

Observers said the offensive, which began this week and was expected to escalate further, was the heaviest in more than a year. They said the Communist Khmer Rouge were apparently attempting to capture as much territory as possible before the full deployment of 22,000 United Nations peacekeepers later this month.

Budget problems delayed the start of the peace mission, raising fears that the fragile peace would collapse before U.N. troops take control. A small advance group of U.N. officials arrived in November, and the first 250 peacekeepers arrived Wednesday.

Any fighting or movement of troops or ammunition violates the U.N.-brokered peace agreement signed in October by the four warring Cambodian factions.

U.N. officials held an emergency session late today with senior military representatives of all four factions to discuss the cease-fire violations. Another meeting was expected tomorrow.

The Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians in the 1970s before being driven out by Vietnam troops. They are the strongest of the three groups that have fought the Vietnam-backed government for 13 years.

Khmer Rouge guerrillas have bolstered their front lines in northern Cambodia with at least 3,500 reinforcements, new ammunition and heavy weapons since late February, according to guerrilla and U.N. sources.

In this week's offensive, the rebels used rockets, mortars and artillery to attack more than a dozen strategic areas in the Cambodian countryside, U.N. officials said.

Most observers say the heavy fighting will die down when U.N. peacekeepers are deployed to the countryside to disarm and demobilize the guerrillas.

Central government troops have fought back, but observers said the army is in disarray. Many soldiers have deserted, and others have not been paid in months.

Cambodian peace may depend on UN troops

Cambodian peace may depend on UN troops

Chicago Sun-Times

Associated press

January 2, 1992

By Nate Thayer  

PHNOM PENH Cambodia could return to war if the United Nations does not send peacekeeping troops and administrators quickly to oversee the fragile peace accord, a U.S. congressman warned Wednesday.

"So far the peace agreement has succeeded in bringing an end to the fighting, but it could very easily fail if UN forces do not arrive soon," said Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.), who is on a congressional fact-finding mission to this country.

The Vietnam-installed government and three rebel groups signed a peace accord in October that created a Supreme National Council to work with the United Nations to administer the country until elections in 1993.

All the parties called Monday to speed up the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeepers.

Officials said a void in political leadership since the peace plan was signed threatens to plunge the country back into conflict.

An inaugural meeting of the reconciliation council was aborted twice by mob violence and instability in the capital.

A crowd beat and nearly killed Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan on his arrival from 13 years of exile on Nov. 27, forcing him to flee the country. The mob was enraged by the Khmer Rouge killing of hundreds of thousands of people during its fanatical Communist rule in 1975-78.

Last month, anti-government riots left at least eight people dead and 16 others wounded.

The government sent troops to regain control of the streets and banned any demonstrations.