Nate Thayer

Nate Thayer Awards and Honors

Thayer’s reporting has earned him The World Press Award, the 1997 British Press Awards 2006 Scoop_of_the_Year British Press Award, and the 1998 Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given by to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft."

He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University 

He was the  recipient of the Center for Public Integrity  International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting oof the Year (http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/icij  http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/icij/journalists/profile/856/  "Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted: :"He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of Political faction characters." http://www.publicintegrity.org/assets/pdf/pi_1999_03.pdf Maud S. Beelman, "Reporting Across Borders," The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity,Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.]

According to Vaudine England of the BBC "Many of the regions greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Far Eastern Economic Review from the legendary Richard Hughes of Korean War fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodias Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot."http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8268105.stm Vaudine England, "Leading Asian Magazine to Close," BBC Asia-Pacific News, September 22, 2009.]

Thayer was also the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award because he did not want to share it with ABC News  [Nightline] saying publicly lambasting American television news saying:"I in no way want my name associated with such egregious violations of journalistic and professional ethics." .http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/your-scoop-nah-its-ours-if-we-want-it-1157187.html "Your scoop? Nah. Its ours if we want it." The Independent May 25 1998.]

Thayer is also the recipient of The Overseas Press Club of America Award, as well as the Asian Society of Publishers and Editors Award for "Excellence in Reporting,"

Thayer was also honored with the SAIS-Novartis "Award for Excellence in International Reporting."

He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by The Wall Street Jounral

In 1999 Thayer established at the Hofstra Universitys Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies in the School of Communication the Nate Thayer Scholarship given annually to "a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need." http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/1999/ho019900008.pdf Hofstra University Student Information Package, Financial Aid Section, p. 45.] http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/SOC/JMSPR/index.html

Khmer Rouge, Cambodian Government Suffer Memory Failure in Court: This Might Help By Nate Thayer

Khmer Rouge, Cambodian Government Suffer Memory Failure in Court: This Might Help

By Nate Thayer

The witness at the moment on the stand testifying against Ieng Sary in today’s Khmer Rouge trial in Phnom Penh seems to be suffering a memory lapse. Let’s try to help him, and a few others who have remarkably similar maladies. The three leaders of the Khmer Rouge in the docket: Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Sary. The chief witness on the stand is Long Narin, for the last 30 years, Ieng Sary’s chief spokesman and closest loyalist.

He seems to be having memory problems. Let me see if this jogs his memory:

On August 6 1996, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge clandestine radio burst on the air and called for “the arrest and destruction  of Ieng Sary and his miscreant clique,” said the radio announcer,”Ieng Sary has hidden himself among the resistance fighters for years,” stole party money, and was nothing less than an “agent of Vietnam. He is therefore sentenced to death.” The Khmer Rouge radio announcer whose voice it was? Khieu Samphan.

That would be Ieng Sary, Pol Pot’s brother-in-law. For relevant historical context, the two had been sentenced to death together already-together-as the “Pol Pot--Ieng Sary clique” in 1979 by the Vietnamese installed Hun Sen Government compromised of ex-Khmer Rouge..

On August 7, 1996, Ieng Sary replied on his newly acquired—now rebel—radio station. The Ieng Sary radio crackled from the jungle denouncing Pol Pot as “the cruelest and most savage of murderers” naming Nuon Chea as Pol Pot’s chief “henchman.” “The war criminals are nobody else but Pol Pot and his handful of henchmen: Nuon Chea…who are the mass murderers of the people of Cambodia, committing until now enormous crimes against mankind. As such, they are sentenced to death.”

Ieng Sary’s radio concluded that “This impetuous mass movement, this groundswell swept up all at once the bloodthirsty, dictatorial clique of Pol Pot and Nuon Chea…” The radio voice, reading from a statement signed in Ieng Sary’s name, ended with “I have decided to resume leadership.” The man whose voice it was? Long Narin. --The man testifying this morning in the docket unable to recall the “details” of his relationship with defendant Ieng Sary.

And for good measure, 3 days later Pol Pot’s radio announced: “The Cambodian people are not confused. They can tell gold from shit…So one-eyed Hun Sen, out-and-out lackey of communist Vietnam, stop barking like a mad dog to deceive others. You yourself have already been sentenced to death.” The announcement was made in the name of Khieu Samphan.

That same day, Ieng Sary’s radio went on the air with the voice of Long Narin and cleared things up a bit: “Constant mutual suspicion reigns,” Long Narin, chief spokesman for Ieng Sary declared.

That radio station was a gift of Hun Sen. Who promptly welcomed Ieng Sary back into the national fold and government. On 14 August, 1996, Hun Sen publicly declared over His radio, “I would like to guarantee the life, the security of Ieng Sary,” the same man he had sentenced to death a few years earlier. But now, Hun Sen had a change of heart and appointed Ieng Sary the new Governor of the Province of Pailin. He also loudly called for, and received, a royal pardon from all previous crimes issued by King Sihanouk. And he recognized Ieng Sary’s newly named political party The Democratic National Union Movement.

However Hun Sen’s then co Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, objected: “Pol Pot, Ieng Sary…at least five or six of them are completely unacceptable.” Hun Sen dismissed that remark less than a year later when he launched a bloody coup, murdering and torturing scores of Ranarridh’s supporters and driving him from power. A number had their tongues ripped out while alive, under interrogation, or their eyes gouged out, or their penises chopped off and stuffed in their mouths, before being executed by leaders of the current government holding a trial against ex colleagues accused of committing “crimes against humanity” and “torture” in Phnom Penh.  

On September 8, 1996, DNUM issued a typewritten document in English and Khmer and signed on official DNUM stationary and signed “Long Narin, Spokesman”. The document said “following the decision not to participate in the UNTAC organized elections, the dictatorial Khmer Rouge leadership was obliged to move its headquarters…At that time, though the old fox Pol Pot decided not to publicize his Machiavellian decision about His Excellency Ieng Sary for fear of the People’s and the Army’s opposition. His Excellency Ieng Sary had no more position in the leadership.” (signed) “DNUM Chief Spokesman, Long Narin”

The Ieng Sary radio was more specific on the reason for his break with Pol Pot and Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. “I wanted to stay in Democratic Kampuchea, because I wanted to preserve our unity and thought it was still possible for me to express my opinion to a certain extent,” but “the dictatorial and murderous gang of Pol Pot (i.e. Sary’s current partners in the defence docket in the UN court, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan) began to openly make false accusations against me by labeling me as an agent of communist Vietnam and the Alliance (the grouping of the U.S., European and Asian countries now allied with the Phnom Penh government), as a traitor to the nation, the people and the Party” This “led me to make the decision to split forever with the  dictatorial gang of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea…and found DNUM on August 15 1996…this movement stems from the profound aspirations of the cadre, combatants, and people of the liberated zone who rose in a tumultuous movement to eliminate the dictatorial and murderous gang of Pol Pot…it is a historical current no one can stop.”

So Ieng Sary left the “murderous gang” of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan, according to his own statement read by his chief spokesman Long Narin, not because of 1.7 million people who died while all three—now in court as co defendants-- were in command together. But because he was accused of being a “Vietnamese agent” and “traitor to the Party.”

This was according to Long Narin, who this morning, in court, can’t recall the details of his relationship with Ieng Sary. The same Long Narin who helpfully hand delivered English translated copies, with his signature, to reporters at the time. The spokeseman for Ieng Sary who was later pardoned, appointed by Hun Sen to the current government, and then arrested by the same Hun Sen, still current Prime Minister of Cambodia. (who, just to complete the circle, was an officer in the Khmer Rouge army commanded by the now defendants during the same period when hundreds of thousands were killed).

All four had previously, at various times, sentenced each other to death. Then later welcomed in high ceremony into the current government. Only to be pressured to have some arrested by the international community. And of which all of the above figures contend they have had a lapse of memory of above mentioned details. Perhaps this might help jog their convenient, individually selective memories a bit.

Taking the moral high ground: Swedish Pol Pot supporter apologizes for his mistake

Taking the moral high ground:Swedish Pol Pot supporter apologizes for  his mistake

By Nate Thayer

When Gunnar Bergstrom was a guest in Khmer Rouge Cambodia of Pol Pot in August 1978, the Swede enjoyed a rare meeting and dinner of oysters hosted by Pol Pot.

The meal followed a rare interview he and three politcal comrades from Sweden were given by the innaccesible and secretive Pol Pot who was then presiding over the death of more than a million and a half people that was actually escalating and under full rage at the time of that August 1978 feast. he returned to Europe and labeled talk about genocide under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge rule as a  Western lie.  

He has since fully publicly acknowledged his mistake, without mitigation or justification. he simply said he was wrong and asked for forgiveness. "For those still appalled by my support of the Khmer Rouge at the time, and especially those who suffered personally under that regime, I can only say I am sorry and ask for your forgiveness," Bergstrom says in his book, "Living Hell."

Full stop. He returned to Cambodia in the mid 2000's and publicly apologized again. He should be commended for having the moral courage to simply admit he was wrong, instead of the decades of silence or mitigation or justification that many others have chosen who shared his views and had a significant influence on public opinion and policy. He has shown moral courage that in contrast is absent from many of his contempraries who remain active in the Cambodian politcal debate today.

The young Swedish leftists  shared Pol Pot's view, seeing the Khmer Rouge takeover as a revolution to transform Cambodia into a fairer society benefiting the poor.

Bergstrom has since realized he was mistaken about Pol Pot's brutal regime, and he has publicly retracted and apologized for his support and the propoganda influencee it had. he took the initiatiove to try and make amends.

 "We had been fooled by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We had supported criminals," he told The Associated Press  from Stockholm. Gunnar Bergstrom has deep regret. He was one of only a handful of Westerners whom the Khmer Rouge allowed to visit during its 1975-79 hold on power. "For those still appalled by my support of the Khmer Rouge at the time, and especially those who suffered personally under that regime, I can only say I am sorry and ask for your forgiveness," Bergstrom says in his book, "Living Hell."

In 1978, Bergstrom was president of the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association, a political group that supported Mao Zedong's China and influenced by the U.S. war in Vietnam. To Bergstrom, the Khmer Rouge revolution presented an "idealistic idea about an alternative society."

Bergstrom has shown courage and gained my respect for his very simple act of moral courage. He, in a way, is a hero in a sea of intellectual cowards that still remain mute in the wake of their shrill cries of support and defence of crimes against humanity. To them, it should be reminded, it is pretty simple: "I was wrong  and I am sorry."

The Night Pol Pot Died: From the Jungles of Northern Cambodia By Nate Thayer

The Night Pol Pot Died: From the Jungles of Northern Cambodia

By Nate Thayer

(Copyright Nate Thayer. All rights reserved. No publication or transmission in whole or part allowed without express written permission of the author. Excerpts from the unpublished manuscript “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.”)

I was alone in a hotel the night Pol Pot died, in the small, remote Thai border town of Surin, abutting the Khmer Rouge controlled jungles of Cambodia.

I had been urgently summoned by the Khmer Rouge a few days earlier in a phone call which betrayed no specifics of why they wanted to see me, only that it was urgent. General Khem Nuon, the Khmer Rouge army-chief-of-staff and top field commander for Ta Mok had said only: “What you have been asking for we have agreed to.”

I took that to mean that I had been granted another interview with Pol Pot, but I was to learn it was even more significant. They had decided, as I had been pressing them for months, to turn Pol Pot over to the international community to face a trial.

I was summoned to discuss how to actually handle the logistics of handing over Pol Pot. It was an attempt to play their last card to garner international support and stem metastasizing mutinies and all out warfare raging in their jungles which threatened to finish their organization for the final time.

I had spent several days along the Thai-Cambodian rebel held border discussing their plight and interviewing their top cadre. Earlier that day I had filed a story with my magazine, the Far Eastern Economic Review, on the Khmer Rouge decision to hand over Pol Pot. The Review went to press at 6:00 pm Hong Kong time on Wednesdays—this one being that day--the 15^th of April, 1998.

“We have decided to turn Pol Pot over to the Americans. But we can’t get in touch with the Americans. We discussed it again this morning and Ta Mok agreed. So we want to give him to you,” said the guerrilla commander.

I was, to put it mildly, momentarily flummoxed. What the fuck was I supposed to do with Pol Pot? Put him in the back of the pickup truck and take him to the Far Eastern Economic Review office in Bangkok? It was not part of my job description. I suggested they should promptly get in touch with the International Committee of the Red Cross and gave him the appropriate contact details. “That is a very good idea!” Khem Nuon responded. There were other details, but I knew that the decision to turn over one of the century’s most egregious perpetrators of crimes against humanity to face justice was a very good story indeed.

The magazine released the highlights of the story in a press release that night at 5:00 pm Bangkok time—6:00 pm Hong Kong time. It was picked up immediately by the international wire services and broadcast by the VOA at 8:00 pm Thailand time on their Khmer language service, which Pol Pot listened to every evening.

17 minutes after Pol Pot died—at 10:32 pm on 15 April 1998—my mobile phone rang in my hotel room. Reaching past the half-empty bottle of fake Johnny Walker Black whiskey on the bedside table, I grabbed the remote, muted the volume of CNN blaring on the television, and answered the phone.

“My friend, Pol Pot is dead,” said Gen. Khem Nuon, the KR commander and for months my good friend, in an urgent whisper. “He died a few minutes ago.” He was calling on a Chinese military radio phone from the jungles across the Thai border.

While the Khmer Rouge always whispered, they were rarely breathless. Nuon was desperate and looking for guidance. “What should I do?” he pleaded. “You must tell the Americans and you must come here immediately.” It was an example the murky terrain of my role as a journalist and liaison with the rebels in their final days.

As I listened to the Khmer Rouge army commander, Monica Lewinsky splashed across the muted screen of CNN International Headline news, the world news dominated with the criminal punishment and removal from power of the US president for his indiscrete blow job with a young intern, which would continue to tower over the story of the demise of a man who had been one of the century’s most notorious despots.

General Nuon called, mainly, because he knew I would want to know. He was both a killer and my friend. Nuon always tried his best to be helpful. I had spent countless days and nights over the last months with Nuon explaining how the world worked outside the jungles he had called home for thirty years. His appetite for and curiosity for ideas and the new-fangled world was insatiable. It equaled my thirst for knowledge of his movement, its inner workings and history. He had commanded the troops that overthrew Pol Pot the year before, and therefore risen as the top field commander of all Khmer Rouge troops. With his formidable language skills and new role as chief field commander of rebel troops, he was for the first time able to clandestinely leave the jungles he called home and travel for covert meetings in Thailand, where he was escorted by a special unit of Thai military intelligence operatives who closely monitored the routines, movements, and intentions of the outlawed guerrilla faction. Nuon was also receiving medical treatment in Bangkok at a Thai military facility for a cancerous thyroid. He would always come to my house and, over copious amounts of hot tea with lots of sugar, spend hours talking about life and just to be free from the harsh deprivations of the jungle. He had come to rely on me and me on him as we spent countless days and nights sharing thoughts and information. “We will be friends forever!” he would often say to me with a broad, gentle grin, squeezing my hand and hugging me. He was bright, gentle, hard working, kind, and a natural leader of men. He was also the top armed commander of one of the world’s most brutal political movements. He personified the contradictions within the Khmer Rouge movement that allowed them to be such a formidable political force despite their atrocious human rights record. He represented to me the contradictions in my own mind that I had developed for the Khmer Rouge—on one hand respectable and impressive and on the other hand unspeakably brutal and offensive. I was very fond of Nuon and him of me, despite the fact, in truth, I had grown to collectively detest everything that Cambodia had become.

There was symbiosis in my relationship with the Khmer Rouge: They needed me and I needed them and neither of us trusted each other. While competent jungle fighters, these were peasants, mostly rice farmers turned guerrillas, but their ranks were also filled with the best and the brightest of Cambodia who had fled to the jungles as youth 30 years before to join the revolution. Nuon and most others had no exposure to how the world worked outside the jungle, where most had lived there entire adult lives. They had come to largely rely on me to both interpret it for them and take their message to the outside.

After Nuon called with the news of Pol Pot’s death, I knew I wouldn’t have to tell the Americans that Pol Pot was dead. Moments after I hung up, an American intelligence officer charged with following Khmer Rouge developments called from Bangkok. He wanted to know if I had heard “rumours" that Pol Pot was dead. Nuon’s phone was tapped as I assumed mine was and the American spy wasn’t fooling either of us. It was a game whose rules I had long before learned and understood. But he also knew that a monitored phone conversation between a guerrilla commander and a journalist was insufficient to confirm such an historic event. They, as I, needed proof. To be sure this wasn’t some kind of political trick, someone independent and credible needed to go back to the jungle and provide details and evidence of what had happened. The American wanted me to bring Pol Pot’s body back if possible, he said, or some forensic material. “If you can’t do that, maybe you could cut off one of his fingers,” he suggested seriously, in an only fleetingly embarrassed tone. I told him I would do what I could. He needed to get Washington hard evidence of what had happened in these jungles inaccessible to them, and his crude suggestion didn’t faze me at the time at all. He was a top notch military intelligence officer, very bright, spoke fluent Thai, and had excellent relations with the Thai military.

The Americans had political restraints and could not simply show up at Khmer Rouge field headquarters, but I didn’t. I requested he make a phone call to the Thai military to encourage them to let me cross their borders at dawn with direct permission from the highest command, into the Khmer Rouge zones. The American promised to put in an urgent good word to facilitate my crossing through the heavily guarded Thai military checkpoints, through which all unauthorized persons were forbidden to pass. The road to Anlong Veng was a well hidden dirt path set off a remote road that hugged the unpopulated, jungle-clad Thai Cambodian border marked by a steep mountain escarpment. These rutted narrow paths were bordered by a towering jungle canopy and weaved through eerily silent thick tropical forests void of any human presence. It was a no-man’s land for miles after the last Thai checkpoint and before populated areas of the Khmer Rouge controlled jungle bases in Cambodia. The areas between frontlines are always the most dangerous, fraught with vulnerability from roving bandits, landmines, and ambush from a wide potential cast of characters.

While the Khmer Rouge wanted me to come, and Gen. Nuon controlled the troops at his jungle checkpoints, crossing out of Thailand into Khmer Rouge territory required another set of permissions.

A few moments after I hung up with the American spook, the assistant of the Thai army commander-in-chief called. It was close to midnight now. He said I was granted permission personally from the Thai army commander-in-chief, who I had known personally for years since he was a mid level Special Forces commander, to go out of Thailand to find Pol Pot’s body. The general was highly respected for his professionalism and honesty and previously was in charge of Thailand’s important and complicated efforts during the Cambodian covert war. He then headed army intelligence before rising to overall army commander, one of Thailand’s most powerful positions. His aide gave me the name and mobile phone number of the commander of a highly secret Thai military unit who I knew only by reputation. Regiment 16 was based in a remote location along the border and charged with the extremely sensitive task of controlling all access to and liaison with the Khmer Rouge, escorting them on their forbidden trips to Thailand and entering the Khmer Rouge zones with relative free will. Regiment 16 officially didn’t exist and performed functions Thailand officially denied it didn’t engage in. He said the Colonel was already instructed to meet me at a specific gas station at dawn

Neither the Thais or the Americans wanted to be seen as involved in what surely would be an extremely high profile event that would soon, I knew, dominate world headlines and attract scores of journalists to the border area. The Thais had long denied they had direct dealings with the Khmer Rouge, loathed the periodic public fallout from revelations to the contrary, and were under intense international scrutiny and United Nations official directive to not assist them.

My trip across the border from Surin in Thailand to Khmer Rouge zones was not a new scenario. I had made these forays many times before. And both the Thai and American intelligence officers trusted me. I could have burned them all many times over the years, and I never did.

I never revealed how I accessed the guerrilla zones or who assisted me. I knew which secrets to keep and which ones to spill and they appreciated that. One thing I rarely reported was what means and methods of getting to the story I sought or used which might jeopardize a source. The process was usually full of intrigue and would make a good read, but all officials involved operated covertly and therefore were deeply suspicious of journalists. I never betrayed a promise or source from any faction, agency or government.

By the time of Pol Pot’s death in 1998, no governments, even China, who previously appeared unconcerned with international opinion, could be seen as having friendly—or any—relations with the Khmer Rouge.

But everyone knew I still maintained good contacts with the guerrillas, and as a journalist this was wholly legitimate. Beholden to no one, I could hold the mantle of an independent, neutral journalist around my neck, which I defended proudly and without compromise. I had no political problems with associating with international pariahs and murderers. It started as my job. And I rather enjoyed it. Rogue people and states fascinated me. And then it became my obsession.

But the night of Pol Pot’s death, in many ways, marked when that particular episode of my life’s long efforts were finally over. It was midnight now. Pol Pot was dead. I felt numb mainly, but also relieved. I drank straight whiskey from a glass, re-organized my gear to cross the border in a few hours at dawn. I watched Monica Lewinsky play over and over on CNN, flashbulbs sparking, as she fled into a courthouse, to face the full puissance of the American justice system. It did not elude me that it was a twisted reality that the Lewinsky affairs sordid details of superfluous justice was far more newsworthy than that which had been deemed appropriate for pursuit of Pol Pot, who stood accused of crimes against humanity. It was a fact that when he died, 20 years after his regime, which left 1.7 million people dead--1/4 of the population—in 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days in power, Pol Pot had never been charged by any court with any crime anywhere in the world. When he died he was not formally, in the eyes of international law, a wanted man. In fact, it would have been a violation of his rights, sufficient to have any charges dismissed under international law, if he was captured and held against his will anywhere outside of Cambodia.

I knew that soon Pol Pot would be featured, perhaps not eclipsing but along with Monica, in the world press. It would leak to be a world story within hours. Once leaked, scores of journalists would descend on this Thai border town. I wanted to get in and out of the jungle before the circus began…..

To be continued….

(Copyright Nate Thayer. All rights reserved. No publication or transmission in whole or part allowed without express written permission of the author. Excerpts from the unpublished manuscript “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s Memoir From Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.”)

What Happened to the Khmer Rouge? They are Back in Power. By Nate Thayer

What Happened to the Khmer Rouge? They are Back in Power.

Some thoughts on the trial of Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan

(Select excerpts from the unpublished manuscript “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge” By Nate Thayer. Copyright Nate Thayer. All Rights reserved. No publication in whole or part without express written permission from the author)

By Nate Thayer

The 1996 “defections” or “surrender” of Ieng Sary and thousands of Khmer Rouge troops in Pailin was actually, more accurately, the beginning of the final reintegration of the Khmer Rouge back into the open legitimacy of mainstream Cambodian society. It also sent shockwaves through Pol Pot’s remaining Khmer Rouge loyalists in the north, and rocked the fragile coalition government in Phnom Penh. The “surrender” of thousands of armed Khmer Rouge did not, as one might expect, strengthen the stability of the central government. Rather, it capsized the precarious political balance of Cambodia itself. It forced to the surface the latent, grave tensions between Hun Sen’s CPP and Ranariddh’s Funcinpec party percolating under the veneer of their government partnership. And marked the irreversible escalation of an inevitable process of the collapse of the government itself.

While Cambodia’s mainstream political factions competed in their anti-Khmer Rouge rhetoric, the truth was far more complicated. For both Funcinpec and the CPP their immediate priority was not the destruction of the Khmer Rouge, but the destruction of each other. In order to achieve this, they each entered into a frenzied competition to embrace the Khmer Rouge as military allies. Each now began a mad rush to woo intact the armed strength of the Khmer Rouge and secure their loyalty to—not the government—but their separate political parties. And the reason for this was nothing less than a strategic plan by each political party to procure an alliance with a strong—not weakened—Khmer Rouge. Whichever party successfully romanced the Ieng Sary faction in Pailin and the Pol Potists in the north would use their new found strength to launch a coup d’état against their government partners. So the push to force the “surrender” of the Ieng Sary faction of the Khmer Rouge in late 1996 was not a harbinger of peace at all: It was, in fact, an irreversible and calculated preparation for war.

It is a mistaken and simplistic premise to assume that any of Cambodia’s mainstream political factions were “anti-Khmer Rouge.” They indeed were frightened, almost obsessed, that the Khmer Rouge would declare allegiance to their political opposition. Everyone recognized that in the perverted priorities of the organization of Cambodian political power, the Khmer Rouge was an impressive and useful military and political organization. The government rhetoric against the Khmer Rouge was as cynical and insincere as it was strident. It was designed primarily for the gullible ears of their foreign benefactors on whose largesse they depended to pay the bills to run the country. In late 1996, each government party, while boasting to the United States and others that they were the architects of the demise of the Khmer Rouge, simultaneously intensified secret negotiations with both the Ieng Sary Pailin-based Khmer Rouge and with Pol Pot’s forced holed up in the north to secure their fidelity.

And from his jungle redoubt, Pol Pot was playing the same game. Like a mistress toying with two jealous suitors, Pol Pot schemed how to best manipulate the government factions to secure his maximum foothold in power. The strategy of all factions were the same—seek maximum power with short term tactical allies to destroy whomever they deemed to be the most immediate threat. These new tactical alliances with other enemies, the thinking went, could then be, when appropriately vulnerable, later targeted and dispatched with similar tactics.

No Cambodian leader had a strategic vision that analyzed the consequences of such an approach. Peace, political stability, economic development, strengthening institutions of government and society, or coherent foreign and domestic policies were too far-sighted theories. And make no mistake: indeed theories they were. It had been centuries since Cambodia had enjoyed any such organization of internal power.

Coalition politics has never been an end game for any Cambodian seeking political power. Power sharing is a distasteful, insincere, and temporary step, part of endless military and political maneuvering serving the only shared strategy: to hold sole and absolute power. Absolute power is demanded not just by a political party, but invariably by leaders within each party. That is why Cambodia’s political parties are always dividing like amoebas. Ambitious leaders, like their God-King predecessors, pursue nothing less than personal and complete hegemony over the country. Until that is achieved, all competition or disagreement, or even policy differences, must be, when the time is appropriate, crushed. This truth is fundamental to understanding why Cambodia is on a seemingly endless roller coaster of internal upheaval. The concept of loyal opposition or coalition politics has no successful precedent in Cambodian history. The primary ramification of this paradigmatic tool of ascension to political power is that Cambodia has remained in a constant state of warfare for generations. The norm of civil war ebbs occasionally to an uneasy temporary political alliance or subjugation between squabbling and scheming enemies, often imposed with force by impatient and frustrated foreign powers. These were the circumstances in late 1996 and 1997 that preceded the reintegration of the Khmer Rouge back into national society and the violent collapse of the UN elected government.

The Cambodian government’s efforts to romance the Khmer Rouge, intensifying in late 1996, would be central to the series of crisis that would rock the country in coming months. It would ultimately culminate with a bloody power struggle among the top Khmer Rouge leadership in June 1997 which ousted Pol Pot from power and days later a bloody power struggle within the Phnom Penh government which ousted Ranarriddh and his Funcinpec from power. The two events were, of course, parcel to each other.

This turmoil collapsed the government and plunged Cambodia back into civil war in July 1997, Hun Sen quickly seizing sole control. Once again, as had happened so many times in Cambodian history, after Cambodians were left to control their own destiny alone—this time with the 1993 withdrawal of United Nations peacekeeping forces—the  country quickly spiraled downward to its sure fate, eventually imploding in an orgy of chaos and violence until one man was left standing. This time Hun Sen—as Pol Pot, Lon Nol, and Sihanouk before him—lorded over his ‘victory”: a political landscape littered with fresh corpses and the surviving opposition humiliated and beaten into submission. In his defense, Hun Sen had simply won the game fair and square by the rules his opponents were all willing participants. But of course it was not a victory, because such an organization of power is, in the end, untenable.

Perhaps most importantly, however, the events of 1997 showed once again, that despite Pol Pot being ousted from the seat of government in 1979 after a short but shocking tenure in power, twenty years later he continued to dictate political developments in contemporary Cambodia. This fact is surely not a reflection of the attributes of the Khmer Rouge, but rather of the extraordinary weaknesses of their opposition: Even after committing crimes against humanity as a central government policy and unspeakable suffering on a horrific scale, the political options to the Khmer Rouge were so unimpressive that Pol Pot’s political movement remained a viable alternative with sufficient popular sympathy to still be a force to be reckoned with decades later. The tenacity of the Khmer Rouge is nothing other than a wholesale indictment of the failures of the entire Cambodian political culture. In a properly organized country, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge would have utterly collapsed under the weight of its own record. The reasons that it didn’t are an essential prism necessary to view and understand the sad and distasteful realities of the Cambodia that preceded and succeeded the Khmer Rouge.

(Select excerpts from the unpublished manuscript “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalist’s memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge” By Nate Thayer. Copyright Nate Thayer. All Rights reserved. No publication in whole or part without express written permission from the author)

For those following the Khmer Rouge Trial of Nuon Chea: Background ambience behind the scenes at the time of the final collapse of the Khmer Rouge. Selected Excerpts from “Sympathy for the Devil” By Nate Thayer

For those following the Khmer Rouge trial of Nuon Chea: Background ambience behind the scenes of the final collapse of the Khmer Rouge. Selected Excerpts from “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalists Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge” By Nate Thayer

(Copyright Nate Thayer. Excerpts from unpublished manuscript “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalists Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge” All Rights Reserved. No publication or citation permitted without author’s express written permission.)

 

By 1994, the Khmer Rouge leadership once again evaporated into the jungle. To my frustration, my methodically constructed stable of Khmer Rouge sources was now deep in hiding. They continued to communicate with me through an elaborate network of underground  agents and Communist party cells. But it was a tortuous web, elaborately compartmentalized to obscure the identity and isolate the location of the guerrillas from their enemies. It would often take weeks, even months for a message from the jungle to get to me in Phnom Penh. Sometimes they would contact me through intermediaries by phone or deceptively postmarked mail. Other times notes would be hand-delivered by well dressed strangers who arrived at my house unannounced, politely exchanged pleasantries, decline to introduce themselves, and hand me a sealed envelope. They would then slip back out into the bustling city through the mazes of armed checkpoints, unpaid government soldiers to busy sleeping or extorting money to look for Khmer Rouge agents.

And I was always organizing my periodic trips across Cambodian government frontlines or over the Thai frontier to the guerrilla bases themselves. Even though it was a war-zone, I felt most relaxed deep in the jungles. I felt much safer under the protection of the disciplined Khmer Rouge than the unpredictable anarchy in government towns. In Phnom Penh, I slept with loaded automatic weapons by my bed and rarely left my house without a pistol and extra ammunition clips. With the guerrillas, I always slept peacefully in my hammock, tied to two trees, a symphony of whooping monkeys and insect’s overhead, surrounded by armed bodyguards who were charged with ensuring no one harmed me.

Messages from my Khmer Rouge contacts were always short and vague, the circumspect handwritten scrawls on ripped out notepaper almost palpable with intrigue and fear. “My Dear Friend, I got your message. If you can get here, we have already agreed to meet you. Ask our Thai friend who gives you this to help. You can trust him We have many difficulties and there are many things I need to talk urgently about,” read one typical unsigned note in its entirety. Even their written messages seemed to rise off the page in a clandestine whisper.

There was urgency to their missives but they always left me unfulfilled, desperate to know more. Their culture of secrecy permeated their every breathing action, their every move the instinctual second nature of a hunted animal. If you read the above message, you will notice, on second reading, there is no clue on why they wanted to meet, where the meeting was, when it would be, who it was with, or what it was about. The notes themselves, when they risked committing to paper, would not even betray whom it was from or that it was intended for me. There was a feeling off stark vulnerability whenever engaging with the Khmer Rouge under such conditions. I never knew where I was going or when I would be back. I always went anyway. All Khmer Rouge communication was like this. It is a fundamental lesson in all clandestine services: reveal nothing that isn’t absolutely necessary to accomplish your mission—and after decades in the jungles the Khmer Rouge had hones it to an art. This succeeded in leaving them firmly in control of all encounters and maximally impenetrable to their enemies.

And make no mistake. They had no doubt I was an enemy agent. Given their historically intolerant view of the likes of me, I was always keenly alert around them. If it was expedient or useful, I never had any doubt my closest Khmer Rouge sources would kill me without emotion. And they often changed their minds of whether one was a friend or foe. Most of those killed by the Khmer Rouge were loyal cadre who had been deemed, almost always out of unfounded paranoia, ‘exposed’ as an enemy agent. For Khmer Rouge cadre, it was, in fact, more dangerous to be a Khmer Rouge loyalist than their enemy. But such political thinking was fundamental to Cambodian political culture and all political leaders and parties operated under such a psychological foundation for pursuing and maintaining power. No one trusted anyone else, including one’s closest comrades. Betrayal and purges had been fundamental to Cambodian politics throughout modern history.

It is rare to meet any Cambodian who has a problem with murdering civilians as a concept. The parameters of the moral debate are simply confined to the merits of the victims. But importantly, in 1992, I had been formally deemed a potentially useful enemy by Pol Pot himself, I was told by a Khmer Rouge cadre close to the top leader. Pol Pot had ordered that a channel be kept open to me. He had deemed me useful to getting their message out in as empirical and neutral manner as they could hope for. His reasoning was that my writings were read by those world figures who were involved in forming Cambodian policy. I was guardedly comfortable with that. In Cambodia, that is the best a foreigner can hope for: A strategic enemy but tactical ally.

In 1993, some of the top cadre with whom I had become close sought permission to communicate with me without prior notification of and approval from the party. When Pol Pot agreed, this was a crucial development in improving my access. All cadre knew it was unwise to question the wisdom of Pol Pot, and followed his orders unquestionably. Pol Pot’s absolute control of all aspects of the organization’s activities presupposed that a Khmer Rouge cadre simply did not have encounters with an American, little less establish a personal relationship, without the clear approval of Pol Pot himself. The penalty for such recklessness was death.

Pol Pot’s sanction of limited access for me was the function of the quality, influence, and reputation of the primary publications I worked for. The far Eastern Economic Review, my primary employer, was the finest newsweekly on Asia—and required reading around the globe for the limited number of diplomats, officials, academics, businessmen, and journalists interested in the region.  It was authoritative and serious and scrupulous and courageous in the quality and accuracy of its in-depth, often exclusive reporting. It covered even the most obscure reaches of Asia comprehensively with depth and persistence and insight. Countries like Cambodia have few readers and advertisers and this was a key reason why most media devoted few full time resources to its coverage. When something happened in Cambodia—or elsewhere in remote corners of Asia—the Review had already provided the context and preludes that preceded the breaking news. It was also in a unique position to have in place people who had the sources and knowledge to provide superior coverage. It was a reporters magazine, driven by an eclectic group of correspondents who often had years of history in the areas they covered. The reporting was backed up by superb editing which ensured its  content was fair, comprehensive, and accurate.

The Phnom Penh Post—the first independent newspaper in Indochina since 1975—was a courageous, scrappy, and detailed bi-weekly newspaper that was read by everyone in Cambodia who was involved in any aspect of policy. It published the details and gave the space that only a local paper can provide. It was started in 1992 by my good friend Michael Hayes, an American who had no newspaper or business experience who had left his work as a humanitarian aid official with the Asia Society, and started the paper with his own life savings from scratch. I lived at the Phnom Penh Post during my years in Cambodia in a three story villa which housed the newspaper offices, production facilities, and the living quarters of Michael, his wife Kathleen, and myself. It was a center of constant hubbub, with a steady 24-hour stream of incoming journalists, varied visitors, sources, and newspaper employees producing the paper.

I also wrote for Jane’s Defence Weekly, the preeminent authority on military matters, and the Washington Post, which was required reading by everyone in Washington. Between them, the Khmer Rouge expected that, in their attempt to spread their message, an honest, accurate analysis that would have a far reaching impact would emerge. They were not often happy with my missives, but also knew that very little could be written which would further blacken their reputation. “ We believe you are serious,” they said to me more than once. They were used to being the target of often inaccurate, speculative, and invariably hostile reporting that focused only on their years in power. In contrast, we covered current issues regarding them as well. I always provided background context that included their atrocious history and current dictatorship, but they were used to this after years of unrelenting criticism. They knew full well that they were culpable, and respected my criticism of their organization as long as it was accurate and comprehensive, regardless of the requisite negative content.

Aside from my forays into the jungle, I was used to meeting more cosmopolitan Khmer Rouge political leaders and diplomats in five-star hotel lobbies and at diplomatic functions. But after 1994, two years after he withdrew the Khmer Rouge from participating in the UN election process, Pol Pot ordered them all back to the jungle. I wasn’t even sure where along the 800-kilometer swath of mountainous jungles over the Thai border my Khmer Rouge sources were hiding. Innumerable times, I travelled for days to remote villages near the Thai frontier on instruction from the Khmer Rouge to meetings. As often as not, a liaison would never materialize. Or I would be guided to an obscure guerrilla base where some mid-level cadre would spout useless propaganda already broadcast verbatim over their clandestine radio. Hungry for gossip, news, or rumour, I relentlessly pursued any source that might offer information. I flew to cities in Asia, North America, and Europe trying to glean information from shadowy sympathizers, relatives of cadre, and former guerrillas who had left the movement, and other underground operatives. I met with spies and diplomats from numerous countries charged with tracking the guerrillas. And I was constantly in contact with Cambodians of all political affiliations, whose agenda I covered equally, and who often knew of activities within the Khmer Rouge through their fellow Cambodians. Each of these encounters, sometimes involving weeks of work, would perhaps produce only a quote or single detail or a rumour to pursue or confirm. I would sort these tidbits of knowledge and carefully piece them together, constructing a portrait of what was happening in the jungle and publish it as an article. It was a frustrating, tedious, and usually fruitless business reporting on the Khmer Rouge: that is why there was effectively on one else who bothered to try. But I enjoyed the methodical challenge and it fit my personality to work alone and focus to fruition on a single task.

But for most of the world, by 1995 the Khmer Rouge leadership had simply slipped silently into the impenetrable forests of northwest Cambodia, contact severed completely, and guerrilla war resumed. Like a disturbed hornet’s nest, they dispatched small, angry squads of troops to attack around the country, emerging from the jungle to strike vulnerable government outposts, massacre ethnic Vietnamese civilians, and blow up trains and bridges. They then immediately evaporated back into the forest.

“The resistance forces are everywhere. We can attack the two-headed, one-eyed puppets and their American bosses everywhere!,” a secret 1995 internal directive by the Khmer Rouge leadership to military commanders said, referring to the fragile UN elected coalition government of co-prime ministers, and to the war wound that left Hun Sen blinded in one eye when he was a loyal lieutenant of Pol Pot. “We can cut the highway anywhere, any bridge and culvert. We are going to cut it over and over until the two headed government…and the Americans turn their tail and run.” The directive instructed: “ Cut the enemies throat! Cut the enemies throat! Cut the enemies blood arteries! Tragic fit, tragic death to all the enemies near and far!”

Nothing was subtle with the Khmer Rouge. This is how they talked in conversation, sputtering vitriol and contempt for the rest of the country who they had dehumanized simply because they weren’t loyal to them.

Westerners who stumbled into Khmer Rouge units after 1993 were regularly kidnapped and brutally executed. They included, as well as many Asian nationalities, Australians, Americans, Belgium’s, French, German, and British citizens. I was involved in every case. They all died an appalling death. I was to learn eventually that their executioners included some of my closest Khmer Rouge friends. Each and every one of their families contacted me, my telephone number given to them by their governments who were unable to assist them. They had been told I might have influence or leverage with the guerrillas and they were desperate for help in saving their husbands, sons, and daughters.

These remain some of my most painful experiences. I was not able to save any of them. I did, often after months of work, gather the grisly details of the demise of each. I remain haunted by the stricken, inconsolable anguish on the faces of their loved ones. They invariably wanted to know every last bit of gruesome information. It is equally true for the millions of Cambodians who were, in some ways, unlucky enough to survive the Khmer Rouge brutal years in power.

But, by 1995, behind the veneer of confidence and aggressiveness, there was a cancer metastasizing at the heart of the Khmer Rouge movement. I knew from the private whispers of grunt Khmer Rouge soldiers on the frontlines and forests, Pol Pot’s 1992 decision to pull out of the Paris Peace Agreements, forego the internationally recognized 1993 UN elections, and break the cease-fire, was considered by many Khmer Rouge cadres as a disastrous, perhaps fatal mistake.

Thousands of rank-and-file felt this way but seethed in silence. Expressing disagreement on such matters was suicide. But the reality was self-evident. Pol Pot and his small group of core leadership were very much like the emperor with no clothes. Instead of bringing them closer to power or peace, the Khmer Rouge were now utterly isolated, opposed by the mass of the peasantry, covert foreign military and material aid severed by China and Thailand, and at war once again. Morale was abysmal.

After two decades of war and unspeakable suffering, the hopes and opportunity for peace that came with the 1991 signing of the Paris Peace Accords had been squandered. Many Khmer Rouge cadre believed that their leaders had failed them and were deeply disappointed. Others were bitter and angry. But expressing opinion or dissent within the Khmer Rouge was unthinkable. And to add to the simmering frustration of the Khmer Rouge, in the eyes of their enemies they were increasingly not viewed  as a serious threat. For an organization that took pride—in the manner of a neighborhood gang of bullies—in forcing others to accommodate their demands through intimidation and sheer terror to be largely ignored by their enemies, was deeply demeaning. And a humiliated Khmer Rouge had the potential to strike back irrationally to demand attention. They were dangerous enough when they were rational.

After the 1993 UN elections, the Khmer Rouge’s biggest threat, in fact, came from within their own ranks. Swatting malarial mosquitoes and eating plain rice seasoned only with salt and sprinkled with dried fish boiled on an open jungle campfire, sleeping in their hammocks slung between trees in the forest, rank and file cadre listened with growing resentment to short-wave radio broadcasts of the international embracement of the government that emerged from the 1993 UN elections. Foreign companies, diplomatic recognition and international aid flooded to their enemies, bolstering their legitimacy and threatening the Khmer Rouge with becoming sidelined as a superfluous political force. The Khmer Rouge, in contrast, remained without electricity, running water, health care, schools, and, increasingly, hope that they would ever taste the fruits of peace, little less victory.

Never willing to address unpleasant realities, the Khmer Rouge went to absurd lengths to put a positive spin on their increasingly desperate conditions. “Our army, our guerrilla forces , are more and more respectable regarding their view, their political knowledge, their economical situation, their welfare, their attitude toward the peaceful relation scheme, their stance on spying activity, and their awareness of the undermining activity,” wrote the top Khmer Rouge leadership to senior commanders in a secret policy and military strategy directive in November 1995. “Thanks to these qualities, the number of our cadre are multiplying; the number of our forces increases; and our forces are more disciplined, more decisive, braver and more resolute to fighting the two-headed national traitors, slaves of the Vietnamese communists and their alliance. The slaves of the Vietnamese communists and their alliance are being swollen, decomposed, and rotten, all devoured by maggots, and having no more flesh.”

The Khmer Rouge, like all Cambodian political factions, seethed in hatred and utterly intractable absolutes. This is the bane of Cambodian political culture—not just the Khmer Rouge—and central to understanding the unending instability in Cambodia. There is no concept of compromise or common good, little less common ground. If you disagreed with the Khmer Rouge, you were a “slave” of the “national traitors.” One did not seek to just defeat the enemy, but preferred to see their bodies not just dead but “rotting” and “devoured by maggots.” You didn’t just execute someone who opposed you, you tortured and humiliated them first, and then murdered their wives and children.

Not only were the Khmer Rouge short of friends and money, but weapons and ammunition. The cessation of foreign and military aid was addressed by boastful self-delusions that they were self sufficient. In 1995, they ordered all soldiers and civilians to meet a quota of carving homemade bamboo stakes and other crude weapons. “The strategic weapons that we now call our ‘main forces’, sharp pointed soldiers, very sharp are punji sticks, and booby traps. These are the strategic weapons we experimented with and the results are highly effective. These forces are located all over, and bamboo, woods, poisons, resins, machetes, axes, and knives are all locally abundant. It can be said that factories making strategic weapons to fight the enemies exist locally and are abundant all over, in lakes and rivers.”

This was the Khmer Rouge leadership’s response to the cutoff of covert military aid from China and the 1994 UN imposed sealing of the border with trade from Thailand. To Khmer Rouge soldiers who had to face the reality of a well-armed enemy in battle, this was not only profoundly insulting, it was life threatening. Their leaders were now asserting that bamboo stakes constituted superior firepower. As a result of such preposterousness, Khmer Rouge cadre increasingly directed their resentment not so much at their enemy as at their own leaders.

Many Khmer Rouge felt their future was passing them by. Defections of frontline troops increased. Morale was abysmal. Soldiers pulled back in battle rather than risk death in a war they now had only a veneer of allegiance to. The blind loyalty of armed cadre long demanded by their faceless leadership, and enforced by fear, was on the brink of dangerously unraveling. And the Khmer Rouge leadership reacted by cracking down on their own loyalists.

Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge top military field commander and Army chief-of-staff, not so affectionately known as “The Butcher”, lamented that “pacifism has entered our cadres” and that “there is confusion, a blending of our essence and our enemies,” referring to increasing contact with villagers in government run frontline areas and growing sympathies among his troops to end the  war. The Khmer Rouge top leadership ordered all contacts severed with villages not strictly under their control. “We have continued to exist with them, eat with them, peacefully allied with them to the point that some of our own cadres and ranks have repeatedly been put in danger. In some of our units, enemy elements comprise 50-60%.” To be deemed an “enemy element” was a spine chilling accusation.

Their leaders made clear to their subordinates, in a secret internal document distributed to frontline units at the time, that they were being closely watched. “Our first responsibility is we must be clean. Our major responsibility is to clean up our act,” warning not to sympathize with proposed negotiations to end the war which they referred to as “the peaceful relationship scheme.” "Our ranks , our cadre, must be clean, our skin clear, free of smell, no peaceful relationship scheme, no spying activity, no internal undermining, nothing to be compromised at all…”

When, that same year of 1995, the leadership ordered troops to attack and burn to the ground front-line villages in northern Siem Riep province they suspected of not being sufficiently sympathetic, more than 1000 Khmer Rouge troops defected instead of carrying out the order. When I visited, the scene was surreal. Hundreds of Khmer Rouge soldiers in pea green Chinese PLA style uniforms lounged in the markets, flirting with local village girls, their commanders firing artillery they had taken with them, now firing back at their former comrades just past the tree line that marked the border from the rice paddies to the guerrilla jungles they had inhabited for thirty some years until only days earlier. “When we went to fight, we didn’t see other nationalities,” said former Khmer Rouge battalion commander Tung Yun. “ we fought because we were ordered to do so, but in our hearts none of us wanted war anymore.” He spoke for thousands of others still in the jungles.

In an atmosphere that forbids questioning the policies of their leaders, with no outlet to vent their disappointment and debate the merits of returning to war, conditions were ripe for an internal Khmer Rouge explosion of violence.

To be honestly transparent, in retrospect, part of me viewed this growing international and domestic consensus for peace and stability as a fundamental career threat. But while I loved being a war correspondent, this war was now meaningless. The fact was, by 1994, I, too, was tired of this war. I, too, did not want to be the proverbial last person to die in a war which now clearly had no purpose other than each side trying to secure raw and maximum power. After the withdrawal of the Vietnamese occupying troops in 1991 and the United Nations forces in 1993, it was now a war without issues, stripped to the carcass of armed conflict which is simply mans raw excersize of his most primal, uncivilized instinct for power and vengeance through violence and superior force; simply a winner takes all bloody grab for power. And the rank and file on all sides knew it. The soldiers from all the political factions still at war were nothing more complicated than pawns for a few hundred powerful and rich so-called leaders who weren’t courageous enough to wage peace and just wanted all of the pie. Many rank and file on both sides refused to fight seriously when ordered to battle, firing from a safe distance and reluctant to engage in tactics which threatened their lives.

By 1995, I had only one more objective in Cambodia, and that was to meet and speak with and interview Pol Pot. And ask him two simple questions. "Why?" And "Are you sorry?" And then, I told myself, I would leave this wicked society forever.

I viewed brewing dissatisfaction within the Khmer Rouge as creating cracks in their armour, opening up potential new means of access for me. Where there was turmoil, there was increased opportunity I could wangle my way into the heart of the Khmer Rouge central command. I had found that the Khmer Rouge opened up to me when they had difficulties, which often left them with issues they wanted to clarify or explain to outsiders. Turmoil and weakness increased the possibility that they might have to play that card. And I was constantly scheming to see that the vehicle they used to do so would be me. I was always encouraging, maneuvering for, and poised to take advantage of such contacts. I approached it as an endless chess game requiring strategy and patience and an intimate knowledge of one’s opponent. I knew from viewing the chessboard that I was closing in, however slowly, on their King, Pol Pot. Obstacles were being removed and I was advancing.

For years my biggest fear was Pol Pot would die before I was able to meet him. I would wake at night, my stomach in knots, with the thoughts of years of effort being concomitantly extinguished with his last breath. Barring that, I was convinced that one day I would meet him face-to-face and Pol Pot would have to answer the questions that haunted his broken countrymen.

In 1996, through smuggled letters, meetings with their underground operatives, and visits to their guerrilla bases across the frontier Thai borders in the jungles of Cambodia’s north, I pushed harder for them to allow me access to their leadership, arguing plausibly that they clearly had to try something new. The Cambodian government and the international community were perplexed by  the silence of the Khmer Rouge leadership and unclear what they wanted. They had let no one deep into their territory for four years--since my last visit—and they could see clearly they were in a weaker position since disengaging from the outside world.

They didn’t have to be convinced that they needed to do something, but they didn’t know what. They needed to reengage their movement to the Cambodian political process. What they needed rather than their tired, failed tactics of vitriolic rhetoric and terror was, I suggested, to shed light on their internal movement to lessen the blackened mystique that had shrouded their movement and Pol Pot in for forty years. Much of that mystique was not politically threatening to them, but simply allowing access to the personalities and daily life in their control zones. My perennially repeated request was that they allow an independent, credible witness as unfettered access as possible. A fresh look from inside their territory, talking with their loyalists, couldn’t possibly result in them having a diminished reputation in the eyes of the world, I repeated to their cadres. They were already a household name worldwide synonymous with unspeakable brutality and senseless violence. In the eyes of the world and most of their countrymen, they were already the devil incarnate and they knew it. There was certainly nothing I could write that would further blacken their image.

Many Khmer Rouge cadre sympathized and were, to a degree, in awe of the sometimes ridiculous and always relentless lengths I had gone over the years attempting to access their inner sanctums and interview Pol Pot.

My persistence, I think, struck some familiar chord of revolutionary self-sacrifice-against-daunting-odds. Perhaps many of them could relate, having disappeared as eager, patriotic youths into the jungle more than twenty years earlier, waiting for naught the revolutionary victory. If they weren’t impressed, at least they were entertained by this shaved-headed American who wouldn’t go away. And if they weren’t entertained, I had regardless become a kind of fixture, like some half-mad Dennis the Menace to the Khmer Rouge’s Mr. Wilson, with whom they grew resigned to affectionately tolerate.

They had, over time, tried everything to reject me—arrested me at gunpoint, shot at me, ordered me killed, banished me, robbed me, and handed me over the border in disgust to be arrested by Thai authorities. I became rather legendary within the Khmer Rouge army, I was to learn, as this reckless, perhaps insane, rather likeable American who would appear in the oddest of circumstances. Literally nothing dissuaded me. I was fully cognizant and reconciled to the fact that there was s strong chance I would die in these jungles. I always tried to be smart with tactics, having committed to a strategy that required accepting a high level of intrinsic danger. But I never once rejected going into a war-zone simply because it was dangerous.

I continued to show up, uninvited, over the years in virtually every corner of their jungles, often where no foreigner had ever been. I arrived by foot, captured Russian military vehicles, driven by defecting government soldiers during battle, on the back of an elephant, bicycle, dirt bikes supplied by the CIA to non-communist guerrilla allies, by river in commandeered sampans, ox-cart, rented helicopter, accompanied by United Nations troops, guided by my own hired mercenaries, escorted by Thai military intelligence liaisons, with Thai businessmen who traded with the guerrillas, logging trucks, and even by taxi cab ( I can remember more than once the driver of my hired car simply refusing to go any further into the scrub and abandoning me to walk the last few miles). I once traversed the trench lines into Khmer Rouge territory driving a government military officer’s Russian jeep, adorned with full government regalia identifying the vehicle, which I had rented from a corrupt Cambodian general. I remember startled guerrilla troops popping up from bunkers, leaves and branches crudely camouflaging their helmets, as I weaved through frontline trenches and around minefields in abandoned rice paddies. I was advised by unamused Khmer Rouge commanders never, ever to do that again.

Almost always, I arrived under dangerous circumstances, through combat frontlines, from enemy-held  territory, over mountains, crossing national borders, always through a minefield, from north, south, east and west, essentially to be turned away, mainly empty-handed, time and time again. I didn’t mid the rejection. The chase itself was a fun-filled adventure, a young man’s fantasy.

My visits to the Khmer Rouge zones didn’t endear me to the government forces either, who regularly tried to kill me. Spies are ubiquitous in Cambodia. The government would know I was in Khmer rouge zones within a very short time, often within hours. I listened to government field radio reports broadcasting my location to front-line troops. They would then rocket our position. This, in turn, didn’t endear me to the guerrilla troops with whom I was visiting.

In general, I was viewed as a problem. Many had concluded my very presence was simply a pain in the ass. There was often a mood shift which seemed to elicit an inaudible groan when I would arrive.

But I was the only westerner many of the Khmer Rouge cadre  and jungle fighters had ever had contact with.  So there was the ever present animal in the zoo factor. It was not unusual for large crowds of Khmer Rouge civilians and soldiers, some walking for days, to gather at a safe distance and gawk at me for hours. Old ladies would squat and chew betel nut, spitting and exchange raucous commentary with each other. “ Are they all fat and bald?” one toothless old lady asked my bodyguard in a remote village which had never hosted a foreigner before.

I remember clearly one time squatting around a fire late at night deep in the jungle just north of the great temples of Angkor Wat, monkeys crying from the tall canopy of trees. I had walked for two weeks from Thailand with non-communist guerrillas accompanying them on a mission to attack government positions. We often encountered Khmer Rouge guerrillas who shared the jungle with their then coalition partners fighting the common enemy, the occupying Vietnamese army and their installed government in Phnom Penh. A grizzled Khmer Rouge cadre was casually drawing battle plans in the dirt with a stick, explaining to other young fighters the next morning’s attack. He pointed to a small village, thrusting his stick in the dirt and raw hatred flashing from his eyes, hissed “Tomorrow, we will turn it into a rice field!” Several minutes into the preview of the intended assault he looked across at me squatting on my haunches a few feet away from him, locked on my eyes in abrupt recognition, and lept back with a cry of terror. “Joy Marey! Barong moek Howee!” Translation: “Motherfucker! A white foreigner has arrived!” was the totality of his exact words. He literally grabbed an AK-47 assault rifle, jumped to his feet, clutched his heart and paced back and forth, taking deep breaths and cursing for a few minutes to recover. Everyone who fit my description, after all, was the enemy, of whom he had only seen pictures of over the years. And to see a vision of the devil himself, a blue-eyed, bearded, bald one, armed and dressed in combat fatigues staring at him from across the campfire deep in the jungle, was too much for him to process. The poor man never seemed quite to recover. He glared at me for days afterwards, his face furrowed in a queer mix of raw hate and confusion.

To try and keep track of the inner workings of the Khmer Rouge was not just a matter of analyzing information. That was the easier part—a skill developed by following the nuances of their historical methodology and rhetoric. The hard part was getting credible, first-hand information. Elevating secrecy to an art form, the Khmer Rouge obscured and compartmentalized all levels of information so it wouldn’t fall into the hands of the enemy, which by 1995 was a category that included every single nation on earth and most Cambodian citizens. I was keenly aware, each time I went into their territory, it was a category that clearly also included me.

For the time being, however, I continued to be a potentially useful enemy whose channel, by order of Pol Pot himself, remained open. I comforted myself by dwelling on the fact, particularly when I was being glared at by armed Khmer Rouge, that every Khmer Rouge cadre knew that it would be suicidal to harm someone who Pol Pot thought might be useful. My relationship with the Khmer Rouge had evolved in the early 1990’s to include, by default, nothing less than perhaps their primary liaison to the West. They did not think of me as a sympathizer. Indeed, in their perpetual state of rather astounding and logic-muddled paranoia, they had concluded that I was a paid operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. “We have discussed whether you are CIA and decided it doesn’t really matter,” one Khmer Rouge diplomat told me matter of factly once. They politely attempted to maintain the charade that they thought I was an independent journalist, but we both knew they didn’t believe it. They simply did not understand the concept of someone who did not serve the interests of—was under the control of—the government that issued ones passport. They often used the term “you” when referring to the US government or angrily condemned me for some Washington policy. I would ritually correct them. And they would apologize half-heartedly. The irony is US law forbids the CIA from recruiting journalists employed by American owned media, and the Far Eastern Economic Review was owned by Dow Jones—perhaps the most iconic symbol of world capitalism. So, while extensive, my dealings with CIA operatives were often a tortuous process themselves that rivaled the Khmer Rouge, with many having to go through acrobatic lawyer-driven hoops to receive prior permission from Washington before meeting me. Some simply ignored the directive from Langley, and I count many intelligence officials—from a broad range of competing countries—among my friends.

It was helpful that the Khmer Rouge faced a couple of basic problems that worked to my advantage. Even before they retreated back to the jungle in 1992, many governments banned their officials from any direct contact with the guerrillas or their representatives. Even at diplomatic functions and cocktail parties, the Khmer Rouge was shunned. US policy went so far as to specifically prohibit initiating contact at cocktail parties. U.S. government officials were allowed—by written directive—to return, but not offer, a verbal greetings or handshake. This tied the hands of intelligence agents or diplomats  who were on one hand tasked with gathering information on the guerrilla group, and on the other forbidden from dealing with them directly. I, of course, had no such problem.

At cocktail parties, Khmer Rouge officials would often be standing alone, clearly uncomfortable in their western suits, looking grumpy as they held a cocktail they wouldn’t drink, being ignored and eyed simultaneously, not unlike a pedophile relative at a family gathering.

I not only had no problem chatting them up, I  reveled in it. I particularly liked National Day celebrations, held by virtually every countries embassy once a year. By protocol, the entire diplomatic list and other dignitaries and select nationals of the country would be invited, including the Khmer Rouge. Those functions to which I wasn’t invited, I crashed. I have attended scores over the years. The hotel ballrooms and ambassador’s living rooms are filled with people who would normally refuse my telephone calls. It was a diplomat’s nightmare and journalists dream; stuck being chatted up by a journalist he had long tried to avoid. Often the Khmer Rouge diplomat would be found in the corner with the North Korean or some other third world pariah. Afterwards, it wasn’t unusual to be grilled by jealous but thankful diplomats who needed something to write in their cable to the home office on their rare Khmer Rouge encounter.

The second basic problem, after the Khmer Rouge retreated back to their jungle redoubts, was often simply a matter of logistics. Dialogue from the jungle is a pain in the neck. Aside from the issues of safety and political will, physical access was extremely difficult. Normal modes of contact—such as telephone, email, meetings in obscure seedy bars or fancy hotel lobbies were, of course, not possible or practical.

In 1996, I took a sabbatical from reporting from Phnom Penh to be a visiting scholar at a Washington academic think tank. It was not unrelated to a rather incendiary series of articles I had written naming both Cambodian Prime Ministers as being bankrolled by and, in exchange, giving political protection to, a major Asian heroin trafficker and organized crime figure.

One day in 1996, while in my office at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, I got a call from a friend in Europe with a message. The Khmer Rouge wanted to see me urgently. Could I come to the jungle? The message was to go to the remote sleepy Thai border town of Surin, and check into a particular hotel as soon as possible. When I arrived at the hotel, I was to call a particular phone number in Europe and give my hotel room number. I was then to wait for someone to contact me. That was the entirety of the message. It was a typical set-up for a meeting with the Khmer Rouge. No mention of who I was to meet, where I would go, when I would be contacted, or what the subject matter would concern. I didn’t even know who within the Khmer Rouge was contacting me.

The routing of the message was typical in its circuitous layers to obscure any prying eyes or ears. And it was designed for the Khmer Rouge to remain in complete control of the process of me arriving in their territory. It denied me any ability to double-cross them if I was so inclined, or to pass on sensitive information to any foreign intelligence officials. It also left me very vulnerable if something were to go wrong. There was always a palpable undercurrent of dark unease for me with these people.

A Khmer Rouge “former” diplomat in Paris, who was married to a French woman and therefore held French citizenship and was allowed to remain in France, served as one of the guerrillas primary contacts in Europe. The Khmer Rouge “former” diplomat in Paris had been contacted by another Khmer Rouge “former” diplomat living underground in Bangkok (in a safe house maintained by Thai military intelligence). That diplomat maintained human runners who would be dispatched back and forth overland across the Thai border into the jungle. The diplomat in Paris had called my friend. My friend, a Franco-Khmer, was trusted by the Khmer Rouge but not a member of the Party. He, in turn, was known to be close to me. The leadership in the jungle relayed information to me in Washington this way. None of the intermediaries were told more than they needed to know beyond getting a message to me. Even if they were inclined to talk they didn’t have any information. The “former” diplomat in Paris had one fully equipped man, trained in China as a coded communication specialist, who could transmit and receive top secret messages from a counterpart in the jungle in times of crisis.

So, as always, I told my friend to reply I would be departing immediately and to relay the message that I would check into the specific hotel as instructed in Surin, Thailand within 72 hours. I boarded a plane from Washington’s Dulles international airport that night for the 36 hour flight to Bangkok. From Bangkok it was a 10 hour drive to the border town.

From the hotel, I dialed a contact number in Europe and informed my contact simply the number of the hotel room I had checked into. No names were used. No countries were mentioned. Certainly no words intimating any outlawed guerrilla groups culpable for committing crimes against humanity were uttered. Even the name of the hotel was omitted. “How are you, my friend?” I said. “I have arrived fine. I am in number 302. I will wait here.’

“I will let my friends know now. They will contact you. Be careful.” He couldn’t tell me who, where or what to expect or when I could expect to know when I would be contacted to not to be informed, then, either, of any of these details.

Then I waited….for days. I forget how many, but several. Mainly I stayed drunk. I did sit-ups and ran in place. I left the room for one hour each afternoon to swim at a lap pool in the town. I ate rice and noodles from the lobby nightclub, which doubled as a karaoke bar, coffee shop, and whorehouse. I prepared for an interview with Pol Pot I cleaned my camera equipment and read literature and documents on the Khmer Rouge I always kept for distraction. I had read everything at least once before.

I had no idea whether I was to walk through the jungle for days, whether I would meet important leaders, including Pol Pot, or when my contacts would arrive to retrieve me.

All that uncertainty requires contingency preparation: jungle clothes, still cameras, video camera, batteries, film, notebooks, hammock, mosquito net, food, rolls of chewing tobacco, whiskey and Ziploc bags of all sizes to protect against the daily monsoon rains. Everything had to fit perfectly inside a small Khmer Rouge knapsack on my back in case I had to walk for days.

And I couldn’t really leave the hotel room not knowing when the Khmer Rouge operatives would arrive and not wanting to draw attention to myself in a town where there are very few western visitors who aren’t up to no good. The small hotel staff knew me well after years of coming though, and it was no secret what, in general, I was up to. They knew I was going to nearby Cambodia, where there was a war, but they really didn’t want to know any more than that. I would always leave the lobby, usually before dawn, not checking out, dressed in jungle clothing with a backpack and laden with camera equipment. Often, I wouldn’t return for days, muddy and dirty and accompanied by fit men in crew cuts and sunglasses. These were my Thai military intelligence escorts who ferried me across the border through a myriad of Thai checkpoints who didn’t speak much and dressed in civilian clothes. They had a particular ID card that seemed to grip any other Thai official's attention with an immediate positive response and silent accommodation. This had always precluded the hotel staff previously of inquiring who I was or what I was doing.

This time there were no Thai officials to greet me and smooth my egress across national borders.

Then one rainy morning at 0600 there was a firm knock on the door. I asked who it was: First in Thai, then in English, then in Cambodian. After a long pause, a hushed voice replied in Khmer: “It’s me.”

TO BE CONTINUED……….

Copyright Nate Thayer. Excerpts from “Sympathy for the Devil: A Journalists Memoir from Inside Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge” All Rights Reserved. No publication or citation permitted without author’s express written permission.)  

 

Were the Khmer Rouge communists? By Nate Thayer

Were the Khmer Rouge communists?

by Nate Thayer on Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 1:43am

Although theoretically a communist party, the personal statements of all the Khmer Rouge top leaders who remained alive after 1996 (including the three on trial now), suggest the Khmer Rouge were more accurately characterized as ultra-nationalists and xenophobic racists (with many similarities to fascism) intent on creating their own version of organized power deeply rooted in current Khmer political culture and history based on no external models. Of the 18 members of the central committee of the communist party that took power in 1975, only four spoke a foreign language. Since neither Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Marx, or Engels were ever translated into Khmer, it is hard to argue that the unspeakable failure and suffering that occurred under the KR was a result of communist—or, for that matter, any outside--ideology. The KR movement was in essence very Khmer. It's demand for obsequies loyalty to a single entity; its refusal to allow for even internal debate or opposition political thought or organization; its fixation on being a victim of foreign designs or trickery; its racial hatred towards non-Khmer; its unspoken inferiority complex to that of its more properly organized neighbors; its use of harsh violence as a central tool of consolidating and maintaining power; and its belief that it had only to unleash its unique abilities superior to other nations to achieve a superior society than the world had previously known were all central psychological and concrete ingredients of the feudal monarchies and regimes which had preceded the KR for centuries. These were all tenets in the tradition of their predecessors but allowed the Khmer Rouge, with its Stalinist power structure, to metastasize like an inoperable cancer throughout the body politic. Within three years 18 of the 22 members of the central committee of the Party had been executed or named as targets for execution. The irony is that, the KR so weakened the Cambodian nation and provoked its neighbors, that it guaranteed the requirement of its delusional prophecy come true--a foreign invasion by Vietnam to save the very nation and race from self extermination.

The Khmer Rouge sought the elimination of any vestiges of recent Cambodian political, social, and economic society. They refused assistance, advice, and even diplomatic relations with most every other nation. They demanded absolute obsequiousness to their policies from the citizenry, attempted to create an agrarian utopia based on emptying of the population from urban areas, demanded anti-intellectualism as state policy and demonized all things foreign—particularly Vietnam--as irredeemable historical enemies intent on conquering Cambodia and eliminating it as a sovereign nation.

They families of the entire population were separated, their children taken to live separately in labor brigades in an attempt to destroy traditional loyalties to be replaced by supine and unmitigated allegiance to the party. There was a near total renunciation of foreign trade, and a radical sealing of the borders and all access of information to and from the outside. Their largest manufacturing plant recycled old rubber vehicle tires to make shoes.

Perhaps their primary focus was an impossible to exaggerate paranoia of enemies everywhere, both “internal” from within their own ranks and the external designs of all foreigners as enemies—with a particular focus on Vietnam—who, the Khmer Rouge leadership were convinced, were poised and aggressively intent on conquering and eliminating Cambodia as a nation and the Khmer as a race.

 

In the process of implementation of these policies they combined the failures of Cambodia’s political culture--of which they vowed to eliminate and instead mimicked and exacerbated--with delusional, absurd, ill-planned and technically impossible utopian fantasies of what they deemed the “Super Great Leap Forward” in an economic strategy implemented in 1977. A direct reference to being more capable than China itself (in its Great Leap Forward), it was designed to prove their superior talents and abilities demonstrating they were racially, culturally, and as a nation-state more advanced than any other economic model in world history,  not just rejecting any foreign model but unsupervised by any Cambodian trained cadre. They forced compliance to these policies with rule through the centrally directed harsh use of violence and forced implantation of delusional central agricultural, economic, and social policies. They relied on manual labour, and arrested and executed cadre who suggested that mechanized machines such as tractors would be a superior method than the forced labour of a starving population. When impossible production quotas weren’t met, the KR cadre in the area were deemed as foreign agents intentionally sabotaging the Cambodian nation. These combined to create a recipe destined for disaster. They allowed no internal debate for their policies contributing to the astonishing failures of central policy as a whole, utter collapse of any normal government functions, extraordinary suffering of the population, a petrified and robotic Party rank and file, and finally a war they provoked which ended in the loss of their country to Vietnamese occupation. These dominant features underlined their tenure in power.

These themes are all consistent with the Khmer Rouge absolute policy of what they called “self reliance-self mastery” and their belief that they were capable of alone creating an agrarian utopia that harked back to their glorious Angkorean past. Pol Pot’s “Super Great Leap Forward” was an example that Cambodia could make achievements superior to that of even China, and reflected both the fact they were far from subservient minions of Beijing and a psychological penchant for vengeance against all things foreign which, they believed, had stripped them of their cultural and racial dignity. The fact that Cambodia had been a failed state in the 600 years since the demise of the Angkor empire created an inferiority complex of which they were determined to prove a misconception or a reflection of the rapacious, corrupt, and incompetent rulers that preceded them. In the end, they proved themselves even more incompetent and inhumane than their political enemies. Those who resisted or questioned their impossible vision for a utopia unique in history were often killed with the sincere belief they were enemies of the very Cambodian race, people, and nation.

Do the Khmer Rouge on trial this week uncomfortably reflect mainstream Cambodian views? By Nate Thayer

At the Khmer Rouge trial yesterday, Nuon Chea said that Vietnam intended to “swallow Cambodia and rip Cambodia of her ethnic race” adding “never trust a foreigner.” This came after a litany of testimony of unspeakable torture and violence inflicted by the KR on fellow Cambodians. The ugly truth is that Nuon Chea’s comments have deep roots in mainstream Cambodian politics. Political violence and the humiliation and destruction of political opponents are far from rare in modern Cambodian politics. Nuon Chea’s view of Vietnam, Cambodian political opposition, and foreigners is a common theme in mainstream Cambodia politics.  The unspoken truth is that far too many Cambodian political leaders are not against murder, human rights abuses, and political violence—they oppose them only when they are the targets.

The Khmer Rouge regime was a mixture of paranoia, hatred, intolerance, a deep historical resentment, inferiority complex, desire for vengeance, and an absurd belief to not just defeat and extinguish their historical enemy, but the Vietnamese race itself. This Khmer Rouge intolerance fits not uncomfortably in the belief system of their Cambodian political opponents. The Khmer Rouge hatred of Vietnam and foreign nefarious intentions against Cambodia has a long precedence in mainstream Cambodian political views. They are shared by a majority of Cambodians of all political stripes. Even their focus on “internal enemies” of the KR party is rooted in centuries of Khmer reality. Cambodia has always had one leader who demanded complete loyalty and absolute political power, no history of coalition politics, opposition parties, or any kind of independent judiciary, press, or even thinking. Anything that reflected any of the former categorized one as an enemy that must be crushed, usually after being publicly humiliated. If one was not submissive, then one was a political enemy by definition. This has virtually always been true in Khmer political culture. When Khieu Samphan—also on trial this week—was in parliament and the cabinet of the then Sihanouk government, he was stripped naked in broad daylight by government police and paraded down the street. He soon fled to the Khmer Rouge and jungle amid public threats to assassinate him. Humiliation and abuse of one’s opponents has a long tradition in Khmer politics. Leaders routinely insult each other in public.  And the murder of political opposition is a common method employed by all Cambodian factions. Sihanouk murdered many opposition figures. After seizing power in 1970, the U.S. backed Lon Nol regime, which overthrew Sihanouk ( who then joined and publicly led the Khmer Rouge into power) rounded up and publicly executed tens of thousands of ethnic Vietnamese civilians prior to expelling the remainder. As an example of acceptance of the murder of Vietnamese civilians by today’s mainstream Cambodian political parties and leaders, during the UN elections the Khmer Rouge rounded up and executed 29 women and children of Vietnamese origin who had been fisherman for generations in Cambodia. Not one Cambodian political party, of which there were more than 30 registered with the UN, raised a voice of objection. They knew that they would alienate the views of the population if they did so. Hun Sen, during his bloody coup of 1997, overthrowing the UN elected government, hunted down and executed hundreds of opposition figures, many brutally tortured, their eyes gouged out and their penises severed and stuffed in their mouth while alive, then disemboweled and their liver fried and eaten. Some had their tongues ripped from their mouths with pliers while alive under interrogation. So in many ways Nuon Chea and Pol Pot were an extreme reflection and logical extension of a Cambodian leader, their views a reflection of their predecessors, successors, and countrymen. Just some food for thought.

The long overdue and politicized trial of the three remaining top Khmer Rouge leaders offers an opportunity for an unvarnished history on one of the most unspeakable blights on modern abuse of power, human dignity, human rights, and international rules of law and war. Or it may be squandered, serving to once again whitewash, deflect, and demonize a few for which many others share guilt and responsibility. It is a reality deeply rooted in other mainstream players in current Cambodian political culture, and those which preceded and succeeded the Khmer Rouge. It also deeply implicates the international community and other Cambodian political leaders, in participating, supporting, reacting to, and delaying taking responsibility for their role in this tragedy. The Khmer Rouge were not an aberration. And the responsibility was far from limited to those on trial now. The ugly truth is that the trial reflects a very uncomfortable--but fundamental--psychology that is alive and ignored in mainstream Cambodia today. I will post excerpts from never before published interviews and documents of Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Ta Mok, Duch, Pol Pot, the current Cambodian government, and other international players in a small attempt to add some context to the current trial and commentary. They include three recorded interviews with Nuon Chea in the jungles of Northern Cambodia, and a roundtable recorded several hour discussion with Ta Mok, Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan on the killings while they were in power, their justifications for them, and the ideology that motivated their policies.  These were conducted in the months and weeks before their capture and surrender.

‘I AM IN DANGER’: Duch talks of the risks to his life, provides details of Khmer Rouge death machine By Nate Thayer

‘I AM IN DANGER’: Duch talks of the risks to his life, even as he provides further details of Khmer Rouge death machine 

By Nate Thayer in Battambang province

Far Eastern Economic Review

May 13, 1999

 

(Authors note: At the time of the publication of this interview, the UN special representative to Cambodia on Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, called for the Phnom Penh government to ensure Duch’s protection “from possible retaliation or attempts to reduce him to silence…because of his key role as a cadre at the heart of the political security machinery he is a crucial witness to some of the worst of human-rights violations which have occurred during this century. Because of the publication of his interview, his safety and life may seriously be in danger.” Hammarberg called for an “ad hoc international tribunal” to be set up outside Cambodia. “The Cambodian judiciary unfortunately is unfit to handle a trial of this complexity and magnitude,” he said, because it failed to meet certain conditions such as “a culture of respect for due process.” The charges proposed by a UN panel of experts cover crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, forced labour, torture, and crimes against internationally protected persons. I was asked by the court for raw copies of my taped interviews of Duch, Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ta Mok, and Ieng Sary. I was also asked to be a witness and testify at the trial. I rejected both requests. Not because I oppose a trial for those indicted (and many others)--quite the opposite--but because I oppose being party to a politically motivated/manipulated/influenced show trial. Not to mention it is in violation of international standards of justice which forbid hearsay. And international law where if a person is alive and available to testify themselves, it is forbidden for a third party to quote that person when he is available to testify on his own behalf. A third reason, is I am a journalist, and portions of the interviews were given on various degrees of "on/off the record" and "background" basis. No court has the right to compel a journalist to reveal their sources. It undermines the whole basis of the role of a free press in a free society. But mostly, in this case, it is clear that there is little difference between this trial and a Stalinist era communist show trial where accused are cherry picked for political reasons, not based on an evidentiary process where investigators gather evidence, decide where they constitute sufficient, court admissible information to base an  indictment, and then press charges. These defendants were pre determined for political reasons and many others were excluded, also for political reasons, despite overwhelming evidence of culpability sufficient for indictment. For Cambodians, it reinforces the reality of impunity from justice for those with political influence. This trial is being given the rubber stamp of approval by the UN and international community, sending a message to your average Cambodian peasant that there exists no where to turn where an independent judiciary will seek justice on their behalf. In thousand sof Cambodian villages, people remain alive and in political power who have committed crimes against international law and their victims have no recourse.)

 

Kang Kek Ieu’s name is usually spelled “Kiang” by scholars, but in his interviews with the REVIEW, he said he writes it as Kang. He is an odd looking man, his large head seemingly out of proportion to his short, thin body. His huge ears frame a wide grin, which exposes his missing teeth and the rotting remaining ones. Both eyes are unfocused, clouded grey-blue with what appears to be glaucoma. His left hand is missing its index finger and is curved like a claw, the result, he says, of an accident while cleaning a weapon in 1983.

He seemed calm about being exposed as a mass—murderer, even laughing briefly at the irony of being asked by the REVIEW to write his own “confession.” Presented with a rough biography to verify, as well as copies of orders he and other leaders issued to torture and kill prisoners, he spoke for days and wrote long descriptions of the workings and structure of the Khmer Rouge killing machine. In the process, he sometimes wept and expressed deep remorse.

He was intent on concealing his whereabouts. “I don’t want any man to know our relationship,” he told the REVIEW, “They will make me unsafe. I have no secrets from the Far Eastern economic Review, but I fear the people around me. I don’t know who is the man of Nuon Chea, of Ta Mok, of Khieu Samphan. I am in danger. My life is at risk. My sister will worry if I speak in Khmer. She will say, ‘My brother will die!’ They can kill me. They will say I am the man of the CIA who sold out to the USA.”

Duch said he had been visited by the local police chief after being seen talking to the review in this remote hamlet. “I see you are talking to the bad people,” Duch quoted the police chief as telling him, “You should be careful.”

There are many people who don’t want the truth to be known, leading the United Nations to fear for his safety. In a statement, the UN special representative to Cambodia on human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, called for the Phnom Penh government to promptly take steps to ensure Duch’s protection “from possible retaliation or attempts to reduce him to silence…because of his key role as a cadre at the heart of the political security machinery he is a crucial witness to some of the worst of human-rights violations which have occurred during this century. Because of the publication of his interview, his safety and life may seriously be in danger."

Hammarberg called for an “ad hoc international tribunal” to be set up outside Cambodia. “The Cambodian judiciary unfortunately is unfit to handle a trial of this complexity and magnitude,” he said, because it failed to meet certain conditions such as “a culture of respect for due process.” The charges proposed by a UN panel of experts cover crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, forced labour, torture, and crimes against internationally protected persons.

If Duch goes before an international tribunal, his evidence would potentially be damning. Among his statements to the REVIEW:

--“Foreigners don’t know who ordered the killings. I want to explain clearly to you: It was a decision of the central committee of the Communist Party. I followed the orders of my superiors, Nuon Chea and Son Sen, but I have great difficulty now, thinking that the people who died did nothing wrong.”

--“My superior first was Vorn Vet during the war time, then after liberation (in 1975) I reported directly to Son Sen. In July 1978, I was transferred to Nuon Chea when Son Sen went to command the fighting in the east with the Vietnamese.”

--Duch later killed Vorn Vet at Tuol Sleng (see “Death in Detail”) after he was purged. “Ta Mok personally arrested Vorn Vet at his house. (Standing Committee member) Ke Pok was there and hid under the bed, trembling with fear. Nuon Chea's wife told me this.” Ke Pok, who as a Khmer Rouge commander was implicated in the purges of the late 1970’s, is now a one-star general in the Cambodian army.

--“The decision to arrest all the women and children, the families of suspects, was made by the provincial committee, the regional leaders, or the central committee of the party. Everyone connected must be killed.”

--Duch said that photos were taken of all the prisoners sent to Tuol Sleng “to prove to the party that they were arrested. For some people, Nuon Chea wanted me to give him pictures of their dead bodies for proof. He ordered me to bring pictures of their dead bodies to his office.”

The arrest of Hu Nim, the former Khmer Rouge Minister of Information, was decided by the entire Central Committee, Duch said. But it was Nuon Chea and Son Sen who actually ordered the arrests and executions of purged cadres. “For arresting people, it was the everyday job of Nuon Chea and Son Sen.” Nuon Chea was in charge of the killing machine and “the second man for the killing was Son Sen.” (Son Sen is now dead; Nuon Chea is living freely in western Cambodia)

--Neither Vorn Vet nor Ieng Sary (the former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister, now also living in Pailin) was present at the 1978 meeting at which the leaders decided to purge the Khmer Rouge eastern zone, Duch recalled. “Son Sen and Nuon Chea ordered the arrest and killing of many of the party leaders,” he said. Then, looking puzzled, he added: “I don’t know why.”

He described the process of distributing the confessions he extracted from his victims under torture: “I made four copies of every confession. I would give the original to Son Sen and keep one copy at Tuol Sleng. Son Sen would give a copy to Nuon Chea and Nuon Chea would give to others depending on the case. After July, 1978, I gave copies to Nuon Chea directly.”

I had a special telephone in my house direct to Son Sen that could not be tapped. Nuon Chea talked less on the phone, but preferred to write instructions and I would visit him at his office. Son Sen loved to talk on the phone, sometimes for more than an hour.”

The Khmer Rouge leaders are aware that the archives seized at Tuol Sleng are potentially incriminating, Duch indicated.” On 25 June 1986, Son Sen asked me, ‘What about the papers at S-21? (a name for the national-security apparatus)’ I told him the truth, that Nuon Chea didn’t tell me the Vietnamese were coming.” (Duch had already said that because of this lack of warning, he didn’t have time to destroy the papers) “Son Sen got very angry with Nuon Chea.”

Poring over some of the Tuol Sleng documents, which ordered the torture and killing of thousands of people, Duch said: “This is the handwriting off Nuon Chea. You see this handwriting is square; mine is oval, like Son Sen’s.”

Having spoken of the fates of eight westerners killed at Tuol Sleng, Duch also recalled the death of another foreigner, a French truck driver who had been working in Indochina before the Khmer Rouge took power. The man’s death was ordered by Ta Mok, Duch said. “I killed him in 1971. Ta Mok ordered me to kill him.” He said the Frenchman, whose name is being withheld by the REVIEW pending the notification of his family, ‘was very courageous. He explained to me about Catholicism.”

Though Duch seemed to realize that these revelations would change his life, he didn’t know quite how. “I guess I cannot work to build schools in my district now, “he said. He then asked whether he might get a job as a human rights worker.

DEATH IN DETAIL: ‘Duch’ implicates living Khmer Rouge leaders in killings. Says Nuon Chea ran Pol Pot’s Death machine By Nate Thayer

DEATH IN DETAIL: ‘Duch’ implicates living Khmer Rouge leaders in killings. Nuon Chea ran Pol Pot’s Death machine, Duch says.

By Nate Thayer in Battambang province

Far Eastern Economic Review

May 13, 1999

(Authors note: This article was written one week after the REVIEW published a several story package by myself and photographer Nic Dunlop. Dunlop had first located Duch, who was living under an alias doing social work and recognized his face, in a truly extraordinary focus by Dunlop on what was then one of the most notorious and in hiding mass murderers in the world, weeks earlier. While Dunlop took his photograph, he did not, with good reason, broach the subject with Duch of  who he really was. The area was dangerous and Nic wanted to be sure it was indeed Duch, and be prepared for a negative reaction. He returned to Bangkok, contacted me, and we returned to a remote village in western Cambodia and confronted Duch with who he was. It was not a relaxing encounter. If Duch had chosen to, he could have disposed of us and no one would ever prove the details. This was hours from any communication with the outside and the heart of territory still controlled by nominally defected ex-KR. I knew the government had long been aware of Duch's location. And I had closely kept track of rumours of him for years which had him dead, working as a school teacher, a converted born-again Christian, and using a similar name to the alias he had introduced himself to Dunlop with. I had informed the REVIEW office that if I was not in contact in 48 hours, there was probably a serious problem. After a very brief denial when I asked if he "had ever worked for the security services between 1975 and 1979" (he contended he was a school teacher then), Duch took a second look at my business card, paused, and silently stared directly in my eyes for perhaps 30 seconds. He then said: "You are from the Far Eastern Economic Review. You are the one who interviewed Pol Pot and Ta Mok." Those seconds hung in the air far longer than was comfortable. "Yes," I said, " And we know who you are." Duch stared silently again for what seemed like forever, his mind obviously racing with the implications of the encounter, reached over, put his hand on my leg, and said "It is God's will you are here. My future is now in God's hands." And he never  lied again. We brought copies of his own torture and execution documents from Tuol Sleng, many with his handwriting and those of Nuon Chea and others. He meticulously acknowledged and identified each one. I gave him a rough biography I had written of him and asked him to correct or add details. He did so with great focus adding many dates and events. I had contacted several Catholic and Protestant Priests and said I was going to meet with someone who had " perhaps killed many people" and asked which passages of the bible might such a person most relate to. ( The answer was Paul: "chief of the Sinners" who was himself a murderer and converted, confessed his sins, sought redemption, was forgiven, and was granted salvation. It was a passage that Duch knew by memory)  After several days of interviewing him, the story was published in the REVIEW. We warned and made clear to Duch that his life would be in danger at 5:00 pm on that wednesday night, when the Review would send its normal press release of the next issues top storiies. We knew it would be picked up everywhere and broadcast in the VOA Khmer language service at 8:00pm that night. Arrangements were made for a secret arrest warrant to be issued in Belgium, so there would be legal authority to have him smuggled across the Thai border to safety, as many powerful people would have reason to silence him. Amnesty International and the UN Centre for Human Rights were pre alerted to the public release of the fact that Duch had been located. They were prepared to release public statements simultaneously with the story publication calling for the Cambodian government to ensure his safety as his life was in danger and he was a key defendent and witness for any trial on Khmer Rouge crimes against humanity. Duch was given mobile phone contacts for me in Battambang city, about two hours away, and told arrangements were in place for a safe house for him or to be smuggled out of the country if he felt his life was in danger. He chose to initially stay in his village. Within hours of the story being released, the very angry village police chief came to his house and said he was ordered to "come to a meeting.' A well known euphamism to Duch, he fled on foot and contacted me in Battambang. I checked him in under a pseudonym in the room next to mine at an obscure hotel. There, tape recorders were turned on and for a week he spoke in great detail of the entire machinery of the Khmer Rouge movement and specifics of many instances of war crimes and crimes against humanity and who ordered carried out and was involved. During this time, international pressure was significant; Governments called for his arrest, many called for his safety to be ensured by Cambodia authorities. The story was published but Duch had seemingly vanished again. After initial refusal, Hun Sen formally agreed to launch a government search for his whereabouts, and journalists descended on Battambang. As a journalist it wasn't my job to arrest him. It was also my responsibility to ensure he understood the consequences of his public statements and to ensure he wasn't murdered for speaking out to the REVIEW, as he had as much a right to due process of law as that he denied to thousands. I was beseiged by Cambodian government, military, diplomats and journalists demanding to know the whereabouts of Duch, who by this time had been known to have dissapeared from his village. One pro--government paper's front page banner headline was "Is Nate Thayer Hiding Duch?" above photogrpahs of us both. After a week, Duch decided he would seek, like Nuon Chea, Khiue Samphan, Ieng Sary and thousands of other former KR, the protection of  a senior Khmer Rouge military officer who had 'defected' to the government and was now a general in the Hun Sen army. We both left the hotel at the same time, he to the compound of the General and a rather nervous me--with 40 hours of the only copy of tape recordings detailing the Khmer Rouge killing apparatus--by land through a myriad of government military checkpoints over the border into Thailand. Duch was immediately betrayed by his contact and was whisked by helicopter to Phnom Penh where he has been in prison ever since. This story is one of those published after the two weeks spent with Duch.)

This time, it was Duch’s turn to write his confessions. In the weeks since the REVIEW broke the news that the notorious Khmer Rouge security boss was still alive, Kaing Kek Ieu has been in hiding, answering verbally and in writing the magazine’s questions about his role in the movement’s 1975-79 reign of terror.

The revelations about his job as chief executioner were chilling enough. But even more importantly, he recounted in detail how senior Khmer Rouge officials ordered the mass murder of prisoners processed through Tuol Sleng detention centre, which Duch—as he was then known—directed. Notably, he implicated Pol Pot’s number 2, Nuon Chea, who is living freely in Pailin, western Cambodia.

Duch’s testimony, which began with last week’s article, is fueling calls for the arrest and international trial of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. It has also made Duch the most wanted man in Cambodia, with the United Nation’s warning that his life is in danger from those who want him silenced.

Phnom Penh fears that moving against the Khmer Rouge leaders, who have officially defected to the government but still effectively control the ex-Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrounding Pailin, could plunge the country back into civil war. Only one Khmer Rouge leader—former military chief-of-staff Ta Mok—is in custody.

Duch, now a born-again Christian, said he was ready to testify against his former comrades and answer for his own crimes in front of an international tribunal. “It is Ok. They can have my body, Jesus has my soul. It is important that this history be understood. I want to tell you everything clearly.” And he did.

“I was a technician for the Communist party,” he declared, then went on to describe the inner workings of S-21, the Khmer Rouge security apparatus that he directed from Tuol Sleng, a converted Phnom Penh school where at least 16,000 people—many of them purged Khmer Rouge cadres and their families—were taken for interrogation. Only seven survived.

Duch said the policy of killing all prisoners was ‘an oral instruction of the party since 1971, when we were trying to rid our ranks of the enemy.” The definition of enemy expanded in 1973, when Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot decided that all cadres should come from the peasantry and the educated should be eliminated. “At that time many things changed and many people were killed,” Duch said.

Once the Khmer Rouge seized power, the internal purges widened. “After liberation in 1975, Pol Pot said: ‘We must protect the party and country by finding the enemies from within the Party. We are not strong enough to attack the enemies from outside, so we must destroy them from within.’ First we arrested the people in the north, then the southwest, then the northwest, then the east. He used Nuon Chea to do the work. Pol Pot never directly ordered the killings. Nuon Chea was always cruel and pompous. He never explained to the cadre, he only ordered them.”

Nuon Chea was in direct command of the Communist party’s killing machine, Duch said. “Vorn Vet and Chay Kim Hour were ordered killed by Nuon Chea,” he said referring to two top leaders. Duch said he personally carried out the orders. “I even had to exhume the body of Vorn Vet from the earth to take a picture of him dead because Nuon Chea wanted proof that he was killed.”

Duch said he also killed eight westerners at Tuol Sleng on Nuon Chea’s orders. “Nuon Chea ordered me to burn their bodies with tires to leave no bones.” The victims were from America, Australia, Britain, France and New Zealand, theoretically making their killers indictable in their country of origin. He said the foreigners were held for a month and tortured using electric shocks by chief interrogator Mam Nay, now a police officer in western Cambodia.

Duch’s testimony could also bolster the case against Ta Mok, the one-legged general who was captured in March, but as of early may, the authorities in Phnom Penh had made no effort to summon Duch to give evidence. “Ta Mok had his own prison,” Duch said—a revelation previously unknown to investigators. “It was located at Cherie O’Phnoe in Kampot province. Many were killed there.”

Duch said his technique for killing prisoners was superior to Mok’s. “I knew from experience that if they were only tortured they wouldn’t say anything. So torture had to be accompanied by psychological tactics; so I told them they would be released if they talked. This was a lie, but it worked. Ta Mok didn’t care about the mental state of his victims. He just tortured them and killed them.”

Duch’s execution methods were similarly efficient.” We had no instruction from the party on how to kill them, but we did not use bullets. Usually we slit their throats,” he said, drawing his finger across his aorta to demonstrate. “We killed them like a chicken.”

Asked about the thousands of women and children he killed, Duch turned away as tears welled in his eyes. “It was a fact that everyone in the Communist party knew that everyone arrested must be killed. Ask anybody in the party.”

Now that his past has been revealed, Duch clearly fears for his life. He sometimes spoke only in whispers, referring to Khmer Rouge leaders by their initials so that listeners would not recognize their names. At other times, he asked to be driven to remote areas to speak in a vehicle where he couldn’t be overheard. Over two weeks, the REVIEW conducted over forty hours of interviews that shed unprecedented light onto the workings of the Khmer Rouge.

“The decisions to kill were not made by one man, not just Pol Pot, but the entire central committee,” Duch stressed.

“Nuon Chea, he was the principal man for the killings. Pol Pot was interested in military strategy. Khieu Samphan did not have the right to decide who to arrest and order killed. He was a notetaker.”

“Pol Pot knew about S-21, but did not direct it personally. He left that job personally to Nuon Chea as No. 2 in the party and Son Sen as head of the army and police.” Then, shaking his head, he added: “They arrested nearly everyone by the end.”

The decision to purge thousands of cadre in the eastern zone in 1978 was taken at a secret meeting of top leaders, Duch said. “Pol Pot ordered it. At the meeting were Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot, and Son Sen.”

Duch said the purge reached its worst in the last weeks of 1978. “My prison was full. Nuon Chea ordered 300 (Khmer Rouge) soldiers arrested. He called to meet me and said, ‘Don’t bother to interrogate them—just kill them.’ And I did.”

The purge didn’t save the movement. Angered by repeated cross-border attacks by the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and captured Phnom Penh within two weeks. “It is true that the last days before the Vietnamese came I personally killed the remaining prisoners” at Tuol Sleng, Duch said. “I was called by Nuon Chea to his office and he ordered me to kill all the remaining prisoners.”

“I asked Nuon Chea to allow me to keep one Vietnamese prisoner alive to use for propaganda on the radio and he replied, ‘Kill them all. We can always get more and more.’”

“I was like a waterboy for Nuon Chea. He didn’t tell me that the Vietnamese were invading so I had no time to burn the documents. When I met Nuon Chea in 1983, he told me, ‘All the papers from the Party were burned except for yours. You are stupid.’”

Thousands of forced confessions bearing notations that Duch identified as his own, or those of Nuon Chea and others, were left behind at Tuol Sleng. The documents, including orders to torture and kill prisoners, would serve as key evidence in any trial of Khmer Rouge leaders.

“I think a trial is a very good idea. It is a good thing to arrest Ta Mok and Nuon Chea. And if Pol Pot and Son Sen were still alive, they should be tried as well. Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan did not have the right to decide the killings by themselves,” Duch said.

Pol Pot committed suicide in 1998, a year after ordering the murder of Son Sen. Khieu Samphan lives in Pailin with Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister.

Duch, who worked for several years for foreign aid organizations under various aliases, is uncertain about the future. “I guess that I will have to go to jail now, but it is OK. The killings must be understood. The truth should be known.”

Additional excerpts from Thayer’s interviews with Duch will be posted on May 7 on the REVIEW’s Web site. www.feer.com

 

End of Story?: Last Khmer Rouge defections don't bring closure - yet By Nate Thayer in Bangkok

End of Story?: Last Khmer Rouge defections don't bring closure -  yet

By Nate Thayer in Bangkok

Far Eastern Economic Review

December 17, 1998

After 28 years and more than 2 million dead, the war in Cambodia ended on December 4. That was the day the last remnants of the Khmer Rouge agreed to lay down their guns and accept the authority of the government in Phnom Penh.

   Conspicuously absent from the deal, however, were the names of the
three most senior Khmer Rouge leaders: military supremo Ta Mok, political
leader Khieu Samphan, and former party No. 2 Nuon Chea. International investigators want to see all three indicted for crimes against humanity for their role in the Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975-79 rule over Cambodia.

  The REVIEW has learned that Thai authorities are detaining all three at the request of the United States. Thai and Khmer Rouge sources say U.S. officials have requested that Thailand hold the trio until an international tribunal is created to try the architects of Cambodia's "killing fields."

     Senior Khmer Rouge and government military commanders negotiated the Khmer Rouge defection in a series of secret meetings at the temple ruins of Preah Vihear, in the remote northern jungles near the Thai border, Khmer Rouge Gen. Khem Nuon told the REVIEW on December 4. Phnom Penh confirmed the agreement the next day.

     The guerilla military commanders, who defected with as many as 5,000 soldiers and up to 30,000 civilians from the Thai-Cambodian border, will be integrated into the government and armed forces, according to Nuon and Cambodian government officials. In exchange, the guerillas have vowed to lay down their arms, don the government uniforms, and recognize the new government and constitution. They will in effect be given an
autonomous zone where the central government wields little influence.

     The decision follows two years of steady defections from the Khmer Rouge, who have been weakened by bloody infighting, a halt to foreign assistance, low morale and the evaporation of popular support. Though Khmer Rouge leaders say they still oppose Hun Sen's government, they have recognized the futility of further armed struggle. "We all agree to join the government. We are tired of war. We will fight politically for the peasants
from now on," says Khem Nuon.

     Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea - the top three Khmer Rouge leaders following the April death of Pol Pot - were not among the defectors. According to Nuon, they are "retired and play no role."

A source close to the guerilla leaders says Thai authorities are holding the three, separately, in Sisaket province near the Cambodian border. "They are in a bad position," the source says. Thai and Khmer Rouge officials add that U.S. officials, who want to see the three tried for crimes against humanity, asked that they be detained. (U.S. officials refused to comment, and the Thai government denied that the Khmer Rouge leaders were on Thai soil.)

     There's no guarantee that they will be brought to trial, however. Both guerilla and government sources say they expect that Khieu Samphan,  a former Khmer Rouge diplomat who has at times been the public face of the movement, is likely to be granted amnesty by the Cambodian government in coming months.

     Even more significantly, an appropriate international tribunal has yet to be created, and doing so may be difficult. Prime Minister Hun Sen has said that such a tribunal should be held in Cambodian territory and controlled by Cambodian authorities. The major democracies, which want to maintain a policy of engagement with Hun Sen, may be reluctant to confront him on the issue. "The U.S. wants to influence and guide the leader, not alienate him," says a U.S. diplomat.

     However, the United Nations sent foreign experts to Cambodia in November to assess the prospect for creating an effective tribunal -  and they are not likely to be so diplomatic. They say Hun Sen's proposal would be unacceptable, as any tribunal would have to be controlled by an independent judicial process, like the war-crimes tribunal in The Hague for the former Yugoslavia. "We will not be party to a judicial farce," says a foreign expert close to the UN team.

     Hun Sen's reluctance to see the creation of an independent tribunal is understandable. He is a former Khmer Rouge commander, and his government is filled with former Khmer Rouge; some defected when he did, in 1977, and others defected in recent years. They include the ministers of defence, interior, justice, finance and foreign affairs, as well as hundreds of officers in the military, security service and civilian administration.

     Among the most notorious is Keo Pok, a former senior Khmer Rouge cadre who became a government official after defecting in March. In charge of purges in the 1970s that killed at least tens of thousands, his role is detailed in documents captured from Tuol Sleng, where the Khmer Rouge tortured and executed more than 16,000 people.

    Mam Nay, another defector, served as chief interrogator at Tuol Sleng and is implicated in the murder of thousands. His signature is on scores of documents detailing the torture and killing of political opponents. He currently grows corn in western Cambodia.

     The demise of the Khmer Rouge began in earnest in July 1996, when thousands rebelled against Pol Pot and other leaders who wanted to return to open warfare against the government formed after the UN-sponsored 1993 elections. The government backed the rebellion, led by Ieng Sary and senior field commanders. Pol Pot and other leaders holed up in the northern jungles deemed the Khmer Rouge rebels traitors and "worse
than excrement." "We want to make one thing clear. We will never
surrender," one senior cadre, Mak Ben, told the REVIEW at the time. "As long as there is grass, we can eat the grass." He defected to the government in July 1997.

     In June 1997, Pol Pot's paranoia about traitors from within peaked. He ordered the assassination of his long-time comrade and defence minister, Son Sen, brutally murdering 16 of his family members in the process. Also targeted was Ta Mok, the one-legged military commander known as "the butcher," who escaped, mustered his troops and overthrew Pol Pot.

     But under Ta Mok's leadership, little improved. By March 1998 he was losing many of his troops to mass defections. An offensive by former loyalists then forced Pol Pot, Ta Mok and thousands of troops and civilians to retreat to the jungles near the Thai border.

     On April 15, Pol Pot died - of a "broken heart," his wife told the REVIEW -  and a livid Ta Mok continued to demand all-out warfare against defectors. "They are traitors who will all die," he said. Ta Mok's interpreter that day was Tep Kunnal, a senior political official and former UN diplomat. During the interview, he turned and whispered grimly: "This movement is finished."

     Later, as he plotted his own escape, Tep Kunnal sent a letter that revealed the bizarre idealism of a movement responsible for one of history's worst mass murders. "How great our sorrow is when we lose someone that we nourish and love dearly," Kunnal wrote. "But here it is not only the loss of someone's life, but the life of a movement that involves hundreds of thousands of human lives that have perished. You can imagine our grief." [End]

The Resurrected: The Khmer Rouge Haven't Disappeared-They're in Power By Nate Thayer

The Resurrected: The Khmer Rouge Haven't Disappeared-They're in Power

By Nate Thayer

Far Eastern Economic Review

Bangkok, April 16, 1998

It was a crime that earned Cambodia's ousted prime minister a 30-year prison sentence. "Norodom Ranariddh negotiated with the Khmer Rouge," the Phnom Penh military court judge intoned on March 18, at the end of a trial orchestrated by his rival co-premier, Hun Sen. But on the day Prince Ranariddh was convicted, Hun Sen's men were holding secret talks with the same Khmer Rouge rebels--cutting a deal remarkably similar to the one for which Ranariddh was being condemned. As a result of the negotiations, hundreds of Khmer Rouge guerrillas emerged from the northern Cambodian jungle the following week, armed with amnesty from prosecution, money and ranking positions in Hun Sen's government. Similar scenes have been repeated all over the country since 1996, when the Khmer Rouge--the ruthless organizers of the 1975-78 reign of  terror that left more than 1 million Cambodians dead--began fragmenting through infighting and defections. Instead of being brought to justice before an international tribunal, some of the movement's top commanders have gained senior positions in the government and security forces, while the Khmer Rouge rank and file have been quietly reintegrated into Cambodian society by the thousands. They are the beneficiaries of the bitter rivalry between Hun Sen and Ranariddh, whose political factions are vying for the allegiance of the guerrillas to strengthen their troop numbers. It's a raw power play that makes Hun Sen's condemnation of Ranariddh's negotiations ring hollow: Hun Sen justified his July 1997 coup by charging that Ranariddh was conspiring with the Khmer Rouge to overthrow the government.

Hun Sen's embrace of longtime Khmer Rouge cadres also undermines the premise of the international community's tacit backing for the Cambodian strongman, which is rooted in the pragmatic belief that his regime is a bulwark against the return of the murderous faction. Preventing the guerrillas from returning to power has been a goal of major Western countries ever since the Khmer Rouge government was overthrown in 1979 by the Vietnamese, who installed a puppet regime of Khmer Rouge defectors in Phnom Penh. After the Vietnamese army pulled out in 1989, this regime remained under Prime Minister Hun Sen. He and his Cambodian People's Party strong-armed their way into an uneasy coalition with Ranariddh's Funcinpec party after contesting elections sponsored by the United Nations in 1993. The factor that has persuaded foreign governments to back Hun Sen and the CPP is the party's control over Cambodia's administrative apparatus, which gave it credibility as the only force capable of blocking a Khmer Rouge comeback. Far from suppressing the Khmer Rouge, however, Hun Sen has courted the rebels as fervently as he accused Ranariddh of doing. He has appointed their leaders to his government despite overwhelming evidence that many of them were involved in torture and murder in the Khmer Rouge's killing fields. In late March, for instance, Hun Sen greeted several thousand Khmer Rouge troops in the latest mass defection. Declaring that he "warmly, movingly and joyfully" welcomed these "compatriot officers," he promised that they would be "inducted into the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, the national police, the military police and the civilian administration."The leader of the breakaway faction, Keo Pok, told journalists: "We all oppose and separate from the control and leadership of the murderous hard-liners . . . and would like to return to live with the Royal government." Pok's own murderous past as a long-time member of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee was forgotten. Indeed, the Cambodian government continued its public condemnation of the rebels without missing a beat. Less than a week later, the government appealed to the Friends of Cambodia--an informal group of countries including the United States, Japan, France and Australia--to bring "the Khmer Rouge to trial for crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity." The U.S. has given more than $1 million to finance the gathering of evidence for an international tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge for such crimes. But in reality, Washington and other "friends of Cambodia" have turned a blind eye to the fact that thousands of Khmer Rouge cadres--many of them suspected mass-murderers--have been brought back into the corridors of power. On April 6, a State Department spokesman told the REVIEW: "The United States has supported the reintegration into Cambodian society of Khmer Rouge defectors . . . Many former members of the Khmer Rouge, including some in Cambodia's current leadership, have renounced that organization's murderous policies." Former Khmer Rouge cadres now in the government include Hun Sen himself, the defence minister, the interior minister, the finance minister, the head of the national assembly, and thousands of others in the provincial and local administrations. Some had been targets of  the Khmer Rouge's 1978 purges and fled to neighbouring Vietnam. After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978, they returned to Phnom Penh to be installed as the new government. But many have joined the government only in the past two years. The Khmer Rouge began disintegrating in earnest in August 1996, when almost half its forces in western Cambodia made a deal with the government. The rebels were enticed by promises that they would be allowed to keep their territory, exploit its rich timber and mineral resources, and hold senior posts in the government and armed forces. These areas are now autonomous zones controlled by the same Khmer Rouge figures who administered them before defecting. They and other Khmer Rouge commanders now hold government office despite abundant evidence that they were guilty of committing atrocities during the movement's three years in power.

Some examples:

-  Keo Pok, the 68-year-old senior cadre who led the mass defection in late March, played a leading role in some of the Khmer Rouge's worst killing sprees. His role is detailed in captured Khmer Rouge documents being compiled by Yale University. According to documents taken from Khmer Rouge torture and execution centres, Pok was involved in the execution of people associated with the Lon Nol government, which was toppled by the Khmer Rouge in1975. In the same year, he led the massacre of thousands of Cham Muslims in eastern Cambodia, the documents show. As head of the northern zone in 1977, he supervised the rounding up of "internal enemies, "including at least 112 civilians who were later killed, according to documents from the Tuol Sleng torture centre, known as S-21, that are cited by Cambodia historian Ben Kiernan and other scholars. "Pok's fingerprints are all over the S-21 archives," says Cambodia scholar Stephen Heder at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. "The evidence is indisputable." Later in 1977, he took charge of the central zone, ordering the local leaders tortured and killed. Pok's worst atrocities came in 1978, when he led massacres in the eastern zone along the Vietnamese border in which tens of thousands of people were killed and hundreds of  thousands forcibly relocated, according to documents left at Tuol Sleng by the Khmer Rouge after they fled the 1979 Vietnamese invasion. "The guy who was in charge of the killing was Pok," says Heder, who has analyzed the documents.

nIeng Sary, the Khmer Rouge's former foreign minister, now controls an autonomous zone in western Cambodia. He broke from Pol Pot in August 1996, and the following year held a press conference in Phnom Penh to publicly pledge loyalty to Hun Sen. Shortly afterwards, he was given the rights to sell 178,000 cubic metres of logs from the timber-rich zone, worth an estimated $75 million. His lucrative deals were signed by Hun Sen on January 7 and 11 this year, according to copies of the official contracts obtained by the REVIEW.

n-- Mam Nay, another notorious Khmer Rouge figure, lives near Ieng Sary and now grows corn for a living, according to Cambodian military sources and human-rights investigators. Mam Nay was chief interrogator at the Tuol Sleng torture centre, where 16,000 people, including women and children, were put to death. His signature is on scores of documents detailing the torture of political opponents. He is implicated in "hands-on torture and execution and would almost certainly be convicted in any international tribunal," says Heder of  London University. Cambodian authorities know where he lives, but have made no attempt to detain him.

n-- Pech Chheang, a long-time ally of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, defected to the government in late March along with his Khmer Rouge troops. Gen. Chheang and his troops are now fighting remnants of the Khmer Rouge in northern Cambodia. Chheang was the Khmer Rouge government's ambassador to Beijing from 1975 to 1984. In 1994, Khmer Rouge radio named him as the movement's defence minister.

n-- Nuon Paet also was made a general in the Cambodian army after he defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1996. He is a convicted murderer. He was found guilty in a Cambodian court for killing three Western tourists who were kidnapped and held hostage for six weeks in 1994.

-  Sam Bith was Nuon Paet's commander at the time of the Westerners' murder. He switched allegiance last August, denouncing his former Khmer Rouge comrades at a Phnom Penh press conference. He is now a two-star general in the government army. Bith was the commander of Khmer Rouge troops who invaded Ha Tien in Vietnam in 1978, according to Heder and other scholars. Those troops slaughtered thousands of  Vietnamese women and children during the cross-border raids, which provoked Vietnam's subsequent invasion of  Cambodia.  Bith was one of nine younger leaders chosen by Pol Pot in 1985 to be groomed to take over the Khmer Rouge. Of those, six have joined Hun Sen since 1996 and now hold senior ranks in the Cambodian army. Since then, most of at least 15 Khmer Rouge army divisions have joined Hun Sen after offers of amnesty, money and government positions. The defections have left the guerrilla movement with a demoralized rump of a few thousand still fighting the government in the jungles in the north. The bulk of the Khmer Rouge are now members of Cambodia's government. That raises the question of who is to be defined as Khmer Rouge and who can be brought before an international tribunal if it were ever to be held.

POL POT: UNREPENTANT An Exclusive Interview By Nate Thayer

POL POT: UNREPENTANT

An Exclusive Interview

Cover Story

Far Eastern Economic Review

October 30, 1997

(Three story cover package)

The world holds Pol Pot responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million Cambodians. But the former Khmer Rouge leader, now a jungle captive of ex-comrades, expresses no remorse. In an historic, exclusive interview with Nate Thayer he defends himself as a patriot. His two-hour exposition ranges over the notorious killing fields, atrocities, party intrigues and his own early life. Plus:The first ever interview with Khmer Rouge strongman Ta Mok

Day of Reckoning: Pol Pot breaks an 18-year silence to confront his past. In defending his murderous rule, he sheds new light on the dark secrets of the Khmer Rouge 

By Nate Thayer in Anlong Veng

Far Eastern Economic Review

October 30, 1997

P OL POT is dying. He's helped slowly out of the backseat of a blue four-wheel drive truck, then stands unsteadily in the dust of the narrow road, smiling shyly and raising his clasped hands to his face in a traditional greeting.

He needs to grasp my arm to walk the 25 meters to an open-air hut, in a clearing hacked out of the dense jungles of the Dangrek mountains. His breathing labored, he eases himself down at a simple wooden table.

A deferential young KR cadre places a plastic bottle of water and a coffee jar filled with salt in front of him. Pol Pot adjusts his traditional peasant scarf, his face drawn and eyes blinking rapidly, and looks sadly across the table at the nearest thing to an interrogator he has ever faced.

The man who presided over the Cambodian holocaust is about to give his first interview in 18 years. It's his chance to make some kind of peace with his bloodstained past, to try to atone for a four-year reign of terror that left a million or more of his countrymen dead.
He refuses.

"I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people," he rasps, his voice almost a whisper. He pauses, fixing his interviewer with an almost pleading expression. "Even now, and you can look at me, am I a savage person? My conscience is clear."

In a two-hour interview, Pol Pot is chillingly unrepentant about the horrors of his 1975-1978 rule over Cambodia. His humanity shows only when he talks about himself or his family; he describes in detail his youth, the origins of his political ideology, his health problems and his 12-year-old daughter's difficulties in school.

Grilled on his culpability for the mass murders, disease and starvation of the late 1970s - when his regime tried to turn Cambodia into a collectivist agrarian utopia - he comes back time and again with the same basic line: The KR made "mistakes," but without their unrelenting struggle Cambodia would have been swallowed by Vietnam.

"I do not reject responsibility - our movement made mistakes, like every other movement in the world. But there was another aspect that was outside our control - the enemy's activities against us. I want to tell you, I'm quite satisfied on one thing: If we had not carried out our struggle, Cambodia would have become another Kampuchea Krom in 1975," he says, referring to the Mekong Delta region, seized by Vietnam from the Khmer empire in the 17th century.

Pol Pot even claims that the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, where the KR meticulously documented their torture and execution of 16,000 suspected "enemies," was a Vietnamese propaganda exhibit.

Yet the rare trip into the KR stronghold of Anlong Veng yielded some stunning revelations. The KR commander who ousted Pol Pot in June, Ta Mok, acknowledged in his first interview ever that "hundreds of thousands" of people had died during the group's time in power. Neither he nor other KR leaders interviewed would admit personal responsibility; instead, they point fingers at Pol Pot or one another.

Pol Pot does admit that he ordered the killing of his longtime comrade-in-arms Son Sen, slain on June 10 along with 14 family members, including grandchildren. "You know for the other people, the babies, the young ones, I did not order them to be killed. For Son Sen and his family, yes. I feel sorry for that. That was a mistake that occurred when we put our plan into practice. I feel sorry. You asked me to say something." Then he says abruptly: "Now I want to talk about the present situation in Cambodia."

It was Son Sen's killing that brought about Pol Pot's ouster from the helm of the revolutionary movement he led for 37 years. Ta Mok, who was also targeted but escaped, arrested Pol Pot on June 19. Five weeks later, Pol Pot was brought before a "people's tribunal" in Anlong Veng and sentenced to life imprisonment for Son Sen's murder.

The KR decided to make Pol Pot's ouster public, hoping to win international support for their battle against the government of Premier Hun Sen. They allowed this journalist to witness the July 25 tribunal, the first time Pol Pot had been seen by a journalist in 18 years. But an interview with the deposed leader took months more to arrange, through intensive contacts with a series of secret operatives both inside and outside of Anlong Veng. It took place on October 16.

For now, that's as far as the KR will go. Pol Pot is not going to be turned over to an international tribunal to face charges of crimes against humanity, Ta Mok said in a separate interview. "I will turn Pol Pot over no problem, if you bring Hun Sen and they go together," he says, setting an unrealistic condition.

Trial or no trial, Pol Pot's line of defence is the same: His youthful, inexperienced movement made "mistakes" under pressure from its enemies, but they saved the country from Vietnamese annexation. Asked whether he wanted to apologize for the suffering he caused, he looks genuinely confused, has the interpreter repeat the question, and answers: "No."

"We had no other choice. Naturally we had to defend ourselves," he says. "The Vietnamese... wanted to assassinate me because they knew without me they could easily swallow up Cambodia."

The anti-Vietnamese rhetoric isn't surprising: the ultra-nationalism of the KR became evident when they started raiding the territory of their erstwhile Vietnamese communist allies in Vietnam in the years after seizing power. But Pol Pot reveals that distrust between the two communist movements dates back to at least 1970, when Le Duan and other Vietnamese leaders tried to persuade him to take nominal command of a combined Cambodian-Vietnamese-Laotian army to fight the American-backed governments in Phnom Penh and Saigon.

"Le Duan and Le Duc Tho, they told us: 'You don't have to fight. You should wait until the Vietnamese victory then the Vietnamese will come and liberate you'," Pol Pot says.

Instead, he raced to beat the Vietnamese to victory. He says that by capturing Phnom Penh on April 17, two weeks before the communist victory in Saigon, the KR saved Cambodia from Vietnamese communist occupation. And immediately, he contends, he took steps to balance Vietnamese influence in Cambodia. "In May 1975, I sent my foreign minister to Thailand because I knew that the east is very savage... what I wanted was to have a friend in the West. Vietnam was furious at me."

There may be truth in Pol Pot's claim that Vietnam had designs on Cambodia. But he goes on, outrageously, to blame even the mass starvation during his rule on the Vietnamese. Nobody knows the precise figure, but during their 1975-1978 rule the "Democratic Kampuchea" regime killed perhaps 200,000 people, many from its own ranks. For every person executed, perhaps seven more died of starvation or disease as a result of the KR's inept central policies.

"To say that millions died is too much. Another aspect you have to know is that Vietnamese agents, they were there. There was rice, but they didn't give rice to the population," Pol Pot claims.

Even more outrageous is Pol Pot's claim that Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng prison was a "Vietnamese exhibition" set up for propaganda purposes after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and drove the KR from power. Scholars say the KR documented each of the 16,000 people whom they tortured and executed, often on Pol Pot's direct orders.

In fact, admissions he makes in the interview link Pol Pot directly to Tuol Sleng. He acknowledges that he ordered the arrest and murder of political enemies, accusing them of collusion with Vietnam. These included Vorn Vet, Hu Num, and Hu Yuon, fellow standing committee members killed after the KR took power. "Those people were in the central leadership of Democratic Kampuchea, but they were not the people of Democratic Kampuchea," he says. "In 1976... that group of people you were talking about, they set up a coup d'etat committee, especially against me. In that committee there were Vietnamese agents in the majority." He names "Comrade Ya" - the nom de guerre of Men San, who commanded the northeast region - as chief conspirator.

KR documents obtained by the Post show that Ya was tortured to death on Pol Pot's orders at the Phnom Penh prison. In a handwritten September 1976 note accompanying a "confession" extracted from Ya under torture, notorious Tuol Sleng chief Duch writes that he "reported this morning at 0910 to the Organization about Ya." The Organization is how Pol Pot was officially known.

"The Organization decided that if this guy continues stubbornly to hide his traitorous linkages and activities, that he should be executed and not allowed to play games any more ... Therefore, with this Ya you can forcefully use the hot method and for prolonged periods, even if you slip and it kills him." The document ends with a chilling addendum: "Ya to read so that he can think it over carefully."

Pol Pot demonstrated that same willingness to turn on his closest comrades 21 years later, when he ordered the killing of Son Sen, his longtime defense minister. In a soft monotone that contrasts starkly with the subject matter, he tried to justify the murder, saying that he had discovered proof that Son Sen was conspiring against him. The principle evidence? "The brother of Son Sen, Son Chhum... even let his daughter marry people who worked with Hun Sen. So the connection has been established."
Pol Pot's paranoia may have helped him survive as a guerrilla fighter, but it ultimately led his movement to self-destruct, fracturing into rival factions. It's a process that began soon after the group took power, and resumed with new intensity in mid-1996. As a result, separate KR groups are now scattered throughout the country, many of them aligned with Funcinpec or the CPP - whose premier, Hun Sen, himself defected from the KR in 1978.

"Pol Pot's stance got even loftier, and our territory got even smaller," says an elderly Anlong Veng villager. "He saw enemies as rotten flesh, swollen flesh. He saw enemies surrounding. Enemies in front, enemies behind, enemies to the north, enemies to the south... leaving us no place to breathe."
Indeed, only six of the original 22 members of the Democratic Kampuchea party central committee survived their years in power unscathed, according to documents obtained from Tuol Sleng. The rest died, or survived only because they were rescued from Tuol Sleng, ironically, by the invading Vietnamese army.

After that, the KR rose from the ashes, with military or political support from China, Asean and Western powers opposed to Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia. They capitalized on the animosity towards Vietnam that permeates Cambodian society.

But since the 1993 UN-run elections, which the KR boycotted, the movement's cannibalization has resumed. Of the nine younger military commanders chosen in 1985 to form the new generation of leadership, six have defected to the Cambodian government and two were arrested for killing Son Sen. In August 1996, senior leader Ieng Sary and more than half of the KR fighters in the northwest broke with Pol Pot, Son Sen, Ta Mok and Khieu Samphan, rallying around the town of Pailin.

While Khieu Samphan is officially head of the KR remnant in Anlong Veng, Ta Mok is clearly the strongman. In fact, Khieu Samphan seems to retain sympathy for Pol Pot. On June 12, in a clandestine radio broadcast, he called Son Sen a "traitor." Asked if he was a hostage of Pol Pot when he made that broadcast, Samphan replies unconvincingly: "You could call it something like that." He refuses to elaborate.

The turmoil has shaken the movement to its core. "All of us - our parents, our children - are poor peasants. We agreed to abandon everything for many years to join the struggle," says Khem Nuon, Ta Mok's chief-of-staff. "And ultimately, in order to kill each other? How can that be?"

So has the KR movement truly turned on its master, Pol Pot? Certainly Ta Mok says so: "Pol Pot's hands are filled with blood." And from Pol Pot's own words, the answer also seems yes. "For me it is over. Over politically, and over as a human being."

Since his sentencing, Pol Pot says he has been confined to a wood-and-thatch hut, where he's virtually bedridden and sometimes on oxygen. When he discusses his health problems he becomes animated, a contrast to the implacable way he discussed those who died under his rule. "You look at me from the outside, you don't know what I have suffered. If you allow me, I would like to tell you about my sickness.

"One night around 2 a.m. I woke up to go to the bathroom," he says, describing an apparent stroke he suffered in late 1995. "My left eye was closed. I thought that maybe nothing was wrong. But when I came back my eye just did not work any more... Now my left side from my head to my toe does not work. And my left eye is 95 percent blind. That is why when I walk it is not normal."

As the interview nears its second hour, Pol Pot often licks his parched lips and sips from his glass of water. Sometimes he becomes annoyed when he is interrupted or his answers are challenged. But he never raises his voice. And he seems eager to elicit sympathy. "In Khmer we have a saying that when one is both quite sick and old there remains only one thing, that you die."

Pol Pot says his days are bleak. His books have been confiscated, and he rarely gets out of bed. "I have nothing to do now," he says, adding that the hut is plagued with mosquitoes.

He listens to the radio every morning: both the clandestine Democratic Kampuchea radio and the Voice of America. "I want to listen to VOA every night as well, but sometimes I fall asleep," he says, complaining that the morning broadcast isn't as interesting as the evening one.

"I feel a little bit bored, but I have become used to that. You know, I can't even play with my daughter or my wife any more because in the morning, even after I wake up, I can't get out of bed. I stay still while my wife occupies herself with gardening and sewing. My daughter gathers wood and works in the kitchen. But we are together for dinner... We dine together at a small table."

He speaks with fatherly affection of his only child, aged 12. "She is a good daughter, a good person. She gets along with the others quite well. "But he says she isn't doing as well in some school subjects as others. On that score, "she is like me." When she grows up, will she be proud to say she is the daughter of Pol Pot? "I don't know about that. It's up to history to judge," he responds.

Then Pol Pot, with an engaging smile, apologizes and says he needs to go back to the hut and lie down. "I feel very, very tired," he says.

He is helped to his feet, unable to rise on his own. As he's assisted down the steps and along the jungle path, he pauses to offer pleasantries to hovering cadres, who remain grim-faced. Then he raises his hands together again in a polite farewell. Before climbing back into the truck, he turns to one of his captors and says softly: "I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country."

 

On the Stand

By Nate Thayer in Anlong Veng

Far Eastern Economic Review

October 30, 1997

There are good reasons to be worried when coming face-to-face with the man responsible for one of the worst mass murders in history. But Nate Thayer was most worries that Pol Pot wouldn’t talk, or would cut off the interview after a few minutes. So from the outset he hit Pol Pot with the big question: Does he admit guilt for his murderous 1975-78 rule? It was a question that Thayer pressed again and again. Because Pol Pot is more likely to die than be turned over to an international tribunal, the jungle interview may be as close to a courtroom as he ever gets.

Thayer’s interpreter, a senior Khmer Rouge cadre, tried to beg out of his translating duties, perhaps anticipating the tone of the questions. Thayer speaks conversational Khmer, but he prevailed upon the interpreter to translate both the questions and answers while a tape recorder and television camera rolled. Here are excerpts, starting with Thayer’s opening questions.

 

Q Nate Thayer: He knows he is accused of leading and organization that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and that he has been condemned by most of the world for it. Is he a mass murderer, or what has he contributed to his country?

A Pol Pot: I think that you can raise all of the questions at one time, and some questions I think that I can answer connecting one to another to simplify things. But it's up to you...

Q: I'm interested in the issues of the time he was in power between 1975 and 1979. The millions of people who indeed did suffer during that time, and whether he feels that he's fairly accused. That's one question, let's start with.

A: Yes, I want to reply. Your question is not unfamiliar. That question has been raised time and again: I would like to say first that my conscience is clear. Everything I have done and contributed is first for the nation and the people and the race of Cambodia.

[Pol Pot then spoke about how the Vietnamese wanted to take over Cambodia, adding "they wanted to assassinate me because they knew without me they could easily swallow up Cambodia".]

Q: I would like to hear all of that, and if he's willing to stay here for hours, I am too. But if we could please deal with this first. As you know, most of the world thinks that you're responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Cambodians who didn't deserve to suffer. Could you answer that question directly? Do you feel that you were indeed responsible for crimes against humanity, against your own people?

A: I'm going to reply. I want to tell you clearly. First, I would like to tell you that I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people. Even now, and you can look at me, am I savage person? My conscience is clear... As I told you before, they fought against us, so we had to take measures to defend ourselves...

Q: You have an opportunity here, a historical opportunity. You know well that during your years in power, your policies - agrarian experiments, social and political organizations, the direct executions of many thousands of people - that many families suffered. The country itself also suffered because of your policies. Your fellow Cambodians want to know whether you feel any remorse, whether you acknowledge that you made very serious mistakes while you were in power?

A: There are two sides to it, as I told you: There's what we did wrong, and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people - by us and also by the enemy - but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now.

Q: But for all those hundreds of thousands who suffered - not just died but suffered from forced labor, from lack of food, from what were clearly failed central policies while you were in power - don't you think that they deserve an apology?

A: For the wrong things of our struggle, as I told you, for the wrong things, it has been written in the book. This is a testimony before history.

Q: Which book?

A: The book is the "The Right and Wrong of Democratic Kampuchea". [Pol Pot was apparently referring to a political tract released by the Democratic Kampuchea movement, as the Khmer Rouge calls themselves, in the late 1980s.]

Q: But that acknowledged only 30,000 deaths. All independent scholars, from all political ideologies, acknowledge a minimum of hundreds of thousands of people who died as a result of failed central policies while you were in power...That is a fact. While you were in sole power-and all the other members of your standing committee say you were in full power-thousands of people died because of failed social policies of your government. Are you willing to acknowledge that fact?

A: As I told you, that was written in the book, and I'm tired of talking about it...

Q: Let's talk about Tuol Sleng. There is overwhelming evidence that you had overall responsibility for Tuol Sleng. Sixteen thousand people who signed confessions were executed, including women and children who were suspected CIA, KGB, Vietnamese agents. Were you responsible for Toul Sleng and do you really believe that those 16,000 - including women and children - were agents of a foreign government?

A: I was at the top. I made only big decisions on big issues. I want to tell you - Tuol Sleng was a Vietnamese exhibition; a journalist wrote that. People talk about Tuol Sleng, Tuol Sleng, Toul Sleng, but when we look at the pictures, the pictures are the same. When I first heard about Tuol Sleng, it was on VOA [Voice of America]. I listened twice. And there are documents talking about someone who did research about the skeletons of the people... They said when you look closely at the skulls, they are smaller than the skulls of the Khmer people.

Q: Are you saying that you never heard of Tuol Sleng before 1979?

A: No, I never heard of it. And those two researchers, they said that those skeletons, they were more than 10 years old.

Q: Sir, let me say that there is overwhelming scientific evidence, overwhelming proof that thousands of people, Cambodians, were executed at Toul Sleng while you were in control of Phnom Penh. There is no dispute among anybody else in the world outside of Anlong Veng, perhaps, that it is true.

 A:[No response.]

 

Forbidden City: New strongman Ta Mok Reaches out of isolation

By Nate Thayer in Anlong Veng

Far Eastern Economic Review

October 30, 1997

 

TA MOK, the one-legged Khmer Rouge general known to the outside world as "the butcher," smiles and chuckles warmly as he welcomes the first journalist he has ever met.

During a three-hour interview over a luncheon of fish and Pringles potato chips specially imported for the occasion, the man who overthrew Pol Pot speaks with a peasant's directness and the ease of a man in total control.

His words, though, are sometimes as chilling as his laugh is warm. In an unprecedented admission by a KR leader, he says "hundreds of thousands" died during the revolutionary regime's 1975-78 rule, though he blames their deaths on Pol Pot.

As for the thousands of fellow KR that his forces killed during the purges of 1978, he shrugs. Their leader, he explains, had been discovered to be Vietnamese.

The new KR strongman can seem a study in contradictions. He has earned a fearsome reputation as a military chief, but in person he comes across as grandfatherly. He is clearly revered by many of the approximately 60,000 people living under his control around Anlong Veng. It's and area almost completely isolated by mountains and dense, land-mine-strewn jungles, but Mok's development projects seem to have turned it into one of the more prosperous swaths of countryside in Cambodia.
But for Mok, 71, there's no contradiction. He's a peasant leader who defends what he sees as the interests of his people. And like Pol Pot, that includes an obsession with the perceived threat of Vietnamese domination. Mok would kill a Vietnamese intruder with the nonchalance with which a farmer plucks a leech off a bare leg.

Mok believes that what his people need now is international support for their guerrilla war against Premier Hun Sen. To that end, he has agreed to an unprecedented interview. Sitting in a wooden pavilion freshly painted with revolutionary slogans, he talks about supporting "liberal democracy." It's not clear if he really understands the term, but since he ousted Pol Pot in June, cadres say he has allowed new freedoms in the guerrilla zone.

The potential benefits of world acceptance are plainly evident form the hard-packed dirt logging road that snakes down the Dongrek escarpment from Thailand to Anlong Veng. Millions of dollars' worth of logs lie by the roadside, blocked from going anywhere by an international agreement that bars the export of timber without central government permission.

That permission isn't about to come: The central government is at war with the KR. Evidence of past battles is everywhere: The few concrete buildings in Anlong Veng are pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel, and government tanks disabled during intense fighting two years ago sprawl in the roadway, political graffiti now adorning their turrets.

Yet Anlong Veng is more than a battlefield. A two-day tour shows a wealth of agricultural projects, making it one of the more developed rural areas in Cambodia. Sophisticated dams, irrigating systems and other water projects are everywhere. Tractors and earth-moving vehicles imported through Thailand work the land.

Water spills over new concrete dams into rivers where dozens of villagers, many missing limbs from mines, haul in large fish with nets.

"The people here love grandfather because he cares very much about the well-being of the poor," says Noun Nov, a cadre in his 40s. Like many others in Anlong Veng, Nov has followed Mok since his mid-teens.

Indeed, Mok says it was his passion for rural development projects ("My hobby is agriculture") that cost him his leg. He stepped on a mine when building a road. "I was inspecting a road project. I was behind a bulldozer," he recalls, shifting his artificial limb.

Is this the one place where the KR's ideology, which caused the death of perhaps one million Cambodians in the 1970s, actually works? Hardly. Mok denies that he ever embraced communism. "I was a monk," he says, and when he was just 16 he was recruited into the resistance. "When I joined the Communist Party of Cambodia, I did not know what communism was," he says with a burst of laugher. "They told me the party is a patriotic one. That is why I joined the party. Later on I found that the Communist Party was sucking the blood of the people.

"When we talk about economic life, I have no theoretical ideology," says Mok. " What is policy? When we talk about life we talk about land and water. For the people, having these is having freedom and democracy."

Actually, KR cadres say Mok has introduced new freedoms in Anlong Veng in the four months since he ousted Pol Pot. Previously, there were no schools, while now scores of brightly dressed schoolchildren carrying notebooks can be seen casually returning home from lessons. Listening to radio other than the clandestine guerrilla station was forbidden; now they can listen freely to foreign broadcasts. "We can even watch TV," one cadre exclaims proudly.

Ironically, there are signs that opening up has spawned social problems the puritanical KR never faced before. Mok has responded in a characteristically KR way: "No Gambling" has been added to revolutionary slogans such as "Defeat for the Contemptible Yuon Enemy Aggressors" adorning the walls of Anlong Veng.

That's not the only new slogan. "Defeat for the Traitor Pol Pot Whose Hands Are Stained With Blood," "Long Live the Emerging Democracy," and "Cambodians Don't Kill Cambodians" are all freshly painted. Mok, who has basically spent his entire life in the jungle, seems to think the appearance of the new slogans will be enough to inspire Cambodians to rally in support of is movement.

"Reports reach me everyday saying that the new policy that 'Cambodians Don't Kill Cambodians' is a magic slogan indeed," he says.

Of course, killing Cambodians was exactly what the KR did during their years when Mok was at the very core of the leadership. Mok denies personal culpability for the mass murder of those years - a denial that scholars say is patently untrue. But in an unprecedented admission by a senior KR leader, he does admit that the regime committed wide-scale abuses.

"It is clear that Pol Pot has committed crimes against humanity," he says. "I don't agree with the American figure that millions died, but hundreds of thousands, yes."

Mok's venom for Pol Pot seems genuine and personal. Yet his denials of personal responsibility ring false, scholars say. For example, he claims no involvement in the Tuol Sleng prison. "Pol Pot alone was in charge of the prison," he insists.

Academics who are analyzing documents seized at Tuol Sleng, including 16,000 signed "confessions" of people who were tortured and executed there, say there's no doubt that Mok both ordered arrests and viewed " confessions". "His fingerprints are all over the place. The proof is irrefutable," says Stephen Heder, a professor at the University of London.

Mok's "butcher" nickname may have been earned in 1978. As commander of the southwestern zone of Cambodia and fifth-ranking party leader, he was ordered by Pol Pot to purge KR cadres from the eastern zone who were accused of conspiring with Vietnam. Zone commander Sao Phim and thousands of his loyalists were killed.

Asked about this brutal purge, Mok makes clear that he believes anyone associated with the Vietnamese is a fair target for murder. "I learned from documents produced by Pol Pot that Sao Phim was Vietnamese," he says of the fourth-ranking party leader.

Mok shrugs again in reference to two other leaders, Hu Num and Hu Yuon, who were killed under torture. "Sao Phim I can understand. This man was Vietnamese," he says, but he then adds that the deaths of "Hu Nim and Hu Yuon I do not understand."

Mok's virulent anti-Vietnamese statements come as no surprise. In 1993, his troops carried out numerous massacres of Vietnamese. "I have never taken a nap in my life, in order to go faster than the Vietnamese, to beat the Vietnamese, to not allow the Vietnamese to attack us," he says. He considers anyone working with Hun Sen or the CPP to be Vietnamese and thus a legitimate target for murder.
That may explain why the straight-talking guerrilla chief seems to feel no guilt for his role in the horrors of 1975-78. Asked about the deaths of those years, he laughs and waves his hand dismissively. "If my hands were stained with the blood of my compatriots, why would the people love me? Go ask them yourself."

Mok says that if he had the chance to live life differently, he would not have joined with Pol Pot, whose "hands are soiled with blood".

Yet his rejection of the long-time KR supremo seems rooted not in the crimes of the 1970s but those on June 1997, when Pol Pot ordered the killing of Son Sen and attempted to murder Mok in a power struggle.

Since the 1993 UN-sponsored elections, the KR had been fracturing, and Pol Pot had moved his base of operations, first from Trat in the southwest, to Pailin, then to Phnom Chhat in the northwest, Mok says. "From Phnom Chhat he came to ask me to stay here. Then....he tried to kill me and the people of Anlong Veng. How can I trust him?"

After nearly three hours talking about the revolutionary movement that has been his world for more than half a century, Mok says Pol Pot has been taken to a mountainside location and is waiting to be interviewed. "Ask Pol Pot whether he recognizes his faults. Ask him why he has assassinated his fellow Cambodians. After all that he has done, what more does he want?" Mok says, scoffing at the man he served for decades. He then asks the interviewer: "Can you still say that Pol Pot and I are not estranged?"

 

 

My Education: How Saloth Sar became Pol Pot

By Nate Thayer in Anlong Veng

Far Eastern Economic Review

October 30, 1997

The bones stacked in the Killing fields dotting Cambodia testify to the results of Pol Pot's 1975-1978 experiment in radical agrarian reform. Until now, however, the ideology that drove it has been left largely to the realm of speculation. Some scholars have described Pol Pot as a Cultural Revolution-style Maoist, while others have conjectured that a youthful grape-picking trip to Tito's Yugoslavia planted the seeds for his later break with the mainstream Marxists of the Soviet Union and Vietnam.

But Pol Pot tells his own story differently. He claims that as a student in France in 1949-53, he was influenced by a range of progressive movements-including, ironically, that of non-violent Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

In his first interview with a foreign journalist in 18 years, Pol Pot may have refused to repent for the horror of his rule, but he was clearly concerned with what the history books say about his personal life. He became animated in talking about his youth and family, after remaining impassive during questioning about the abuses of his rule.

Historians haven't even been able to agree on the ultra-secretive Pol Pot's birthday: Some say May 25, 1925, while others put it on the same day in 1927. Pol Pot said neither was correct: He was born in January 1925. "January-I remember, because my mother wrote it in chalk on the wall of the house, next to the cupboard," he said in Khmer, adding "janvier" in French to make sure there was no mistake. He had lied about his age, he said, to remain eligible for a scholarship.

Born Saloth Sar in Kampong Thom province, he attended secondary school in Phnom Penh and won a scholarship to France in 1949. Clearly defensive of his status as an "intellectual," Pol Pot volunteered that biographer David Chandler was "not entirely accurate" when characterizing him as a poor student. "I was not a bad student. I was average . . . I studied just enough to keep my scholarship. The rest of the time I just read books," he said.

It was those books, as well as the leftist student movements brewing in Europe in the years after World War II, that gave Pol Pot his early political education. "I looked at the second-hand books that were on sale along the Seine River, the old books that I loved to read," he recalled. "When I got money from my scholarship, I had to spend it on rent and food, so I only had 20 or 25 francs left to spend.

But I got a lot of books to read. For example, La Grande Revolution Francaise. I did not understand it all, but I just read. At the same time I saw the movement in India of Mahatma Gandhi. He was well known and I was very pleased with that. And later on Nehru.

"I started as a nationalist and then patriot and then I read progressive books. Before that time, I never read L'Humanite [the French communist party newspaper]. It scared me, " he smiled, "But I got used to it because of the student movement."

Pol Pot said there was nothing political about his trip or trips to Yugoslavia in the early 1950s. "I went to Yugoslavia because it was vacation time and I had no money. They organized a brigade... I paid just 2,000 francs, including everything. It wasn't influenced by any ideology. We just went for pleasure.

The next year . . . I went camping. So I cannot tell you of any single influence. Maybe it's a little from here, a little from there."

Pol Pot said his real political awakening, though, came upon his return home to Cambodia. "Before I went to France, my relatives, they lived comfortably. They were middle peasants. When I came back, I went to my village by bus. When I got off the bus, I met someone with a wagon. He asked my name and he said: 'Ah- you've come back!' And I look at him and see he's my uncle. And he asks me 'Do you want to go home?' I was shocked. Before he had a piece of land and a buffalo, now he had become a rickshaw-puller... I met and talked with the relatives who used to have land and buffaloes and had nothing now... What influenced me most was the actual situation in Cambodia."

The secrecy that made the Khmer Rouge so effective was, Pol Pot said, second nature to him. "Since my boyhood, I never talked about myself ... That was my nature. I was taciturn ... I'm quite modest. I don't want to tell people that I'm a leader ... I didn't tell anybody, not my brother, not my sister, because I didn't want to worry them. If anything happened to me, I didn't want them to have any connection to it. So some people think that I don't care about them. But on the contrary, I respect, I love my relatives. But I never revealed my political thinking to them."

Pol Pot said that it was as much "by chance" as anything that he became leader of the Cambodian communist party in 1960, when Tou Samouth disappeared. "There was nobody else to become secretary of the party, so I had to take charge," he said.

He vehemently denied that he had killed his "best friend", explaining in detail how Tou Samouth had been betrayed and arrested when he left his safe house in Phnom Penh to fetch medicine for his sick child. Tou Samouth was taken to the house of Lon Nol - the military commander who would later lead Cambodia- and interrogated for a week, Pol Pot said. "At that time I was his aide. If Tou Samouth had talked, I would have been arrested. He was killed at Stung Meanchey pagoda. We loved each other."

POL POT: THE END By Nate Thayer

POL POT: THE END

COVER STORY

Far Eastern Economic Review

By Nate Thayer

August 7, 1997

In a stunning journalistic achievement, REVIEW correspondent Nate Thayer comes face-to-face with the elusive Pol Pot, architect of Cambodia’s killing fields. In a story packed with exclusive photos, Thayer describes Pol Pot’s jungle “trial,” and reveals the turmoil within the Khmer Rouge. Separate stories profile Pol Pot, introduce the new Khmer Rouge leadership, and shed new light on Cambodia’s deadly July coup and the suspected drug baron who financed it.

BROTHER NUMBER ZERO

On Other Pages:

19: Pol Pot Unmasked

21: New Face of the Khmer Rouge

22: Casualties of Hun Sen’s Coup

23: The Money Man Behind the Coup

24: On History’s Front Line

Pol Pot caused the deaths of more than a million Cambodians. But when he turned on his longtime military commander, Ta Mok, that was one Cambodian too many

By Nate Thayer in Anlong Veng, Cambodia

After a series of furtive rendezvous, using coded messages over mobile phones, I slipped into one of the most impenetrable, malarial-ridden and landmine-strewn jungles of the world: Khmer Rouge-controlled northern Cambodia. I was hoping to interview Pol Pot, one of the century’s most notorious and elusive mass murderers.

What I did not fathom, as I entered the Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng at 12:12 p.m. on July 25, was that I was about to witness nothing less than history.

“Long live! Long live! Long live the new strategy!” hundreds of voices chanted in unison. The clenched fists of the crowds pumped toward the sky, as a smiling middle-aged Khmer Rouge cadre led me toward an open-air mass meeting hall. Old artillery pieces and a captured Russian tank stood nearby.

“Crush! Crush! Crush! Pol Pot and his clique!” shouted the crowd on cue as we approached, their fists striking down towards the ground.

There, slumped in a simple wooden chair, grasping a long bamboo cane and a rattan fan, an anguished old man,  frail and struggling to maintain his dignity, was watching his life vision crumble in utter, final defeat.

This was how the “people’s tribunal’ began for Pol Pot, reviled around the world for personally orchestrating a reign of terror that left more than a million human beings dead and shattered the lives of many millions more.

The crude podium held a microphone, and crackling loudspeakers—powered by a car battery lying on the earthen floor—began to spew humiliating public denunciations of the long-time Khmer Rouge leader.

A shocking number of participants stood on crude wooden stumps, sat in home-made wheelchairs, or were missing eyes—sacrifices to the revolutionary cause of Pol Pot. Others, their arms blown off by landmines, were unable to join the frequent clapping as speaker after speaker denounced the man once venerated as “Brother Number One.”

“Our ultimate goal today is that the international community should understand that we are no longer Khmer Rouge and we are not Pol Potists!,” roared Ta Neou, the governor of the approximately 60,000 civilians who live in the area, which was under Pol Pot’s control until weeks ago.

The carefully orchestrated performance evoked the image of a grainy, black-and-white film clip from China’s Cultural Revolution. But the message was starkly different. “Long live the emergence of the democracy movement!” shouted individuals in the crowd, periodically interrupting leaders offering carefully crafted speeches at the microphone. A chorus would repeat the slogan, followed by prolonged applause by the roughly 500 participants. “Crush! Crush! Crush! Pol Pot and his murderous clique!”

Pol Pot sat alone, near three other manacled loyalists. Many in the crowd of women, children, and uniformed guerrillas seemed more interested at gazing at the first Westerner they had ever seen than in watching the traumatized old man sitting alone in a chair.

Each speaker, seemingly chosen to represent a sector of society—a farmer, an intellectual, a soldier, a woman—got up to denounce and humiliate Pol Pot “and his clique.”

Pol Pot often seemed close to tears as the vitriol was unleashed. In contrast,  three  younger army commanders put on trial alongside him had menacing, almost arrogant expressions, staring coldly into the eyes of the speakers, the crowd and the visiting reporter.

“We have sacrificed everything for the sake of the movement,” Ta Neou continued, “Our parents and all of us are children of peasants and farmers, we have sacrificed everything for the sake of the movement, but at the end we kill each other.”

Pol Pot, who ruled Cambodia for more than three years and ruled the Khmer Rouge for more than three decades, is genuinely finished. He has been denounced and imprisoned by his own movement. Not for the 1975-1978 Cambodian genocide, but for turning on his own comrades in an attempted purge in June, according to speakers at his trial.

Those commanders, led by longtime military commander Ta Mok, struck back and took Pol Pot prisoner after the purge failed. The tribunal sentenced Pol Pot to life imprisonment, but ruled out turning him over to international courts, where he could face charges of crimes against humanity.

The Khmer Rouge of Anlong Veng have good reason to try and distance themselves from the notorious Pol Pot. They want to attract international support for their struggle to unseat Cambodian premier Hun Sen. That is why they let a foreign reporter witness the show trial, the first time a journalist had entered Anlong Veng and left alive.

Yet lengthy interviews with Khmer Rouge cadre left little doubt that his ouster was authentic. Still, the cadres clearly saw it as a tragedy, and continued to treat the 72-year-old Pol Pot with Gentle respect.

The fall of Pol Pot underlines the view that the Khmer Rouge movement that ruled Cambodia in the 1970’s essentially no longer exists. The original leaders have largely been replaced by younger ones less steeped in communist ideology, and the movement has fractured into numerous factions, many of whom are allied with the mainstream political parties contesting power in Phnom Penh.

“It no longer makes any sense whatsoever to call whatever remains a Khmer Rouge movement,” says Stephen Heder, a Cambodian Scholar at the University of London’s School of Advanced International Studies. “Because of the realignment of forces over the last several years, the concept of a Khmer Rouge movement as we know it no longer has any meaning.”

But that doesn’t mean the Khmer Rouge have become irrelevant in Cambodia. The aggressive courting of Khmer Rouge factions by Cambodia’s rival premiers, Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was central to the July 5-6 coup in Phnom Penh. In fact, the REVIEW has learned, the Khmer Rouge finalized their alliance with Ranariddh’s Funcinpec party on July 4. Worried that the balance of power would be tipped in his rival’s favour, Hun Sen ousted Ranariddh the next day.

 

Photo: Nate Thayer

Pol Pot also opposed those negotiations, and it led to his downfall, according to Khmer Rouge cadre interviewed in Anlong Veng. Virtually the entire leadership favoured a political deal with the royalist Funcinpec, but Pol Pot was opposed, said Gen. Khmer Nuon, who is now the Khmer Rouge’s army chief of staff.

“Domestically and internationally, Pol Pot has his own personal problems to take care of,” Khem Nuon said, referring to Pol Pot’s blood-soaked reputation. “He has no way out. That is why he keeps dragging this movement toward the darkness.”

The visit to Anlong Veng opened an unprecedented window into the inner workings of one of the world’s most secretive guerrilla movements. The Khmer Rouge have splintered dramatically since July 1996, when forces in western Cambodia, representing almost half the movement, broke with Pol Pot’s northern forces headquartered at Anlong Veng. The western split was headed by Ieng Sary, Pol Pot’s brother-in-law and longtime comrade-in-arms.

Khem Nuon said the western split was aimed against Pol Pot himself, but the 72-year-old leader blamed his top leaders—Ta Mok, Nuon Chea, and Son Sen—for losing the west by failing to heal the rift. “ So Pol Pot asked Mao—over there,” Khem Nuon explained, pointing to a young Khmer Rouge cadre standing listening to the interview,” to shoot Ta Mok and burn him—last October—to leave no evidence.”

The grim-faced young cadre, who looked capable of such a deed, nodded in agreement with his commander. But he didn’t carry out Pol Pot’s order. Because Ta Mok, who is known to the outside world as “The Butcher,” is immensely popular with the troops and civilians under his control. So Much so, Khem Nuon said, that Pol Pot saw him as a threat. “All the combatants here are under Ta Mok and they really like him a lot because he is so helpful to them in terms of standard of living. He built roads, bridges, dams within this area,” Khem Nuon said. “This is the reason Pol Pot wanted to get rid of Ta Mok.”

Pol Pot turned to two senior military field commanders, Gen. Sarouen and Gen. San, and attempted to consolidate power against Ta Mok. He called a mass meeting on February 25 of this year, and had them declared the new political and military leaders, replacing Ta Mok, Khem Nuon said. “What is the main cause that steered our people to rise up against Pol Pot? One, the leadership and the grip on power by Pol Pot was so long. All the power was within his hands,” Khem Nuon said. “Pol pot took decisions without even consulting the top leadership.”

About the same time, according to Cambodian government sources and diplomats, secret negotiations accelerated between envoys of Prince Ranariddh and elements of the Khmer Rouge in Anlong Veng. Most of these efforts were conducted by Ta Mok loyalists—often behind Pol Pot’s back—and the top royalist military commander, Gen. Nyek Bun Chhay. By May, the faction agreed in principle to join in alliance.

Increasingly isolated, Pol Pot launched a desperate attempt on June 9 to scuttle the peace deal by purging Ta Mok and other top leaders. That night, longtime defence minister Son Sen and 14 of his relatives, including a five-year-old child, were shot dead by Sarouen’s men, according to both Khmer Rouge and intelligence sources. “On the 9^th of June at 12:15 a.m., Pol Pot issued a direct order to take two Toyota pick-up trucks loaded with 20-30 soldiers to kill Mr. Son Sen,” said Khem Nuon.

The killings sparked several days of turmoil, with commanders fleeing into the jungle in disarray. But they rallied behind Ta Mok and trapped Pol Pot and his band of 300 remaining supporters on June 15, Khem Nuon said. Four days later, they had surrendered.

With Pol Pot neutralized, the remaining Khmer Rouge leadership moved rapidly forward to finalize a secret, tactical, political and military alliance with Ranariddh’s political faction. The two factions were allies against Hun Sen’s Phnom Penh government in a decade-long guerrilla war before Cambodia’s 1991 peace treaty.

The deal was closed July 4 in Anlong Veng. Hun Sen, learning about Funcinpec’s new alliance through his agents, launched his deadly coup the next morning, according to Cambodian political cadres and Asian intelligence sources. It has tipped Cambodia, which enjoyed four years of relative peace after 1993 United nations-sponsored elections, back into the throes of the warfare that seems to define this nation of 10 million people.

Hun Sen has claimed the entire tribunal was stage-managed by Pol Pot himself. Khem Nuon paints a very different picture, but he did say that Pol Pot had ‘consented’ to having a foreign reporter witness the mass meeting, as a way of acknowledging his guilt for moving against his comrades.

“ Pol Pot did himself confess to me clearly, after his arrest,” Khem Nuon said. “ When I met him the first time, he embraced me and burst into tears and said: ‘It is the right thing comrade that this has happened,’ and then he cried. It was on June 21, 1997, and he told me: ‘I am wrong, comrade, all the mistakes were made by me, alone,’ and then he cried.”

“ Pol Pot told me that this is the end of his life, he has nothing left, but he begged me to allow him to live,” Khem Nuon continued. “ I also want to make clear that if Pol Pot was vested with any credibility or respect, he would not have shown up and let you see him like you just did today.”

: I told him this morning that you were going to be here,” to witness his condemnation, Khem Nuon told the REVIEW. “ I told him that we want to prove to the world that we no longer want to associate ourselves with him. Then he consented.”

As the “People’s Tribunal of Anlong Veng” continued into its second hour, the new leaders somberly paced on the outskirts of the crowd, concerned by the deteriorating health of a now clearly weak and traumatized Pol Pot. Guerrilla officials acknowledged that Pol Pot suffered from serious heart disease and high blood pressure long before the events of recent days.

Khem Nuon said relatives and friends of those killed on June 9-10 wanted the blood of Pol Pot and his co-defendants San, Khon, and Sarouen—said to have carried out the murders on his orders. “ You notice that here today nobody was allowed to carry a weapon to this meeting, otherwise they would have been killed by the mob already,” Khem Nuon said.

But the cadre who overthrew Pol Pot seemed anguished as they watched the white-haired old man, who was dressed in loose cotton clothes with a blue-and-white Cambodian scarf looped around his neck. Confusion and sadness were etched on men who had spent their entire adult lives following Pol Pot from Cambodia’s jungles to its capital and back again.

“ We have put an end to the leadership which has betrayed our organization and the people,” Mak Ben, a bespectacled French-educated economist, dressed in a green Chinese-style military uniform, said from the podium. “ They are completely gone, as of right now, the Pol Pot regime has ended.”

“ Having acknowledged the betrayal of our group in recent months by Pol Pot and his clique,” the loudspeaker roared into the nearby forest, then Pol Pot’s crimes were read out. They included the murder of Son Sen, the attempted murder and ‘detention’ of Ta Mok and Nuon Chea, and “destroying the policy of national reconciliation,” a reference to the attempt to block the Funcinpec deal.

“These are the criminal acts—the betrayal by Pol Pot and his clique—against the people, the armed forces, and our cadre. In conclusion, we all decide to condemn and sentence this clique to life imprisonment.”

He immediately was helped up, unable to walk unassisted, by a guard in Chinese-style military fatigues. “ get someone under his other arm, get him more help,” Khem Nuon ordered. Patting his heart, Khem Nuon added: “ I am worried that he may die from the stress.”

Some people respectfully bowed, as if to royalty, as Pol Pot walked 25 meters to a waiting vehicle. “ I said what I said with a very heavy heart,” said Tep Kunnal, an emerging political leader, as he walked slowly away with his head bowed after denouncing Pol Pot. “ It is very, very difficult for me, but it had to be done. Before there were two dangers for Cambodia. Pol Pot and the Vietnamese puppet Hun Sen. Now there is only one.”

The cadres suggested that I ask Pol Pot questions while he was led away, but balked at translating when told the questions I wanted to pose. “ I cannot ask such a question to the leaders. You must ask them in Khmer yourself. It is better.”

Pol Pot, perhaps never to be seen alive again, was helped into a Toyota Landcruiser with tinted windows—captured booty from UN peacekeeping soldiers prior to the 1993 elections. Seconds after the trial ended, a torrential rain began.

 

POL POT: THE END

COVER STORY

 

POL POT UNMASKED: He was obsessed with secrecy and total control

By Nate Thayer in Bangkok, Thailand

Far Eastern Economic Review

August 7, 1997

Pol Pot, whose name is synonymous with the Cambodian genocide, exercized total control over the Khmer Rouge for more than three decades from behind a wall of impenetrable secrecy.

By putting him on trial, his former comrades-in-arms have unmasked a man who shunned exposure, even when he was premier of Cambodia. They have also broken the vice-like grip on the movement he retained through a combination of charisma and utter ruthlessness.

Born to a peasant family in Kampong Thom on May 18t, 1925, Saloth Sar—Pol Pot’s real name—was educated at a Buddhist monastery before entering technical school in Phnom Penh. His clandestine life began in his teens, when he joined the anti-French resistance movement in Indochina during World War ll.  By 1946, he was a member of the underground Indochinese Communist Party.

In 1949, he won a scholarship to study radio electronics in Paris, where he was active in radical student politics. His studies, apparently, took a back seat and he failed his exams three years in a row. He spent one summer picking grapes in Tito’s Yugoslavia, where he may have acquired his radical communism that challenged Soviet-style orthodoxy.

It was also during his sojourn in France that he charmed Khieu Ponnary, whose sister was married to Ieng Sary, another future Khmer Rouge leader.

Returning to Phnom Penh with no degree, Pol Pot taught at a private secondary school and wrote articles for left-wing publications that he signed, “The Original Khmer.” His underground activities went farther than that, however. He became a senior member of the Cambodian Communist Party at its founding congress in 1960, and was named secretary in 1963 after the mysterious death of Tou Samouth.

It was then that his secret life became his whole life. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, no longer content to belittle the Cambodian communists as “me Khmer Rouges”—“My Red Khmers”—was stepping up police pressure. Pol Pot and his comrades fled into the jungle, leaving no trace. “When a secret is kept secret, 50% of the battle is won,” Pol Pot once said.

Twelve years later, after fighting first Sihanouk’s army and then American-backed troops of Gen. Lon Nol, the battle was won. On April 17, 1975, Pol Pot’s army of peasants, clad in simple black-cotton uniforms, marched into Phnom Penh. Finally, Pol Pot could put his ideas into action.

The result was one of the most brutal and disastrous social experiments in history. After emptying the capital at gunpoint, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge tried to transform Cambodia into a communal agrarian utopia, but instead turned the country into a vast slave-labour camp. More than one million Cambodians—out of a population of some 7 million—were executed, tortured, or starved to death under the Khmer Rouge reign of terror.

The educated were the first to be slain. But later, as the reign of terror turned on itself, waves of purges decimated the ranks of Khmer Rouge cadres. Anyone who could pose a threat to Pol Pot was killed.

Through it all, Pol Pot stayed behind his mask. When it was announced in 1976 that Pol Pot had been named premier of “Democratic Kampuchea,” as the country was renamed, American intelligence officials—who had been fighting the Khmer Rouge for years—could not figure out who he was.

“Secret work is fundamental,” Nuon Chea, the party’s number 2, told a visiting Danish delegation in 1977, the only time Nuon Chea was seen in public.

Nevertheless, a personality cult started to spring up around him in May 1978, pushed by cadres eager to show their loyalty as purges spiraled. Tens of thousands of Khmer Rouge cadres were executed as Pol Pot eliminated competition. His power was clearly growing, Chandler says: whereas he was addressed as ‘Elder Brother Pol” or “Brother Number One” soon after taking power, that gradually changed to “Uncle Secretary” or “party centre” to “Leading Apparatus” to, finally, the “High Organization.”

Pol Pot’s radical ideas were nourished by a five month sojourn in China in 1965-66, when the country was in ferment leading up to the Great proletarian Cultural Revolution. His admiration for the Gang of Four was mutual: Pol Pot went to China after his 1975 victory and met Mao Zedong, who congratulated him on his speedy revolution.

While Pol Pot’s thinking may have been influenced by his foreign experiences, at its root it is deeply Khmer. And in Pol Pot’s case, that means a visceral hatred of Vietnam, the much larger neighbor that seized the Mekong Delta from the medieval Khmer empire. Egged on by that HATRED, Khmer Rouge guerrillas carried out raids into southern Vietnam, triggering the December 1978 Vietnamese invasion.

Pol Pot again fled into the jungle, after ruling for three years, eight months, and 20 days. Reverting to form, he took the code name “81.” Until July 25, 1997, he hadn’t been seen by foreign journalists since 1979, when he was filmed by Naoki Mabuchi, a Japanese photographer with close ties to the Khmer Rouge.

Pol Pot officially retired from his official posts in 1985, but there was never any question that remained in total control of the movement. Cadres who have heard him speak say he is an amazing orator, making speeches so resonant in revolutionary and patriotic spirit that they bring his listeners to tears. Yet he refrained from appearing publicly.

Now, it appears Pol Pot has lost both his mask and his powers. That doesn’t auger well for the movement he helped found, and which is now in danger of segmenting further. As Nuon Chea said in his 1977 interview: “The leadership apparatus must be defended at any price…as long as the leadership is there, the party will not die.”

 

POL POT: THE END

COVER STORY

NEXT GENERATION: Khmer Rouge put on a new face

By Nate Thayer in Anlong Veng, Cambodia

Far Eastern Economic Review

August 7, 1997

A tiger, according to Gen. Khem Nuon, can indeed change its stripes. And if foreigners doubt that the Khmer Rouge movement has  done just that, he said, they should come and see for themselves in the jungles of Northern Cambodia.

That is the message that the movement’s new military chief-of-staff wanted to send in an unprecedented interview at his headquarters of Anlong Veng. “ From now on, we are going to open this area free for foreigners, so they can see the real facts about our movement,” he said.

Anyone who accepts that invitation will find a mixed picture. Clearly, the purge of Pol Pot and a generational transfer of leadership has profoundly changed the secretive movement. In the interview, Khem Nuon spoke with openness about the past “crimes” and future plans, and he showed no interest in communist ideology.

At the same time, however, the group continues to sound the drum of rabid anti-Vietnamese ultra nationalism, and remains bent on the overthrow of Cambodian premier Hun Sen. Some of the older leaders who orchestrated the 1975-78 Cambodian reign of terror still wield influence, and younger cadres talk of “democracy” rang hollow against the backdrop of a Cultural revolution-style show trial.

The movement is opening up for a reason: It wants to build alliances both within the country and overseas for its crusade against Hun Sen and the “Vietnamese aggressors” that it claims are still occupying the country. Specifically, it wants to join forces with Funcinpec—whose leader co-Premier Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was ousted by Hun Sen in a July 5-6 coup—as well as with other political parties opposed to Hun Sen.

But Khem Nuon and other new leaders are aware that if they’re going to have any hope of winning Western support, they have to break with the movement’s blood-soaked past. “ The reason we put an end to the Pol Pot regime is because we want the international community to see and help us in our struggle with other movements in order to fight against Hun Sen and the Vietnamese,” Khem Nuon said.

To an international community that equates the Khmer Rouge with genocide, it’s going to be a hard sell. But Khem Nuon says the Khmer Rouge—or, more precisely, Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea Party—no longer exists. The movement is now called the National Solidarity Party.

“ If they still call me Khmer Rouge they haven’t seen what I have just done. I am the one who destroyed Pol Pot, who has been in power for many years,” he said after the group’s longtime leader was publicly denounced. “ Even the United States and the Vietnamese failed to get rid of him, but I can. So how can you call me the Khmer Rouge?”

In an unprecedented admission, he said that “crimes” had been committed during the Khmer Rouge’s nearly four year rule of Cambodia. But even when pressed, he would not go much farther, Blaming individuals rather than the group. “ We do condemn those who have committed crimes, which were not right,” Khem Nuon said. “ At the time I committed no crimes, only Pol Pot and some of his close people. Now they are gone, while Pol Pot is arrested. Some of them have defected to the Vietnamese side, and the rest I don’t know where they are.”

According to Khem Nuon and other Cadres, the movement is now led by a nine-member standing committee that includes only one member of the old guard: Khieu Samphan, the head of the committee, a diplomat who for years has been the public face of the Khmer Rouge. Khem Nuon, who’s aged about 50, is the second-ranking member, but his power is bolstered by his being the top military figure.

Yet Khem Nuon freely acknowledges that older leaders such as Gen. Ta Mok and Nuon Chea, who were key members of the murderous 1975-78 Khmer Rouge regime, still have a say in “all important matters.” Khem Nuon, who did military training in China, is the right-hand-man of the one-legged Ta Mok. “I’m the one who is in charge of the armed forces right now, but I keep consulting him all the time,” he said.

Once Hun Sen is driven out, the National Solidarity party would be happy to participate in democratic elections, Khem Nuon said. Tep Kunnal, another top-ranking standing committee figure, also spoke of liberal democracy as desirable. It seems that the new generation is driven less by communist ideology than by the ultra nationalism that has long under laid politics in a country squeezed between more powerful neighbors.

Khem Nuon claims there are 10,000 guerrillas and 60,000 civilians loyal to the movement around Anlong Veng. “Our movement is pure and clean,” he said. “ I hope the international community will help us.” For starters, he urged, “ Please ask them to stop calling us ‘Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.’”

 

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POL POT: THE END

COVER STORY

Harrowing Tales: Hun Sen’s forces torture and kill former allies

By Nate Thayer in Samrong, Cambodia and Bangkok

Far Eastern Economic Review

August 7, 1997

 

At the jungle hide-out along the Thai-Cambodian border, Gen. Serei Kosal, stuttering and wide-eyed with fear, relates five-days of flight from Phnom Penh through the Cambodian countryside. He was one of the top military officers targeted for arrest by Hun Sen, Cambodia’s second prime minister, who deposed the first prime minister, prince Norodom Ranariddh, in the July 5-6 coup.

Gen. Serei fled the capital on the morning of July 5 by commandeering a military aircraft to the western city of Battambang. From there, he travelled three days by foot with no food until he reached resistance-controlled zones along the Thai border. Claiming 700 troops under his command, he vowed to organize guerrilla war.

He was lucky to have escaped: The coup left scores dead, including two of his fellow generals, and hundreds arrested. Thousands of others are fleeing or in hiding.

“ We need a safe haven to protect our people from killing and arrest,” said Serei, dressed in borrowed shorts and shoeless. “ Hun Sen is hunting down our people, killing them, arresting them. Why hasn’t the world condemned the coup makers and acted in support of democracy and against the dictators?”

His bewilderment is shared by other Ranariddh loyalists who are flocking to north and northwest Cambodia to seek sanctuary and organize guerrilla resistance. They are joined daily in these jungles and remote villages near the Thai border by opposition-party members, journalists, and other civilians. Many relate harrowing tales of witnessing summary executions, atrocities, and the arrest of anyone suspected of affiliation with Ranariddh’s Funcinpec party.

From their accounts and evidence gathered by human rights officials, a grim picture is emerging of torture and summary execution by Hun Sen and his cohorts, many of whom are former Khmer Rouge soldiers who took part in the “killing fields” of the late 1970’s. Equally disturbing are allegations that foreign embassies refused help to Cambodians who feared for their lives in the first days after the coup when many of the killings occurred.

International human rights officials in Phnom Penh say they had confirmed 36 executions by mid-July and were verifying a dozen others. “ We have had many cases of bodies found, hands tied behind their back, with bullets in the head. But sometimes we arrive too late for the bodies and there are only ashes. They are literally incinerating the evidence,” said a senior Western human rights investigator in Phnom Penh. United Nations officials say they know of another 30 Funcinpec supporters who were tortured and forced to drink sewage.

Investigators say at least 617 people have been detained in Phnom Penh and another 271 are known to have been arrested outside the capital. They say the evidence beginning to trickle in is “only the tip of the iceberg,” but includes specific information linking Hun Sen’s top lieutenants to unspeakable acts of torture and murder.

Gen. Chau Sambath, a military advisor to Ranariddh, was captured while trying to flee the capital by motorcycle. According to human rights officials and Cambodian intelligence officers, Sambath was taken to Hun Sen’s personal compound on July 8 where he was tortured, then executed. The sources say his fingernails were pulled off and his tongue ripped out before he was killed by Gen. Him Bun Heang, chief of security for Hun Sen and head of his personal bodyguard. “ They wanted to know the military radio frequencies of Funcinpec leaders, so they tortured him at Hun Sen’s house,” said a senior Cambodian military intelligence officer. “ They pulled his tongue out of his head with pliers when he wouldn’t talk.”

Another Funcinpec general, secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior Ho Sok, was executed on the grounds of the ministry by the bodyguards of National Police Chief Gen. Hok Lundy, a loyalist of Hun Sen. According to Amnesty International, Ho Sok was arrested “ while attempting to find a country that would give him asylum.” He had taken refuge at the embassy of an Asean country, but was expelled at the request of Hun Sen’s aides and arrested as he drove to the luxury Cambodiana hotel, where many foreigners and Funcinpec officials had fled in the days after the coup. A Ministry of Interior spokesman confirmed the killing, saying it was done by “people who were angry with him.”

At least five bodyguards of Gen. Nyek Bun Chhay, the commander of Funcinpec forces, had their eyes gouged out while they were under interrogation, then executed, according to Western human rights officials and Cambodian military sources. After 14 days of flight through the countryside Nyek Bun Chhay has since arrived at the jungle headquarters and commands the resistance army.

Hundreds have already arrived in Thailand, including scores of Funcinpec officials, at least 24 members of parliament, journalists associated with independent newspapers, and officials of other political parties.

“The soldiers came to my house with rocket launchers looking for my steering committee members, putting their pictures on TV and posted in military offices,” said Sam Rainsy, Cambodia’s most prominent opposition politician and head of the Khmer Nation party. “ There is a campaign to destroy the KNP. The soldiers told people at my office ‘ We will not even let a baby asleep in a hammock stay alive.’ This is real Khmer Rouge language We cannot operate anymore. Democracy is finished.” More than 1000 of his party workers are now amassed at a jungle encampment along the Thai border under the protection of Funcinpec troops still loyal to Ranariddh.

“Killing and repression are going on on a very large scale. Hun Sen is a murderous prime minister,” Ranariddh told the REVIEW in Bangkok on July 20. “ I hope that the U.S. congress will call for a cessation of all aid to Hun Sen.”

But international condemnation of the coup has been decidedly muted, with the major donor countries still considering whether to support a government controlled by Hun Sen. If he maintains a credible coalition by co-opting ministers from Ranariddh’s Funcinpec party, he may win that support.

The ambivalence of major Western governments was foreshadowed by the reaction of their embassies in Phnom Penh during the coup—a response that has been criticized bitterly by Cambodian and human rights officials. They say the American and Australian embassies refused entry to Cambodian government officials who sought refuge on embassy grounds. The U.S. embassy also “flatly refused” requests of political asylum for some members of parliament or to issue them with emergency visas.

“We begged visas from Western embassies. We begged them to open their gates for people who were clearly targeted for persecution, and the Americans, the Australians, flatly said no,” said a foreign human rights official in Phnom Penh. “ These are the embassies who have pushed people to exercise their rights, have said they supported human rights and free expression and opposition politics, but when these very values are trampled upon and those who exercised their  rights were targeted, they did nothing to help.”

American embassy sources said they had no clearance from Washington to offer political asylum and claim they were not approached directly by any Cambodians for sanctuary on embassy grounds.

The U.S. also set up a sanctuary on the grounds of the Cambodiana hotel in downtown Phnom Penh during the fighting that raged in the city. Some Cambodian parliamentarians who have since fled the country said they were denied access to the sanctuary in the hotel’s ballroom. The correspondent for Voice of America, Cambodian citizen Som Sattana, was refused access to the ballroom by embassy personnel, despite having received death threats, according to human rights workers. He has since left the country.

“We set up a U.S. embassy reception centre at the Cambodiana hotel early on Sunday (July 6) for American citizens,” said an embassy spokeswoman, who added: “ We were not open for visas during the fighting.”

The able to flee are regrouping in newly formed resistance zones in northern Cambodia. Several thousand heavily armed troops backed by tanks and artillery control a swath of territory across several provinces abutting the Thai border, including the contested northwestern provincial capital of Samrong.

Hundreds of Funcinpec members, exhausted from days of trekking across the country to reach Funcinpec-controlled areas, spoke of being hunted by Hun Sen’s forces. “ They are arresting people in their houses, in the jungle, along the road—anybody they think works for Funcinpec,” said Sok Nuon, a policeman who fled from Kampong Chhnang province.

Gen. Long Sereirath, formerly deputy commander of the 5th Military Region in the north, fought his way out of Siem Riep city four days after the coup. He said he went without food for three days before reaching Samrong. “ We will blow up key bridges to keep them from coming north with artillery,” he said, but added that his forces were desperately low on ammunition.

His commander, Lt. Gen. Khan Savouen, who is now leading resistance forces, appealed for foreign assistance from his front-line command post near national Route 6 in Siem Riep province.” We will fight even if we don’t get foreign assistance,” he said, surrounded by Russian T-54 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Heavy fighting raged a few kilometers away and his position was overrun the day after the REVIEW interviewed him.

 

POL POT: THE END

COVER STORY

DUBIOUS DONOR

Money man: Theng Bunma sent cash and gold for Hun Sen’s coup

By Nate Thayer

Far Eastern Economic Review

August 7, 1997

How much does it take to buy a coup? In Cambodia, the going rate seems to be $1 million. Suspected drug baron Theng Bunma said he gave that much in cash and gold to Second Prime Minister Hun Sen to fund the putsch which toppled co-premier Norodom Ranariddh.

“For the clash of 6^th of July, 1997, I called Mr. Hun Sen and I talked to him. I gave him $1 million dollars to do whatever to control the situation,” said Bunma in an interview with Australian Channel 7 television.” He asked me if I had the money. I said no, but I would send 100 kilograms of gold in a plane into Cambodia.’ In return for his generosity, Bunma, reputed to be Cambodia’s richest businessman, enjoyed a perk of being a big-time coup financier: More than 300 hundred of Hun Sen’s troops, backed by tanks, were dispatched to protect Bunma’s property during the coup.

“ I say what the second prime minister did was correct. Why? One reason, take the example of my hotel. The other side wanted to destroy it, the government put three tanks and soldiers around to protect it,” he said. Asked whether Bunma had given the government the money, Cambodian Secretary of State for Information Khieu Kanharith replied:” Why would he give us a million dollars? I do not know what we are supposed to do with this money—it’s nothing, we need $100 million to finance the redevelopment of the whole country.”

Bunma also said he gave $50,000 dollars each to three leaders of a renegade faction of Ranariddh’s Funcinpec party “to encourage them”—Siem Riep governor Toan Chhay, Banteay Meanchey provincial governor Duong Khem and Minister of State Ung Phan.

The tycoon has denied allegations by the United States that he is involved in heroin trafficking.

'I'm tired of talking about it':Excerpts from interview with Pol Pot By Nate Thayer

'I'm tired of talking about it'

Excerpts from interview with Pol Pot October 16, 1997

By Nate Thayer

Phnom Penh Post

Friday, 24 October 1997 

   

Pol Pot, in his Oct 16 interview, dodged the big question - his role in mass murder - despite repeated attempts to get a response from him.

Nate Thayer's interpreter, senior KR cadre Tep Kunnal was less than keen on his job, trying to beg out of his translating duties. Thayer prevailed upon Kunnal to stay and translate the questions and answers. The following are excerpts, starting with Thayer's opening questions, addressed to the interpreter:

Q: He knows he is accused of leading and organization that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and that he has been condemned by most of the world for it. Is he a mass murderer, or what has he contributed to his country:

A: I think that you can raise all of the questions at one time, and some questions I think that I can answer connecting one to another to simplify things. But it's up to you...

Q: I'm interested in the issues of the time he was in power between 1975 and 1979. The millions of people who indeed did suffer during that time, and whether he feels that he's fairly accused. That's one question, let's start with.

A: Yes, I want to reply. Your question is not unfamiliar. That question has been raised time and again: I would like to say first that my conscience is clear. Everything I have done and contributed is first for the nation and the people and the race of Cambodia.

[Pol Pot then spoke about how the Vietnamese wanted to take over Cambodia, adding "they wanted to assassinate me because they knew without me they could easily swallow up Cambodia".]

Q: I would like to hear all of that, and if he's willing to stay here for hours, I am too. But if we could please deal with this first. As you know, most of the world thinks that you're responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Cambodians who didn't deserve to suffer. Could you answer that question directly? Do you feel that you were indeed responsible for crimes against humanity, against your own people?

A: I'm going to reply. I want to tell you clearly. First, I would like to tell you that I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people. Even now, and you can look at me, am I savage person? My conscience is clear... As I told you before, they fought against us, so we had to take measures to defend ourselves...

Q: You have an opportunity here, a historical opportunity. You know well that during your years in power, your policies - agrarian experiments, social and political organizations, the direct executions of many thousands of people - that many families suffered. The country itself also suffered because of your policies. Your fellow Cambodians want to know whether you feel any remorse, whether you acknowledge that you made very serious mistakes while you were in power?

A: There are two sides to it, as I told you: There's what we did wrong, and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people - by us and also by the enemy - but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now.

Q: But for all those hundreds of thousands who suffered - not just died but suffered from forced labor, from lack of food, from what were clearly failed central policies while you were in power - don't you think that they deserve an apology?

A: For the wrong things of our struggle, as I told you, for the wrong things, it has been written in the book. This is a testimony before history.

Q: Which book?

A: The book is the "The Right and Wrong of Democratic Kampuchea". [Pol Pot was apparently referring to a political tract released by the Democratic Kampuchea movement, as the Khmer Rouge calls themselves, in the late 1980s.]

Q: But that acknowledged only 30,000 deaths. All independent scholars, from all political ideologies, acknowledge a minimum of hundreds of thousands of people who died as a result of failed central policies while you were in power...That is a fact. While you were in sole power-and all the other members of your standing committee say you were in full power-thousands of people died because of failed social policies of your government. Are you willing to acknowledge that fact?

A: As I told you, that was written in the book, and I'm tired of talking about it...

Q: Let's talk about Tuol Sleng. There is overwhelming evidence that you had overall responsibility for Tuol Sleng. Sixteen thousand people who signed confessions were executed, including women and children who were suspected CIA, KGB, Vietnamese agents. Were you responsible for Toul Sleng and do you really believe that those 16,000 - including women and children - were agents of a foreign government?

A: I was at the top. I made only big decisions on big issues. I want to tell you - Tuol Sleng was a Vietnamese exhibition; a journalist wrote that. People talk about Tuol Sleng, Tuol Sleng, Toul Sleng, but when we look at the pictures, the pictures are the same. When I first heard about Tuol Sleng, it was on VOA [Voice of America]. I listened twice. And there are documents talking about someone who did research about the skeletons of the people... They said when you look closely at the skulls, they are smaller than the skulls of the Khmer people.

Q: Are you saying that you never heard of Tuol Sleng before 1979?

A: No, I never heard of it. And those two researchers, they said that those skeletons, they were more than 10 years old.

Q: Sir, let me say that there is overwhelming scientific evidence, overwhelming proof that thousands of people, Cambodians, were executed at Toul Sleng while you were in control of Phnom Penh. There is no dispute among anybody else in the world outside of Anlong Veng, perhaps, that it is true.

[No response.]

"Pol Pot, I Presume." Nate Thayer, Wall Street Journal

"Pol Pot, I Presume."  

Nate Thayer, Wall Street Journal

August 1, 1997

Nate Thayer, a reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Review, garnered
world-wide attention after becoming the first Western correspondent in almost
20 years to see former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. What follows is his own
account, condensed from the Aug. 7 issue of the magazine, which, like The Wall
Street Journal, is owned by Dow Jones & Co.

After a series of furtive rendezvous, using coded messages over mobile phones,
I had slipped into one of the most impenetrable, malaria-ridden and land
mine-strewn jungles of the world: Khmer Rouge-controlled northern Cambodia. I
was hoping to interview Pol Pot, one of the century's most notorious and
elusive mass murderers.

As I entered the Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng on July 25, hundreds of
voices chanted in unison: "Long live! Long live! Long live the new strategy!" The clenched fists of the crowd pumped toward the sky, as a smiling, middle-aged Khmer Rouge cadre led me toward an open-air meeting hall. Crackling loudspeakers, powered by a car battery lying on the earthen floor, began to spew denunciations of the longtime Khmer Rouge leader. "Crush! Crush! Crush! Pol Pot and his clique!" shouted the crowd on cue as we approached, their fists striking down toward the ground.

Final Defeat

A shocking number of the participants stood on crude wooden stumps, sat in home-made wheelchairs, or were missing eyes--sacrifices to the revolutionary cause of Pol Pot. Others, their arms blown off by landmines, were unable  join the frequent clapping as speaker after speaker denounced the man once venerated as "Brother Number One."

The carefully orchestrated performance evoked grainy film clips of China's Cultural Revolution. But the message was starkly different. "Long live the emergence of the democracy movement!" shouted individuals in the crowd. A chorus would repeat the slogan, followed by prolonged applause from the roughly 500 participants. Each speaker, seemingly chosen to represent a sector of society--a farmer, an intellectual, a soldier, a woman--got up to denounce and humiliate Pol Pot "and his clique."

Pol Pot sat alone, near three manacled loyalists, and often seemed close to tears as the vitriol was unleashed. In contrast, the three younger army commanders on trial alongside him had menacing expressions, staring coldly into the eyes of the speakers.

Pol Pot, who ruled Cambodia for more than three years and ruled the Khmer Rouge for more than three decades, was denounced and imprisoned by his own movement. Not for the 1975-78 Cambodian genocide, but for turning on his own comrades in an attempted purge in June.

The Khmer Rouge of Anlong Veng have good reason to distance themselves from Pol Pot: They want to attract international support for their struggle to unseat Cambodian Premier Hun Sen. That's why they allowed a foreign reporter to witness the show trial, the first time a journalist has entered Anlong Veng and left alive. Still the cadres clearly saw Pol Pot's ouster as a tragedy, and continued to treat the 72-year-old former leader with gentle respect.

The fall of Pol Pot underlines the view that the original Khmer Rouge movement which ruled Cambodia in the 1970s essentially no longer exists. But that doesn't mean that the Khmer Rouge have become irrelevant in Cambodia. The aggressive courting of remaining Khmer Rouge factions by Cambodia's rival premiers, Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was central to the July 5-6 coup in Phnom Penh. In fact, the Khmer Rouge had finalized their alliance with Ranariddh's Funcinpec Party on July 4. Worried that the balance of power would be tipped in his rival's favor, Hun Sen ousted Ranariddh the next day.

Virtually the entire Khmer Rouge leadership favored a deal with Funcinpec, but Pol Pot was opposed, said Gen. Im Nguon, who is now the Khmer Rouge's army chief of staff. "Domestically and internationally, Pol Pot has his own personal problems to take care of," he said, referring to Pol Pot's blood-soaked reputation. "He has no way out. That's why he keeps dragging this movement toward the darkness."

The Khmer Rouge had splintered dramatically since July 1996, when forces in western Cambodia, representing half the movement, broke with Pol Pot's northern forces headquartered in Anlong Veng. The western split was headed by Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's brother-in-law and longtime comrade-in-arms. Im Nguon said the split was aimed against Pol Pot himself, but the 72-year-old leader blamed his top leaders--Ta Mok, Nuon Chea and Son Sen--for failing to heal the rift.

"So Pol Pot asked Mao--over there," Im Nguon explained, pointing at a young Khmer Rouge cadre, "to shoot Ta Mok and burn him--last October--to leave no evidence."

The grim-faced young cadre, who looked capable of such a deed, nodded in agreement with his commander. But he didn't carry out Pol Pot's order. Ta Mok, who is known to the outside world as "the butcher," is immensely popular with the troops and civilians under his control. So much so, Im Nguon said, that Pol Pot saw him as a threat. "They really like him a lot because he is so helpful to them in terms of standard of living. He built roads, bridges, dams within this area," Im Nguon said.

Pol Pot turned to two senior military field commanders, Gen. Sarouen and Gen. San, attempting to consolidate power against Ta Mok. On Feb. 25 he had them declared the new military and political leaders, replacing Ta Mok, Im Nguon said. About the same time, according to both Cambodian government sources and diplomats, secret negotiations accelerated between envoys of Prince Ranariddh and elements of the Khmer Rouge in Anlong Veng. Most of these efforts were conducted by Ta Mok loyalists--often behind Pol Pot's back--and the top royalist military commander, Gen. Nyek Bun Chhay. By May, the faction agreed in principle to join in alliance.

Increasingly isolated, on June 9 Pol Pot launched a desperate attempt to scuttle the peace deal by purging Ta Mok and other top leaders. That night, longtime defense minister Son Sen and 14 of his relatives, including a five-year-old child, were shot dead by Gen. Sarouen's men, according to both Khmer Rouge and intelligence sources. The killings sparked several days of turmoil, with commanders fleeing into the jungle in disarray. But they rallied
behind Ta Mok and trapped Pol Pot and his band of about 300 remaining supporters on June 15, Im Nguon said. Four days later, they had surrendered.

With Pol Pot neutralized, the remaining Khmer Rouge leadership moved rapidly to finalize a secret political and military alliance with Funcinpec on July 4. Hun Sen, learning about Funcinpec's new alliance through his agents, launched his deadly coup the next morning.

Hun Sen has claimed the tribunal I witnessed was stage-managed by Pol Pot himself. Im Nguon paints a very different picture, but he did say that Pol Pot had "consented" to having a foreign reporter witness the mass meeting, as a way of acknowledging his guilt for moving against his comrades. "Pol Pot did himself confess to me clearly, after his arrest," Im Nguon said. "When I met him the first time, he embraced me and burst into tears. . . . He told me: 'I am wrong, comrade; all the mistakes were made by me, alone,' and then he cried."

"Pol Pot told me that this is the end of his life, he has nothing left, but he begged me to allow him to live," Im Nguon continued. "I also want to make clear that if Pol Pot was vested with any credibility or respect, he would not have shown up and let you see him like you just did today."

Life Imprisonment

As the "People's Tribunal of Anlong Veng" continued into its second hour, a loudspeaker roared into the nearby forest: "These are the criminal acts--the betrayal by Pol Pot and his clique--against the people, armed forces, and our cadre. In conclusion, we all decide to condemn and sentence this clique to life imprisonment."

Pol Pot, unable to walk unassisted, was helped up by a guard in Chinese-style military fatigues. Some people respectfully bowed, as if to royalty, as Pol Pot walked 25 yards to a waiting vehicle. The cadres suggested that I ask Pol Pot questions while he was led away, but balked at translating when told the questions I wanted to pose. Pol Pot, perhaps never to be seen alive again, was helped into a Toyota Landcruiser with tinted windows--captured booty from United Nations peacekeeping soldiers prior to the 1993 elections. Seconds after the trial ended, a torrential rain began.

Duch Confesses-He was the chief executioner in one of history's most murderous regimes. Now, he's a born-again Christian and aid worker. In his first interview, 'Duch' confesses to his Khmer Rouge crimes--Nate Thayer and Nic Dunlop

Duch Confesses

Far Eastern Economic Review

May 6, 1999

 

He was the chief executioner in one of history's most murderous regimes.
Now, he's a born-again Christian and aid worker. In his first interview,
'Duch' confesses to his Khmer Rouge crimes. The revelations could shake
Cambodia.

By Nic Dunlop and Nate Thayer in Battambang province

At first, the old man speaks only of his passion for Jesus and his mission
to bring the Gospel to these squalid jungle hamlets populated by Khmer
Rouge defectors.

Ta Pin, as he calls himself, has worked with international aid groups in
recent years, and he speaks for an hour--in a combination of Khmer, French
and English--of the needs of the peasants. He proudly displays a pair of
laminated certificates he received after attending seminars held in
Cambodia by American evangelical churches--they commend his "personal
leadership development, team-building and deepening commitment to Jesus
Christ."

He sidesteps several political questions, until one causes him to look
down and examine the business card of a visiting reporter. Following a
long pause, his eyes narrow and he looks directly at his visitor,
betraying a racing mind. "You are from the Far Eastern Economic Review,
the one who interviewed Pol Pot, Ta Mok and the other leaders," he says.
"Yes," the reporter replies. "They told me who you are and that you were
here."

The old man stares silently into the distance for a moment, then sits
down next to the reporter. Without being asked another question, Kang
Kek Ieu--alias Ta Pin, alias Hong Pen, alias "Duch"--begins to speak of
his life as the chief executioner for Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

"First, I want to say that I thank God to be meeting the Far Eastern
Economic Review today," says the one-time warden of Cambodia's most
notorious death camp who has been on the run for 20 years. "It is God's
will you are here. Now my future is in God's hands."

With that, he talks freely of his role and that of others in the horrors
of 1975-79, when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia and as many as 2 million
people perished out of a population of less than 7 million. "I have done
very bad things before in my life. Now it is time for les represailles
[to bear the consequences] of my actions."

He makes the confession in interviews on April 22 and 26 in his one-room
hut in the jungles of western Cambodia. His pregnant niece lies sick and
nearly comatose on a mat behind him, her arm taped to an intravenous
drip that hangs from a ceiling beam. His son sits nearby, his wooden leg
with carved toes--he stepped on a landmine in 1985--hanging over the
edge of the hut's raised floor. Hundreds more mines, in all likelihood,
still seed the earth around the hamlet.

"The first half of my life I will remember forever. Then I thought God
was very bad, that only bad men prayed to God. My unique fault is that I
did not serve God, I served men, I served communism," the 56-year-old
Duch says. "I feel very sorry about the killings and the past. I wanted
to be a good communist. Now, in the second half of my life, I want to
serve God by doing God's work to help people."

Comrade Duch has much to be sorry about. He was chief of the Khmer Rouge
"S-21" national-security apparatus and ran the notorious Tuol Sleng
detention centre in Phnom Penh. A converted secondary school, Tuol Sleng
was the nerve centre for a nationwide network of prisons and execution
grounds. Thousands of people--many of them purged Khmer Rouge cadres and
their families--were tortured, forced to confess to fantastic plots and
executed at Tuol Sleng, their bodies dumped in shallow graves outside
the city.

The treatment and the confessions of inmates were meticulously
documented. Duch's own signature and detailed comments are on hundreds
of documents ordering barbarous torture methods ranging from electric
shocks and severe beatings to the pulling out of toenails and submersion
in vats of water. At least 16,000 people were "processed" through Tuol
Sleng, according to scholars; only seven survived, escaping when
invading Vietnamese troops captured Phnom Penh in January 1979.

If an international tribunal is convened to try the Khmer Rouge for
genocide, Duch would be a pivotal figure: He was the direct link between
the Khmer Rouge political leadership and its killing machine.

"Duch would in fact be in a key position to close key gaps in the
evidence," says Stephen Heder, a Cambodia expert at London University's
School of Oriental and African Studies. "Although we have documents
linking S-21 to Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ta Mok, Ke Pok and Son Sen, among
others, they do not establish incontrovertibly that any of the above
ordered all the crimes against humanity that we know were committed, and
leave very unclear the roles of key figures such as Ieng Sary and Khieu
Samphan."

Heder was referring to the top leaders of the Communist Party of
Kampuchea, who ran the country from April 1975 to the end of 1979. In
the past few years, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and Ke Pok have
all "defected" from the Khmer Rouge and now live freely in Cambodia; Ta
Mok is alone in having been jailed after his capture in March. Son Sen
was murdered in June 1997 on Pol Pot's orders, and Pol Pot committed
suicide in April last year to avoid trial.

Duch's confessions will likely give new impetus to calls by the United
Nations, the United States and other major aid donors for the arrest and
trial of Khmer Rouge leaders. Indeed, in the interview, Duch says that
the entire leadership was responsible for the executions he carried out.
"The decisions for the killings were made not by one man, not just Pol
Pot, but by the whole central committee," he says. "Whoever was arrested
must die. It was the rule of our party. S-21 had no right to arrest
anybody. We had the responsibility to interrogate and give the
confession to the central committee of the party."

Putting on his glasses, he solemnly leafs through copies of documents
recovered from Tuol Sleng and shown to him by the REVIEW. They are
"confessions" extracted under torture, riddled with notations in Duch's
handwriting giving instructions for questioning, torture methods and
execution. "Yes, this is my signature," he says, pointing to a scrawl
ordering the torture of one victim. "And this handwriting is Nuon Chea's
and this one Son Sen's."

Another forced confession bears a long note from Duch to the party
leadership on the "traitorous activities" of a perceived enemy. "That is
my handwriting," he volunteers, then pointing elsewhere on the document,
he adds: "And this here is Nuon Chea's handwriting." The prisoners were
later executed. He identifies what he says is the handwriting of Nuon
Chea and fellow leaders on other documents, many with notations to or
from "Elder Brother" or simply the ominous "Organization," as the
Standing Committee of the Communist Party was known.

Nuon Chea, formerly No. 2 in the party hierarchy behind Pol Pot, was
effectively given amnesty by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen last year.
After staying in luxury hotels in Phnom Penh and vacationing in the
seaside resort of Sihanoukville, he now lives freely in the western
Cambodian border town of Pailin.

Examining the documents, Duch expresses what seems like genuine remorse.
"I am so sorry. The people who died were good people. I am here now. God
will decide my future." He adds: "There were many men who were innocent.
I tried to understand the punishment and orders to kill. I have a great
difficulty in my life thinking that the people who died did nothing
wrong."

He goes on to identify those he says made the command and control
decisions of organized genocide. "The first was Pol Pot, the second was
Nuon Chea, the third Ta Mok," he says.

Referring to seven Westerners known to have been executed at Tuol Sleng,
he says: "Nuon Chea ordered that the foreigners be killed and their
bodies burned so no bones were left. Only the Europeans were burned. I
remember well the Englishman. He was very polite."

At the same time, Duch offers a degree of exoneration for others. "Ieng
Sary knew nothing," he says of the regime's foreign minister. "He only
knew a little of the internal situation of the country because his work
was outside Cambodia." In 1980, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death for
genocide in a show trial staged in his absence by the government
installed in Phnom Penh by Vietnam. He was pardoned in 1996 by King
Norodom Sihanouk after leading mass defections from the Khmer Rouge to
the government.

The regime's figurehead prime minister, Khieu Samphan, was not as
oblivious, according to Duch. "Khieu Samphan knew of the killings, but
less than the others," he says. Khieu Samphan now lives with Nuon Chea
in Pailin, which is controlled by Ieng Sary and other ex-Khmer Rouge.

While Duch's revelations would be a prosecutor's dream, the chances of a
hearing being convened before an international tribunal abroad or a fair
trial being held in Phnom Penh remain remote. Cambodian Prime Minister
Hun Sen has resisted calls for a wide-ranging trial, saying it could
spark a new civil war in a country at peace for the first time in 30
years.

In fact, the REVIEW has learned, the Cambodian government has been aware
of Duch's whereabouts since at least mid-1997, but apparently made a
political decision not to arrest him. Questioned by international
human-rights investigators as to why Duch had not been detained, the
army deputy chief of staff, Gen. Pol Saroeun, remarked: "What do you
want to do, cause a panic?"

The fear is that the arrest of Khmer Rouge figures implicated in the
genocide could destroy the fragile peace. Large areas of northern and
northwestern Cambodia are controlled by ex-Khmer Rouge, and thousands of
soldiers remain loyal to their leaders. These leaders have nominally
defected, but actually operate autonomous zones outside the control of
the Phnom Penh government.

On April 19, Hun Sen said foreign judges would be allowed to take part
in the trial of the jailed Ta Mok, but he insisted it would be held in a
Cambodian court. He was noncommittal on the issue of arresting others
implicated in the crimes of 1975-79, saying the government couldn't tell
the judicial branch what to do. Four days later, the UN special
representative for human rights in Cambodia, Thomas Hammarberg,
nonetheless reiterated the commitment of the international community to
push for a trial of key leaders implicated. Hammarberg has asked to meet
Ta Mok but was denied permission to do so by Hun Sen.

In his remote village in northwest Cambodia, Duch says he is willing to
let his fate be decided by others. "For the trial of myself, I don't
worry, it is up to Hun Sen and Jesus."

Instead, he speaks of his wish to leave politics behind. "For the
present and future, I want three things: Schools for the children, for
my stomach to be full, and I want to finish my life to pray to God, to
bring the spirit of God to everybody in Cambodia."

Cambodians, however, may not find it so easy to forgive and forget.

PHOTOGRAPHIES POL POT

PHOTOGRAPHIES POL POT

Excerpts from video of Pol Pot trial. Jungles of Northern Cambodia near Anlong Veng, July 25 1997. In French. Video copyright: Nate Thayer

"Ink':The New Yorker: "Nate Thayer, a thirty-seven-year-old Boston Brahmin with a shaved head and teeth blackened by chewing tobacco, emerged from the Cambodian jungle..."

Ink

The New Yorker

The Talk of the Town

By Philip Gourevitch

August 18, 1997

On Friday, July 25th, Nate Thayer, a thirty-seven-year-old Boston Brahmin with a shaved head and teeth blackened by chewing tobacco, emerged from the Cambodian jungle, having witnessed and recorded on film the Khmer Rouge trial of Pol Pot. Being the first Western journalist to see Pol Pot in nearly two decades was, he said over the telephone from Bangkok last week, the fulfillment of a "life objective." A few years ago, in Phnom Penh, The Cambodian capital, he had given me some indication of what he had endured along the way. By Thayer’s reckoning, over the last ten years he has been the object of several assassination attempts and countless death threats; been taken hostage twice by the Khmer Rouge; seen eight of his personal security guards killed; been hospitalized sixteen times for cerebral malaria; been detained more than ten times by Thai intelligence and Cambodian government troops; and lost hearing in one ear when his vehicle was blown up by a land mine.

Thayer's appetite for the extreme, his gift for shucks-it-ain't nothin' self-dramatization, his readiness to meet armed adversaries with what he calls "superior firepower," and his anti-hair style have won him the nickname Kurtz among the increasingly pampered ranks of contemporary foreign correspondents. Thayer, who speaks Khmer, has said that he feels more attuned to life in Cambodia than in America. Of New York, where he lived, and was mugged, as a teen ager, he says, "Man, I can't control my perimeter there. It's the crazies that I can't deal with." Thayer rarely talks about his family - moneyed New England; Harvard's Thayer Hall; his father, Harry Thayer, a former Ambassador to Singapore - except to ...recall Judge Webster Thayer, who sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti: "Whenever they call me the black sheep of the family, I say, 'What about this fucking guy?

 Whether Thayer’s gnarly macho bluster is more of a gag or pathology, it has served as a useful foil for his intense seriousness as an investigative reporter and political analyst. Since he first turned up, with no journalistic experience, in the refugee camps along the Thai border in 1988, Thayer's muckraking exposed of Cambodia's Jacobean politics have made him not just a chronicler of events but a significant factor in their development. (In a typical story, he found himself alone in a hotel room with a coup plotter, ringed by troops with orders to kill). His principal employer is the Far Eastern Economic Review, but he also contributes to Soldier of Fortune, a magazine which he calls "by far the finest publication of its genre."

 

In 1992, Thayer trekked up the old Ho Chi Minh trail near the border of Vietnam, where he discovered a lost army of anti-communist Montagnards, still loyal to their Saigon and American commanders; he convinced them that the war had been over for seventeen years, and many of them later settled in America. A more recent ‘scientific’ expedition, in search of the Kouprey—a nearly extinct Indochinese bovine species—ended in fiasco, after Thayer and his cohort rode into the jungle on elephants, heavily armed and wearing Donald Duck and Ronald Reagan masks on the backs of their heads to scare off Tigers (the cats tend to attack from the rear).

 

 

In June, when Khmer Rouge radio announced that Pol Pot had been imprisoned, Thayer saw an opportunity to get "the last great interview in Asia." He was broke, so he borrowed the plane fare and set about convincing his Khmer Rouge contacts that they needed to bring a credible witness to Anlong Veng, the jungle redoubt where Pol Pot was being held. With his old friend the cameraman David McKaige, Thayer proceeded through an elaborate underground railroad—“meetings at gas stations, coded phone messages, hotel rooms, waiting”--...into the bush. "I wasn't the first to get into Anlong Veng," he said. "I was the first to get out." Three Westerners had disappeared after venturing into the Khmer Rouge headquarters in the past year or so.

 Thayer never got his interview. Pol Pot, seventy-two years old, and visibly weakened by disease, could not stand on his own, much less speak, when the two-hour trial was over. "Every ounce of his being was struggling to maintain some last vestige of dignity," Thayer said. “You could see his cheeks shaking.” And Thayer, who choked up himself during an interview with Ted Koppel afterward, told me, "It was a tragic thing to watch any human being have to go through that, regardless of what he did to others. I felt great sympathy—and not just for him. My mind raced with the millions of people whose lives were destroyed."

Still, Thayer seems almost to regard the accomplishment of this life goal as old news. The leaders of this summer's coup in Phnom Penh are themselves old Khmer Rouge cadres. "Pol Pot is in jail; the rest of them are in leadership," he said. "They're executing people, and the American government doesn't have the balls to call it a coup, because that would mean cutting off aid, and that's a scandal." To hear him talk, Pol Pot's demise was not the end of the story but the starting point of a new one.—PHILP GOUREVITCH

 

DEPT OF SCOOPS: Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?-"Talk of the Town"-The New Yorker

DEPT OF SCOOPS

Where’s the Committee to Protect Journalists from each other?

The New Yorker

May 25, 1998

Talk of the Town

By Philip Gourevitch

A George Foster Peabody Award is the broadcasting world’s version of the Pulitzer, and until last Monday, when the fifty-seventh annual awards ceremony was held, at the Waldorf-Astoria, nobody who was honored with a Peabody had ever spurned the distinction. Then Nate Thayer came to town. Thayer is the thirty-eight-year-old Bangkok-based journalist-adventurer who, last July, obtained one of the great scoops of our time by trekking into the Cambodian jungle, attending the show trial of Pol Pot, and trekking out into Thailand with the whole bizarre spectacle on high-quality videotape. Much of that footage was promptly aired by ABC’s “Nightline” in a three-part series, which went on to win one of this year’s Peabody’s for “distinguished achievement and meritorious public service.” And Thayer went from being the first journalist to meet up with Pol Pot in nearly twenty years to being the first to turn down a Peabody.

 

In a letter “formally and unequivocally” rejecting his share in the award, Thayer wrote, “Ted Koppel and ‘Nightline’ literally stole my work, took credit for it, trivialized it, refused to pay me, and then attempted to bully and extort me when I complained. They should not be rewarded for this kind of behavior and I under no circumstances want my name associated with these egregious violations of basic journalistic ethics and integrity.” So last week’s gala luncheon became a split-level ceremony: upstairs, in the Waldorf’s Grand ballroom, Koppel accepted the trophy—the sixth Peabody of his career—while downstairs, in one of the Waldorf’s many saloons, Thayer pleaded his case to the barman, who set up his double scotches for free, explaining, “I like a man with principles.’

Thayer has no quarrel with the series Koppel anchored, or with the fee of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars that, a month ago, ‘Nightline” finally paid him for the use of his footage. But the deal—which he originally negotiated with Koppel over the phone—was for a one-week exclusive on North American television rights only. As Thayer understood it, that meant that he could sell the remaining world broadcast rights and the potentially lucrative still photographs from his encounter with Pol Pot, and that he retained the print-media exclusive to the story, which he had promised to his longtime employer, the far eastern Economic Review, a Hong Kong-based weekly. Thayer says that he chose to work with Koppel “because of his reputation for integrity” and yet “within twenty-four hours the pictures and the story were all over the place. ABC’s public-relations just took it over.”

 

Even before the first “Nightline program on Pol Pot aired, the network’s promotion teams were shipping out photographs made from Thayer’s footage, and video clips were available on the ABC web site, where anybody could simply download them. “Nightline” also allowed a writer from the Times to preview ten minutes of the footage, with the result that Thayer’s scoop—text and photographs appeared on the paper’s front page before his own article for the Review had gone to press. According to a spokeswoman for ABC, this sort of pre-broadcast publicity is normal, and the network did nothing to violate its agreement. If Thayer thinks otherwise, the spokeswoman says, “It might be that he had no idea that this is what happens when you deal with a large news organization.”

 

Thayer does think otherwise. “My main objection is that the industry has taken control of journalists, and part of our job is to fight for the integrity of our profession,” he said last week over more double scotches in a midtown bar. “I’ve just become incredibly disillusioned over the last year.” Sadly, Thayer’s sense of himself as something of a dinosaur is not inaccurate; in the dangerous pursuit of his stories that have made him famous, he has often needed to trust verbal agreements—even with Khmer Rouge cadres—as a matter of life or death. And nobody in the news business seems to recognize that fact better than Ted Koppel. Last October, at the same Waldorf podium where he would claim his latest Peabody award, Koppel addressed a banquet for the Committee to Protect Journalists, paying homage to reporters who risk “ death, or torture, or imprisonment” in violent places under repressive regimes, and he warned that American journalism was equally endangered.—but “more insidiously”—by “the trivialization of our industry.” He said, “We struggle to be first with the obvious…we’re afraid of the competition; afraid of earning less money; afraid of losing our audience.”

Last week, with the ghost of those words hanging in the hall, Koppel kept his Peabody acceptance speech brief. “Nate has chosen not to accept this award, because he has some profound differences with ABC news, with “Nightline”, with me. I’m sorry about that, genuinely sorry,” he said, adding, “While he rejects this award, I don’t want to reject the enormous contribution he made to bringing the world this story.”

 

It was odd hearing Thayer spoken of as having made a “contribution” to the story that he alone had brought out of the Cambodian Jungles. Finding Pol Pot was his biggest scoop, but for ten years, in one groundbreaking story after another, Thayer has not only chronicled Cambodia’s treacherous political history but also done a good deal to shape it. Early last month, for instance, he got word that the Khmer Rouge leaders who had purged Pol Pot, and were keeping him captive, wanted to turn the aging and sickly boss of the killing fields over to “the Americans” for trial; before an international tribunal. “But they didn’t know any Americans,” Thayer recalled. “Just me. I went back in, and spoke with them, and reported their wishes. The Voice of America’s Khmer-language service led the eight-o’clock news with the story on April 15^th. Pol Pot was listening, and a few hours later he was dead.” Thayer grinned, and ran a big hand over his shiny shaved scalp, his narrow eyes seemed to brighten. “ That’s my award,” he said, and laughed. “ I killed Pol Pot.”---Philip Gourevitch

Tyrants Old and New - The Washington Post Lead Editorial

Tyrants Old and New

The Washington Post

July 30, 1997

FOR THE FIRST time in 18 years, Pol Pot -- one of the century's most evil figures -- has been sighted by a Westerner and shown on American television. It is as if Hitler or Stalin had resurfaced two decades after their genocidal crimes. Pol Pot, whose Khmer Rouge movement turned Cambodia into a concentration camp where a million people died in four short years, now appears as a feeble old man, supported by two soldiers as he walks, fretfully clutching a scarf to his neck.

Why is this sight -- filmed in the remote jungle by journalist Nate Thayer and a cameraman companion -- so disturbing? Partly it is the unsatisfactory letdown of a show trial to which Pol Pot has been subjected. Now victimized by the Stalinist and Maoist style that he helped bring to Cambodia, Pol Pot is shown sitting on a rickety chair as hundreds of his erstwhile Khmer Rouge compatriots shout in unison for him to be "crushed, crushed, crushed." Is it truly a fall from power, or a Pol Pot ruse within Cambodia's tangled politics? Outsiders cannot be sure. We can be certain, though, that it is not the international war crimes tribunal that alone could provide justice and satisfy history.

But the scene disturbs for another reason, too. To see this malarial old man is to render human the monster of our imagination -- and to remind us that he cannot have committed his crimes alone. We like to pretend that the awful genocides of the 20th century were the works of evil geniuses -- Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot -- beyond the control of ordinary people like ourselves. Yet Pol Pot could not have enslaved his nation without many willing collaborators, inside and outside Cambodia. Even the United States, which now (rightly) demands his apprehension, offered indirect support and cooperation when it suited U.S. geopolitical needs. This reality becomes all the more painful as we watch history repeat itself. A new tyrant even now is consolidating his rule in Cambodia. Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge lieutenant, has not committed crimes on Pol Pot's scale, yet the reports now emerging from Cambodia of tortures and summary executions are horrifying enough. And once again people inside and outside Cambodia are making their accommodations. Quislings in the party of ousted prime minister Norodom Ranariddh scramble to take his place, offering Hun Sen a constitutional fig leaf. Donor countries such as Japan proffer aid, taking with a straight face Hun Sen's promise to restore democracy. Perhaps 20 years from now, Hun Sen will face a trial someplace -- and everyone will again pretend that he acted all by himself.

Guerrilla Court Holds `Trial' For Pol Pot; Americans Witness Sentencing in Jungle - The Washington Post

Guerrilla Court Holds `Trial' For Pol Pot; Americans Witness Sentencing in Jungle

The Washington Post

July 28, 1997 | William Branigin

An American reporter said yesterday that he saw the elusive Pol Pot Friday in the jungles of northern Cambodia and witnessed the longtime Khmer Rouge guerrilla leader's "trial" by former followers who mutinied against him last month.

Nate Thayer, a staff correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review and an occasional contributor to The Washington Post, saw the deposed leader of the radical communist group at Anlong Veng, a Khmer Rouge stronghold now controlled by mutinous remnants of Pol Pot's guerrilla army. It was the first time in 18 years that a Western reporter had seen the mastermind of Cambodia's 1970s holocaust, in which more than 1 million people died by execution or from disease, starvation and overwork in less than four years of Khmer Rouge rule.

"I witnessed his public trial and denunciation and sentence to life imprisonment," Thayer said by telephone from Bangkok. He said Pol Pot and three of his top military commanders were sentenced for "crimes of genocide" by a Khmer Rouge tribunal in an open-sided meeting hall after a two-hour trial attended by local villagers and Khmer Rouge militiamen. Thayer described Pol Pot as looking "old and defeated" as he sat before the tribunal and heard himself denounced. White-haired and frail-looking, the former dictator walked with a cane and was said to be suffering from an undisclosed illness. Thayer called the scene the "most extraordinary event" he has ever witnessed, the equivalent of "seeing Hitler in his bunker." He said he brought out photos and videotape that are "really historical." Thayer said the Review has exclusive rights to his story and that he could not divulge further details until the weekly magazine's cover story is published later this week. He declined to say whether he had spoken to Pol Pot, who is believed to be 69 years old and has been reported to be in poor health. The trial Thayer referred to occurred Friday in Anlong Veng at what Khmer Rouge radio described as a mass meeting of the movement's followers. In a broadcast Saturday, the group's clandestine radio station said that "thousands of people held a meeting and condemned and sentenced Pol Pot and his squad that had carried out serious rebellious deeds against the people." The broadcast said Pol Pot and unidentified members of his "genocidal clique" were sentenced to "life imprisonment" by representatives of "the people, the army and cadres." Thayer, 37, who has traveled to Khmer Rouge zones repeatedly in recent years, was allowed to attend the ceremony with an American cameraman. He has lived in Southeast Asia off and on since 1981 and speaks Khmer, the Cambodian language. Videotape of the scene is to be broadcast Monday night on ABC's Nightline program under an arrangement among the network, Thayer and the Review. Thayer said his forthcoming story in the Review would make clear that Pol Pot's long rule over the Khmer Rouge is over and that the trial was "no political trick." He said Pol Pot was clearly displeased that the event was witnessed by an American journalist and cameraman. The two were the first westerners to go to Anlong Veng and make it out alive, Thayer said. A British expert on land-mine removal and two French tourists were captured by the Khmer Rouge in the area and have not been seen since. According to Cambodian, Thai and Western sources, Pol Pot has been held under house arrest at a site north of Anlong Veng close to the Thai border since last month, when a major dispute split the Khmer Rouge's already depleted ranks. The rift was apparently provoked by the efforts of some Khmer Rouge elements to strike a deal with Prince Norodom Ranariddh, then Cambodia's co-prime minister, under which the Khmer Rouge would have been allowed to join Ranariddh's political organization in return for dropping their "provisional government" and publicly recognizing the Cambodian constitution and government. As part of the arrangement, sources said, the Khmer Rouge remnants in Anlong Veng were to break definitively with Pol Pot and two other bloodstained leaders, Khmer Rouge defense chief Son Sen and guerrilla commander Ta Mok, leaving the movement in the hands of longtime nominal leader Khieu Samphan and a younger generation of Khmer Rouge commanders and cadres. But the deal fell apart -- by one account, when no foreign country would agree to let Pol Pot and the others take up residence in exile. Early on June 10, Son Sen and his family were slain in Anlong Veng in a purge attributed to Pol Pot. Ta Mok, who may also have been targeted, sent forces in pursuit of Pol Pot and a dwindling band of followers, capturing them 10 days later. Ailing and exhausted, Pol Pot and his longtime deputy, Nuon Chea, were carried into a Khmer Rouge jungle base in hammocks, according to Gen. Nhek Bun Chhay, a military aide to Ranariddh who at the time was trying to negotiate the handover of Pol Pot for trial before an international tribunal. Khmer Rouge radio declared then that Pol Pot had committed "treason" but indicated no willingness to turn him over for such a trial. Speculation grew that he was dead or that the events in Anlong Veng were a ruse to camouflage his continued manipulation of the movement he led for 35 years. The holding of a public "trial" by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge captors suggests there is little prospect he will be brought to justice in an international setting. The negotiations between Ranariddh's faction of Cambodia's coalition government and the Khmer Rouge remnants prompted a government coup July 5 and 6 by co-prime minister Hun Sen, who accused Ranariddh's partisans of trying to bring Khmer Rouge guerrillas into Phnom Penh to bolster the prince's forces. By holding an ad hoc "trial" of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge remnants apparently are still trying to position themselves to wage a political struggle against Hun Sen's rule while maintaining the group's diminished guerrilla force for protection.

Nate Thayer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nate Thayer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Nate Thayer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nate Thayer (born April 21, 1960) is a journalist who interviewed Pol Pot. He was the Cambodia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, a respected investigative publication that published from 1946 to 2009. His journalism has focused on international organized crime, narcotics trafficking, human rights, and areas of military conflict.

Nate Thayer discussing Pol Pot's trial, July 1997.

Contents  [hide]  1 Publications, honors and awards 2 Career 2.1 Thayer at Pol Pot's Trial 2.2 Nightline controversy 2.3 Interview with Pol Pot 2.4 Thayer and the death of Pol Pot 2.5 Interview with Kang Kek Iew 2.6 Subsequent work 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Publications, honors and awards

Thayer has written for Jane's Defence Weekly, Soldier of Fortune, The Associated Press and for more than 40 other publications, including The Cambodia Daily and The Phnom Penh Post. Thayer’s reporting earned him The World Press Award, the 1997 “Scoop of the Year” British press award, and the 1998 Francis Frost Wood Award for Courage in Journalism, given by Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York to a journalist "judged to best exemplify physical or moral courage in the practice of his or her craft."^[1] He was a visiting scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University^[2] as well as the first recipient of the Center for Public Integrity's ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting in November, 1998.^[3] Upon awarding Thayer the ICIJ Award, the judges noted:

"He illuminated a page of history that would have been lost to the world had he not spent years in the Cambodian jungle, in a truly extraordinary quest for first-hand knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and their murderous leader. His investigations of the Cambodian political world required not only great risk and physical hardship but also mastery of an ever-changing cast of factional characters."^[4]

According to Vaudine England of the BBC, "Many of the region's greatest names in reporting made their mark in the pages of the Review, from the legendary Richard Hughes of Korean War fame, to Nate Thayer, the journalist who found Cambodia's Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot."^[5]

Thayer was also the first person in 57 years to turn down a prestigious Peabody Award, because he did not want to share it with ABC News' Nightline whom he believed stole his story and deprived him and the Far Eastern Economic Review of income.^[6][7]

Since 1999 Hofstra University's Department of Journalism and Mass Media Studies in the School of Communication has awarded the Nate Thayer Scholarship to a qualified student with the best foreign story idea. Winners are selected on the basis of scholastic achievement or potential as well as economic need.^[8]

[edit] Career

Thayer was born in 1960^[9] in Massachusetts, the son of Harry E. T. Thayer who was United States Ambassador to Singapore from 1980 to 1985. He studied at the University of Massachusetts Boston. From 1980 to 1982 he was involved with the Boston-based Clamshell Alliance, acting as spokesman during protest events at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant^{[10][11][12][13]} as well as anti-draft protests.^[14]

He began his career in Southeast Asia on the Thai-Cambodian border, taking part in an academic research project in which he interviewed 50 Cham survivors of Khmer Rouge atrocities at Nong Samet Refugee Camp in 1984.^[15][16] He then returned to Massachusetts where he worked briefly as the Transportation Director for the state Office of Handicapped Affairs.^[17][18] Thayer himself noted, "I got fired. I was a really bad bureaucrat."^[19]

He later worked for Soldier of Fortune Magazine reporting on guerrilla combat in Burma,^[20] and in 1989 he began reporting for the Associated Press from the Thai-Cambodian border.^[21] In October 1989 he was nearly killed when an anti-tank mine exploded under a truck he was riding in.^[22] In 1991 he moved to Cambodia where he began writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review.^[23][24]

In August 1992 Thayer traveled to Mondulkiri Province and visited the last of the FULRO Montagnard guerrillas who had remained loyal to their former American commanders.^[25] Thayer informed the group that FULRO's president Y Bham Enuol had been executed by the Khmer Rouge seventeen years previously.^[26] The FULRO troops surrendered their weapons in October 1992; many of this group were given asylum in the United States.^[27][28]

In April 1994 Thayer participated in (and funded) the Cambodian Kouprey Research Project, a $30,000, two-week, 150 km field survey to find the rare Cambodian bovine known as the kouprey.^[29] Thayer later wrote: "After compiling a team of expert jungle trackers, scientists, security troops, elephant mahouts and one of the most motley and ridiculous looking groups of armed journalists in recent memory, we marched cluelessly into Khmer Rouge-controlled jungles along the old Ho Chi Minh trail."^[30]

On July 3, 1994 Thayer was asked help negotiate Prince Norodom Chakrapong's release and safe passage to the airport after the prince had been accused by Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh of plotting a coup d'etat.^[31][32] Thayer was subsequently expelled from Cambodia by Prince Ranariddh, but he returned anyway.^[33]

In early 1997 he was again expelled from Cambodia for exposing connections between Prime Minister Hun Sen and heroin traffickers.^[34][35] Thayer then decided to pursue a fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.

[edit] Thayer at Pol Pot's Trial

Pol Pot´s trial, reported by Nate Thayer, August 2, 1997

Nate Thayer became world famous in July 1997 when he and Asiaworks Television cameraman David McKaige managed to visit the Anlong Veng Khmer Rouge jungle camp inside Cambodia where Pol Pot was being tried for treason.^[36] Thayer had hoped for an interview but was disappointed:

"Pol Pot said nothing. They made it clear and I believed them, that I was to interview Pol Pot after the trial. Pol Pot literally had to be carried away from the trial--he was unable to walk--and I was not able to talk to him. I did try to talk to him... he did not answer any questions, and he did not speak during the trial.^[37]"

Thayer noted, "Every ounce of his being was struggling to maintain some last vestige of dignity."^[38]

Thayer believed that the trial had been staged by the Khmer Rouge for him and McKaige:

"It was put on specifically for us, to take the message to the world that Pol Pot has been denounced. They had reported on their radio, on June 19, that Pol Pot had been purged. No one believed them. After five years of lying over their radio, there was no reason anyone should take what they say credibly. It was clear to them that they needed an independent, credible witness to show what was happening."^[39]

[edit] Nightline controversy

According to Thayer, Ted Koppel of ABC News made a verbal agreement with Thayer to use footage from the trial on Nightline, then violated that agreement:^[40]

"[Koppel] returned home with a copy of my videotape. I gave it to him in exchange for his strict promise that its only use would be on Nightline. However, once he had the copy of the tape, ABC News released video, still pictures, and even transcripts of my interviews to news organizations throughout the world. Protected by its formidable legal and public relations department, ABC News made still photographs from the video, slapped the “ABC News Exclusive” logo on them, and hand delivered them to newspapers, wire services, and television...All of these pictures demanded that photo credit be given to ABC News... The story won a British Press Award for “Scoop of the Year” for a British paper I didn’t even know had published it...I even won a Peabody Award as a “correspondent for Nightline." But I turned it down—-the first time anyone had rejected a Peabody in its 57-year history."^[41]

ABC News responded that they had "agreed to pay Nate Thayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money."^[42] In 2002 Thayer sued Koppel and ABC News for $30 million in punitive damages and unspecified compensatory damages.

[edit] Interview with Pol Pot

In October 1997, Thayer returned to Anlong Veng and became only the second western journalist (after Elizabeth Becker in 1978) ever to be granted an interview with the former dictator^[43][44] and, along with McKaige, was certainly the last outsider to see him alive.^[45] Thayer recounted the story of his interview with Pol Pot in his book Sympathy for the Devil: Living Dangerously in Cambodia - A Foreign Correspondent's Story.^[46] Pol Pot told Thayer:

"First, I want to let you know that I came to join the revolution, not to kill the Cambodian people. Look at me now. Do you think ... am I a violent person? No. So, as far as my conscience and my mission were concerned, there was no problem. This needs to be clarified...My experience was the same as that of my movement. We were new and inexperienced and events kept occurring one after the other which we had to deal with. In doing that, we made mistakes as I told you. I admit it now and I admitted it in the notes I have written. Whoever wishes to blame or attack me is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have enough experience to totally control the movement. On the other hand, with our constant struggle, this had to be done together with others in the communist world to stop Kampuchea becoming Vietnamese. For the love of the nation and the people it was the right thing to do but in the course of our actions we made mistakes.^[47]"

[edit] Thayer and the death of Pol Pot

Thayer visited Anlong Veng again on April 16, 1998, only a day after Pol Pot had died. After photographing the corpse he briefly interviewed Ta Mok and Pol Pot's second wife Muon, who told Thayer, "What I would like the world to know is that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father."^[48] Thayer was then asked to transport Pol Pot's body in his pickup truck to the site a short distance away^[49] where it was later cremated.^[50]

[edit] Interview with Kang Kek Iew

In April 1999 Thayer, alongside photojournalist Nic Dunlop, interviewed Kang Kek Iew (Comrade Duch) for the Far Eastern Economic Review after Dunlop had tracked Duch to Samlaut and suspected strongly that he was the former director of the notorious S-21 security prison.^[51] Dunlop wanted Duch to provide clues that would reveal his identity, and Thayer began probing Duch's story that he was Hang Pin, an aid worker and a born-again Christian:

"Then Nate said, 'I believe that you also worked with the security services during the Khmer Rouge Period?' Duch appeared startled and avoided our eyes...Again Nate put the question to him...He looked unsettled and his eyes darted about...He then glanced at Nate's business card...'I believe, Nic, that your friend has interviewed Monsieur Ta Mok and Monsieur Pol Pot?'...He sat back down...and inhaled deeply. 'It is God's will that you are here,' he said."^[52]

Duch surrendered to the authorities in Phnom Penh following the publication of this interview.^[53][54] Dunlop and Thayer were first runners-up for the 1999 SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism, presented by the The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, for "exposing the inside story of the Khmer Rouge killing machine."^[55]

[edit] Subsequent work

Nate Thayer has also covered Albania,^[56] Indonesia,^[57] Mongolia^[58] and the Philippines.^[59] In 2003 he reported on the Iraq War in a five-part series for Slate Magazine.^{[60][61][62][63][64]} He also covered the Bangkok 2010 Redshirt riots.^[65][66] He has recently worked for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' Center for Public Integrity writing a three month investigation on North Korea as a rogue state financed by criminal activity.^[67]

[edit] References

1. ^ "Hofstra forms journalism award selection committee." Long Island Business News, 04/06/98, Vol. 45 Issue 14, p. 19.
2. ^ Dale Keiger, "In Search of Brother Number One," Johns Hopkins Magazine, November 1997
3. ^ ICIJ Journalists: Nate Thayer
4. ^ Maud S. Beelman, "Reporting Across Borders," The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity, Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.
5. ^ Vaudine England, "Leading Asian Magazine to Close," BBC Asia-Pacific News, September 22, 2009.
6. ^ "Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it." The Independent, May 25 1998.
7. ^ Richard Linnett and Wayne Friedman, "Marketing the News: The Selling of Pol Pot," Advertising Age, 11/18/2002, Vol. 73, Issue 46.
8. ^ Hofstra University Student Information Package, Financial Aid Section, p. 45.
9. ^ Philip Gourevitch, The Talk of the Town, “Ink,” The New Yorker, August 18, 1997, p. 25.
10. ^ Randy Shipp, "Antinuclear coalition set for fresh assault on Seabrook," The Christian Science Monitor, May 22, 1980, p. 7.
11. ^ Michael Knight, "1,500 Repulsed at Seabrook Trying to Take Nuclear Site; Two Officers Injured On Easy Ground," New York Times, May 25, 1980, p. 22.
12. ^ "Clamshell Plan to Protest Reactor Move to Seabrook," Boston Globe, Feb 18, 1981, p. 1
13. ^ "250 Protest at Seabrook Nuclear Site," The Harvard Crimson, Wednesday, March 04, 1981.
14. ^ Edward Quill and Richard H. Stewart, "Draft Foes Partly Padlock Post Office," Boston Globe, Jul 23, 1980, p. 1.
15. ^ Ben Kiernan, "Orphans of Genocide: the Cham Muslims of Kampuchea Under Pol Pot," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Volume 20, Issue 4, 1988, p. 2.
16. ^ Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79. New Haven: Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0300144345, 1996, p. 264.
17. ^ Frances Robles, "Many Who Depend on The Ride Say They Can't," Boston Globe, Aug 21, 1988 p. 33, Metro Section.
18. ^ Joe Ferson, "Handicapped Criticize MBTA on Van Service: Frequent Delays, Faulty Equipment Cited." Boston Globe, Sep 16, 1988, p. 82.
19. ^ Nate Thayer, "Finding Pol Pot: Nate Thayer's Story-Behind-the-Story." The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity, Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.
20. ^ Thayer, "Finding Pol Pot," 1999.
21. ^ Nate Thayer, "Aid Workers Flee as Cambodia Fighting Intensifies," The Associated Press, 13 September 1989.
22. ^ "U.S. Reporter Injured, One Killed by Mine in Cambodia," 16 October 1989, Reuters.
23. ^ Nate Thayer, "Rubies are Rouge." Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb 7 1991, pp. 29-30.
24. ^ Andrew Sherry, "Nate Thayer vs. Pol Pot," April 5, 2005
25. ^ Nate Thayer, “Montagnard Army Seeks UN Help,” Phnom Penh Post, Sept. 12, 1992.
26. ^ Nate Thayer, "Forgotten Army: The Rebels Time Forgot," Far Eastern Economic Review, Sept 10, 1992, pp. 16-22.
27. ^ Nate Thayer and Leo Dobbs, “Tribal Fighters Head for Refuge in USA,” Phnom Penh Post, October 23 1992.
28. ^ Nate Thayer, "Trail of tears: 'Lost' Montagnard Army Vows to Fight On," Far Eastern Economic Review, Sept 10 1992, pp. 18-22.
29. ^ "Search for the kouprey: trail runs cold for Cambodia’s national animal". Phnom Penh Post, April 2006.
30. ^ Nate Thayer, "Motley crew moves out on jungle mission impossible," Phnom Penh Post, April 22, 1994.
31. ^ Nate Thayer, "Frantic calls from Regent's Rm 406," Phnom Penh Post, National News, 15 Jul 1994.
32. ^ Nate Thayer, "As It happened..." Far Eastern Economic Review, July 14, 1994, pp. 15-16.
33. ^ Philip Gourevitch, "Guns 'N Deadlines," HQ Magazine, Nov/Dec 1997, pp. 116-119.
34. ^ Nate Thayer, "Narco-nexus." Far Eastern Economic Review, April 24 1997, Vol. 160 Issue 17, p. 20.
35. ^ Nate Thayer, “Drug Suspects Bankroll Cambodian Coup Leader,” Washington Post, July 22, 1997.
36. ^ Nate Thayer, “Pol Pot, I Presume,”. Wall Street Journal, August 1, 1997.
37. ^ *"Cambodia: Trial of Pol Pot," interview with Gareth Evans and Tep Kunnal.
38. ^ Philip Gourevitch, The Talk of the Town, “Ink,” The New Yorker, August 18, 1997, p. 25.
39. ^ Keiger, 1997.
40. ^ Kelly Heyboer, "A Journalistic Coup Turns Sour," American Journalism Review, September 1997, pp. 10-11.
41. ^ Nate Thayer, "Freelancers’ Vital Role in International Reporting With the rise of media conglomerates, foreign news has been shoved aside." Nieman Reports, Dec 2001.
42. ^ Jeffrey Schneider, VP, ABC News, quoted in Richard Linnett and Wayne Friedman, "Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot." Advertising Age, 11/18/2002, Vol. 73, Issue 46; Section: Briefs.
43. ^ Nate Thayer, "Dying Breath The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 30, 1998
44. ^ Becker E. When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution. 1st PublicAffairs ed. New York: PublicAffairs, 1998, ISBN 978-1891620003, p. 516.
45. ^ Nate Thayer, "Finding Pol Pot: Nate Thayer's Story-Behind-the-Story." The Public i: Newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity, Vol 7, no. 2, Mar 1999.
46. ^ Nate Thayer, Sympathy for the Devil: Living Dangerously in Cambodia - A Foreign Correspondent's Story. Penguin Putnam Inc., New York 1999, ISBN 978-0670885763
47. ^ Nate Thayer, "Day of Reckoning." Far Eastern Economic Review, 30 October 1997: pp. 14-20.
48. ^ Thayer, "Dying Breath," April 30, 1998.
49. ^ Gordon Sharpless "Anlong Veng: Normalcy returns to the former Khmer Rouge stronghold," Tales of Asia, July 2000
50. ^ Nury Vittachi, "A brief history of FEER," October 1, 2009.
51. ^ Nic Dunlop, The Lost Executioner: A Journey to the Heart of the Killing Fields. New York: Walker & Company, 2006.
52. ^ Dunlop, 2006, pp. 271-72.
53. ^ Stan Alcorn, "Photography in the Killing Fields," DART Center for Journalism and Trauma, March 2008.
54. ^ Nic Dunlop and Nate Thayer, "Duch Confesses," Far Eastern Economic Review, May 6, 1999; vol 170, no. 3:, p. 76.
55. ^ "Associated Press Team Wins ’99 SAIS-Novartis Prize," SAIS Reports, Johns Hopkins University, April/May 2000, p. 2.
56. ^ S. Jayasankaran, Nate Thayer, "From Logs to Lotus," Far Eastern Economic Review, 12 December 1996, cover story.
57. ^ Syamsul Indrapatra, Nate Thayer, Bertil Lintner, John McBeth, "Worse to come," Far Eastern Economic Review, 162.30 (Jul 29, 1999): 16-18.
58. ^ Nate Thayer, “Forward Steppes,” Far Eastern Economic Review, March 27, 1997, p. 20.
59. ^ Rigoberto Tiglao, Andrew Sherry, Nate Thayer, Michael Vatikoitis, "'Tis the season," Far Eastern Economic Review, 161:52, Dec 24, 1998: 18-20.
60. ^ Nate Thayer, "Live From Baghdad," Slate, March 19, 2003
61. ^ Nate Thayer, "The Bombing of Baghdad," Slate, March 22, 2003
62. ^ Nate Thayer, "Baghdad Gets Scarier," Slate, March 24, 2003
63. ^ Nate Thayer, "More American Bombs, and More Iraqi Defiance," Slate, March 24, 2003
64. ^ Nate Thayer, "The Road From Baghdad," Slate, March 28, 2003
65. ^ "Thai crisis : CTV News Channel: Nate Thayer in Bangkok."
66. ^ Michael Sheridan and Nate Thayer, "Vengeful redshirts threaten tourism: The Thai protest has spawned an underground militant wing in Bangkok," The Sunday Times, May 23, 2010
67. ^ Nate Thayer, profile

[edit] External links

• "Journalist Nate Thayer was on the scene in Cambodia recently when Pol Pot, the leader of the guerrilla force, the Khmer Rouge, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a show trial," NPR Interview, August 7, 1997
• "Continuing Unrest," PBS Interview with Sydney Schanberg and Nate Thayer, June 18, 1997.
• "Cambodia: Trial of Pol Pot," interview with Gareth Evans and Tep Kunnal.
• "Your scoop? Nah. It's ours if we want it," The Independent, 25 May 1998
• "Killing Fields Leader 'killed himself'," BBC News, January 21, 1999
• "70's Torturer in Cambodia Now 'Doing God's Work'," The New York Times, May 2, 1999
• "Former Khmer Rouge leader arrested," The New York Times, Sept 19, 2007
• "Alternative Wasn't There For Hun Sen," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan 5, 1999
• Nate Thayer, "Dying Breath: The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement he created," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 30, 1998
• Nate Thayer, "The Road From Baghdad," Slate, March 28, 2003
• Nate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot on YouTube, Part 1
• Nate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot on YouTube, Part 2
• Dirck Halstead, "Rewind: Wars and Memories (PART I)" October 17, 1997
• "Educating Nate Thayer by Al Rockoff and Project Pineapple," June 9, 2010
• Andrew Drummond, "The Rebel Who Caught Pol Pot," The Times, July 30, 1997.

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ESCAPES: The Living Fields; Cambodia's Most Famous War Reporter Retreats to Dorchester County, Md.

ESCAPES: The Living Fields; Cambodia's Most Famous War Reporter Retreats to Dorchester County, Md.

The Washington Post

November 8, 2000 | Steve Hendrix

"If I were writing about this area," the war correspondent says with one arm draped over the steering wheel of his pickup, "that would be my lead right there."

The war correspondent is squinting down the sunny main street of Cambridge, Md.--a rank of blank storefronts and shabby 1960s siding. Specifically, he's pointing at a digital clock that glows feebly on the side of a two-story corner law office. "That clock has been six hours slow since I got here. It's the perfect emblem for this place."

This place is Dorchester County, Md., a working Chesapeake borough less than two hours from Washington where it sometimes seems the digital age has progressed no further than a half-bright digital clock overlooking a sleepy downtown. The war reporter--who has a hard time looking at any scene without mentally crafting a paragraph about it--is Nate Thayer, a hard-eyed, trouble-hunting journalist who has infiltrated some of the bloodiest jungle strongholds in Southeast Asia. To the surprise of his family, colleagues and readers, the 40- year-old Thayer recently retreated to placid Dorchester after more than 15 years of chasing danger around the world. Last spring, he bought a capacious old farmhouse and 70 acres on Church Creek, less than a mile as the heron flies from Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. He's quietly writing a book and tending the fields with his longtime sweetheart, Carol Bean, and Scoop, a scrappy mutt they rescued from the slums of Bangkok. After a long adrenaline ride through hot spots and hellholes, Thayer says he came to Dorchester for a little peace. Reluctantly.

"I was the world's most unmotivated buyer," he laughs, walking across the street to his frequent breakfast spot at the counter of Doris Mae's Restaurant. "I looked at waterfront property all over the world, Thailand, France. When I finally came over here, everyone said, 'Don't even look in Dorchester, there's nothing there,' which immediately intrigued me. The overwhelming sentiment here is not to change things. That's why I like it."

A white-haired woman at the griddle looks up as Thayer enters. He's an imposing figure in any setting, but particularly in a small- town egg joint with Navy recruitment posters on the wall. He's tall, lithe and swimmer-strong (from daily laps at the Cambridge YMCA). With a shaved head, a natural scowl and an ever-present pinch of black snuff under his front lip, Thayer looks downright piratical. It's a broke-nose mien that serves him well in the dyspeptic bars where he does much of his reporting, but one that belies his blue- blood lineage (his father was an ambassador to Singapore) and his own intellectual bent as a rapacious reader who recently did a turn as a think-tank scholar with Johns Hopkins University.

The waitress greets Thayer in a motherly way and asks if he wants his eggs poached, an item not on the menu. He says yes, asks her the news and looks around at the orderly calmness that pervades this community. "Having lived so long in the absence of rules," he says, "I've come to appreciate a properly organized society."

Thayer began his career as a flouter of rules, a hard-drinking 28- year-old with a taste for conflict and serious weapons. As a Bangkok- based freelance reporter, he quickly gained a reputation for going where others couldn't--or wouldn't--go. He learned the local dialects, lived and walked in the jungle with the bad guys and endured the sundry malignancies of modern Indochina: multiple bouts of cerebral malaria, kidnappings, a land mine explosion that shattered his leg and ruined his hearing. But the stories kept coming. In 1992, along the old Ho Chi Minh trail, Thayer discovered a forgotten band of mountain rebels who had to be convinced the Vietnam War was over and their American sponsors long gone. He has exposed heroin kingpins, corrupt politicians and murderous generals. "I want to go to my grave making people with guns, power and money nervous," he says with a frank grin. "I love it."

But more than any other, Thayer has been in pursuit of one villain for the whole of his career: Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge dictator who oversaw the greatest mass murder since Hitler. To work his way into Khmer Rouge territory, Thayer allowed himself to be captured numerous times, each occasion making friendly with another local Communist field commander. He tramped, on one trip, through more than 400 miles of jungle with Khmer Rouge units. He shared their mess and was treated in their field hospital after the truck he was riding in tripped a land mine and he woke up with his head in the engine compartment and a companion's severed leg across his chest. Finally, in 1998, Thayer's single-minded pursuit led him to what many consider the scoop of the decade, the first on-the-record interview with Pol Pot since he was driven from Phnom Penh in 1979. When they met in a sweltering jungle hut, the man responsible for killing an estimated 2 million people fixed his gaze on Thayer and said slowly, "I've known your name for a long, long time."

Five months later, Pol Pot--old and broken--was dead.

Somehow, it's even more jarring to hear Thayer's matter-of-fact telling of his extraordinary history as he moves through his now decidely ordinary life in Dorchester County. After breakfast, he rumbles down brick-paved High Street, past the boat basin crowded with both yachts and work boats. The big, shady Victorian sea captains' houses along here are slowly being bought and restored. It's an antique waterside neighborhood that seems like it could be, maybe, on the verge of better times.

"I think it's going to take off," Thayer says, pulling up to a large, well-groomed red house with a noble front porch. It's Cambridge House, a bed-and-breakfast that Thayer wants to visit. He entertains a steady stream of globe-trotting reporters, photographers and diplomats at his new place, and he considers it a host's duty to be able to recommend local inns and restaurants. Inside, innkeeper Stuart Schefers cautiously shares Thayer's optimism about the county.

"Slowly it's coming back," says Schefers. In addition to Cambridge House--already popular with bicyclists, birders and hunters-- Schefers is a partner in the Chesapeake Grill, one of a number of ambitious new restaurants in the area. "It's been neglected, but it is one of the few areas around the bay that hasn't been ruined by overdevelopment."

Driving the growing feeling that Dorchester may finally cash in on the tourism that has plumped up St. Michaels Island just across the Choptank River is a Hyatt resort being built hard on the edge of town. The $150 million, 450-acre development is slated to open in Christmas 2001, instantly becoming the biggest employer in the county. After decades of placidly watching tourist dollars zoom through town at 60 mph on their way to Ocean City, Dorchester may be in for a boom of its own.

A few minutes later, Thayer is driving down the wattle of shoreline below Cambridge, an intricate terrain laced with the many creeks and marshes that feed the Chesapeake. There are few buildings, just some modest homes, a sun-baked one-room schoolhouse where young Harriet Tubman once learned her letters and, tucked in a shoreside forest, an ancient Anglican church and cemetery. The corn fields are in stubble now; the sorghum is up and the waterfowl are on the wing. It's duck-hunting country and through the autumn, Thayer--who has heard some gunfire in his time--listens to the reports echoing across this wet, flat land.

"It's so dominated by water," he says, gazing at the low white crab boats working up the creek. Thayer is a slow, deliberate talker, and he drives the same way. Old farmers in tractor caps pass him in pickups even shabbier than his. "It's steeped in classic rural traditions, agriculture, fishing. That's what drives life here."

That will remain, Thayer believes, even if more people discover what he has, in part, because the vast 25,000-acre Blackwater refuge keeps adding more land. But there's also a doggedness to the local culture that will survive the lure of quick-buck development. (And already, more Volvos lugging bikes and kayaks are to be seen on the local roads, pulling into B&Bs and restaurants that cater to city visitors who come for the Eastern Shore the way it used to be.)

"You find that they are determined to maintain a farmer's way of life, even though they could make a killing by selling out to developers," says the war correspondent. As he rolls by, window open, a blazing white egret lifts out of the reeds with heavy, angelic flaps. "They know better than I do what a good place this is."

ESCAPES KEYS

Getting There: Dorchester County (war-free since 1865) is on the Eastern Shore, about 90 miles from Washington. From the Beltway, take Route 50 east all the way to Cambridge. James Michener set part of "Chesapeake" here, and it's the birthplace of Harriet Tubman (Home Towne Tours offers tours of Tubman sites, 410-228-0401).

Lodging: Cambridge House (112 High St., 410-221-7700, www.cambridgehousebandb.com) is a stout, begabled old captain's mansion at the town waterfront. Rooms are $120, with a five-course dinner available with weekend packages ($329). Twenty-eight miles south of Cambridge, Wingate Manor (2335 Wingate-Bishop's Head Rd., 888-397-8717, $80 to $120) is a comfortable, roomy old pile hard on the Honga River. Bikes available gratis, boats for rent.

Eating: Rolston's Chesapeake Grill (321 High St.) makes it no longer necessary to cross the Choptank for upscale steak and seafood (entrees start at $20, with a less expensive bar and bistro up front). Hysers (824 Locust St.), an honest lunch counter, mixes a serious ice cream soda.

Antiquing: Dorchester remains bargain country, with almost a dozen antiques shops around Cambridge proper, the largest being the Packing House Antique Mall (411 Dorchester Ave., 410-221-8544).

Info: Dorchester County Tourism, 800-522-8687, www.tourdorchester.org.

'Christ brought you to meet me'

'Christ brought you to meet me'

IOLNEWS

April 22 2009 at 11:16am

---

Phnom Penh - The former Khmer Rouge prison chief told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court on Wednesday he believed Jesus Christ had guided journalists to track him down a decade ago when he was a fugitive.

Duch, a born-again Christian, apologised in March at the start of his trial, accepting blame for overseeing the extermination of 15 000 people who passed through the regime's Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21.

As he sat in the dock on Tuesday wearing a white polo shirt, he recounted how journalists Nic Dunlop and Nate Thayer interviewed him at a hotel in a western Cambodian town in 1999.

"I told Nic Dunlop, 'Christ brought you to meet me.' Nic Dunlop quoted those words and those are the words I spoke to him," Duch said.

"I said, 'Before I used to serve human beings, but now I serve God.'"

Nic Dunlop found Duch hiding in a western Cambodian town in 1999 and later wrote a biography of the former prison chief.

Duch - whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav - told the court he confessed his role in the 1975 to 1979 regime after hearing Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot state that Tuol Sleng prison never existed.

"I could not bear what Pol Pot said, so I had to show my face," Duch said.

"For S-21, I was the chairperson of that office. The crimes committed at S-21 were under my responsibility," he added.

Although Duch says he oversaw the brutal prison, he has maintained he never personally executed anyone and has only ever admitted to abusing two people.

The former mathematics teacher has also denied prosecutors' claims that he played a central role in the Khmer Rouge's iron-fisted rule.

He faces life in jail at the court, which does not have the power to impose the death penalty.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and many believe the UN-sponsored tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to two million people. - Sapa-AFP

Ta Mok Obituary: Pol Pot's enforcer linked to 1.7m deaths

 

Pol Pot's enforcer linked to 1.7m deaths

The Irish Times

July 22, 2006

Ta Mok: Ta Mok, the nom de guerre of a Khmer Rouge leader who played a key role in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s, died yesterday in a Phnom Penh military hospital, where he awaited trial on genocide charges.

Historians of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist 1975-1979 rule say he oversaw massive and bloody purges of party cadres and ordinary people, a role which later earned him the nickname "The Butcher".

To the last, however, the one-legged 80-year-old protested his innocence, saying he was merely a simple soldier maligned by the international media.

Over the past few years, Ta Mok's lawyer said his client was in declining health after suffering a heart attack. A frail, white- haired man, Ta Mok was believed to be 80. He maintained to the end that he bore no responsibility for Cambodia's "killing fields" and that other Khmer Rouge commanders had been the architects and perpetrators of the genocide.

But for years Ta Mok was a feared name in Cambodia. As the second in command of the Khmer Rouge, he and his followers were linked to the elimination of entire villages, forced labour camps, mass executions and torture chambers. The prime minister, Hun Sen, referred to him as the "Hitler of Cambodia".

Although little is known about his personal life, Ta Mok, whose real name was Chhit Choen, was born into a peasant family in Cambodia's southern province of Takeo. Like many poor young Cambodians in the 1930s, he became a Buddhist monk because pagodas offered food and shelter.

He left the monkhood at 16 and in the 1940s joined the resistance movement against the French colonialists.

Unlike other senior Khmer Rouge leaders such as Pol Pot, Ta Mok never studied abroad. His only ideology was Cambodian nationalism, and he vaguely grasped the concept of communism, which was the foundation of the Khmer Rouge's ultra-Maoist revolution.

"When I joined the Communist Party of Cambodia," he told Nate Thayer of the Far Eastern Economic Review in a 1997 interview, "I did not know what communism was. They told me the party was a patriotic one. That is why I joined the party."

He also told Thayer his motivation for becoming a guerrilla was to secure a better life for Cambodian peasants and to free the country from Vietnamese domination. The Khmer Rouge came to power in April 1975 after defeating the US-backed government of Lon Nol.

He established himself as Pol Pot's enforcer, dispatching cadres to parts of the country deemed insufficiently committed to the "Year Zero" revolution or too soft on traditional enemy Vietnam.

He was also the leader most strongly against reintroducing money, outlawed in the early days of power to reinforce the purity of the agrarian revolution.

During the 44 months it ruled Cambodia - until deposed in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops - the Khmer Rouge killed one of every six Cambodians in the name of creating a pure agrarian society free of foreign influence.

Ta Mok fled into the jungles after Vietnam's invasion to carry on the guerrilla war, first against Vietnam, then against the new Cambodian government. He conducted ruthless purges of the Khmer Rouge's suspected enemies and set up a fiefdom in the northern town of Anlong Veng.

UN peacekeepers in 1993 blamed him for the slaughter of ethnic Vietnamese, including many women and babies, in a fishing village on the Great Lake.

In 1997, Ta Mok took control of the Khmer Rouge from Pol Pot in a bloody purge. But by then, the movement was dying. Defectors by the hundreds had surrendered their weapons in exchange for a government offer of amnesty. Pol Pot died in the northern jungles in April 1998.

Ta Mok was arrested in March 1999 crossing into northern Cambodia from Thailand and charged with genocide under a law banning the Khmer Rouge.

Ta Mok: born 1926; died July 21st, 2006

Adages; Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot.(Ted Koppel and ABC in lawsuit)

 

Adages; Marketing the news: the selling of Pol Pot.(Ted Koppel and ABC in lawsuit)

Advertising Age

November 18, 2002 | Linnett, Richard; Friedman, Wayne

Byline: Richard Linnett, contributing: wayne friedman

Earlier this year, Ted Koppel survived an attempt by ABC to bounce him and ``Nightline'' off the air for David Letterman's ``Late Show,'' but will he be able to defend himself against a $30 million lawsuit?

Adages has learned that Mr. Koppel and ABC are being sued for $30 million in punitive damages and unspecified compensatory damages by Nate Thayer, a freelance reporter who alleges that they stole his exclusive story and that the ``misappropriation of credit deprived Thayer of the advertising value of his name.''

Thayer broke what has been called one of the great scoops of the last century. At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of who has the right to market a scoop to the rest of the media: The outlet airing the story or the reporter who got it?

In 1997, after a decade-long search, Thayer finally tracked down Pol Pot, who was believed to be dead, deep in the jungles of northern Cambodia. It was the first time Pol Pot had been photographed and interviewed in 20 years. And it was the last. The Cambodian dictator, who was said to be responsible for the deaths of about 3 million Cambodians, died under mysterious circumstances a year after Thayer filmed him. Thayer's video footage of the interview with Pol Pot aired on ``Nightline'' on July 28, 1997.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Oct. 30, alleges that Koppel and ABC breached a contract with Thayer that allowed for limited use of the Pol Pot footage. Thayer would get credit for the images and be paid $350,000 for the story. The agreement, the suit says, was made verbally in front of witnesses, and Koppel promised that ABC lawyers would draft a final document. ``Don't worry,'' Koppel said to Thayer, according to the complaint. ``You must trust me, journalist to journalist.''

``Instead of complying with those terms,'' said Mel Weiss, partner at Milberg Weiss Berhad Hynes & Lerach, New York, which is representing Thayer, ``ABC immediately created a frame grab, used it without giving Thayer credit, fixed ABC's logo on the photo saying `ABC News exclusive,' forwarded the frame to news services, posted it on the ABC Web site, gave a transcript of the video and a 10 minute portion of it to The New York Times, and broadcast the video on monitors throughout the streets of Cambodia, which basically destroyed Thayer's commercial viability with this product.'' The suit accuses Koppel and ABC of copyright infringement, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, tortious interference with business relations and fraud, among other things.

According to the complaint, Thayer never received a written contract. He claims an ABC lawyer told him the reason he couldn't get a contract that day was because the lawyer ``did not know how to type'' and he had ``no secretary.'' Thayer also claims he did not receive payment until 10 months later, when ABC sent $350,000 to defuse the controversy after Thayer refused to accept a Peabody Award that he was to share with ABC for the Pol Pot report.

Along with damages, Thayer is demanding the defendants be required to pay him ``the profits and other economic benefits realized.'' Profits would include advertising revenue ``Nightline'' got the nights it aired the footage, according to a person with knowledge of the lawsuit.

``In 1997 ABC News agreed to pay NateThayer the sizable sum of $350,000 for the rights to use his footage of former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot,'' said Jeffrey Schneider, VP, ABC News. ``Despite the fact that ABC provided prominent and repeated credit and generous remuneration for his work, Mr. Thayer initiated a five-year barrage of complaints coupled with repeated demands for more money that culminate in this filing, in what is essentially a contract dispute. We find it unfortunate that Mr. Thayer and his lawyers have attempted to attack the good name of one of America's most respected news broadcasts as well as a journalist of impeccable reputation. We look forward to the opportunity to prove in court that Thayer's claims have no merit.''

Send scoops to [email protected]

CAPTION(S):

Swimming to Cambodia: Ted Koppel creates a news event in Phnom Penh with footage of Thayer's interview with Pol Pot. * Thayer: Through a minefield

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

 

Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

AsianWeek

November 25, 1998

AsianWeek
11-25-1998
Briefs: Pol Pot Interviewer Gets Award

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. -- Nate Thayer, the first Western journalist in nearly two decades to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1997, was awarded $20,000 this weekend for outstanding international investigative reporting.

Thayer is the first recipient of the prize from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He is the Southeast Asia correspondent for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

Ethnic NewsWatch SoftLine Information, Inc., Stamford, CT

Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

Peabody winner rejects award for Pol Pot story

AP Online

May 18, 1998

AP Online
05-18-1998
NEW YORK (AP) _ Nate Thayer, a Bangkok, Thailand-based journalist who sold a story about Cambodian leader Pol Pot to ABC's ``Nightline,'' rejected the prestigious Peabody award for the piece, saying ABC and Ted Koppel stole his work.

Thayer, 38, said in the May 25 edition of New Yorker magazine, that Koppel promised the story would be a one-week exclusive with North American television rights only.

But before the story went on the air, Thayer said ABC shipped photos of the footage worldwide, put the news on its Web site and allowed The New York Times to preview part of the story in a publicity effort. The effort scooped Thayer's own print account for the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review.

In a letter rejecting the Peabody, Thayer said ``Ted Koppel and `Nightline' literally stole my work, took credit for it, trivialized it, refused to pay me and then attempted to bully and extort me when I complained. They should not be rewarded for this behavior and I under no circumstances want my name associated with these egregious violations of basic journalistic ethics and integrity.''

ABC said the pre-broadcast publicity is common practice for such an exclusive story.

Koppel said he was sorry Thayer chose not to accept the Peabody, broadcasting's equivalent to the Pulitzer.

``While he rejects the award, I don't want to reject the enormous contribution that he made to bringing the world this story,'' Koppel said last Monday at the 57th annual awards luncheon.

Thayer was paid $350,000 last month for the story, which aired last July. The video captured the show trial of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader blamed for the deaths of up to 2 million of his countrymen. It was the first time in nearly 20 years the Cambodian dictator, who died in prison in March, was caught on camera.


Copyright 1998 The Associated Press All Rights Reserved.

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