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Cambodia: Facts & Lies

By VVAW

Cutting Thru the News, 'Officials', McGovern

In April 1975, revolutionary forces of the people of Cambodia rolled into the capital of Phnom Penh, bringing to an end the five-year old dictatorship of Lol Nol. From the moment, there began an intense campaign by U.S. agencies and the media of slandering, distorting and outright lying about the conditions, affairs and activities of the Cambodian people and their leaders.

The smear campaign, led for awhile by Jack Anderson, noted Washington muck-raker, "proved" beyond a doubt that millions of people have been slaughtered by the "inhuman monsters" who rule Kampuchea. "Reliable sources" for these tales have been an almost endless line of supporters of the Lon Nol regime plus some leftover officials now become refugees. All of them have good reasons for splitting Cambodia. A recent Chicago Tribune article, basing their latest massacre story on refugee intervies, admitted that the refugees' stories were, for the most part, unreliable since they had a tendency to exaggerate both figures and events in order to gain attention (of course the Tribune printed their lies anyhow.) Almost anything is better than the lives some of these refugees now live in the camps in Thailand. The article in the Tribune, after cutting down its "witnesses," goes on to point out that, with all these stories, "something was going on there (in Cambodia)."

The media barrage against Cambodia has its effects. With the cameras rolling and the eager press in attendance, Senator George McGovern recently stepped up to add his bulk to the attacks on Cambodia. The "peace" candidate defeated in the 1972 presidential campaign by another "peace" candidate, Richard Nixon, called for an all-out invasion of Cambodia by an "international force," including the U.S., to "save the people of Cambodia."

And in mid September another voice out of the past appeared before the national pres—ex dictator Lon Nol, direct from his hide-out in Hawaii. In an emotional appeal, with cameras rolling, Lon Nol decried the "suffering of the Cambodian people' and called upon the handful of his wealthy countrymen in attendance for "any young Cambodian man to join with him in leading their people (their kind, that is) back into Cambodia." The pres noted that there were no takers for this offer.

As in the past three years, this was another outrageous shot at the people of Democratic Kampuchea ("Kampuchea" is the name which the people of the country have chosen to use). One network, NBC, even went so far as to say that the Lon Nol government had been the legitimate government of Cambodia, living in the beautiful and peaceful city of Phnom Penh, until one day, out of nowhere, the "commies" rushed into town out of the buses and won the wars—just like that! It's one more chapter in the book written by the rich in this country as they attempt to rewrite the history of the war and its aftermath in the minds of the American people.

These stories are part of the endless stream of lies accusing the people of Kampuchea of a "death march" during the evacuation of their cities, a continued, "slaughter" of millions of Kampuchean people, and rule by a handful of leaders who are trying to take Kampuchea back to the stone age.

The ruling class here in the U.S., relying on the time-tested technique of "if you say it often enough someone will believe it," are wrong, however, if they believe the American people will forget everything about the war. Millions of us witness the slow death of the Lol Nol dictatorship in our living rooms over a period of years as the liberation forces tightened their steel trap on Lon Nol and company. Thousands of us, veterans of the war in Southeast Easi, remember clearly how we loaded U.S. aircraft with bombs for the then "neutral" country, or took part in the Nixon-ordered invasion of Cambodia. Others can recall the training, arming and dropping of CIA-backed mercenaries into Cambodia from Thailand and Vietnam, a disgusting lot of pigs and criminal who financed their operations with heroin sales to American GIs. With these memories, we aren't about to buy this new propaganda campaign. In fact, we've seen similar campaigns in the past.

When we went to Vietnam we were told how we would be saving the Vietnamese people. Then we discovered "Operation Phoenix, " a computerized murder and assassination program that accounted for hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese deaths at the hands of U.S. backed forces. Many of us witnesses the thousands of killings of Vietnamese by U.S. troops in order to save the Vietnamese from themselves.

And now McGovern and Lol Nol want us to follow them into Cambodia to save the Cambodian peoples—from themselves! It's necessary, they say, because of the "genocide" going on in Cambodia. Well, if we add up the figures from "official" sources, from refugees and journalists, we find that there are no more problems in Kampuchea—the entire population has been wiped out several months back. It's not too hard to remember when, according to U.S. Pentagon figures on enemy kills demonstrated that 2 1/2 times the total population of North and South Vietnam had been killeds—halfway through the war.

So what is going on in Kampuchea—what about the many bloody charges leveled at the new government and the people of that independent country? Much of the answer is already a matter of public record.

In March of 1970, Lon Nol took control of Cambodia from Prince Sihanouk in a CIA-led coup. During the period of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military conducted "secret" and later open bombings following the coup and, in the process, destroyed 90% of the existing structures in Cambodia, gutted the countryside and rice fields, and killed over 800,000 people—12% of the population—a genuine case of genocide. Thousands of people fled the countryside, for the cities like Phnom Penh, swelling the population of this city from 60,000 to over 300,000. In May of 1970, the U.S. invaded Cambodia which brought about a worldwide storm of protest, including the death of 4 students at Kent State University. The invasion resulted in U.S. troops getting kicked out.

The next five years saw the eventual control of over 90% of the country by liberation forces who obviously enjoyed a great deal of popular support. The circle around Phnom Penh grew tighter and the city turned into a huge human cesspool.

In April 1975, revolutionary forces took Phnom Penh. The U.S. and Soviet-back dictator, Lon Nol, loaded up what was left of the government treasury in gold on U.S. planes and made their break to Hawaii where they are still holed up today. The evacuation of Phnom Penh by the new, revolutionary government, brought outcried of rage from the U.S. press which decided they had finally found the "bloodbath" that U. S. politicians had been predicting all along. With the pullout of U.S. forces, however, the real "bloodbath" was over.

With rumor left as their main weapon against Cambodia, the U.S. led off with the charge that the evacuation of Phnom Penh was a "death march."

However, a Khymer resident of Phnom Penh, describing the conditions in Phnom Penh at the time, wrote, "At the time that our families were evacuated from the city, cholera was spreading rapidly, everywhere." The lack of drinking water presented real health hazards. Even the U.S. Inspector-General reported in March of 1975 that "the potential for spread of epidemics of cholera and typhus is widespread." The report concluded, "Unsanitary living conditions in Phnom Penh caused by crowding and influx of refugees into the city create a health hazard and present the danger of epidemics."

One Cambodian eyewitness later recalled. The liberators distributed medicine, but it was insufficient because the number of people was too large." This was verified by testimony from refugees later interviewed in Thailand.

The filtration plant, the electric power plant, the national bank, the docs, lighthouse and port of Phnom Penh—not one of these was operational when the city was liberated.

The combined threats of starvation and epidemic necessitated the evacuation of the city.

At the time the New York Times declared, "One-third to one-half of the population was forced to leave at gunpoint with no food, no water, shelter or medical care." But a number of accounts from foreign journalists and Cambodian refugees show that all these things were provided, as best as was possible, along the way. One American wrote, " I saw relay stations and rest stoops along the road, where Khymer troops, mostly women and Buddist monks, supplied food and water.

Father Jacques Engleman, a Benedictine Priest with two decades of experience in Cambodia, wrote, "There was enough food for everyone. At night Cambodians would stop to cook the rice and sleep." Engleman further reported that the priests who accompanied for evacuation "were not witness to any cruelties."

Jerome and Jacelyn Steinback, two teachers in Cambodia, witnessed the evacuation and saw entire blocks told "You must leave," continuously throughout the day, stated that "even at the last moment, there was no brutality, no anger."

The medical system had collapsed—liberation forces reopened the hospitals.

What occurred in Phnom Penh and other cities, contrary to the "death march" slanders, was a strategy, carried out as well as possible under extremely difficult conditions, for dealing with the initial problems of post-war Kampuchea, and made necessary by the conditions caused by the U.S. war on that country.

Still the U.S. press raves about "ghost towns," but again witnesses have a different story. Documented sources, French and America, point out than only a few months after liberation, some 70 small and large factories were in operation. By March, 1976, Swedish Ambassador Kaj Bjoer reported 200,000 people in Phnom Penh, hardly a "ghost town."

Stories of massive starvation are still current today, no surprise given the amount of land destroyed by U.S. bombs and defoliants. By the summer of 1975, however, Newsweek reported in an interview with the Deputy Premier Ieng Sary, "There is enough to feed the people. It is not abundant, but enough." To date, through the planned land reforms, Kampuchea has moved to surplus crops according to international sources and recent American visitors. There's no doubt that for the handful of Cambodians who lived well off the U.S. in the past conditions are much harder today—in fact, many of these individuals are the sources for the horror stories which appear in the U.S. press. For the vast majority of the people of Kampuchea, however, conditions have improved.

So why does the U.S. ruling class and its media continue to attack Kampuchea? The concept of Democratic Kampuchea as a non-aligned, independent nation sticks in the craw of the U.S. which for so long tried to control old Cambodia. Emerging nations like Kampuchea, which has told the two superpowers, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to take their economic aid (which comes with strings attached), their advisors and their troops and stuff them, present a genuine threat to the U.S. and Soviet plans to divide up the world while waiting to cut each other's throats.

Kampuchea, standing on its own legs, show other struggling nations and movements that people all over the world don't have to follow the superpowers' program. As a non-aligned, independent nations they can exert the type of international influence that the U.S. and Soviet Union can't deal with.

As veterans of the war in Indochina, we flew, rode and walked through Southeast Asia. We fought a war that many of us grew to realize was wrong—we fought on the wrong side.