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Cambodia: Progress Not Bloodbath

By VVAW

The discovery of the name of Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia, made while he was visiting the People's Republic of China, has provided the American media with another peg on which to hang their attacks on the country of Cambodia. The list of charges leveled at that country makes Cambodia appear to be an example of the lowest depths to which it is possible for a government to sink. For instance,

• One tenth of the people have perished in "a holocaust which makes Hitler look like a piker."
• When Khymer Rouge troops entered Phnom Penh, they began shooting and beating to death hospital patients who had just come out of surgery.
• There was a "brutal evacuation of the city"--400,000 are believed to have died.
• "Through 're-education' (concentration) camps, constant indiscriminate killings, and warnings that with so many people dead, the living must work twice as long and hard, the Khymer Rouge rule Cambodia." (These quotes and slanders are taken from a column by Nick Thimmesch, quoting in turn from a book Murder of a Gentle Land by two editors of Readers Digest.)

These lurid tales of bloodshed and inhumanity come from refugees, the people who fled Cambodia to the safety of nearby Thailand. Cambodians who understand and support the work that their government is doing, naturally enough, stay in Cambodia which does not want to be bothered with newsmen, from Readers Digest or elsewhere since there is too much to do at home. A man who used to make his living pimping off American aid or ripping off his countrymen through the black market during the final days of the liberation of Cambodia, is not likely to be enthusiastic about being told he will now have to work for a living, that his free ride is over. And he will also feel the need to ingratiate himself with the anti-communist government of Thailand. In short, his tale of bloody woe needs to be looked at with some skepticism.

Even more important than seeing where the media's "sources" are coming from is to understand what is in fact going on inside the country of Cambodia, and the reasons behind some of the moves that the government has made.

The capital city of Phnom Penh was evacuated shortly after the National United Front of Cambodia liberated the city. Reasons, however, go back through the period of U.S. occupation of Cambodia. Through 1969 the Cambodian government under Prince Sihanouk recognized and, as best it could, supported the liberation struggle in South Vietnam. The Cambodian right wing hated Sihanouk's nationalization of foreign trade and refusal to take U.S. aid; the U.S. government needed a base to attack the N.L.F. in South Vietnam. Together, they staged the coup that brought General Lol Nol to power. In the next five years, as much as 95.1% of the economic support of the Cambodian government came from the United States; there is no doubt who was pulling the strings.

As part of its support for Lol Nol's dictatorship, the U.S. military devastated the country. Bombing and ground fighting destroyed vast fertile areas. Fifteen percent of the productive rural population was killed or injured. By 1975, in Phnom Penh which had grown from 600,000 to 3 million as people fled the war in the countryside, as many as 250 people were starving to death daily, according to the medical director for Catholic Relief work. Cambodians were unconsciously having to decide to let their weaker children starve so there would be food for the others in hopes of keeping them alive. Meanwhile, up to half of the aid being given to the Lol Nol government went into the well-lined pockets of generals and other officials.

In April 1975 when the United Front was victorious and Lol Nol's government was thrown out, there was enough food in Phnom Penh to last for only a couple of days. In fact, the U.S. government was apparently counting on the fact that without sufficient food, there would be the basis for a counter revolution within months of the fall of Phnom Penh. Moreover, lack of clean water and wretched over crowded living conditions brought about the beginning of a cholera epidemic.

Epidemic, not food, the height of harvest in the countryside--the government moved the people out. Not with "death marches" reported in the U.S. media (older people were moved in confiscated vehicles, and one witness talked about 3 or 4 rest stops every mile for the bulk of the population). Nor did Phnom Penh become a "ghost town"--soldiers cleaned the place up and by the end of the summer 100,000 people had moved back into the city.

Hospitals--because the Long Nol government had spent a virtually unnoticeable amount of funds on healthcare, the hospitals were desperately bad. One of them, the only barely adequate hospital in Phnom Penh, was kept open and, as one of the French doctors evacuated in April said "is to be functioning normally."

What was the result of this massive dislocation? First, there was not starvation; in fact, by early 1976 Cambodia was able to send rice to nearby Laos. Epidemic in Phnom Penh was stopped. And, as an added advantage, sabateurs in the city, hoping to hide in the swollen population, were either uncovered or isolated. Rice production is around 700 pounds per person per year; irrigation projects are moving forward. For every 100 families, there are 20 hospital beds. 80-90% of the rampant illiteracy have been wiped out. The Cambodia revolution is progressing well.

So why the slanders and propaganda from the U.S. media? The U.S. was soundly defeated in Cambodia, in part because of the massive protests here at home; the government and the ruling class hope to tar and feather those who supported the struggle of the Cambodian people with their charges of "bloodbath." Unlike Vietnam where there is always the issue of the MIAs to fall back on, the U.S. doesn't want to talk about MIAs in Cambodia partially because they have never wanted to admit the role U.S. troops played in that country. Perhaps in part because of the very self-reliance that the country of Cambodia has displayed, it remains an especially pointed thorn in the side of the U.S. rulers.

(Information in this article was taken, in part, from the book Cambodia: Starvation & Revolution, by George C. Hildebrand and Gareth Porter. Other information was taken from a speech by Pol Pot, Prime Minister of Cambodia.)