Distant Voices (56 page)

Following Hurd's denial, Chris Mullin, MP tabled a written parliamentary question asking Defence Secretary Tom King, ‘if British servicemen or any other employees of his Department have been involved in providing military training for Cambodians in Malaysia, Thailand, or Singapore . . .' The question was returned to Mullin by the Commons Table Office, which refused to accept it. The Table Office clerk had written the word ‘blocked' on it.
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Shortly after the start of the Gulf War in January 1991 President Bush described Saddam Hussein as ‘Adolf Hitler revisited'.
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Bush also expressed his support for ‘another Nuremberg'; and the call to try Saddam Hussein under the Genocide Convention was echoed in Congress and across the Atlantic in Whitehall.

This was an ironic distraction. Since the original Hitler expired in his bunker, the United States has maintained a network of dictators with Hitlerian tendencies – from Saddam Hussein to Suharto in Indonesia, Mobutu in Zaire and a variety of Latin American mobsters, many of them graduates of an American school of terrorism in the US-run Canal Zone in Panama. But only one has been identified by
the world community as a genuine ‘Adolf Hitler revisited', whose crimes are documented in a 1979 report of the UN Human Rights Commission as ‘the worst to have occurred anywhere in the world since Nazism'.
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He is, of course, Pol Pot, who must surely wonder at his good fortune. Not only is he cosseted, his troops fed, supplied and trained, his envoys afforded all diplomatic privileges, but – unlike Saddam Hussein – he has been assured by his patrons that he will never be brought to justice for his crimes.

These assurances were given publicly in 1991 when the UN Human Rights Sub-commission dropped from its agenda a draft resolution on Cambodia that referred to ‘the atrocities reaching the level of genocide committed in particular during the period of Khmer Rouge rule'.
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No more, the UN body decided, should member governments seek to ‘detect, arrest, extradite or bring to trial those who have been responsible for crimes against humanity in Cambodia'. No more are governments called upon to ‘prevent the return to government positions of those who were responsible for genocidal actions during the period 1975 to 1978'.
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These assurances were also given as part of the UN ‘peace plan' which was drafted by the permanent members of the Security Council: that is, by the United States. So as not to offend Pol Pot's principal backers, the Chinese, the plan has dropped all mention of ‘genocide', replacing it with the euphemism: ‘policies and practices of the recent past'.
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On this, Henry Kissinger, who played a leading part in the mass bombing of Cambodia in the early 1970s, has been an important influence; it was Kissinger who in July 1989 urged Bush to give the Peking regime ‘most favoured nation' trading status in spite of the bloody events in Tiananmen Square only weeks earlier. Kissinger regards the Chinese leadership as a moderating influence in South-East Asia and supports China's ‘present course'.
⁴⁷

At the first Cambodian ‘peace conference' in Paris in August 1989, American delegates demonstrated their desire to rehabilitate China and, if necessary, its Khmer Rouge client. American and other Western diplomats entertained
Chinese and Khmer Rouge representatives in private; and it was in this atmosphere that the word ‘genocide' was declared ‘impolitic'. In a briefing document bearing the handwriting of the Australian minister for foreign affairs, Gareth Evans, a ‘specific stumbling block' is ‘identified' as ‘whether it is appropriate or not to refer specifically to the non-return of the “genocidal” practices of the past'.
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It is difficult to imagine Herbert Vere Evatt, Australia's minister for external affairs at the birth of the United Nations, similarly wondering whether or not it was ‘appropriate' to refer to the ‘genocidal practice' of Hitler's Third Reich. Evatt was the first president of the United Nations and played a significant part in the formation of the world body, which arose from the commitment of all nations that ‘never again' would the Holocaust be allowed to happen. But it did happen again, in Asia; and it could happen yet again.

The attitude of the Australian Government was salutary. In announcing his ‘UN plan' for Cambodia in November 1989, Senator Evans said his aim was to exclude the Khmer Rouge. And yet the plan called on the Hun Sen Government to step aside. Evans described this as ‘even-handed'.
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In its 153 pages the Australian Government's ‘working paper' made no mention of Khmer Rouge atrocities, which were all but dismissed as ‘human rights abuses of a recent past'.
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In the UN General Assembly, the Australian representative, Peter Wilenski, used this euphemism to describe the killing of more than a million-and-a-half people, or a fifth of Cambodia's population.
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As Ben Kiernan has pointed out, ‘The plan soon degenerated into a refusal to take any action without Khmer Rouge acceptance – not at all a means to exclude them.'
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As for bringing Pol Pot before the ‘Nuremberg' proposed by President Bush for Saddam Hussein, this was proposed in 1988 by Gareth Evans's predecessor, Bill Hayden, and rejected by US Secretary of State George Schultz.
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The lesson for Saddam Hussein here was patience. Just as Pol Pot has been restored, if not completely absolved, so the
Iraqi ‘Hitler' could reasonably expect to be left alone. And just as those who have politically and militarily opposed the return to power of Pol Pot have been undermined by Western governments and the United Nations, so have those, like the Kurds, who have fought Saddam. This is the order of the world, both old and new.

The UN ‘peace plan' for Cambodia, part of which grew out of the Evans plan, was an essential part of this order. Few such documents, proclaiming peace as its aim, have been as vague and sinister. The new, cleansing jargon was deployed throughout; the Khmer Rouge were reclassified as a ‘faction' and given equity with the three other ‘factions'. Their distinction as genocidists was not considered relevant. Each ‘faction' was to regroup in ‘cantonments' where 70 per cent of their weapons would be surrendered ‘under UN supervision'. Disarming the conventional Phnom Penh Army would be relatively simple; disarming the Khmer Rouge would be virtually impossible, as most of their arms flowed across the Thai border and were held in secret caches.

The Khmer Rouge, said the plan, ‘will have the same rights, freedoms and opportunities to take part in the electoral process' as any other Cambodians and specifically to ‘prohibit the retroactive application of criminal law'. So not only did the mass murderers have the same rights as those who survived the pogroms but they were granted immunity from prosecution. There would be ‘free and fair elections', regardless of the fear and coercion that were Pol Pot's stated strategy in a country that had never known elections. Never mind, said the UN plan, a ‘neutral political environment' was the way forward. Here the informed reader struggled not to break into demonic laughter. Proportional representation, the chosen electoral method, would apparently produce a ‘neutral' coalition, headed by Prince Sihanouk.
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Norodom Sihanouk is much romanticised by Westerners, who describe his rule as
la belle époque
. On his throne Sihanouk knew how to patronise and manipulate foreigners; he was the reassuring face of feudal colonialism, a colourful
relic of the French Empire, a ‘god-king' who was his country's leading jazz musician, film director and football coach.

But there was another Cambodia beneath the lotus-eating surface of which foreigners were either unaware or chose to ignore. Sihanouk was a capricious autocrat whose thugs dispensed arbitrary terror. His dictatorial ways contributed to the growth of the communist party, which he called the Khmer Rouge. His own ‘Popular Socialist Community' had nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with creating suitably benign conditions for the spread and enrichment of a corrupt and powerful mandarinate in the towns and of ethnic Chinese usurers in the countryside.

It was at first puzzling that the United States should now see in Sihanouk ‘the hopes for a decent and democratic Cambodia',
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because the Cambodia he ran was anything but democratic. The prince regarded himself as semi-divine and the people as his ‘children'. Members of the Cambodian Parliament were chosen by him, or their seats were bought and sold. There was no freedom to challenge him. His secret police were feared and ubiquitous; and when an organised opposition arose seeking an end to corruption and poverty, many of its leading members were forced to flee for their lives into the jungle, from which cauldron emerged Pol Pot and his revolutionaries.
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Although a number of his relatives were murdered by the Khmer Rouge, Sihanouk retains the distinction of being one of the first to support them and one of the last to condemn them. After he was overthrown in 1970 and replaced by General Lon Nol, he called on his people to join Pol Pot's
maquis
. During this time he was said to be a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh. Yet, during his ‘imprisonment', he flew to New York and addressed the United Nations General Assembly as Pol Pot's head of state. He misled the world about the true nature of the Khmer Rouge, saying that ‘a genuinely popular democracy and a new society have been born in Kampuchea – a society without the exploitation of man by man . . .'
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This inspired many
expatriate Cambodians to return to a fate of torture and death.

Sihanouk's closeness to the Khmer Rouge provided a challenge for his Western backers. In 1979 the British journalist William Shawcross, a personal friend of Sihanouk, claimed the prince had ‘roundly denounced the brutality of the Khmer Rouge' from exile in Peking. As the transcript of Sihanouk's press conference showed, he said nothing of the kind, referring only vaguely to ‘violations of human rights'. In fact, he gushed with praise for the Khmer Rouge regime: ‘The whole country [was] well-fed,' he said, ‘ . . . the conditions were good . . . Our people . . . had more than enough to eat. And suppose there is a reign of terror. How could they laugh? How could they sing? And how could they be gay? And they are very gay.' Sihanouk went on to say that his people were so ‘happy' that ‘my conscience is in tranquility . . . it seems [there was] better social justice . . . I confess that the people seem to be quite happy with Pol Pot.'
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In 1990 Sihanouk said he ‘would agree to anything the Khmer Rouge wanted'.
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He was equally blunt on American television: ‘The Khmer Rouge', he said, ‘are not criminals. They are true patriots.'
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He told the American journalist T. D. Allman, who has known him for many years, that he personally was not opposed to genocide.
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To some observers of the ‘mercurial' prince, he is unstable; to others he is a fox. A former Foreign Office diplomat, John Pedler, who has known Sihanouk since the 1960s, believes the prince remains in awe of his former jailer during the Pol Pot years, the Khmer Rouge leader, Khieu Samphan. ‘It is a psychological attachment,' wrote Pedler in 1989. ‘They are like the rabbit and the snake. One of his actual jailers, Chhorn Hay, a hardcore Khmer Rouge who oversaw his imprisonment in the Royal Palace, is often among his entourage, a constant reminder to him that his life is still in the hands of “Angkar” [Pol Pot's mythical organisation]. The West – and indeed, he himself – still has not recognised how much of what he purveys is Khmer Rouge propaganda.'
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One of Sihanouk's most ardent promoters in the United
States was Congressman Stephen Solarz, chair of the House of Representatives' Asia and Pacific Affairs Committee. In 1989, out of 535 Senators and representatives, only Solarz had visited Cambodia since the overthrow of Pol Pot. This indicated the depth of understanding about a country upon which the United States has rained the greatest tonnage of bombs in the history of aerial bombardment. Solarz was responsible for building support for the Bush Administration's backdoor support for the Khmer Rouge, which he called ‘covert lethal aid' to the ‘non-communist resistance'.
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Solarz's claim – that ‘non-communist resistance forces do not train or fight with the Khmer Rouge and are not even in close proximity with them' – was breathtaking.
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There was abundant evidence to the contrary, including film of Sihanoukists and Khmer Rouge troops attacking a village and looting it, even videotaping each other in the act.
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There was voluminous detail of their joint operations in
The Cambodia Report on Collaborative Battles
.
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‘Sihanouk's forces carry out joint military operations with the Khmer Rouge,' wrote John Pedler in 1991, ‘as I was personally able to confirm when I visited Kompong Thom in central Cambodia. I was in that province when the last remnant of the Sihanoukist forces involved in a joint operation with the Khmer Rouge against the provincial capital were ousted from their positions in Pre Satalan.'
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On February 28, 1991 the White House issued a statement on Cambodia which it clearly hoped would be ignored or lost by a media overwhelmed by the day's other news: ‘victory' in the Gulf. President Bush, it said, had admitted to Congress that there had been ‘tactical military co-operation' between the ‘non-communist' Cambodian forces and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.
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The statement was a condition demanded by Congress for its final approval of $20 million for the ‘non-communists'.