Dear KI-Media,
Below please find the article I wrote and posted on your blog last year. I have made some minor modifications to the original version and would appreciate if you can post it again this year.
To other compatriots, especially those elder who had personal involvements in some key events from the early days to the end of the KR movement, if you notice any inconsistency or inaccuracy in the events mentioned in this article, please provide feedback and I'll make the necessary corrections.
Thanks,
Khmer Academy
The event of January 07, 1979 continues to generate protracted debates in our country at different levels and classes of society. Whether at political or academic institutions, professional or business communities, or casual web blogs, these debates have polarized the nation into two camps – the increasing majority who views January 07, 1979 as a full scale invasion with a clear intent-to-occupy; and the few who, for a matter of convenience, chooses to portray it as a genuine humanitarian intervention from Hanoi to save Khmer people from the KR killing regime.
At the center of these debates, the very same question has been raised repeatedly. What was the real motive(s) leading to the January 07, 1979 event? To these days, the answers to that question not only remain politically unsettled, but also continue to predominantly influence the nation affairs because of its far-reaching historical, socio-political and economical dimensions.
In this editorial, the author will endeavour to present an impartial view of the January 07 event based on personal experiences, available historical and researched data, as well as genuine and verifiable information from credible sources; and hope to set the record straight.
In order to correctly understand the real motive(s) behind the January 07 event, it is important to revisit a series of key events starting from the Indochina anti-colonial war era.
During the struggle against the French colonialism (1946 -1954), a small number of Khmer nationals joint the Indochina Communist Party (ICP) which was created and controlled by the Vietnamese communists. However, many Khmer nationalists and intellectuals who also sought the independence from France at that time refused to joint the ICP movement because it was evident to them that the military defeat or rapid withdrawal of French colonialism would open the door for Vietnam to annex Cambodia.
In 1951, the Khmer section of the ICP was given the name of Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) under the leadership of Son Ngoc Minh, Sieu Heng and Tou Samut. Although they had their own party name, the KPRP leaders were nothing more than obedient executors of all plans drafted by the Vietnamese communists.
The Vietnamese communists betrayed their KPRP comrades when they signed the 1954 Geneva Agreements and withdrew their combat units from Cambodia. That betrayal allowed the Sihanouk armed forces to reclaim the zones occupied by the ICP and subsequently liquidate many KPRP members. On the verge of collapsing, the KPRP went underground and largely disappeared from Hanoi vision for many years.
As the Vietnamese communists started the unification war in the South, they made an alliance with Sihanouk in order to use Khmer territory to create rear bases and deliver ammunition and weapons to the South. In exchange, the Vietnamese communists would again betray their Khmer communist comrades by scrapping all plans for the Khmer communists to fight the Sihanouk regime.
With no outsider help and little hope to win, Sieu Heng, the second-in-command leader of KPRP, betrayed his comrades and secretly informed Sihanouk regime of Khmer communist activities in the country. In 1962, Sihanouk secret police found and killed Tou Samut at a hide-out in Phnom Penh.
In the middle of the KPRP chaos and absence of firm control from Hanoi, Pol Pot managed to get himself elected to the post of the General Secretary during the party congress in 1963. Completely caught Hanoi off-guard, Pol Pot quickly renamed the KPRP to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Pol Pot later explained that the reason for changing the party name from KPRP to CPK was that the ICP and its by-product KPRP were created by Vietnam to occupy Cambodia and Laos lands.
By mid sixties, Hanoi realised that Sihanouk’s support for its armed struggle against American imperialism was weakening as Lon Nol and Sirik Matak increasingly opposed such support. Hanoi suddenly remembered its old allies – the KPRP, which had been renamed to CPK. However, Hanoi found out that due to its oversight or negligence, it had to confront many unexpected problems with the new CPK leadership.
People in Pol Pot’s clan who were nominated to occupy highest posts were largely unknown and suspicious to Hanoi because they were educated in France and were not checked for allegiance to the Vietnamese communists. Furthermore, unlike his elder comrades or predecessors from the 1950’s era, Pol Pot openly and vigorously promoted and defended a policy that Khmer communists should act in accordance with their own purposes and interests independent of all (i.e. independent of interests of Vietnamese brothers).
Recognizing the threat that Pol Pot’s clan was setting aside its interests, Hanoi considered two options – creating a new communist party in Cambodia with Khmers trained in Vietnam, or infiltrating agents inside Pol Pot’s structure. The Vietnamese communist leaders picked the second option which allowed Pol Pot to temporarily preserve the power, but hoped their infiltrating agents would be able to gradually remove him from the leadership position.
A few days after the Sihanouk regime was disposed by the military coup d’etat of March 18, 1970, the Vietnamese communists entered Cambodia arguably in response to Nuon Chea’s request. The Vietnamese occupied almost a quarter of Cambodia territory and transferred the control of the “liberated” regions to CPK. During that time, the Vietnamese leadership aroused obvious hostility and mistrust among Khmer communist leadership when it openly declared that the Cambodian communist party was given a subordinate role and obliged to follow all directions set by the Vietnamese Workers Party (VWP).
Under the 1973 Peace Agreement signed in Paris, Hanoi agreed to fully withdraw its armed forces from Cambodia. That agreement represented a unique opportunity for Pol Pot’s clan to break the Vietnamese influence and control within the Khmer communist structure. In the same year, Vietnamese communist leadership publicly admitted that the initiatives taken by the Khmer communists were out of its hands. In 1974, Pol Pot made it known to Le Duan that the relationship between the two communist parties was based on mutual respect and non-interference.
With the communist victories in Phnom Penh and Saigon in 1975, Hanoi had successfully accomplished one of the two Ho Chi Minh’s sacred dreams – unify North and South Vietnams, but failed the other dream – creation of Indochina Socialist Federation which put Cambodia and Laos completely under Vietnamese domination. Pol Pot continued to defy Hanoi by declaring that the KR had won a definitive and clean victory without foreign assistance, meaning the KR did not owe anything to Vietnam.
But that was not how Hanoi saw it. Hanoi was hoping that their infiltrating agents were working to gradually strengthening its influence in Cambodia. By September 1976, under the pressure from various factions, Pol Pot temporarily resigned his post of Prime Minister and made statements to fool his enemies that he was willing to soften his stance toward Vietnam.
The news of Pol Pot’s resignation was seen by Hanoi that its infiltrating agents were gaining the upper hand. In that same year, Le Duan indirectly told the Soviet Ambassador that Cambodia would become sooner or later part of Vietnam.
It turned out the news about Pol Pot’s resignation was totally misunderstood or misinterpreted by Hanoi. Hundreds if not thousands of KR pro-Vietnamese cadres trained and “introduced” by Hanoi into Pol Pot ‘s structure were arrested and tortured while Le Duan was telling his Soviet allies that Pol Pot’s clan was weakening.
For all these years, Hanoi incorrectly thought that people like So Phim, Ta Mok and Nuon Chea were loyal and sympathetic to the Indochina federation idea. Like many other high ranking KR cadres, Soa Phim opposed Pol Pot’s self-destructive ideology, but by no way he was a pro-Vietnamese as Hanoi had sought. In fact, Soa Phim was a bitterly anti-Vietnamese.
Hanoi finally recognized its obvious and repeated failures to remove Pol Pot from power through internal uprising, and lost patient with the endless border fighting started by the KR since Spring 1977. It also realized that the Beijing was training, arming KR soldiers, building roads and military bases, including the Air Force base in Kampong Chhnang, which made it possible for a fighter jet to take off and reach Saigon with less than half an hour. Such possibility posed an unacceptable threat to Vietnam national security, and Hanoi was compelled to plot a new strategy to get rid of Pol Pot by staging a coup d’etat through the mutiny of the Eastern zone military forces. Since that option ended with a complete disaster and suicide of Soa Phim, Hanoi finally decided to overthrow Pol Pot regime by a massive military invasion, which were secretly and meticulously prepared since Summer 1977.
All of these preceding events undeniably suggested that the true and only motive of January 07, 1979 event was the continuation of Ho Chi Minh’s unfulfilled dream to annex Cambodia. Through its massive military invasion, Vietnam hoped to re-conquer Cambodia and reassert its control and domination in a preparation for the eventual creation of Indochina Federation state. The presence of millions of Vietnamese illegal settlers on Cambodian soil since January 07, 1979 till these days strongly supports that argument.
Though many lives were saved from the KR systematic executions by the January 07, 1979 event, it was purely an accidental coincidence, which Hanoi later exploited it repeatedly in its propaganda to justify its invasion and hide its true motive. Knowing the history and how the KR organization came to life in the first place, Khmer people will always remember and mark the January 07, 1979 event as the end of the KR killing regime, but never as what Hanoi has sought to portray.
As it happened with other events in history, Vietnam through its agents and sympathizers can present the event of January 07, 1979 in the way that fits its expansionist agenda, but it can never fool the understanding and gain the trust of the Khmer nation with its expansionist ambition.
Khmer Academy
January 06, 2010
tekchetkonkhmer@gmail.com
To other compatriots, especially those elder who had personal involvements in some key events from the early days to the end of the KR movement, if you notice any inconsistency or inaccuracy in the events mentioned in this article, please provide feedback and I'll make the necessary corrections.
Thanks,
Khmer Academy
---------------
The Untold Truth of January 07, 1979
The event of January 07, 1979 continues to generate protracted debates in our country at different levels and classes of society. Whether at political or academic institutions, professional or business communities, or casual web blogs, these debates have polarized the nation into two camps – the increasing majority who views January 07, 1979 as a full scale invasion with a clear intent-to-occupy; and the few who, for a matter of convenience, chooses to portray it as a genuine humanitarian intervention from Hanoi to save Khmer people from the KR killing regime.
At the center of these debates, the very same question has been raised repeatedly. What was the real motive(s) leading to the January 07, 1979 event? To these days, the answers to that question not only remain politically unsettled, but also continue to predominantly influence the nation affairs because of its far-reaching historical, socio-political and economical dimensions.
In this editorial, the author will endeavour to present an impartial view of the January 07 event based on personal experiences, available historical and researched data, as well as genuine and verifiable information from credible sources; and hope to set the record straight.
In order to correctly understand the real motive(s) behind the January 07 event, it is important to revisit a series of key events starting from the Indochina anti-colonial war era.
During the struggle against the French colonialism (1946 -1954), a small number of Khmer nationals joint the Indochina Communist Party (ICP) which was created and controlled by the Vietnamese communists. However, many Khmer nationalists and intellectuals who also sought the independence from France at that time refused to joint the ICP movement because it was evident to them that the military defeat or rapid withdrawal of French colonialism would open the door for Vietnam to annex Cambodia.
In 1951, the Khmer section of the ICP was given the name of Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP) under the leadership of Son Ngoc Minh, Sieu Heng and Tou Samut. Although they had their own party name, the KPRP leaders were nothing more than obedient executors of all plans drafted by the Vietnamese communists.
The Vietnamese communists betrayed their KPRP comrades when they signed the 1954 Geneva Agreements and withdrew their combat units from Cambodia. That betrayal allowed the Sihanouk armed forces to reclaim the zones occupied by the ICP and subsequently liquidate many KPRP members. On the verge of collapsing, the KPRP went underground and largely disappeared from Hanoi vision for many years.
As the Vietnamese communists started the unification war in the South, they made an alliance with Sihanouk in order to use Khmer territory to create rear bases and deliver ammunition and weapons to the South. In exchange, the Vietnamese communists would again betray their Khmer communist comrades by scrapping all plans for the Khmer communists to fight the Sihanouk regime.
With no outsider help and little hope to win, Sieu Heng, the second-in-command leader of KPRP, betrayed his comrades and secretly informed Sihanouk regime of Khmer communist activities in the country. In 1962, Sihanouk secret police found and killed Tou Samut at a hide-out in Phnom Penh.
In the middle of the KPRP chaos and absence of firm control from Hanoi, Pol Pot managed to get himself elected to the post of the General Secretary during the party congress in 1963. Completely caught Hanoi off-guard, Pol Pot quickly renamed the KPRP to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Pol Pot later explained that the reason for changing the party name from KPRP to CPK was that the ICP and its by-product KPRP were created by Vietnam to occupy Cambodia and Laos lands.
By mid sixties, Hanoi realised that Sihanouk’s support for its armed struggle against American imperialism was weakening as Lon Nol and Sirik Matak increasingly opposed such support. Hanoi suddenly remembered its old allies – the KPRP, which had been renamed to CPK. However, Hanoi found out that due to its oversight or negligence, it had to confront many unexpected problems with the new CPK leadership.
People in Pol Pot’s clan who were nominated to occupy highest posts were largely unknown and suspicious to Hanoi because they were educated in France and were not checked for allegiance to the Vietnamese communists. Furthermore, unlike his elder comrades or predecessors from the 1950’s era, Pol Pot openly and vigorously promoted and defended a policy that Khmer communists should act in accordance with their own purposes and interests independent of all (i.e. independent of interests of Vietnamese brothers).
Recognizing the threat that Pol Pot’s clan was setting aside its interests, Hanoi considered two options – creating a new communist party in Cambodia with Khmers trained in Vietnam, or infiltrating agents inside Pol Pot’s structure. The Vietnamese communist leaders picked the second option which allowed Pol Pot to temporarily preserve the power, but hoped their infiltrating agents would be able to gradually remove him from the leadership position.
A few days after the Sihanouk regime was disposed by the military coup d’etat of March 18, 1970, the Vietnamese communists entered Cambodia arguably in response to Nuon Chea’s request. The Vietnamese occupied almost a quarter of Cambodia territory and transferred the control of the “liberated” regions to CPK. During that time, the Vietnamese leadership aroused obvious hostility and mistrust among Khmer communist leadership when it openly declared that the Cambodian communist party was given a subordinate role and obliged to follow all directions set by the Vietnamese Workers Party (VWP).
Under the 1973 Peace Agreement signed in Paris, Hanoi agreed to fully withdraw its armed forces from Cambodia. That agreement represented a unique opportunity for Pol Pot’s clan to break the Vietnamese influence and control within the Khmer communist structure. In the same year, Vietnamese communist leadership publicly admitted that the initiatives taken by the Khmer communists were out of its hands. In 1974, Pol Pot made it known to Le Duan that the relationship between the two communist parties was based on mutual respect and non-interference.
With the communist victories in Phnom Penh and Saigon in 1975, Hanoi had successfully accomplished one of the two Ho Chi Minh’s sacred dreams – unify North and South Vietnams, but failed the other dream – creation of Indochina Socialist Federation which put Cambodia and Laos completely under Vietnamese domination. Pol Pot continued to defy Hanoi by declaring that the KR had won a definitive and clean victory without foreign assistance, meaning the KR did not owe anything to Vietnam.
But that was not how Hanoi saw it. Hanoi was hoping that their infiltrating agents were working to gradually strengthening its influence in Cambodia. By September 1976, under the pressure from various factions, Pol Pot temporarily resigned his post of Prime Minister and made statements to fool his enemies that he was willing to soften his stance toward Vietnam.
The news of Pol Pot’s resignation was seen by Hanoi that its infiltrating agents were gaining the upper hand. In that same year, Le Duan indirectly told the Soviet Ambassador that Cambodia would become sooner or later part of Vietnam.
It turned out the news about Pol Pot’s resignation was totally misunderstood or misinterpreted by Hanoi. Hundreds if not thousands of KR pro-Vietnamese cadres trained and “introduced” by Hanoi into Pol Pot ‘s structure were arrested and tortured while Le Duan was telling his Soviet allies that Pol Pot’s clan was weakening.
For all these years, Hanoi incorrectly thought that people like So Phim, Ta Mok and Nuon Chea were loyal and sympathetic to the Indochina federation idea. Like many other high ranking KR cadres, Soa Phim opposed Pol Pot’s self-destructive ideology, but by no way he was a pro-Vietnamese as Hanoi had sought. In fact, Soa Phim was a bitterly anti-Vietnamese.
Hanoi finally recognized its obvious and repeated failures to remove Pol Pot from power through internal uprising, and lost patient with the endless border fighting started by the KR since Spring 1977. It also realized that the Beijing was training, arming KR soldiers, building roads and military bases, including the Air Force base in Kampong Chhnang, which made it possible for a fighter jet to take off and reach Saigon with less than half an hour. Such possibility posed an unacceptable threat to Vietnam national security, and Hanoi was compelled to plot a new strategy to get rid of Pol Pot by staging a coup d’etat through the mutiny of the Eastern zone military forces. Since that option ended with a complete disaster and suicide of Soa Phim, Hanoi finally decided to overthrow Pol Pot regime by a massive military invasion, which were secretly and meticulously prepared since Summer 1977.
All of these preceding events undeniably suggested that the true and only motive of January 07, 1979 event was the continuation of Ho Chi Minh’s unfulfilled dream to annex Cambodia. Through its massive military invasion, Vietnam hoped to re-conquer Cambodia and reassert its control and domination in a preparation for the eventual creation of Indochina Federation state. The presence of millions of Vietnamese illegal settlers on Cambodian soil since January 07, 1979 till these days strongly supports that argument.
Though many lives were saved from the KR systematic executions by the January 07, 1979 event, it was purely an accidental coincidence, which Hanoi later exploited it repeatedly in its propaganda to justify its invasion and hide its true motive. Knowing the history and how the KR organization came to life in the first place, Khmer people will always remember and mark the January 07, 1979 event as the end of the KR killing regime, but never as what Hanoi has sought to portray.
As it happened with other events in history, Vietnam through its agents and sympathizers can present the event of January 07, 1979 in the way that fits its expansionist agenda, but it can never fool the understanding and gain the trust of the Khmer nation with its expansionist ambition.
Khmer Academy
January 06, 2010
tekchetkonkhmer@gmail.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment