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Murder In Aftermath Of Secretary Albright's Asia Tour
Hanoi-Backed Former Khmer Rouge Lead Cambodia Coup
Murder In Aftermath Of Secretary Albright's Asia Tour
Hanoi-Backed Former Khmer Rouge Lead Cambodia Coup
U.S. Veteran Dispatch Staff Report
Sep./Oct./Nov. 1997
On Sunday, July 6, 1997, democracy died in Cambodia. Shortly after sunrise over central Phnom Penh, troops loyal to Hanoi-installed former Khmer Rouge commander Hun Sen opened fire on the home of the elected Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh and government buildings. During attacks which Hun Sen initiated on Saturday, major thoroughfares were blocked by armored vehicles. As explosions and gunfire echoed across the capitol, panicked civilians fled the city while similar attacks were taking place against non-communist bases in at least three other major provinces. As the attacks began, a video tape of Hun Sen wearing camouflage fatigues (a'la Saddam Hussein) accusing the non-communists of "treachery," repeatedly appeared on national television. The previous day, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry informed the international press that Hun Sen was in Vietnam for a "holiday." Congress recently received reports that a convoy of ammunition and uniforms from Vietnam was greeted by Hun Sen shortly before the coup.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission in Cambodia, despite threats by Hun Sen, released an in-depth report on August 30 that verified that Hun Sen's forces murdered and tortured to death at least 41, and possibly 60, royalist military and police officers. U.N. investigators told the Far Eastern Economic review that at least 617 people had been detained in Phnom Penh and another 271 were known to have been arrested outside of the capitol. Some, such as General Chau Sambath, were viciously tortured to death in Hun Sen's personal compound. Sources told U.N. investigators that Sambath's fingernails and tongue were ripped out before he was killed by former Khmer Rouge General Him Bung Heang, chief of security for Hun Sen and head of his personal body guards.
On the Thai border, a Cambodian police official told Agence France Press that Hun Sen's troops also murdered royalist soldiers' wives and children. "Hun Sen's troops arrested my two children who were not more than 10 years old," said sobbing Captain Sot Mao, "and executed them in the Poipet Market." Members of Sam Rainsy's anti-communist Khmer Nation Party reported members being hunted and arrested by Hun Sen's forces throughout the country, with some 1,000 KNP members currently seeking refuge in Thailand.
The coup began less than one week after Madeline Albright, the self-proclaimed, "tell it like it is," U.S. Secretary of State, was squired across Vietnam by Ambassador Pete Peterson laying a symbolic brick in Ho Chi Minh City as the cornerstone for a new $40 million American consulate. Secretary Albright canceled a planned trip to Cambodia for fear of political instability. On the eve of her departure to Asia, the Washington Post published a hard-hitting expose of a classified FBI report on the Easter Sunday massacre in Phnom Penh that had been suppressed by the Clinton Administration.
In the report, FBI investigators who traveled to Phnom Penh pinned the responsibility for the massacre and assassination attempt on democratic anti-corruption leader Sam Rainsy on the personal bodyguard forces of Hun Sen. The incident involved grenades pitched into a crowd during a pro-democracy rally in front of the Parliament building which resulted in at least 20 deaths - including one of Sam Rainsy's bodyguards - and 150 injuries. Witnesses told United Nations officials that Hun Sen's soldiers urged suspected grenade throwers to "run faster" and sheltered them from pursuing crowds. After the incident, soldiers beat wounded civilians who pleaded for help and fired on taxi drivers who attempted to provide assistance to the severely injured.
U.S. ambassador to Cambodia Ken Quinn advised the FBI agents to leave Cambodia before they could complete interviews because of rumors that they were being targeted for assassination. Despite the known abuses by Hun Sen, including his financial backing by major international drug dealers, a senior Clinton Administration official told the Washington Post that the U.S. Government would have enormous difficulties ending its dealings with Hun Sen, "if you want to get something done in Cambodia."
Since 1991, the international community, primarily the United States, has spent more than $3 billion in Cambodia for peacekeeping and nation building operations. The royalist FUNCINPEC Party led by Ranariddh and their non-communist allies won a decisive victory in a 1993 national election. However, under the threat of a military coup by Hun Sen and his Hanoi-trained army, the United Nations made an unprecedented gesture of permitting Hun Sen to be the "co-Prime Minister," and did not challenge his former-communist forces from retaining control of the army, the security police, the courts and most provincial governments.
Tension built during recent months as the country began preparation for new national elections scheduled for 1998. Under threats and pressure from Hun Sen, the elected Parliament was reluctant to meet to draw up new election laws necessary to begin the electoral campaign process. International human rights organizations criticized the Cambodian government for assassinations, arrests and intimidation of journalists and pro-democracy advocates. Sam Rainsy, 48, leader of the democratic Khmer Nation Party, and his family received numerous death threats before the Easter Sunday assassination attempt. Former Foreign Minister and chairman of the FUNCINPEC Party Prince Norodom Sirivuth was arrested and exiled from Cambodia by Hun Sen, who threatened to "shoot down" any civilian airplane that carried Prince Sirivuth back to Phnom Penh.
During recent weeks, as Hun Sen's public statements became more threatening - including orders to arrest Prime Minister Ranariddh - and his forces increasing intimidation and gunfights with army and naval forces loyal to Prince Ranariddh, non-communists within the military began stockpiling ammunition and supplies. The coup events began with Hun Sen's forces surrounding and opening fire on a munitions warehouse at a base run by troops loyal to Ranariddh.
On Friday, July 4, with Hun Sen in Vietnam, Ranariddh flew to France to seek help to avoid a civil war. The desperate act was too little, too late. By Saturday, Hun Sen's armored personnel carriers were rumbling through the streets of Phnom Penh. The gruff voice of Hun Sen was heard over the radio and television airwaves in a repeated taped statement labeling Ranariddh a "traitor" who had to be deposed. While accusing Ranariddh of collaborating with the Khmer Rouge, the leasers of Hun Sen's shock troops who indiscriminately opened fire in residential neighborhoods, were themselves Khmer Rouge commanders until recent months. Mortar, rockets and machine gun fire caused thousands of civilians to flee the city. Hundreds more crowded along ferry boat docks on the banks of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers, desperate for transportation to safety.
As of midday on Sunday, local hospitals began reporting civilian casualties. During the fighting, a stray mortar shell damaged the French Embassy. The U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh urged all Americans to take refuge in a relatively secure hotel on the Tonle Sap River, where walls were lined with mattresses to limit any damage caused by shelling.
The coup began amid the short lived euphoria over the demise of Pol Pot, Hun Sen's former supreme Khmer Rouge commander. During the past year, both Ranariddh and Hun Sen competed for the loyalty of Khmer Rouge soldiers and their families who had surrendered but had not given up their arms. An apparent 1996 accommodation between former-rivals China and Vietnam laid the foundation for Hun Sen and his Party to initiate their courting of the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge forces and to isolate and attack the royalists and non-communists.
In China following the communist accord, an ailing King Sihanouk remained mostly silent about the fratricide in his kingdom. Sihanouk returned to Cambodia on August 29, by passing Phnom Penh and flying directly to his summer palace in Siem Reap. In a backhand gesture to Hun Sen and his puppet First Prime Minister Ung Huot, Sihanouk conferred the country's highest medals on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for their "courageous reporting" on government abuses. However, without material and humanitarian support from the United States and other free countries, Sihanouk did not have the ability to lead a credible military resistance.
One reason for the coup may have been the forging of a new alliance between Sam Rainsy, Prince Ranariddh, republican Son Sann's Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party and smaller pro-democracy parties.
Knowledge of Hun Sen's Easter massacre grew among the country's primarily rural population, strengthening the support for non-communist alliance. The fear of a galvanized electoral opposition and the fear of being held accountable by international jurists may have played a role in Hanoi advising Hun Sen to strike before the national election campaign had begun. More threatening, former communist Prime Minister Penn Sovann who was imprisoned in Hanoi in 1982 and replaced by Hun Sen who ceded vast amounts of Cambodian territory to Vietnam, began forming an opposition political party that was attracting numerous dissident members of Hun Sen's Cambodia People's Party.
In a total contradiction of Hun Sen's "Khmer Rouge threat" excuse for the coup, on August 22, the government radio broadcast a speech by Hun Sen to a gathering of former Khmer Rouge guerrilla leaders who had joined his forces during the past year. In the speech, Hun Sen ridiculed the U.S. embassy giving protection to former communist Prime Minister Pen Sovan to leave the country. Sovan had been in hiding since the coup in fear of being assassinated by Hun Sen's henchmen.
In the U.S. Congress, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced a provision in the Foreign Assistance Appropriations Bill to cut off all direct U.S. aid to the Hun Sen regime through Fiscal Year 1998. Also, a bi-partisan resolution co-sponsored by Rohrabacher, Ben Gilman, Douglas Bereuter, Eni Faleomavaega, Howard Berman and Jay Kim called for the U.S. Government to release the FBI report on the Easter Sunday grenade attack and all recent U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency reports on Cambodia. In addition, Rohrabacher requested that the State Department make available all correspondence to and from the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh.
Although Members of Congress have expressed concern about the denial of asylum to royalists and other non-communists during the July 5 violence in Phnom Penh, a more egregious issue is the attitude that the Clinton Administration has shown toward Asian communist leaders. Upon her arrival in Vietnam, U.S. Secretary of State Albright told reporters that during the Vietnam War she was uninvolved with its political turmoil. Throughout her visit to Vietnam she advocated that the U.S. and Vietnamese Communist government develop a new relationship, and that Americans view Vietnam (in the lingo of the public relations department of the U.S. -Vietnam Trade Council) "as a country and not a war." Tragically, the Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodian Communists viewed the U.S. Government denial of Hanoi's role in Hun Sen's violent ambition as a license to destroy the very people who believe in American ideals of democracy.
As this issue goes to print, royalist forces loyal to the democratically elected government are waging a fierce defense of a mountain top base at O'Smach near the Thai border. For three weeks, the outgunned and poorly supplied non-communists have withstood human wave assaults and massive artillery bombardments. Hun Sen's forces and their 130mm artillery are being ferried to the front lines in the private Mi-26 helicopters owned by international drug baron Teng Bunma, who bragged that he spent $1 million of his own money to fund the coup. The helicopters are reportedly piloted by Russian mercenaries hired by Bunma. Thus far, the Administration has resisted releasing the embassy cables and the DEA reports requested by Congress.
American officials such as Ambassadors Peterson and Quinn and Secretary Albright expect the American people to believe that the Asian communist governments simply have no knowledge of what they did to American prisoners of war that were known to be in their gruesome hands. Or that "internationalist" communist regimes are our misunderstood friends, and are not really manipulating the affairs of their neighbors. It is apparent, however, that the life long revolutionary killers are holding fast to Chairman Mao's dictum, "political power comes through the barrel of a gun."
