January 1979
by Richard S. Ehrlich
HONG KONG (UPI) -- Vietnam has accused the Cambodian government of Pol Pot, which it crushed four days ago in a blitzkrieg, of killing nearly three million Cambodians and forcing the relocation of seven million others since 1975.
Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich
Pol Pot's Massacres Discovered in Cambodia
A description of conditions in the country came Thursday from the Vietnam News Agency. It attributed some of its report to a correspondent for the victorious Cambodian rebels' "Saporamean Cambodia News Agency" (SPK).
There was no independent confirmation of the reports. Western intelligence sources have said the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge regime emptied entire Cambodian cities, including Phnom Penh, and killed large numbers of citizens during its three-and-a-half-year reign.
The charge was repeated in the United Nations Security Council Thursday by Soviet representative Oleg A. Troyanovsky, speaking in support of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.
The Vietnamese report said victorious Cambodian rebels who retook Phnom Penh Sunday found the capital "a city of decay and death" with hospitals shut, and rusty cars, bicycles and furniture strewn about.
The Vietnam News Agency quoted Phan Trong Tue, a Vietnamese Communist Party Central Committee member, as saying Pol Pot had tried to model Cambodia on China's Cultural Revolution.
Tue said the former leadership, "learning from the Chinese Cultural Revolution," carried out "continual rebellion and purges within the party, the armed forces, public employees and the people, and have killed millions" of Cambodians.
He gave the figure as "almost three million."
Tue said the ousted regime had "applied the Chinese people's commune method.
"But even outdoing their masters, they forced people into concentration camps..."
Tue said the Pol Pot regime killed Cambodians "with hammers, knives, sticks and hoes like killing wee insects.
"The whole country was reduced to nil: no freedom of movement, no freedom of association, no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom to study, no freedom of marriage, no currency, no business, no trade, no more pagodas...and no more tears to shed over the people's sufferings."
Tue said, "Those who did not live with the devil and did not witness tortures and massacres which plagued Cambodia into a state of terror cannot understand why the bloodthirsty fascist regime -- a shock force of Chinese expansionism -- was smashed and completely collapsed within less than 40 days, from the founding of the (rebel) Cambodia National United Front for National Salvation on Dec. 2, 1978."
The SPK correspondent reported inhabitants wept and hugged the Cambodian rebels.
"Houses, hospitals and cinemas remained closed," the correspondent said.
"A desolate atmosphere prevailed at the university center and the Technological Institute of Phnom Penh where windows were shut, the yard overgrown with grass and dilapidated furniture lay in disorder.
"Rusty motor cars, motorbikes and bicycles lay in big heaps occupying the whole ground floor."
Former Premier Pol Pot's government "constantly uprooted and relocated the seven million Cambodians in 19 provinces," he said.
"They turned everything topsy turvy, erased all names, and renumbered all areas and military zones, giving a number to each soldier, each division and each street in their own order.
"They wanted to erase all our national traditions."
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