King Norodom Sihanouk

The monarch has watched over his people for 58 years. What happens when he's gone?
King Norodom Sihanouk has seen his country occupied three times, has been betrayed and overthrown and has spent nearly two decades in exile. He has had children killed by revolutionaries. His country has been ripped apart by war and suffocated by poverty. In this climate he has thrived, playing leading role in domestic politics for more than 50 years, forming friendships with some of the century's most powerful rulers, brokering deals to calm turbulent times at home and securing the love of the people.
"He has helped solve a lot of political crisis as the referee and has brought peace for us. His mediating role is unique in Cambodian politics," says Theang Saphay, a 43-year-old motorbike tai driver. "We need him to stay with us as cool shade to protect the Cambodian people." But in his twilight year, the King, who recently turned 77, is fading.
Who will replace him is a question few in Cambodia will openly discuss, for fear of showing disrespect to the King. But the subject has been raised more frequently in recent months as the King himself says he is dogged by poor health. "My subjects, you must understand that I am considerably weak," he said in a recent television address, explaining why he has cut back on public appearances. "Now my life enters a period that is similar to the setting of the sun."
King Sihanouk has had two strokes and suffers from diabetes. In 1993 he was diagnosed with colon cancer, which has gone into remission, though he is still frequently in Beijing for medical treatments. In a private conversation with friends recently, the King said he is content with his contributions to the country, and now that Cambodia is stable, he is comfortable dying.
Some say the monarchy today is an outdated concept, no longer serving the needs of the country, and should be abolished in favor of a republic. Others charge that with one party effectively ruling Cambodia, the King is needed to speak for and protect the people to help minimize the abuse of power. And there is still a loyal following, especially in the countryside, that sees the King as the country's one true leader.
"Whoever is chosen as Cambodia's next king, the monarchy will never be the same after Norodom Sihanouk," says opposition party leader Sam Rainsy. "He will be probably the last of Cambodia's great kings." The role the future king will play in Cambodia is unclear. He could serve as a figure head, merely overseeing royal ceremonies and entertaining heads of state. Or he could, in theory, assume more wide-ranging powers granted by th Constitution--broader powers, some say, than King Sihanouk has exercised.
"Our King has not played his role as monarch fully," say Lao Mong Hay, executive director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy. "He has not exercised his constitutional powers. If the government doesn't work well, if the Parliament is just rubber stamping, then the King can step in.... Many people," he says, "wish he could do more."
But in interviews with foreign and Cambodian political analysts, a picture emerges of and isolated and increasingly-powerless monarch who once commanded the center stage in Cambodian politics but is now politely chastised by Prime Minister Hun Sen for meddling in politics, helpless to alter a system dominated by Hun Sen's party, the CPP. And the peacemaking deals for which the King is so widely praised, analysts say, have benefited Hun Sen more than anyone.
A Political Decision
Though the monarchy still attracts blinds devotion for many, Cambodia has a young population and the monarchy is losing the mystique it once had. King Sihanouk's successor, and the future of the monarchy itself, depends not on bloodlines but political convenience, at least while Hun Sen remains prime minister and perhaps longer.
"The next king will have not chance to survive without support from the current prime minister," says a Cambodian analyst with ties to all three main parties. "He will be a real symbol of the monarchy. Nothing else. Otherwise, he will not survive." Constitutionally, the throne is open to any member of the Royal family who is at least 30 years old and a descendant from King Ang Dong, King Norodom or King Sisowath. This could include hundreds of people , but only a few are recognized as likely candidates.
The short list includes National Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the King's son and one-time first prime minister; Prince Norodom Sirivudh, the King's half brother who was expelled in 1995 for allegedly plotting to assassinate Hun Sen then granted amnesty by the King last year; and Prince Norodom Sihamoni, the King's son with Queen Norodom Minineath, who lives in Paris as Cambodia's representative to Unesco.
The suggestion also is raised periodically that the Constitution could be changed to make Queen Norodom Monineath the reigning monarch. The National Assembly has the power to do this, needling a two-thirds vote by its members.
The succession process is often criticized as being too highly politicized. Unlike countries such as England which has a hereditary monarchy with the successor known far in advance, the next monarch here will be chosen by the Royal Council of the Throne. The nine-member body is composed of the prime minister, the top three posts in both the National Assembly and the Senate and the leaders of the country's two Buddhist sects. The CPP controls five of the nine seats.
Fortune and Calamity
Whoever assumes the throne, the King's successor will be stepping io a legacy nearly impossible to match.
"He is a political survivor who commands tremendous political respect," says Kao Kim Hourn, executive director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace. "The next king will have to work very hard. He will have to show that he's capable. The King worked very hard to get where he is today--more than 20 years to restore the throne, to restore the country as a new kingdom."
King Sihanouk was little more than a boy when he became Cambodia's ruling monarch. In 1941, at the age of 18, prince Norodom Sihanouk was appointed King by a French colonial government that thought he would be a weak and controllable figurehead.
In 1945, when the Japanese invaded Cambodia, the young King took the opportunity to declare the country's independence from France, though the freedom was short-lived as the Japanese were soon defeated. But by 1954, Cambodia was given its independence, a concession King Sihanouk is credited with securing from France, which was already reeling from its defeated the throne--making his father the king--to immerse himself in politics as prime minister. As war spread through then-indochina, Prince Sihanouk's effort were increasingly directed at balancing the pressures from the US and communist powers supporting Vietnam. While out of the country in 1970, he was overthrown by his trusted general Lon Nol.
Prince Sihanouk threw his support behind the Khmer Rough, a new guerrilla movement fighting Lon Nol's US-backed regime. The Khmer Rouge, he said in a 1980 interview, could not have come to power without his support. He returned to Phnom Penh in 1975 only to become a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge in the Royal Palace until 1979. The movement he once supported and would late join in a governing alliance had killed five of his children.
In the opinion of a prominent western historian on Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk had already undermined the monarchy by this time and set the course for how it would be viewed in the future.
"Sihanouk himself first crippled, then dismantled the monarchy by his behavior in the 1950s and 1960s, first by abdicating, then by making his father, then by making his father,
then his mother head of state, then by joining the Khmer Rough," the historian says. "The institution no longer exists, aside from him." For the next 13 years after his release from the Khmer Rouge, Prince Sihanouk lived in exile in Beijing and Pyongyang, North Korea, but was involved in efforts to rid Cambodia of Vietnamese occupation. He returned to Cambodia in 1991 following the Paris Peace Agreements. by 1993, with UN-sponsored elections under way, Prince Sihanouk seized an opportunity to return to the throne.
Bowing to Pressure
Though Prince Ranariddh's Funcinpec party won the election, the CPP claimed fraud. Hun Sen persuaded Prince Sihanouk to take control, telling him it was the only way to prevent war in Cambodia. Prince Sihanouk obliged, appointing himself prime minister, president and supreme military commander.
Although his son's party had won the election outright, Prince Sihanouk told both sides to join in a power-sharg government, with Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen serving as two prime ministers. As part of the new Constitution, Sihanouk was reinstated as king. While the deal gave him back the throne, the King's own assessment of his actions at the time was less than enthusiastic. In "Report from a stricken Land," former New York Times report Henry Kamm says the King coalition with threats of civil war.
Since then, analysts say, the King repeatedly has had to bow to the powers controlling the country-- Hun Sen and the CPP. In describing the King's role in recent and past history in Cambodia, many international scholars have not been kind to King Sihanouk. They have questioned oppression of rivals during the 1960s, his alliances with the communist Vietnamese during the war, his support of the Khmer Rouge, his flights into exile during Cambodia's troubled times and his undermining of the 1993 election results.
Such claims, says Thach Bunroeun, Prince Ranariddh's chief of cabinet, are both disrespectful and unfair. "Cambodians should be thankful again and again and again to his Majesty," he says. "He has been able again and again to bring peace to this country, after all the political turmoil that Cambodian leaders have created."
Of course, Thach Bunroeun is a royalist. But there are other observers who agree with this assessment. "The King was absolutely essential to the fact that there is a government now," says a Western political analyst.
The tension that followed the 1998 elections, which the CPP won, turned into political deadlock. Because Funcinpec would not recognize the results, the government largely ground to a halt and Cambodia's relationship with the international community was put on hold.
"In the end it was the King who made everybody aware that the continued stalemate was not good for the country, not good or Cambodia's relations with others, and he decided to put an end to it," the analyst says. "The King saved the country from itself."
Power Has limits
Through most of the 1990s, the King's actions have been more subtle. his preferred method for speaking out or issues--both social and political--is his monthly newsletter, Bulletin Mensuel de Documentation, a collection of correspondences and press clippings critiqued by the King. He uses it as a forum to defend himself against his critics. But he also bemoans the violence, poverty and lack of education in the country and condemns government corruption and mismanagement.
The BMD, analysts say, is the King's political tool--one of his last remaining tools. In a scribbling in the margin of the BMD recently, the King spoke in favor of an international tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders. Whether or not Hun Sen was influenced by media reports of he King's comment, he said a few days later that he now supports the involvement of foreign judges in the trial.
Earlier tis year, more than 30 Cambodiadvocacy groups wrote a letter to the BMD, asking the King to exercise the powers granted him in the Constitution.
"These articles endow the King with significant powers to act against wrongdoing in public office, in the judicial system and in the army, to fight the destruction of our natural resources for short-term profit, to maintain the sovereignty of our borders and to defend the rights of Cambodian people," the group wrote. "While the King's role is not to govern, he should put his considerable experience and influence to good use in protecting Cambodia from the forces of destruction."
A Royal Cabinet official responded with a letter stating that the King does not want to make enemies of the prime minister, the government and the military.According to article seven of the Constitution, "The king shall reign but shall not govern." But the Constitution is vague on the powers given to the king, leaving much room for interpretation. The King, for instance, oversees the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, charged with ensuring a fair court system and disciplining judges. The King is also charged by the Constitution with ensuring the proper functioning of public institutions, though it does not say which institutions, though it does not say which institutions or what powers of enforcement the king should have.
"It's very general, so it's up to him to decide how to use it, "say Chea Vannath, president of the Center for Social Development, one of the groups that signed the letter. "It allows him to exercise his power broadly." For Lao Mong Hay, of the Khmer Institute of Democracy, "the question is one of courage."Deep down, because of his overthrow in 1970, he seems to be scared of powerful figures," he says. "He does not want to antagonize, lest he be thrown out again." Taking a more active role in politics carries too many risks for the King, says the Cambodia analyst with ties to the three main parties, adding that King Sihanouk has neither the support from government leadership to openly oppose Hun Sen nor the desire to jeopardize the monarchy.The King has a lot of theoretical power in the Constitution. In practice, he understands it's not a power he can exercise," he says. "Each time King Sihanouk has said something that directly or indirectly involved politics, he is told by the people in power that he should not do politics. He has tried to step in and people have let him know very fast. He's tried many times.
"His concern is how to make the royal family survive," he says. "Since he has to be very careful with the prime minister, he has to do things in a way that the prime minister cannot accuse him of interfering... He knows how to not go too far. That's his wisdom."
Influencing the Throne
But in the eyes of Hun Sen,
A top-ranking CPP official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says the party has alread chosen who it wants to succeed the King. He refused to name the candidate, but made clear that the party wants to next king to focus on religion and culture--not politics.
"In the 1960s, the King could rule by himself. But he was out of the country for 20 years. Now society is more complicated. You need a big team to rule," the official says. "Before, the King was like both the prime minister and the president. The King still thinks he's between prime minister and president."

The official also says the CPP resents that the King speaks out on topics seen as political. Asked about the BMD, he shakes his head in disappointment. "It was the King himself who decided after the Untac period that the King will reign, but not rule," he says. "But he is not comfortable to stay out of politics." Whether or not King Sihanouk's actions over the past several years can be called political, they have been effective, says a Western political analyst.
"He's used his position not as a figurehead, not as a rubber stamp, but to influence events in Cambodia, and he has," he says. "No one is going to have it as King Sihanouk has it now. But the question is: Who can develop it to counterbalance a hot-headed prime minister when it's needed?"
For Thach Bunroeun--"a Sihanoukist, a Royalist, a Khmerist," as he describes himself--King Sihanouk and the king to follow will determine the future of the country. "If Cambodia is going to survive, we must have monarchy, in the true sense,. Khmer monarchy represents Khmer culture, the Khmer soul."
He compares present-day Cambodia to the Christian biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites. After they had escaped enslavement by the Egyptians and were waiting in the desert, God sent Moses the Ten Commandments to guide the people. "Cambodia today needs Ten Commandments," Thach Bunroeun sage. Cambodia today needs a revolutionary leader with integrity, with moral principal. The next king of Cambodia should be that person."
For nearly 50 years, queen Norodom Monineath has been at the side of King Sihanouk--from his years as prime minister to his overthrow, his imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge, his exile and his return to the throne. This experience, some say, makes her the ideal candidate to succeed the King upon his death.
"Who else, next to the King, has been at the top?" says Lao Mong Hay, of the Khmer Institute of Democracy. "She has had a mentor in the form of her husband, 24 hours a day." Both the King and the Queen have said in the past that they do not want the Queen to succeed him. but in a private meeting with friends last month the King said for the first time that the Queen succeeding him may be the best option.
This is due, in part, the King told friends, to his disillusionment with the candidacy of Prince Ranariddh, his long-time choice for the throne. though the King still wants Prince Ranariddh to succeed him, he acknowledges that his candidacy may be hurt because he is still involved in politics as head of the National Assembly and president of the Funcinpec Party. The King has also expressed concern about what will happen to his wife if he dies. He has told friends that he wants the Queen to retain a prominent role in Cambodia, as well as a home in the Royal Palace.
According to the Constitution, the Queen cannot succeed her husband as Cambodia's monarch. But, political analysts say, if Prime Minister Hun Sen and his CPP party want the Queen to be the reigning monarch, they can make it happen. The National Assembly needs a two-thirds vote to change the Constitution.
"We Cambodians need to have a smooth transition," says Lao Mong Hay. "We cannot afford to have abrupt change. We need smooth succession to continue the monarchy. And if we do not want the monarchy anymore, then a smooth transition to a republic."
Though the Queen will never be perceived by the people as the same as the King, her presence on the throne could be beneficial in the short term, says a Cambodian political analyst with ties to the three main parties.
"You cannot compare the Queen and the King," he says. "The Queen can assume the transition, but for a short period of time. The Queen is very clever; she can save the royal family. But the role can never be a lasting role."
If the Queen succeeded the King, she would be Cambodia's first female monarch. This could have a powerful effect on people's views of women's roles in Cambodian society, says Chea Vannath, president of the center for Social Development. But even if the Queen does not assume the throne, she says, the Constitution should be changed to make women of the royal family eligible for the throne.
CAMBODIA UNDER SIHANOUK, 1954-1970
King Sihanouk continues to be one of the most controversial figures in Southeast Asia's turbulent, and often tragic, postwar history. Admirers view him as one of the country's great patriots, whose insistence on strict neutrality kept Cambodia out of the maelstrom of war and out of the revolution in neighboring Vietnam for more than fifteen years before he was betrayed by his close associate, Lon Nol. Critics attack him for his vanity, eccentricities, and intolerance of any political views different from his own. One such critic, Michael Vickery, asserts that beneath the neutralist rhetoric Sihanouk presided over a regime that was oppressively reactionary and, in some instances, as violent in its suppression of political opposition as the Khmer Rouge.
According to Vickery, the royal armed forces under Lon Nol slaughtered women and children in pro-Khmer Issarak regions of Batdambang in 1954 using methods that were later to become routine under Pol Pot. Another critical observer, Milton E. Osborne, writing as an Australian expatriate in Phnom Penh during the late 1960s, describes the Sihanouk years in terms of unbridled greed and corruption, of a foreign policy inspired more by opportunism than by the desire to preserve national independence, of an economy and a political system that were rapidly coming apart, and of the prince's obsession with making outrageously mediocre films--one of which starred himself and his wife, Princess Monique.
Sihanouk was all of these things--patriot, neutralist, embodiment of the nation's destiny, eccentric, rigid defender of the status quo, and promoter of the worst sort of patron-client politics. He believed that he single-handedly had won Cambodia's independence from the French. The contributions of other nationalists, such as Son Ngoc Thanh and the Viet Minh, were conveniently forgotten. Sihanouk also believed he had the right to run the state in a manner not very different from that of the ancient Khmer kings--that is, as an extension of his household. Unlike the ancient "god-kings," however, he established genuine rapport with ordinary Cambodians. He made frequent, often impromptu, trips throughout the country, visiting isolated villages, chatting with peasants, receiving petitions, passing out gifts, and scolding officials for mismanagement.
According to British author and journalist William Shawcross, Sihanouk was able to create a "unique brand of personal populism." To ordinary Cambodians, his eccentricities, volatility, short temper, sexual escapades, and artistic flights of fancy were an expression of royal charisma rather than an occasion for scandal. Sihanouk's delight in making life difficult for foreign diplomats and journalists, moreover, amused his subjects. Ultimately, the eccentric humanity of Sihanouk was to contrast poignantly with the random brutality of his Khmer Rouge successors.

Prime Minister Hun Sen

After decades of often brutal struggle, Hun Sen has positioned himself as Cambodia's undisputed strongman and a tough survivor on Asia's turbulent political scene. But surprisingly little is known about him. Next month, however, will see the publication of "Hun Sen: Strongman of Cambodia," the first biography of a controverisal figure who has risen from guerrilla fighter to elected prime minister. "He is both a pragmatist and an idealist, but he can be tough as he proved against the Khmer Rouge," journalist and co-author of the biography Harish Mehta told AFP. "We were not out to demolish Hun Sen, we were out to produce a balanced account of a man who is the single most important personality in Cambodia today." Hun Sen's unofficial biographers, Indian journalists Harish and Julie Mehta, have given a broadly sympathetic portrait of a figure who holds a remarkable ability to inspire either love or loathing -- and seldom anything in between But politics aside, what emerges from the biography is a complex personality: a charming diplomat, an eloquent poet, unforgiving to his enemies, ruthless in battle with a thirst for power but simple tastes.."Among the strong students I was strong. Among the strong soldiers I was strong. Now among the strongmen I am strong," Hun Sen said of himself during an interview in 1998. It details how a young Hun Sen, shocked by the bombing of Cambodia by the United States and South Vietnam in the early 1970's, emerged a dedicated Khmer Rouge field commander. Like so many other Cambodians, Hun Sen also took a share of hardship: he lost his eye during fighting and before the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, and his first child died shortly after birth when it was dropped in the hospital. A "disillusioned" Hun Sen quit the ranks of the genocidal guerillas in 1977 in terror of the mounting internal purges. The biographers, in line with most historians, clear Hun Sen of any role in the brutal genocide. After fleeing to Vietnam, Hun Sen was greeted by imprisonment and interrogation, but then political asylum. Successive Khmer Rouge border attacks on Vietnam then convinced Hun Sen's hosts to help him raise an army of "national liberation." Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and ouster of Pol Pot places a 27 year-old Hun Sen as Asia's youngest-ever foreign minister. The central role of Hun Sen in the invasion was to provide ammunition to his opponents, who today still dub him a stooge of Vietnam. But in power as prime minister since 1985, Hun Sen has emerged a survivor where many cold war warriors have long disappeared, a communist-turned-capitalist yet still deeply conscious of his humble origins. "I don't want to judge him. I was born in a village, he was born in a royal palace," Hun Sen says of his main political rival Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who he ousted as coalition partner in 1997. "If he looks down on Hun Sen he will look down on millions of people who are poorer than himself." But his life is not without They come from America to teach us about human rights and democracy, and I don't want to be their student," Hun Sen said in a typical anti-American outburst in 1997. Such rhetoric does not prevent his son, Hun Manet, from attending the priviledged US military school of West Point, nor Hun Sen attending the graduation ceremony as a proud father earlier this year. But although Hun Sen has emerged victorious from frequent bloody battles with often formidable opponents, he appears aware that it is in his peace time rule where he will be judged. "I want to be a strongman and do something for my country ... I want to build our economy like the other Southeast Asian strongmen did," Hun Sen commented before the fall of Indonesia's president Suharto. "So it is not yet correct to call me a strongman. I will recognise that I am a strongman when I succeed in eliminating the poverty of the Cambodian people and bring peace, economic development and security to Cambodia." Hun Sen once expounded Marxist dogma, but now espouses a capitalism in which almost anything goes. Quick to show a withering anger, he can charm dignitaries and trade earthy jokes with villagers moments later.
"I am just a transitional person who helped bring Cambodia from war to peace, bring Cambodia from dictatorship to democracy, bring Cambodia from planned economy to a free-market economy," Hun Sen said in a recent exclusive interview with The Associated Press.
Friends and foes agree on two points: The chess-playing workaholic is an extraordinary example of the self-made man and a cunning survivor.
"He's extremely intelligent and has proved more than capable of running circles around foreigners who have tried to influence him and domestic opponents who have tried to challenge him," say Stephen Heder, a scholar of Cambodia at London's Scholl of Oriental and African Studies.
The latest to learn were the UN legal experts who demanded that the UN dominate a proposed tribunal to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, the communist regime blamed for the deaths of more than 1 million people during its rule in the last 1970s.
The experts threatened to withhold the UN stamp of legitimacy from the trial unless the international body got its way.
Hun Sen answered that Cambodia is a real country and can put the architects of one of history's worst genocides on trial with or without UN help. He added that UN moral authority in Cambodia is limited, since the Khmer Rouge held the country's UN seat a decade after it was driven from power and its crimes became known .
When he became the world's youngest prime minister at age 33 in 1985, Hun Sen had survived five wounds from fighting with the Khmer Rouge against the US-backed Lon Nol government in the early 1970s. Artillery shrapnel blinded his left eye.
Hun Sen barely escaped execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge after he turned against the regime in the
midst of brutal internal purges. He fled to Vietnam and returned with an invading Vietnamese army that toppled the Khmer Rouge in 1979. He kept the Vietnamese from taking over Cambodia completely during their decade-long occupation and rose to the top of a Hanoi-style regime that fought a Hanoi-style regime that fought a Khmer Rouge dominated resistance coalition until 1991.
Even after losing a UN-sponsored election in 1993, the son of poor farmers who never finished high scholl out maneuvered his chief political
rival, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, to retain the job of co-prime minister and keep hold on the levers of power.
"The real success of a man is not money or weapons," Hun Sen said in the interview. 'To me the important point is to make the right assessment and to find the right solution. That is why I have been successful."
Others differ. Lao Mong Hay. executive director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy, describes Hun Sen as "a Machiavellian prince," a compelling communicator and "a Maoist in that he believes power comes from the barrel of the gun."
He is both a competent political administrator and a ruthless political criminal," say Heder.
Sam Rainsy, a pro-democracy advocate can now Hun Sen's main political rival, calls the prime minister a "murderer," charging he ordered a 1997 grenade attack at a Sam Rainsy rally that killed 16 people.
A direct link to Hun Sen has not been proven in that case, nor in the killing of some 100 officials of Prince Ranariddh's party after an uprising by Hun Sen supporters against the prince in 1997.
Cambodia ranks among the poorest of nations, with deep feudalistic foundations below new trappings of democracy.
Lao Mong Hay says Hun Sen presides over a patronage network, makes key decisions out of his residence and runs cabinet meetings at which nobody dares challenge his authority.
But noting Hun Sen's age, 48, and past growth in influence and ability, Lao Mong Hay believes the premier is capable of initiating reform and economic improvements-as long as changes do not undermine his power.
Pointing to piles of reports on his desk, the chain-smoking Hun Sen said: 'The hot war that confronts us now is the war against poverty. I want to devote most of my remaining time to social-economic development."
Even his worst enemies concede Hun Sen puts in a great deal of time on the job, starting the day at 7 am and rarely going to bed before 2 am. When sleeping pills don't work, Hun Sen said he will work on until 4 am.
One extracurricular passion is writing lyrics for songs, sometimes jotting them down in a helicopter or car on inspection trips. "My experiences make me write sentimental songs," he said.
By Cambodia Daily 2000

Cambodia's Dictator: Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide!

Cambodia's dictator, Hun Sen, may soon find he has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, was arrested in London and is being held on an international warrant for extradition to Spain. Pinochet is accused of presiding over genocide, torture and kidnappings committed by his secret police after he seized power in a military coup, ousting President Salvador Allende. Allende, although democratically elected, was supported by the Soviet KGB and communist Cuba. Hun Sen is guilty of the same litany of crimes, but to a greater degree, which makes him a prime candidate for similar prosecution.
As pointed out in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, "Leaders who trample on the human rights of others can be held to account anywhere in the world. We must take note that this is the way of the modern world. ... If a dictatorship is responsible for crimes against humanity, those responsible are being brought to justice by the international community. An accord was adopted in July that established an international war crimes tribunal for such a purpose. The atrocities the tribunal was to specifically address are primarily those in Bosnia and in African countries. But the approach is appropriate to bring to justice dictatorial regimes like that of Pinochet involving such crimes anywhere..."
Not only has Spain issued an international warrant for Pinochet's arrest, but six other European countries including France and Germany have followed suite, and the United States Department of Justice is contemplating similar action. Also, the Cuban American National Foundation is testing the resolve of Spain to pursue dictators, using Madrid's action against Gen. Pinochet as a basis for bringing criminal charges against Fidel Castro. The plaintiffs include Castro opponents in exile in Spain and Spanish relatives of Cubans executed or imprisoned because of anti-Castro activities. Similar charges can now be brought against Hun Sen by relatives of his victims living in France, Australia, the United States and elsewhere.
Hun Sen's crimes include: participation in the Khmer Rouge genocide during Pol Pot's reign as a military commander in the eastern zone; implementing the genocidal K5 plan as a Vietnamese puppet during their bloody occupation of Cambodia; leading the July 1998 coup in Cambodia that resulted in the extra-judicial murder of over 100 members of the democratically elected opposition; and as the Commander-in-Chief, ordering the recent bloody-repressive crackdown on democratic demonstrators in Phnom-Penh in which at least 34 people were killed and another 53 others simply disappeared. At the same time, Hun Sen's henchmen also tortured and murdered several reverend Buddhist Monks.
Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a r{missing words}tions, H.R. Res. 533, condemning Hun Sen for both his past and current crimes, and his culpability for violations of international law. A similar resolution, Sen. Res. 309, is pending in the U.S. Senate. Appallingly, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Kenneth Quinn tried to assuage Hun Sen's fears by assuring him that neither of these Resolutions were binding by law. What Quinn forgot to tell him is unlike Hun Sen's kangaroo courts, justice systems in the U.S., and in other democracies, can act independent of the political systems. Although Cambodia's dictator purports to support bringing Khmer Rouge leaders before an international tribunal, he only wants three Pol Pot holdouts, Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Noun Chea--who have yet to submit to Hun Sen's command--brought to trail. However, Hun Sen wants them tried only in the inept and corrupt courts in Cambodia that he controls. Trying Khmer Rouge leaders could lead to his downfall, for invariability, some may "rat" on Hun Sen for they know his real role in the Khmer Rouge's hierarchical during the Cambodian genocide.
Although Hun Sen claims he had no role in the Khmer Rouge genocide, others say differently. According to a an October 30, 1989 article in The Washington Post, one eastern zone witness states, "Hun Sen...and the troops under his command killed indiscriminately anyone in their way." In Kompong Cham Province, they "cut the throats of critically wounded at the city hospital. During the battle to relive the provincial capital...my special forces unit discovered hundreds of bodies of men, women and children, young and old, including Buddhist Monks, who had been first tortured and then killed--some executed by a gunshot to the back of the head, others chopped to death with hoes, still others strangled to death or suffocated by plastic bags tied over their heads."
And Hun Sen, as Secretary General of the Cambodian Communist party during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia from 1984-1989, was responsible for the deaths of "tens of thousands of victims." [This is a far greater number than the 3,000 killed or disappeared during Gen. Pinochet's 17 year rule.] According to witnesses, Hun Sen played a major role in implementing the K5 Plan during the Vietnamese occupation. Described as a "new genocide," Cambodians were formed into forced labor brigades to build an "Asian Wall" along the Thai border, where they died by the "tens of thousands" of starvation, exhaustion, disease, and land mine blasts. With no training and no tools, they were forced into the fields and forests to clear mines, more often than not, blown to pieces when they stepped on mines. If anyone tried to flee, they were shot on the spot. The "Wall," some eight hundred kilometers, was to serve as a "defense line" for the Vietnamese troops against Polpotist bandits in the forests. This all took place during a little-known period in Cambodian history: the time from 1979-1989, after the Pol Pot regime and during the Vietnamese occupation. "Although overshadowed by the great genocide which took place between 1975 and 1978 under Pol Pot, the subsequent period also brought genocide of the same form, though of a lesser scope. It was perpetrated by Pol Pot's successors and former colleagues, among them Hun Sen." [See Marie Alexandrine Martin's "Cambodia, a new colony for exploitation;" Indochina Report--"The military occupation of Kampuchea;" Philippe Pacquet's "Nouveau Genocide;" and Esmeralda Luciolli's "Le Mur de Bambou-Le Cambodge apres Pol Pot"]
Nevertheless, Hun Sen has his defenders. One of them, Ben Kiernan, heads the U.S. funded Cambodian Genocide Program. He claims he has uncovered no evidence that Hun Sen was involved in the genocide. However, this would have been impossible, for the Khmer Rouge's policy was kill or be killed. One can only wonder what Kiernan's motives are. "Kiernan spent most of the mid-1970s, when the Khmer Rouge was in power, extolling its ideology and trying to discredit reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities." He was quoted as saying, "the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have recently made it out to be."
According to The Wall Street Journal, in 1995, Kiernan came into possession of a huge cache of previously unexamined documents in Phnom Penh. It was thought that some of them related to American POW/MIAs from the Vietnam War. However, Kiernan refused to share them with the Department of Defense, even upon urging from Kiernan's funders, the Department of State. This gave rise to the suspicion that the documents may be incriminating to Hun Sen. He was senior military commander of the eastern zone, where numerous Americans became missing, a number of POWs were known to have been held, and several POWs murdered.
General Pinochet may have one saving grace, that is he is credited as being the father of modern day democracy and for catapulting Chile's economy from a static socialist one to one of the most prosperous in Latin America. He remains quite popular in Chile, and he maintains the status of Senator for Life.
Hun Sen should take this page from Chile's history book, and emulate General Pinochet. If Hun Sen turned his dictatorship into a liberal democracy, and worked with opposition leaders Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy in rebuilding Cambodia's shattered economy; stopped the extra-judicial killings and brought the ones guilty for these crimes to justice; stopped the drug running; halted the illegal logging that is undermining Cambodia's food security; and turned over all of the Khmer Rouge leaders for trial by an international tribunal; he too might be pardoned and voted Senator for life. If not, Hun Sen may soon find he has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
By Michael BenMr. Benge spent 11 years in Southeast Asia, over five years as a Prisoner of War-- 1968-1973. He is a diligent student of regional affairs, and works closely with the Cambodian-American community. For efforts in rescuing several Americans before his capture, he received the State Department's highest award for heroism and a second one for valor.

Mr Son Sann

Son Sann was the leader of the republican-inclined Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) which was established in October 1979 in opposition to the Khmer Rouge and the incumbent People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). he was born on 5 October 1911 in Phnom Penh to a family originating from southern Vietnam. Son Sann was educated in France, where he graduated in 1933 from the School for Advanced Commercial Studies. On his return to Cambodia, he served as deputy governor of the provinces of Battambang and Prey Veng in the French administration. After the Pacific War, during which he engaged in private business, Son Sann held a series of senior government offices beginning with finance minister; in 1954, as foreign minister, he represented Cambodia at the conference leading to the Geneva Agreements on Indochina. He became the first governor of Cambodia's National Bank in 1955, holding that position until 1968 and serving concurrently as prime minister during 1967-8. He was never in tune politically with Prince Norodom Sihanouk but after Sihanouk's overthrow in 1970, Son Sann left Cambodia to take up residence in Paris, where he was living when the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975. As leader of the KPNLE, he took his movement in June 1982 into the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK), in which he held the office of prime minister. Poor military performance by the KPNLF led to dissension within its ranks but Son Sann, who attracted respect for his personal probity, held on to its political leadership. He took a hard line towards the incumbent government in Phnom Penh and was a party to the negotiations which culminated in a political settlement at the International conference on Cambodia in Paris in October 1991. He returned to Cambodia in December 1991 and then transformed the KPNLF into the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party for the elections in May 1993 under United Nations auspices (see UNTAC). His party won only 10 out of the 120 seats in the Constituent Assembly. Son Sann was elected its chairman and supervised its role in drafting a new constitution, which was promulgated in September. After the re-establishment of the constitutional monarchy, Son Sann retired from public life, giving up his chair of the National Assembly to Chea Sim. He lost his position as party president to the minister of information, Ieng Mouly, in July 1995. Son Sann, who died December19, 2000 of a heart attack, served his country as prime minister, founder of the central bank, resistance fighter and peace broker.

Son Sann, one of Cambodia's leading statesmen and fighters for democracy over the past half-century, died in his sleep in Paris Tuesday morning. He was 89. Son Sann served as prime minister in 1967 and 1968 under a government led by then-prince Norodom Sihaouk. Son Sann also created the National Bank of Cambodia in 1955. He was born in October 1911 in Phnom Penh.

"Samdech Son Sann died at 1:30 pm Phnom Penh time because of a heart attack," National Assembly President Prince Norodom Ranariddh told a session of lawmakers Tuesday afternoon. "He served the nation nobly for many, many year." Samdech is a title bestowing honorary princeship.
Ranariddh asked the lawmakers to stand and pay their respects to Son Sann, who began his public service in 1935 as governor of Battambang province. Kem Sokha, a close associate of Son Sann and former secretary-general of Son Sann's Buddhist Liberal Democrat Party, called the late statesman "Cambodia's first democrat."
"He founded the Democratic Party in 1947 and became president of the National Assembly for that party in 1951," said Kem Sokha, who is a senator. When Norodom Sihanouk was ousted in a republican coup d'etat in 1970, Son Sann went into exile. He tried unsuccessfully to reconcile Norodom Sihanouk with the republican regime as it fought against a takeover by the communist Khmer Rouge In 1975.

son Sann moved to Paris after the communist victory in 1975 and watched as the Khmer rouge government of Pol Pot turned Cambodia into a massive killing field. Son Sann helped found a guerrilla resistance force, the Khmer People's National Liberation Front in 1979 at the Thai-Cambodian border and fought both the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese army that occupied Cambodia from 1979 to 1989.

As the leader of one of the fur warring factions that singed the Paris Peace Accords in 1991, bringing peace to Cambodia after more than 20 years of war and civil unrest, he served in the UN-sponsored Supreme National Council that glided the nation until an election was held in 1993.

Kem Sokha said that resisting Vietnam' aspirations to conquer Cambodia, fighting against dictatorships, and combating corruption were Son Sann's most important political goals. "Cambodia people call him Mr Clean," Kem Sokha said. "He's one of the few clean men in Cambodia. No corruption."
Kem Sokha said the senor statesmen died without pain. "He died o fold age in his sleep this morning," Kem Sokha said. "He was up walking around only yesterday." Government officials and friends were to gather Tuesday evening at the Phnom Penh residence of his son, Son Soubert, a Constitutional Council member, associates said.
The Khmer People's National Liberation Front
From its inception in October 1979, the right-wing, proWestern , former prime minister Son Sann, noted for his integrity and for his unyielding personality, led the Khmer People's National Liberation Front. The organization was the strongest of the country's noncommunist resistance forces. Its key figures were formerly prominent in the administrations of Sihanouk and of republican leader Lon Nol.
A number of displaced Cambodians sheltered in temporary camps on Thai soil near the Thai-Cambodian border backed the KPNLF, which had originated in the anti-Khmer Rouge movement of the 1960s. It controlled about 160,000 civilians confined at "Site 2," a camp in Thailand barely a kilometer from the Cambodian border. Most of the people in the camp were toughened survivors of the Pol Pot era, and they were therefore a potential pool from which to recruit armed rebels for the KPNLF.

In the 1984 to 1985 Vietnamese dry-season offensive, the KPNLF reportedly lost nearly a third of its 12,000 to 15,000 troops in battle and through desertions. This setback, which was blamed on Son Sann for his alleged meddling in military matters, aggravated the long-standing personality conflicts within the KPNLF. Some KPNLF members criticized Son Sann's alleged tendency toward being dictatorial and unbending, and they questioned his lukewarm attitude toward the idea of a unified military command that included Sihanouk's ANS.
Criticism mounted after reports that some of the organization's field commanders were involved in the black market and in other forms of corruption. Charges of human rights violations in the KPNLF-run camps for displaced persons further fueled internal dissension. In December 1985, a dissident faction, wanting to limit Son Sann's role to ceremonial duties, announced the formation of a Provisional Central Committee of Salvation, which would be the new executive body of the KPNLF.

The new group asserted that it had seized power from Son Sann in order to put an end to the internal problems of the KPNLF. Key members of the group included two KPNLF vice presidents: General Sak Sutsakhan, formerly Lon Nol's chief of staff; and General Dien Del, commander in chief and chief of staff of the KPNLF armed forces. Other notables were Abdul Gaffar Peangmeth and Hing Kunthon, two executive committee members whom Son Sann had dismissed earlier, and Huy Kanthoul, a former prime minister.

Son Sann countered with the formation of a new military command committee under General Prum Vith. He said, however, that General Sak would remain as commander in chief of the Joint Military Command (that now included the ANS), which was launched in January 1986, reportedly as a concession to the dissident group. Under a compromise worked out through a third party, General Sak regained his control of the armed forces in March 1986. Son Sann, then seventy-four years old, withdrew a previous threat to resign as CGDK prime minister. By early 1987, unity in the KPNLF had been restored, and Son Sann retained his presidency, while General Sak remained in full control of the military.
In a major reshuffle of the military high command in March, General Sak placed his deputy, Dien Del, in charge of anticorruption measures. The need for sweeping internal reform already had become a pressing issue in January 1987, when morale was so low that several hundred KPNLF soldiers defected to Sihanouk's ANS.
Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste
The smaller of the two noncommunist resistance groups, the Armée National Sihanoukiste (ANS) owed allegiance to Sihanouk. It was the armed adjunct of FUNCINPEC, which rallied Sihanouk supporters clustered on the Thai border. The force was formed in June 1981, by consolidating the Movement for the National Liberation of Kampuchea (Mouvement pour la Libération Nationale du Kampuchea--MOULINAKA and at least two other armed groups of Sihanouk supporters grouped on the Thai border. These groups existed at first in conditions of near penury, their members poorly armed and equipped as well as half starved.
Following the proclamation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, international support consisting of armaments, supplies, and other nonlethal aid, principally from the ASEAN countries and from China, began to transform the ANS into a more effective movement. In about 1986 to 1987, it became the principal noncommunist insurgent force by default when the KPNLAF slipped from that position because of its internal leadership dispute.

No authoritative figures for the personnel strength of the ANS were available in the late 1980s. The most frequently cited totals ranged from a low of 7,000 to a high of 11,000 combatants. The former figure was quoted by Sihanouk, the latter by Sihanouk's son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, some time afterward. In late 1987, Sihanouk also declared that the ANS maintained "8,500 fighters permanently inside Cambodia." (This number would not necessarily include headquarters, staff, and support elements on the Thai border.)
The ANS was organized into a command structure and maneuver elements. The command structure was headed by the commander in chief of the ANS, who was assisted by both a chief and a deputy chief of staff. In 1987 the positions of commander and of chief of staff were held concurrently by Prince Norodom Ranariddh, and that of deputy chief of staff by Major General Prince Norodom Chakrapong, both middle-aged sons of Sihanouk. Maneuver elements consisted of battalions, grouped under the first through the sixth brigades.

There were, in addition, four independent regiments, at least one reportedly composed of Khmer Rouge deserters who had rallied to Sihanouk's cause, and five independent commando groups, each composed of about seventy personnel. Following the Vietnamese dry-season offensive of 1984 to 1985, the ANS made a major effort to deploy its fighters away from the border camps and more deeply into Cambodia. In 1987 according to Sihanouk, ANS combatants were deployed in five Cambodian provinces, including Batdambang and Siemreab-Otdar Meanchey on the western border with Thailand. Limited deployments also were reported as far east as Kampong Thum.
Photographic evidence indicated that the ANS, like the KPNLAF, was equipped principally with Chinese weapons. This included AK assault rifles, light machine guns, RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launchers, and recoilless rifles. ANS combatants were dressed in a panoply of uniforms, some of them of ASEAN origin. These included camouflage fatigues and (T -shirts), visored caps, and combat boots. Indications of rank were not evident on uniforms; however, ANS members sometimes wore plastic-laminated chest pocket badges bearing a photograph of Sihanouk and a noncommunist Cambodian flag.
Major Political and Military Organizations
ANS
Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste, or Sihanouk National Army: Umbrella organization of the military forces (including MOULINAKA (q.v.) loyal to SIhanouk, founded in 1981 as armed wing of FUNCINPEC (q.v.).

CGDK
Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (See also KPRP). Recognized by the United Nations as the official government of Cambodia, the ruling coalition in Democratic Kampuchea, a loose political and military coalition of the three resistance groups--Democratic Kampuchea, the KPNLF (q.v.), and FUNCINPEC (q. v.).

CPNLAF
Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces. New name given to the RAK (q.v.) in the early 1970s.

FANK (formerly FARK)
Forces Armées Nationales Khmères, or Khmer National Armed Forces. Military component of Lon Nol's Khmer Republic (q.v.).

FARK
Forces Armées Royales Khmères, or Royal Khmer Armed Forces. Armed forces in the newly independent Cambodia in 1953, replaced
by FANK (q.v.).

FUNCINPEC
Front Uni National pour un Cambodge Indépendant, Neutre, Pacifique, et Coopératif, or National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia. Sihanouk's main political organization, formed in 1981. An autonomous part of the CGDK (q.v.).

FUNK
Front Uni National du Kampuchéa, or National United Front of Kampuchea. Established by Sihanouk in Beijing in 1970, shortly after the Lon Nol coup ousted him from power; a political and military coalition committed to destroying the Lon Nol regime.

GRUNK
Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchéa or Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea. Government-in-exile formed by Sihanouk after his ouster in 1970.

ICP
Indochinese Communist Party; founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930 and dismantled in 1951 into its component parties, i.e., the Vietnam Workers' Party, the KPRP (q.v.), and the Lao Itsala.

KCP
Kampuchean (or Khmer) Communist Party. Formerly called the WPK (q.v.); renamed in 1966. The CPK dominated the Khmer Republic (q.v.) resisting forces from 1970 to 1975 and ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1978. Succeeded by the KPRP (q.v.).

Khmer Bleu (Blue Khmer)
Sihanouk's domestic opponents on the right, whom he so named to distinguish them from his domestic opponents on the left, the Khmer Rouge (q.v.).

Khmer Issarak (Free Khmer)
Anti-French, nationalist movement organized with Thai backing in 1945 from elements spanning the political spectrum; within a year split into factions, and by independence all but one of them were incorporated into Sihanouk's political structure. Located in western Cambodia, they were on the wane after 1954. The only dissident group, under Son Ngoc Thanh, they became known as the Khmer Serei (q.v.), a heterogeneous left-wing guerrilla movement operating in border areas, in the 1970s.

Khmer Krom
Members of a Cambodian minority who lived in Cochinchina; early nationalists. Several major nationalist leaders came from this group.

Khmer Loeu (Highland Khmer)
Hill tribes comprising several ethnolinguistically diverse groups living in Cambodia, mainly along the northeastern and the eastern frontiers; upland- and forest-dwelling ethnic minorities, especially from Rotanokiri Province, an early RAK (q.v.) stronghold.

Khmer Republic
Established in 1970 by Lon Nol.

Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer)
The name given to the Cambodian communists by Sihanouk in the 1960s. Later (although a misnomer) it was applied to the insurgents of varying ideological backgrounds who opposed the Khmer Republic (q.v.) regime of Lon Nol. Between 1975 and 1978 it denoted the Democratic Kampuchea regime led by the radical Pol Pot faction of the Kampuchean (or Khmer) Communist Party. After being driven from Phnom Penh by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, the Khmer Rouge went back to guerrilla warfare, and it joined forces with two noncommunist insurgent movements to form the CGDK (q.v.). Also known as the NADK (q.v.).

Khmer Rumdo (Liberation Khmer)
Sihanoukists; pro-Sihanouk Cambodians recruited from the country's eastern provinces, trained and armed by Hanoi.

Khmer Serei (Free Khmer)
An anti-Sihanouk group under Son Ngoc Thanh's leadership emanating from the anti-French resistance movement called the Khmer Issarak (q.v.), located in southeastern Cambodia; in armed opposition to the Sihanouk regime from 1959 on, but dissolved itself shortly after the deposition of Sihanouk in March 1970. Right wing, antimonarchical nationalists.

Khmer Viet Minh
Cambodian communists; the 3,000 to 5,000 Cambodian communist cadres who had repatriated to North Vietnam after the Geneva Conference; derogatory term used by Sihanouk to refer to Cambodian leftists organizing pro-independence agitation in alliance with the Vietnamese.

KNUFNS
Kampuchean (or Khmer) National United Front for National Salvation; also known as the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation and the Salvation Front. It was founded in 1978 by anti-Khmer Rouge (q.v.) Cambodians in Vietnam as an alternative to the Pol Pot regime, as a Cambodian structure to help legitimize the Vietnamese invasion and the ouster of Democratic Kampuchea. As the first incarnation of what has remained the main political organization in the PRK (q.v.) besides the KPRP, (q.v.) the front had numerous noncommunists, including Buddhist clergy, in its leadership, although it was largely controlled by communists. Name changed in 1981 to KUFNCD (q.v.).

KPNLAF
Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces, also known as the Khmer People's National Liberation Army (not to be confused with the Khmer People's Liberation Army, the opposition forces organized by the Vietnamese Viet Minh at the end of World War II). Military component of KPNLF (q.v.), formed in March 1979 under Son Sann.

KPNLF
Khmer People's National Liberation Front. An autonomous part of the CGDK (q.v.), the KPNLF is a political and military organization, founded and led by former prime minister Son Sann, for the purpose of resisting the Vietnamese.

KPRAF
Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Armed Forces. Military component of PRK (q.v.).

KPRP
Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party. The original party was founded in September 1951, when the ICP (q.v.) dissolved into three national parties (the leadership and policies of which were aligned with the Vietnamese communist movement). The name of the party was changed to the WPK (q.v.) in 1960 and then to the KCP (q.v.) in 1966. Today this designation applies to the communist party that functions in the PRK (q.v.). In one sense it is a new organization; in another sense it is the continuation of the communist parties that preceded it. The date of its founding is uncertain, although the First Party Congress held publicly was convened in May 1981; the party may have come into existence after mid-1978.

KUFNCD
Kampuchean (or Khmer) United Front for National Construction and Defense. Umbrella organization of the KPRP (q.v.). (Formerly KNUFNS (q.v.).

MOULINAKA
Mouvement pour la Libération Nationale du Kampuchéa, or Movement for the National Liberation of Kampuchea; a pro- Sihanouk group formed in August 1979 by Kong Sileah after he broke ranks with General Dien Del; military organization based among the civilian camps on the Cambodian-Thai border.

NADK
National Army of Democratic Kampuchea. The successor to the RAK (q.v.--name change effective December 1979), as the armed forces of the Khmer Rouge (q.v.).

NFLSVN
National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. Called the Viet Cong by opponents, it led the struggle against the United States.

PAVN
People's Army of Vietnam. The military forces of North Vietnam (until 1976) and, after unification, of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. During the Second Indochina War (1954-75), PAVN bore the brunt of the fighting against United States military forces in Vietnam.

PDFGNUK
Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea. A mass organization established by the exiled KCP (q.v.) in September 1979 and headed by Khieu Sampan with the aim of ousting the Vietnamese from Cambodia.

PDK
Party of Democratic Kampuchea. New name given to the communist party in Cambodia in December 1981, when the party allegedly dissolved itself, probably to distance itself from the brutality of Pol Pot's regime.

PRK
People's Republic of Kampuchea. The Vietnamese-sponsored Phnom Penh regime established in 1979.

PRYUK
People's Revolutionary Youth Union of Kampuchea. Mass organization for young people that was less elitist than the communist party.

RAK
Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea. Founded by Pol Pot in 1968, this force was renamed the Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces (CPNLAF [q.v.]) in the early 1970s. Also known as the People's National Liberation Armed Forces of Kampuchea (PNLAFK). In 1979 it became the NADK (q.v.).

Viet Cong
Contraction of the term Viet Nam Cong San (Vietnamese Communists), the name applied by the governments of the United States and of South Vietnam to the communist insurgents in rebellion against the latter government, beginning around 1957. As used in the Khmer Republic (q.v.) the term applied to South Vietnamese communist troops operating in South Vietnam and in Cambodian territory as well.

Viet Minh
Contraction of the term Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (League for the Independence of Vietnam), a coalition of nationalist elements dominated by the communist and led by veteran Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh. Originally a broadly based Vietnamese nationalist or organization in armed opposition to both the French and the Japanese; by 1951 taken over by communists. As used in the Khmer Republic (q.v.), the term applies to Vietnamese communists, North Vietnamese in particular.

Mr Son Gnoc Thanh

Son Ngoc Thanh was one of the earliest exponents of Cambodian nationalism but fell foul of Norodom Sihanouk, who treated him as a political outcast. Son Ngoc Thanh was a member of the Cambodian minority in southern Vietnam, where he was born in Travinh in 1908 into a family of prosperous landowners.
He trained as a teacher as well as studying law for a year in France. He then joined the colonial administration in Indochina and in the early 1939s was working as a magistrate in Cambodia. In 1935 he became the secretary of the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh and in he following year jointly founded a Cambodian language newspaper Nagaravatta (Angkor Wat (Temple)).
France's failure to resist Japanese intimidation in Indochina encouraged Thanh's anti-colonial orientation and he became involved in a demonstration in July 1942 in protest at attempts to romanize the Khmer language and to introduce the Gregorian calendar. He fled to Thailand, where the Japanese
mission arranged fro him to travel to Tokyo, where he spent the remainder of the war. When the Japanese overturned the French administration in Indochina in March 1945, Son Ngoc

Thanh returned to Cambodia tooccupy the post of foreign minister, making no secret of his republican sympathies. He assumed the office of prime minister on Japan's surrender but was arrested in September 1945 by British forces and taken to Saigon, where he was sentenced to detention in France for collaboration.He was released in October 1951 and returned to Phnom Penh to receive a rapturous public welcome which offended Sihanouk. Thanh adopted a vigorous anti-French position which he expressed in a newspaper called Khmer Krok (Cambodians Awake). When the newspaper was suspended in February 1952, he fled the capital and fomented a republican rebellion again French rule, which provoked Sihanouk to take the lead in the independence movement. Sihanouk then succeeded in marginalizing Son
Ngoc Thanh, who remained in the jungle after Cambodia's independence had been conceded by France. Son Ngoc Thanh spent the next decade and a half leading a feckless resistance against Sihanouk's rule with Thai, South Vietnamese and US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) support , while living in Saigon.
After Prince Sihanouk was overthrown by a right-wing coup in March 1970, Thanh returned again to Cambodia in August to become an adviser to president Cheng Heng. In March 1972 he was appointed to the nominal post of First prime minister by Lon Nol, who had become executive president. When he was asked to resign by Lon Nol after fraudulent elections in September 1972, Son Ngoc Thanh left Cambodia in some despair to live again in South Vietnam in retirement, where he is believed to have died shortly after the Communists seized power in 1975.

The Banyan Tree: Untangling Cambodian History

Lon Nol's position was a difficult one. By 1970 there were believed to be some 40,000 Vietnamese troops in the sanctuaries. Furthermore, many of the weapons and supplies for communist troops in South Vietnam came through Cambodia. The Vietnamese would not abandon the sanctuaries willingly.

Once Lon Nol had effectively ended Cambodia's neutrality and cast his lot with the Americans, both the Americans and the Vietnamese discarded their last vestiges of restraint. On April 30, American and South Vietnamese government troops invaded southeastern Cambodia. But the elusive communist "headquarters" were not found, and the communist troops simply retreated deeper into Cambodia. As they did, the Vietnamese communists were cast in the role of surrogates, fighting Lon Nol's troops while the Khmer Rouge grew in strength.
Lon Nol soon proved to be incompetent both as a military leader and as a chief of state. The corruption within his administration was worse than that under Sihanouk, and many Cambodians began to believe that the country would be better off under the Khmer Rouge. Many of the peasants detested Lon Nol; they believed that Sihanouk - the onetime King - was Cambodia's rightful ruler. Relatively few people understood that the Khmer Rouge had no intention of allowing Sihanouk to wield any real power. The real leader of the Khmer Rouge was a failed electronics student who had become a communist while studying in Paris. His name was Saloth Sar, and he would later become known under his nom-de-guerre: Pol Pot.
As the fighting began to spread throughout Cambodia, North Vietnamese troops consistently routed the inexperienced Cambodian army. In August of 1971, Lon Nol mounted an ambitious offensive -- "Chenla II" -- in an attempt to regain lost territory. It was a poorly conceived campaign, and the result was a crushing defeat from which the Republic's forces never recovered. It soon became apparent that without massive American aid the government would collapse. That assistance came in the form of military hardware and air support.

American bombing quickly became the centerpiece of Lon Nol's defense. Before Congress brought the bombing to a halt in August 1973, more than 2 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Cambodia.
Although the exact number of deaths caused by the bombing is unknown, there is no question that civilian casualties were numerous. In one instance, the government-held town of Neak Luong was inadvertently bombed because of an error by the bomber's crew. One hundred thirty-seven people were killed, and more than 205 were wounded. On another occasion, near the village of Saang, peasants in a funeral procession unknowingly walked into a B-52 target area. Hundreds were killed. The incident underscored the tragedy of the bombing campaign: even when the strikes were on target, civilian deaths were inevitable.
Most of the Cambodians who witnessed such carnage place the blame squarely upon the Americans and Lon Nol. Their anger led many of them to join the Khmer Rouge, and by late 1972 the Khmer Rouge army had grown to some 50,000 soldiers.
As the Khmer Rouge grew, they became increasingly independent of their Vietnamese allies. Relations between the two groups had often been strained; aside from historical animosities, the Cambodian communists greatly resented the Vietnamese for not having actively supported their bid to overthrow Sihanouk in the late Sixties.
When the Vietnamese and the Americans signed the Paris Peace agreement in 1973, the Vietnamese quickly began to withdraw their troops from Cambodia. At the same time, shipments of Chinese arms destined for the Khmer Rouge failed to arrive, and the Khmer Rouge may have believed that the weapons had been stolen by the Vietnamese. Additionally, under the terms of the Paris accords, American air raids in Laos and North Vietnam were halted; and since the Khmer Rouge had refused to negotiate at Paris, there were now more U.S. aircraft available for strikes in Cambodia. To the Khmer Rouge, the increased bombing was the result of a betrayal by the North Vietnamese: the Vietnamese had bought a reprieve for themselves by sacrificing their allies.
It scarcely mattered. The Khmer Rouge continued to make gains on the battlefield. Government forces were beset not only by incompetence, but by corruption as well. Many of Lon Nol's officers sold materials, supplied by the U.S., to the Khmer Rouge: gasoline, medicine, even ammunition. In one incident in 1973, mortar rounds from Kompong Cham were sold to the communists, who then used the shells in an attack which virtually destroyed the town. Another common practice among corrupt officers was to pad the payroll by exaggerating the number of soldiers in their unit and pocketing the excess pay. Other officers went still further: they kept the salaries of the real soldiers as well.

The country spiraled toward destruction, its people trapped between the two armies. Both sides sent children, barely in their teens, into combat. Lon Nol had already displayed his brutality in pogroms against ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia, killing thousands and sending 200,000 others into exile. The Khmer Rouge were rumored to be even more savage; tales from villages captured by the communists spoke of old women being nailed to the walls of their houses and burned alive, of children being torn limb from limb. One of the few detailed accounts of the Khmer Rouge policies and strategies came from Ith Sarin, a Khmer Rouge defector, in a book called Regrets For The Khmer Soul. In typical fashion, Lon Nol responded to the book's dire warnings by jailing its author.
As the war raged on, the Khmer Rouge began to seem invincible; their troops fought with a relentlessness and tenacity that amazed even seasoned veterans. Lon Nol's demoralized army shrank before the onslaught. The bravery of individual soldiers could not compensate for their army's ineffective and corrupt leadership. The territory held by the Republic was reduced to little more than a handful of enclaves around the major cities.
With the Khmer Rouge clearly holding the upper hand, they rebuffed attempts to end the war through negotiations. By 1975, the situation for the Khmer Republic was clearly hopeless. Finally, on April 1, as insurgent rockets burst within a few hundred yards of his plane, Lon Nol fled the country. The U.S. embassy was closed and evacuated on April 12. From within the besieged capital, Premier Long Boret offered to surrender on the sole condition that there be no reprisals against those who had been loyal to the Republican government. The Khmer Rouge refused, and the government finally surrendered unconditionally on April 17, 1975.
As the first Khmer Rouge troops entered the capital, they were greeted by crowds waving makeshift white flags. The war was over.
The cheering crowds could not know that the next three years of "peace" would lead to more deaths than the last five years of war.

The March 1970 Coup d'Etat

Sihanouk was away on a trip to Moscow and Beijing when General Lon Nol launched a successful coup d'état. On the morning of March 18, 1970, the National Assembly was hastily convened, and voted unanimously to depose Sihanouk as head of state. Lon Nol, who had been serving as prime minister, was granted emergency powers. Sirik Matak, an ultraconservative royal prince who in 1941 had been passed over by the French in favor of his cousin Norodom Sihanouk as king, retained his post as deputy prime minister. The new government emphasized that the transfer of power had been totally legal and constitutional, and it received the recognition of most foreign governments.
Most middle-class and educated Khmers in Phnom Penh had grown weary of Sihanouk and apparently welcomed the change of government. But he was still popular in the villages. Days after the coup, the prince, now in Beijing, broadcast an appeal to the people to resist the usurpers. Demonstrations and riots occurred throughout the country. In one incident on March 29, an estimated 40,000 peasants began a march on the capital to demand Sihanouk's reinstatement. They were dispersed, with many casualties, by contingents of the armed forces and the Khmer Serei. From Beijing, Sihanouk proclaimed his intention to create a National United Front of Kampuchea. In the prince's words, this front would embrace "all Khmer both inside and outside the country-- including the faithful, religious people, military men, civilians, and men and women who cherish the ideals of independence, democracy, neutrality, progressivism, socialism, Buddhism, nationalism, territorial integrity, and anti-imperialism." A coalition, brokered by the Chinese, was hastily formed between the prince and the KCP. On May 5, 1970, the actual establishment of FUNK and of the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchéa--GRUNK ), were announced. King Sihanouk assumed the post of GRUNK head of state, appointing Penn Nouth, one of his most loyal supporters, as prime minister.
Khieu Samphan was designated deputy prime minister, minister of defense, and commander in chief of the GRUNK armed forces (though actual military operations were directed by Pol Pot). Hu Nim became minister of information, and Hou Yuon assumed multiple responsibilities as minister of interior, communal reforms, and cooperatives. GRUNK claimed that it was not a government-in-exile because Khieu Samphan and the insurgents remained inside Cambodia. For Sihanouk and the KCP, this was an extremely useful marriage of convenience. Peasants, motivated by loyalty to the monarchy, rallied to the Funk cause. the appeal of the Sihanouk CP coalition grew immense after october 9,1970 when Lon Nol abolished the monarchy and redesignated Cambodia as the Khmer Republic. The concept of a republic was not popular with most villagers, who had grown up with the idea that something was seriously awry in a Cambodia without a monarch.
GRUNK operated on two tiers. Sihanouk and his loyalists remained in Beijing, although the prince did make a visit to the "liberated areas" of Cambodia, including Angkor Wat, in March 1973. The KCP commanded the insurgency within the country. Gradually, the prince was deprived of everything but a passive, figurehead role in the coalition. The KCP told people inside Cambodia that expressions of support for Sihanouk would result in their liquidation, and when the prince appeared in public overseas to publicize the GRUNK cause, he was treated with almost open contempt by Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan. In June 1973, the prince told the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that when "they [the Khmer Rouge] no longer need me, they will spit me out like a cherry pit!" By the end of that year, Sihanouk loyalists had been purged from all of GRUNK's ministries.

General Lon Nol

Marshal Lon Nol achieved notoriety as the leader of the coup which overthrew Prince Norodom Sihanouk on 18 March 1970. He ended the monarchy in Cambodia and in October 1970 established the short-lived Khmer Republic, which was superseded when the Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975. Lon Nol was born on 13 November 1913 in Prey Veng Province. He was educated at the Lycée Sisowath from which he joined the French colonial administration, rising rapidly

to become a provincial governor at the age of 32. At the end of the Pacific War, Lon Nol became chief of the Cambodian police and then ransferred to military command, displaying loyalty to Norodom Sihanouk, who was then king. Lon Nol was appointed governor of the important border province of Battambang in1954 and then chief of staff of the army in 1955. By the end of the decade, he had become both commander-in-chief and minister of defense. He was prime minister 1966-7. In September 1969 he returned to the office of prime minister as prince Sihanouk's political grip on Cambodia began to weaken.After the removal of Prince Sihanouk, Lon Nol, who was a practicing mystic, showed himself to be an incompetent military leader in the face of a Vietnamese-led insurgent challenge. In February 1971 he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered, yet still held on to power with US backing, His rule was both repressive ad corrupt, contributing to the ultimate victory of the Khmer Rouge. He was persuaded to go into exile on 1 April 1975 but only in return for US$1 million being deposited in his name in a United States bank. He settled in Hawaii until 1979 when he removed to California, where he died on 17 November 1985.

Cambodian PM met with French President Jacques Chirac

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen met with French President Jacques Chirac on Monday, 19 September 05, as part of a 10-day overseas tour. Samdech Hun Sen was expected to sign agreements on bilateral cooperation with France and to ask the French government to appoint its judges for a proposed genocide tribunal for surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, a presidential adviser said. The Cambodian prime minister was due to meet with French business leaders Tuesday before leaving on Wednesday, according to the AP. Samdech Hun Sen arrived in France on Saturday, after taking part in the Sept. 14-16 World Summit at the United Nations in New York.