February 9, 2001

Dear Editor:

I read with great interest the article entitled "January 7 and its malcontents" which appeared in your esteemed newspaper on January 10, 2001.  Your effort in trying to give a balanced view on this very difficult and sensitive issue is very commendable. However, without adding more
complications to this already controversial and complex issue, I would like to give a more historical point of view based on two recent sources written by Vietnamese expatriates. I am referring to a book written in French by Colonel Bui Tin, a former editor of "Nhan Dan", the Vietnam armed forces, entitled "945-1999; Vietnam: La face cachee du regime." the other is a book
which appeared in the Internet from France  authored by Mr. Dang Anh Tuan, of the French research center called NRCS, and is entitled "Vietnam: the Land of the dragons and Legends.

It is indeed very rare to hear from other Vietnamese views, besides the official propaganda from the Communist Vietnamese government in Hanoi. I strongly feel that these two interesting and original historical perspectives of Vietnam' s role in Cambodia is really worth noting.

Bui Tin was an eyewitness to the invasion of Cambodia since day one, that since the first Vietnamese tank pushed through the border of Cambodia on the eve of Christmas in 1978. He later stayed as a person in charge of forming the national press corps of Cambodia. In that capacity he attended many secret and high level meetings between the Vietnamese occupation authorities
under the supervision of Le Duc Tho member of the Polit Buro and General Le Duc Anh Commander of the Occupation forces, and the Vietnamese-picked Cambodian government representatives that included Pen Sovann, Chansi, Phu Thoong among others. Form the quotation given below and translated from French by me for your readership convenience, all neutral observers can clearly see that aspects of the invasion, its organization, management,
design and implementation were performed by Vietnamese policy-makers with the Cambodian "chosen leaders" as bystanders if not as sheer pawns.  On these very revealing aspects of the invasion, one can read the following description;

  "As for me, I remained three years in Cambodia, returning to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi only occasionally. During this period, I gathered a great deal of documents. Some was coming from the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh. There was, in particular, a text of agreement signed on July 1976, allowing the Chinese army to build the largest airport in all Southeast Asia in Kompong Chnang. There were also congratulations sent by Mao Zte Tung to Pol Pot for
having succeeded in crushing, as completely and as quickly, the capitalists, the exploiting land owners, and the reactionary lackeys, a historic and bloody achievement.  But to apply this proletarian internationalism, that revolution had to crush one million of skulls with shovels and clubs on behalf of socialism and the purity of communism, and marxism-leninism!

From these Khmer Rouge documents, I was able to examine their genocidalpolicy. It was really much worse than the crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II, but this policy was cleverly hidden under the mantels of pure communism. The regime was absolute because it was led by a progressive communist party, so progressive that it was a model for the other communist parties in the world, at least from their point of view.

This sentiment would have lasted longer had we not made numerous errors later on. The first one, was the fact that we stayed too long in Cambodia. I thought that we should have withdrawn much earlier and without any condition attached.  After the liberation of Cambodia, we were enameled with the pretense of arrogance.  In the midst of the communist party we were told that we must exercise our duty as international proletarian in order to reinforce and export to other countries. However, for the Vietnamese people, it was like as if we were the guests to a house that belongs to somebody else.

The main person responsible for the policy in Cambodia was Le Duc Tho. He was assigned by the Polit Bureau to supervise the liberation of the country and to set up a new party and a new government. Before even our armed forces had reached Phnom Penh, he presided over a meeting in the border region known as the "Bec de Canard," near Snoul, for the purpose of nominating a Cambodian government to replace the one led by Pol Pot. Among the "chosen," was Pen Sovan who became minister of defense and who was also appointed as Secretary
General of the Cambodian Communist party. His appointment was no great surprise to Cambodians because, for more than ten years he managed the broadcasting in the Cambodian language for the Voice of Vietnam radio. There was also Chansi, also a member of the Communist Party of Vietnam, who before 1979 had managed an electrical sub-station in the province of Vinh Phu in Vietnam. That fact did not prevent him from becoming Prime Minister of
Cambodia until his sudden death in 1983.  As to Bou Thoong, who became Deputy Prime Minister of Cambodia with the rank of general, he was only a captain in the Vietnamese army, stationed in a small district in the highland.  Le Duc Tho even appointed a twenty six-years-old nurse to from the Tra Vinh province in the Mekong Delta, member of the Cambodian communist party secretariat and responsible for the Ideology and cultural commission. She thus became
hierarchically higher than Vandy Caon, who holds a doctorate degree from the Sorbonne, but was assigned to the social sciences department in that commission.

In Phnom Penh, Le Duc Tho often stayed in a villa behind Chamcar Mon, the royal residence, which is on the bank of the Mekong. There, he called for meetings with senior officials of the party, including the Secretary General of the Cambodian Communist Party, the Prime Minister and the members of the government. I saw him talk to those Cambodian officials at the royal palace in 1981, and also in Thu Duc, near Saigon, at the beginning of 1982. If I were not personally present in those meetings, I would never have believed that such scenes could have taken place. Le Duc Tho, caught in his oratory frenzy, had forgotten his nationality and that of his counterparts, and he ingratiated himself to freely lecturing these officials like schoolboys.  

'Comrades, you must study hard. You must work seriously. Being responsible communists, you must improve your moral character to deserve the trust that has put you where you are, and in the revolution. You must understand that the communist cadre are chosen with great care, and those who have shown any sign of weakness will be replaced. Concerning the consumption
of alcoholic beverage, you can drink, but not too much. But, it appears that some comrades are completely controlled by their women and are involved in trafficking. It is unacceptable. Do you understand? Put all that into your head!"

When Pen Sovan was dismissed from his job as Secretary General of the Party and Defense Minister in 1981, it the work of Le Duc Tho - supported by Le Duc Anh. On their recommendation, the Polit Bureau accepted in Hanoi the "call" from several members of the Communist Party of Cambodia. But the Cambodian people never had anything to do with either the appointment or the fall of Pen Sovan from power. What did Pen Sovan do wrong? At the beginning, Pen Sovan who was a major in the Vietnamese armed forces continued to act as a
junior officer. During a meeting, he stood up and at attention to salute General Le Duc Anh! The latter had to remind Pen Sovan that as a minister of defense, he is his superior and he was told to stop acting that way. However, after having been received with great honor by Brejnev, Pen Sovan had changed his attitude toward Vietnam. According to a Vietnamese adviser in charged of training Cambodian cadre, he did not always know how to hide his unhappiness about his lack of real power while being secretary general of the party and minister of defense, at the military level, he was ignored by general Le Duc Anh. Such behavior was intolerable in the eyes of our Directorate, therefore, Pen Sovan was brought back to Vietnam where he was in house arrest and closely watched near Hanoi, where he spent ten years. We only allowed him to
return to Cambodia after the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops, when the United Nations took charge of the country."

From the above I would like to draw the attention of your readership on the fact that contrary to what Mr. Pen Sovann claimed that he was unaware of the Vietnamese intention when he agreed to be the head of the so called "Salvation Front government." This is not possible, because he was a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party and a Major in the Vietnamese Armed forces.
He is either very naive or he did not tell the truth.  His belated remorse for having worked for the Vietnamese is to be commended.  But, he should not forget that he part of the problem of allowing the Vietnamese to implement their historical expansionist not to say imperialist policy and strategy toward Cambodia.

I am now turn to my presentation or more precisely a Vietnamese historical view of this expansionist/imperialist policy dating back to the tenth century.  In the words of Dang Anh Tuan the Vietnamese author that I mentioned earlier, the strategy and policy that have been used by the Vietnamese to conquer its neighbors, especially Champa and Kampuchea Krom is well analyzed and illustrated as follows:

  The first kingdoms of the legendary dynasties were located north in Tonkin. By the 10th century they had, as a name kingdom Van Lang, then kingdom Âu Lac, started from the Red River delta, the cradle of the Vietnamese nation, a movement characterized as Nam Tie^'n (Advancement toward the South). This nation relentlessly pushed new cells in each parcel of land favorable to its mode of growth. It was based on a multitude of small, politically independent hearths consisted of soldier-peasants reinforced sometimes by troops from the central authority and behaved like a gigantic madrepore forming its atoll little by little, ending up with encircling and assimilating the new country and thus enlarge Viet-Nam. It had the advantage of a triple coherent national structure: a bureaucratic state built on the Confucian model around an imperial function having the mandate of Heaven, the family, and the village. This helped in preserving the country's civilization lived by each and every Vietnamese like a total attachment to the forces of the land and the ancestors.

  It constituted an undeniable advantage for a policy of expansion but would on the other hand always require a strong central authority. At the least relaxation of the latter, the country crumbles easily. This is one of the main reasons of why the history of Vietnam is filled with disorders and eternal wars. This policy of nibbling silkworms allowed the slow absorption
of the space occupied by the Khmer and the Chàm people. Their vestiges currently found in central Vietnam (Phan Thiet, Da Nang etc.) and in the delta of the Mekong River illustrate very well this conquest. The attachment to independence has been proven many times in the past and in the war in Vietnam. It requires long centuries of struggle, wars, pains and jolts for Vietnam to finally become the size of a dragon today.    

It is clear from the above excerpt that Vietnam has had a long-standing strategy and policy designed to conquer Champa and Cambodia. Champa does exist any longer whereas Cambodia is still under the devastating impact of the Jugaunut of the "Nam Tien" under the disguise of "liberation".  The purpose of this essay is not to stir up the hatred between the Vietnamese and
Cambodian people. There are already too many defenders of Hun Sen and the Vietnamese such another article by Tony Kevin, but there is hardly any Cambodian voice raised in the defense of Cambodian people against Vietnamese imperialism without being accused of being cynical or worse still a racist or political expedient. I am neither a politician nor and Vietnamese hater. I
want and wish that the two neighboring people can live as friends one day.  But, before that process of reconciliation could start Vietnam will have to stop its imperialist and genocidal policy and must apologize to the Cambodian people and not the other way around. Meanwhile, Cambodians especially their "leaders" must do their utmost to tame their emotion and irrational behavior and by protecting from both physical and psychological harms until an acceptable solution can be found.

Naranhkiri Tith, Ph. D.

SAIS
The Johns Hopkins University
Washington, DC.