Regarding Democratic Kampuchea

THE TRIUMPH OF THE KHMER ROUGE.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE REVOLUTION.

Once the Khmer Rouge regime was installed in political power in Kampuchea, one of the most interesting social experiments in human history began. The changes that the new rulers began to implement were very profound, radical and unprecedented in modern history. In fact, the Yugoslav documentaries are unique in that they show us a completely new Kampuchea. Democratic Kampuchea was at that time the only nation in the world that did not use money, the only nation that had practically emptied the cities to move the population to the fields for agricultural work. The Yugoslav film concludes: "Nobody is starving in Kampuchea." The same statement was made in December 1978 by Dagens Nyheter, a Stockholm-Swedish newspaper, in a sensational report signed by Richard Dudman, who introduces his impressions of a trip by saying that three and a half years after the war of destruction unleashed by the terrible American bombing of Kampuchea, Vietnam and Laos, the nation is once again able to feed its citizens and even resume exporting rice. He goes on to say that the government has undertaken a major irrigation program to bring new fields under water and be able to produce two or three crops a year.

In one of the few reports made directly to the head of the Khmer Rouge, Pot Pot, American journalist Richard Dudman elaborates on the communist leader's thinking:

Elsewhere in the report, according to Dudman, Pol Pot accuses Vietnam of being a lackey of the Soviet Union, an enemy of Kampuchea, and a threat to world peace and stability. He predicts disaster for Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and their Warsaw Pact allies if they dare to send troops to help Vietnam in the current border conflicts (December 22, 1978).

The new leadership's plans are enormous: first, they believe it is wrong to rely on foreign aid, which only creates dependency. Relying on one's own efforts is a fundamental rule of the new policy. As a result, all imports were suspended and the country's borders were hermetically sealed to prevent political and ideological penetration from abroad. Secondly, it was decided to transfer the entire working population to agricultural work, which was considered to be the basis of the national economy. As a result of this decision, the cities were "emptied" and Phnom Penh appeared as a deserted city with a few tens of thousands of inhabitants. The entire working population was transferred to the countryside to speed up the construction of dams, water reservoirs and irrigation canals. The gigantic social transfer was also aimed at protecting the population from the imminent bombings that, according to the intelligence services, would be initiated by the defeated U.S. imperialists. It would not have been the first time, nor the last, that the Yankees avenged their defeats by bombing the civilian population. Third, according to Dudman, one of the largest housing projects in the world was initiated. Thousands of simple but attractive wooden dwellings of various styles sprang up throughout the country to replace the old, unsanitary caves made of branches and sticks. (4) New Kampuchea was clearly a unique nation, and we will see why.

Pol Pot, the prime minister of the Khmer Rouge, said:

"Our Kampuchea was completely and finally liberated by the great triumph of April 17, 1975. Today we enjoy full independence and sovereignty. This is very important because it is the first time in more than 2000 years of history that we are independent economically, politically, militarily and culturally…. This makes us very happy and proud…" and "In our new Kampuchean society, there are also contradictions of life and death because the enemy, in the form of various imperialist espionage organizations in the service of reactionary interests, is secretly working among us to undermine our revolution…" "The new phase of our Kampuchea revolution is not old, it is only two years old. Compared with the period of the national-democratic revolution, in which we operated for dozens of years and gained great experience, in this new phase of the revolution everything is new to us… Therefore, we must move our minds, investigate and acquire knowledge about the concrete situation of the country in order to improve our work and achieve successes and triumphs in the future…". Journalist Malcolm Caldwel, for his part, has these ideas about the Khmer Revolution:

• "My final conclusion, the result of my own research, is that the Kampuchea experiment, which may seem totally irrational, reactionary and retrograde to the Western media and to the Vietnamese and Russians, is an extremely valid and valuable experiment. It would be a great tragedy if it were destroyed by a Vietnamese invasion, which could take place this month or next December 1-4"
• "It is necessary to understand that the Cambodian guerrillas have always felt isolated from the whole world, from the Russians, from the Chinese, from Sihanouk. They fought their battles from the bottom up, counting only on the support of the rural population, without contacts with international movements and without the support of any great power, socialist or non-socialist….The Cambodians fed themselves, fed their army, stored rice for the liberation of Phnom Penh, and exported rice to the South Vietnamese National Liberation Front - to enable them to complete their final offensive - and also to Laos. They demonstrated the viability of their particular form of rural program. This brings us to a question that can help us understand the desperate intensity of this policy…"

Caldwell, a progressive writer who saw Kampuchea as a very interesting model of socialist social organization, showed great sympathy for the Khmer experience, and this is surely the reason why he was assassinated in the Khmer capital in December 1978, of course by the agents who swarmed the capital as spies for the future invasion of Kampuchea by the Vietnamese revisionists (far removed from Ho Chi Minh's thinking) and their masters, the Soviet revisionists. Caldwell, endorsing other independent criteria, emphasizes the viability of the rural, agrarian and economic development of Democratic Kampuchea.

In short, we can say that the Khmer Revolution was indeed a unique revolution. Relying solely on its own forces, it sought to make a radical break with the world system of imperialism in order to build an entirely new society.

The political line of the new revolutionary nation could not be to the liking of imperialism, which considered and still considers the whole world as its property. All this is not new, but in addition, Democratic Kampuchea, with its policy of complete national independence, contradicted the designs of international revisionism, which believed that revolutionary movements must faithfully follow its orders and dispositions.

The day after the triumph of April 17, 1975, the provocations against the "heretic" Kampuchea began. Since the model of socialist construction was different and in some cases contradictory to that applied in most "socialist" states, a large-scale propaganda campaign was promoted with the aim of discrediting and then directly attacking this experience.

A STATE WITHOUT MONEY.

One of the most remarkable features of the Khmer experience was undoubtedly the decision to eliminate the circulation of money, the Cambodian riel, and replace it with bonds that could be exchanged for products or services, depending on the circumstances. Let's see how the Khmer Rouge explain this financial and monetary policy in Dudman's report.

"Thioun Prasith of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that the Khmer Rouge stopped using money in 1973 to solve the problem that arose in the liberated areas and then spread to the whole country after the liberation… But the peasants who could sell their rice to the guerrillas preferred to do so to the South Vietnamese agents and even to the FNL, for the best payment. At the same time, the peasants' need to work the land made it difficult to recruit soldiers. Prasith says that the revolutionary organization was able to solve these problems by organizing cooperatives and at the same time prohibiting the use of money by replacing it with the barter system… This is how the system worked, according to the official: All the rice, rubber or any other product was delivered to the state at the value of the rail (4 x 1 dollar). If the cooperative needed medicines, clothes, tractors, trucks, these products were delivered by making the corresponding calculation compared to the products. Likewise, the state granted an incentive to poor cooperatives, received from successful cooperatives, these more products…".

Naturally, this policy scandalized the whole world: how could the Khmer Rouge dare to abolish the symbol of the capitalist economy? It was therefore unforgivable, and it was only necessary to take the appropriate measures to punish such a "crime".

THE EMPTYING OF CITIES.

THREE MILLION VICTIMS?

Since none of the above "arguments" seemed sufficient to overthrow the revolutionaries in black, they went on to fabricate the "Big Lie" that would fill magazines, newspapers and reports in East and West. The monstrous accusation against the Khmer leaders of having murdered THREE MILLION Kampuchean citizens since coming to power in 1975 was thrown to the wind. Along with the exorbitant number, the "causes" of the extermination were listed, including: being able to read and write, wearing glasses, being a doctor, teacher or artist, etc. etc.

The exorbitant figure of two or three million people "killed" by the Khmer Rouge came from a press conference given by Khieu Samphan in Colombo, Sri Lanka. There, Samphan said that the population of Kampuchea before the civil war (the Yankee bombings) was 7 million people and that now it could be said that it was 5 million. This clearly meant that during the entire war confrontation: the Yankee aggression through the terrible bombings, the liberation struggle after the Lon Nol coup, and the outright executions of the fascist reactionaries by the Khmer Rouge regime, Kampuchea suffered a hemorrhage of about two million people killed by a whole series of causes derived from the war, but to conclude from this that the Khmer Rouge "killed" two million people is precisely what the "big lie" that we and Noam Chomsky are currently denouncing to the world has done.

In short, if we are to believe the anti-Khmer propaganda, we must view these leaders as totally unbalanced elements and of a far superior sadism to that exhibited by Hitler's Nazi fascists. In fact, the German racists advocated racial purity and sought to exterminate entire nations and peoples in its name. According to Western propaganda and that of the "socialist world," the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea killed for pleasure and sport. All this, of course, weighs heavily and can only convince those who want to be convinced.

The "big lie" was systematically spread to the four winds, resulting in worldwide condemnation of the Khmer Rouge regime. The possibilities of defense were very few and were limited to a few Western journalists of good faith and critical sense who, without falling into the trap, began to think about the practicability of making a mountain of corpses disappear in the very limited technical conditions of a backward country.

Let's see below the version given by Noam Chomsky, the prestigious American intellectual, about the "big lie":

"We are not going to document here the avalanche of anger and rage that was directed against the Khmer Rouge from the beginning, and the evidence on which it was based. But it is worth highlighting a few facts:

1) The immediate and violent indignation that peaked in early 1977 and lasted until the fall of Pol Pot was based almost entirely on evidence that essentially related to 1975 and 1976.

With the exception of a few specialized journalists, the State Department's experts on Cambodia, and probably most of the small group of experts on Cambodia, the most extreme accusations consisted of a great display of outrage at Communist atrocities, accusations whose integrity can be judged by comparison with the reactions to the first phase of the genocide and the responsibility of the United States in it.

These skeptical assessments, which were almost entirely suppressed in the media, proved to be very accurate for the period in question.

The evidence that provided the crucial basis for the denunciation of the Communist genocide was of the kind that would have been ridiculed had similar claims been made about the first phase of the genocide or other U.S. atrocities, including the faked interviews and photographs and the fabricated statements attributed to Khmer Rouge officers. These included the forged interviews and photographs and the fabricated statements attributed to Khmer Rouge officers, which were constantly repeated even after their falsity had been admitted; the erroneous estimates of the number of victims, based on the misinterpretation of studies that became unquestioned doctrine even after their inaccuracy had been exposed; the highly selective reports on the refugees, which did not include many of their testimonies, as well as detailed studies by specialists in Cambodia that could not be used, so that it soon became a propaganda campaign with a level of fraud on an astonishing scale…".

Why add anything to the surprising opinion of the American intellectual who has nothing of communism and everything of anarchism?

This perfectly orchestrated campaign was accompanied by the so-called "border incidents" with Vietnam, which also sought to portray Democratic Kampuchea as an aggressive regime ready to attack the pacifist countries of the region. This "argument" also clashed with the most elementary common sense. Could it be imagined that Kampuchea, with an army a hundred times smaller in number, practically without mechanized units, without aviation, and with a primitive navy, could have the intention of destroying Vietnam, the owner of the fourth most powerful army in the world? Of course not. The truth is that there had always been territorial problems between Vietnam and Kampuchea, and the principled policy of the new government proclaimed the right of Kampuchea to a number of territories occupied by Vietnam by force. These claims did not sit well with Vietnam, which today clearly feels "protective" of all of former Indochina.

However, according to all the impartial data we have, Kampuchea's march along the paths of independent development was accelerated. Self-sufficiency in rice consumption had been achieved, and the surplus could be exported. Hunger had been overcome, and there was enormous potential to meet the population's needs for housing, education, and health. Of course, the standards were very low and it could not be otherwise.

The work was hard, but it was free, and Kampuchea was the master of all its efforts. You could see it in the movies and the films of independent journalists, the swarms of men and women working on the dams under the most adverse conditions, but with enthusiasm and the conviction that they were laying the foundations of a new society.

Of course, such a policy could not please the old dominant social classes of the country, the bureaucracy and other middle social categories. It was said, for example, "How can an intellectual do manual work in the fields? Although there is nothing intellectual about it, the bureaucrat accustomed to bribery, sitting behind a comfortable desk, therefore considers it an attack on "human rights" to be forced to work in production. The social parasites, that is, those elements that swarm in the cities and are dedicated to crime, illegal transactions and trade of all kinds, also became mortal enemies of the new regime and contributed to its discredit.

But one thing is certain: the regime enjoyed the support of the great national majorities, and no internal force, no matter how much help it could get, had even the possibility of endangering the stability of the government. This reality was well known to the new and bitter enemies of Democratic Kampuchea, and it was precisely for this reason that they had to meticulously organize a trap to overthrow the Khmer Rouge.

THE LIE. THE INTERNAL INSURRECTION. THE TRUTH: A REAL VIETNAMESE INVASION.

The first step in the aggression was to make the world believe that there was an armed movement in opposition to the Phnom Penh regime. It was said that resistance had emerged in several provinces and that it was even possible to see that it had liberated some areas. In addition to these versions, we have the testimony of Hedvig Ekerwald, a Swedish journalist, who says in the February 1979 issue of the magazine "Musikforum": "In the summer (78), for example, there were reports on the radio in Hanoi about uprisings in the same provinces that we visited. But the people in those provinces did not revolt; on the contrary, they worked. If the country had been on the verge of civil war, as the reports on Radio Hanoi suggested, we would have noticed something…"

The alleged "resistance" inside the country existed only in the minds and desires of international revisionism, which now used U.S. imperialism to suppress a revolutionary experience. The lies about the internal resistance led to talk in late 1978 of the creation of a National Liberation Front organized in Hanoi by some Khmer Rouge dissidents led by Heng Samrin. Events were accelerating, and by the end of 1978 there was open talk in Kampuchea that Vietnam would attack once the dry season began in early 1979, so the intervention of international organizations was requested to prevent aggression.

Indeed, on January 1, 1979, large concentrations of Vietnamese troops crossed the common border and invaded Kampuchea's territory. In the border battles, the modern Vietnamese army had no difficulty destroying the poorly armed Khmer Rouge regiments. In the regular battles, the victory could only be turned in favor of Vietnam's aggressive war machine. Within days, the invading Vietnamese armies surrounded Phnom Penh. It was expected that the Khmer leadership would try to defend the capital, but in a sudden change of strategy, the Khmer command abandoned the city and proclaimed the people's war against the foreign occupiers by retreating to the western mountains.

From the outset, Vietnam tried to hide its direct intervention, proclaiming to the four winds and to those who would believe it that it was an "internal uprising" that brought down the Khmer Rouge government. The whole well-orchestrated campaign, directed from Moscow and Hanoi, is aimed at making the whole world swallow millstones. There is talk of the great hatred that has built up in the people of Kampuchea against the "genocidal" Khmer leaders who murdered no less than THREE MILLION PEOPLE. Every family, without exception, lost at least one member, they said, which explains the ease with which the internal "resistance" was able to overthrow the regime.

However, the continuation of the farce is not possible. The Western press, while rejecting the Khmer experience, can only refer to the massive Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea, describing it in all its circumstances. It has been rightly said that "the first casualty of war is truth". Indeed, the first thing the Vietnamese armies destroyed on Khmer soil was the possibility of their conduct coming to light. It was brandished as an incontrovertible argument that the regime had murdered THREE MILLION PEOPLE, and of course such savagery fully justified the invasion and direct intervention of the "big brother" in the internal affairs of Kampuchea.

The European press in particular, with the enormous technical resources at its disposal, exposed the whole plot hatched by the Soviets and the Vietnamese against the Khmer people. The Swedish magazine "Folket i Bild" of January 1979 carries a very interesting report by two of its representatives who visited Vietnam just in the days of the invasion. Lasse and Lisa Berg talked at length with Do Quic Cuong, the director of Ho Chi Minh City Radio, who gives a detailed account of the official Vietnamese version of events. First of all, he states that the liberation of Kampuchea in 1975 was possible thanks to Vietnamese help, i.e. without Vietnam there would have been no liberation of Kampuchea (the hero of the movie, who gives freedom to the people. n.n.). He then explains that the Khmer Rouge government showed its enmity to Vietnam from the very beginning by provoking long and endless border aggressions, and that the Chinese helped Kampuchea to build a powerful army of 25 divisions from its previous three and stationed them in the border area. Do goes on to say that the border attacks became more aggressive, while Vietnam "patiently" called for dialogue and talks to solve common problems; finally, in mid-1978, the Khmer people decided to free themselves from their oppressors and formed a liberation front, which they supported as an "internationalist" duty.

On December 30, according to Do, the "front" liberated the town of Kratie, 74 kilometers inside Kampuchea, with the help of Vietnamese troops. For the first time, a Vietnamese leader admits the participation of Vietnamese troops in the Kampuchea conflict. Here are some paragraphs from the Swedish journalists' report:

"The Big Lie. "The first casualty of war is the truth" and in Indochina the big lie is happening…. On the one hand the worst massacre in history is described and on the other hand a utopia is realized… In the Vietnamese version, a defensive war is being waged against a threat that has its roots in China; in the other version, Vietnam is an expansionist, territory-hungry state with superpower ambitions and possible support from Moscow…"

On the other hand, we have the version of the French journalist K. S. Karol, who tells us:

"I believe that in the present circumstances the development of events is decisive for the left. Socialism, which appears as peace in the consciousness of the workers, is gradually being confused with war, with a possible expansion of the conflict on a world scale. That is why it is possible to hide behind a story like that of the "Kampuchean uprising", covered by armored divisions and Mig-21 planes, instead of saying loud and clear that the Soviet Union has no right to occupy sovereign states, either directly or by proxy, under the pretext of political contradictions that can be resolved by the parties according to law and justice, much less when they are Communist states…".

The mask has fallen completely and the truth, the first victim of the war, is rising like the phoenix from its ashes. Little by little, the whole reality is revealed. It is a simple and straightforward invasion of a militarily powerful country against a weak one, the eternal story of class society. The director of the radio station in Ho Chi Minh City had arrived beaming with joy to inform Swedish journalists about the "liberation" of Phnom Penh on the morning of January 8, 1979 at 12:30 p.m., and at that time the legend of the "Liberation Front" that had overthrown the Khmer Rouge was still in force. As you can see, for the Vietnamese themselves, the ridiculous version lasted only a week, but for certain "revolutionaries" from the interior, even today, they continue to talk about the "Cambodian Revolution" with a colonial flavor right down to its name.

THE PEOPLE'S WAR AS A RESPONSE TO AGGRESSION.

Like any aggression by a powerful person against a weak one, it was thought that the adventure would be nothing more than a pleasant walk and some isolated shots that, when heard by the "natives", would cause them to flee in terror. The abandonment of the capital led to the belief that everything was really over and, according to Do, "the people could finally return to the fields and to peaceful work". But the reality was different.

The Khmer Rouge hastily ordered the abandonment of the major cities: Kompong Som, Battambang and other cities, and dispersed small guerrilla groups throughout the country. The people's war against foreign aggressors began.

After occupying Phnom Penh and most of the Khmer territory, the Vietnamese set about organizing the occupation by putting a certain gloss on it. They had obtained the collaboration of some ex-Khmer Rouge such as Heng Samrin, a low-ranking officer who, when punished for mistakes committed, turned in favor of the pro-Vietnamese factions of the country, which, as we have seen, are extremely small, and of course a similar element was indicated to play the role of "quisling". It was under his leadership that the new national government and the "new" administration were structured.

The deeply anti-national and treacherous character of the collaborationist administration of Heng Samrin and his pro-Vietnamese supporters is shown by the agreements and pacts he signed immediately after taking the capital. A Vietnam-Kampuchea treaty "legalized" the presence of Vietnamese troops in Khmer territory indefinitely as long as the nation's "security" remained threatened. Thus, faithfully following the imperialist example of claiming left and right that their armies are "called" to "defend" the peoples, the international revisionists have no qualms about violating the independence of the peoples and their national sovereignty.

The fields between homeland and anti-homeland are clearly demarcated in the singular struggle. Prince Sihanouk, an old enemy of the Khmer Rouge against whom he had fought and imprisoned between 1975 and 1979, quickly took sides against the invasion and on the side of those who defended Kampuchea's independence with arms in hand. The bourgeois patriot and aristocratic former Khmer ruler did not hesitate for a moment to lend moral support to the genuine Khmer resistance in the face of foreign aggression. We will see later how the national unity against the aggressors developed with the participation of Prince Sihanouk.

One of the most important texts published to slander and discredit the Khmer experience was the book: "The Extermination of a Noble Country" by journalists John Barron and Anthony Paul, which even served as the basis for a movie dedicated to attacking the Khmer Rouge ("The Cries of Silence"). We do not know if the country was "noble" when the American Air Force saturated the entire Khmer territory with genocidal bombs that murdered hundreds of thousands of truly innocent victims. These authors, in the midst of their total hostility to the revolution, say of its leaders

"Khieu Samphan, 44 years old. Stoic and incorruptible, awkward and socially shy, doctrinaire and dogmatic…. Hou Yuon, 45. Intelligent and adventurous, sometimes arrogant, charismatic and a good leader… Hu Nim, 43. Nervous and rough, talkative and even haughty, he earned respect for his intelligence and ability as a polemicist… Ieng Sary, 45. Cunning and determined, courteous and diplomatic… Ieng Thirith, 43. Ieng's beautiful wife, more fanatical than her husband… Saloth Sar, 47. Quiet and reserved, patient and determined, described by an opponent as dull and effeminate, Saltoh had been a teacher and a journalist… (16). In the context of their values and beliefs, all but perhaps Hu Nim seemed to be men of principle, honest and courageous, almost puritanical. 

If these are the views of the Khmer Rouge's avowed enemies of their leaders, then it is utterly inconsistent to attribute to them the commission of atrocities against their own people. In fact, the above paragraphs show that no one can deny that the Khmer Rouge were intelligent, courageous, and above all, profoundly incorruptible. What more can a people ask of their leaders?

With all the data accumulated from the first source, we can pause for a moment and analyze it carefully. Let's assume that all or some of the accusations against the Khmer regime are true, and that people were indeed killed like flies with insecticides during that government (1975-78). If this were true, the hatred of an entire people against the Khmer Rouge leaders would have manifested itself in some way, making it impossible for them to survive in the already difficult conditions of guerrilla warfare in the mountains. How can one imagine that a contingent of some 40,000 men, poorly armed, poorly fed, and with such a hostile civilian population, could sustain a real war of resistance for so many years against the Vietnamese army, which had mechanized equipment and modern aviation? Of course, this is incomprehensible to any impartial observer.

On the other hand, if the internal opposition to the Khmer Rouge was so great and so deep, what would be the point of the presence of the huge Vietnamese contingent, which, far from diminishing, tends to increase? Finally, why are the new rulers in Phnom Penh so afraid of the presence of Western observers? None of these questions can be answered, and they make it abundantly clear that the traitors can hold on to power only with the saving presence of some 200,000 Vietnamese army troops.

Throughout 1979, news agencies from the Thai border reported major clashes and constant movement of both Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge troops. Heng Samrin's army acted only as a police force in Phnom. Penh and other cities, unable to face the battle-hardened Khmer Rouge units resisting the massive foreign invasion. The Khmer Rouge military formations, made up of peasants, youths and even children in their classic black uniforms and scarves or shawls around their necks, are slowly retreating to the west of the country in search of favorable territory for irregular warfare.

Below we take an interesting report obtained by a Thai journalist on the common border:

"He found a young soldier who took him to a camp where 300 to 400 Khmer Rouge soldiers were resting, more than half of them very young women and boys. We move around a lot and cause a lot of casualties to the Vietnamese. Almost all the soldiers carry AK-47-type automatic rifles. Even 12-year-olds are armed. It is our duty to be in constant movement, they say. Now let's go to Nimia village, says one of them, who seems to be the leader. We did not know if the group belonged to Pol Pot's forces or not, but some of them wore the Maoist calatrava. They invited us to eat their meal of rice and water, but interrupted the meal when two trucks arrived. The leaders exchanged whistles and everyone scattered into the forest. They are Thai soldiers patrolling the border. Relations between Thailand and the now rebellious Khmer Rouge soldiers have improved dramatically since the Vietnamese invasion. This report was taken about 3 or 4 kilometers inside Kampuchea near the Thai border…"

The patriotic struggle of the Khmer people and nationality against the hateful aggression of international revisionism, this time with a modern army, continues to be led to this day by the leaders of the Khmer Rouge: Kieu Samphan, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, from the mountains and jungles of Democratic Kampuchea. During the dry season, Vietnamese aggression intensified and new mechanized units were launched against rebel hideouts, while the so-called monsoon opened up new possibilities for the Khmer Rouge's guerrilla warfare.

Jan Myrdal is a respected Swedish journalist and public figure. As a friend of the peoples of so-called Indochina, who fought so heroically against and defeated U.S. imperialism, Myrdal has visited Kampuchea several times. The last time he did so was when Pol Pot's regime had been driven out of Phnom Penh and was fighting in the jungles of the north and west of the country against the regular troops of Vietnam, who, as we know, had imposed a puppet regime. According to his account, Myrdal entered Kampuchea through the Thai border and made contact with the Khmer Rouge authorities who controlled the entire western part of the country. Let's read below some of Myrdal's expressions about the policies of the K.D., the Vietnamese invasion and finally the Khmer resistance against the aggression of Brezhnev's international revisionism commanded by the Soviet Union, in his book "Kampuchea, Hosten 1979":

"In conversation after conversation, they told me the same thing: the Vietnamese are waging a war of extermination. They are stealing everything, destroying everything, beating the civilian population. Vietnam uses hunger as a weapon…. I think it's true. Not only is it clear from the reports, but I heard it from journalists who visited Kampuchea in 1978. Regardless of their different views and beliefs, whether they were from the United States, Japan, Yugoslavia, or Sweden, they all agreed on one thing: in the large districts we traveled through, there was food. Hunger had disappeared. Kampuchea was even able to export rice. The railroads were working again. The telephone network was being repaired… Houses were being built in every cooperative. I visited schools. I took textbooks. I write what everyone could see…. But I am afraid that our voice will be drowned in the massive false information spread by Vietnamese and pro-Soviet forces…"

"(Question) Does the entire world press report that the DPRK government massacred the people and killed the entire intelligentsia after the triumph of April 17, 1975? What do you have to say about this? (Answer). Don't talk about massacres, says Dr. Thiounn Thioeun. It's gossip. It's not true. The only massacre is the one Vietnam is doing now. There was no massacre before. But in every revolution in history there have been failures and mistakes. The same thing happened in Kampuchea. But our revolution was not full of mistakes and failures like other revolutions. So, little by little, the truth is coming out despite the gossip and propaganda in the media in Vietnam and other countries. The truth will come out and it will be shown that I am right…"

"Today a lot is written about the massacre in Kampuchea. This is true. There was a massacre in Kampuchea between 1970 and 1975. Perhaps one million of the seven million inhabitants were victims… But those responsible for the 1970-1975 massacre were the United States, its politicians and military, and its servants in Phnom Penh. Also responsible were the Soviet and East German diplomats who represented their countries at the court of Lon Nol…. Now the massacre in Kampuchea is happening again. The Vietnamese occupation has rendered the camps completely useless. The government in Hanoi is working to crush and destroy the Kampuchean people. Maybe it wants to do what it did to the Champa people…"

The problem of Kampuchea has occupied the attention of various international organizations, such as the United Nations, where the Soviets and Vietnamese have been bitterly censured for their brutal aggression. For us, however, far more important than mere censorship is the historical materialist analysis of such an event as we have in hand for the cause of socialism throughout the world.

For how long can we continue to speak of "socialism" when the most despicable methods of aggressor imperialism are being imitated in the most blatant manner? In the name of what popular sovereignty can we speak when we do not respect the inalienable rights of a people and its independence? What proletarian internationalism can we speak of if there has been no foreign intervention on the other side?

The truth is that the "sin" of Democratic Kampuchea was to pretend to follow its own path, an independent path, outside of any foreign imposition. The Khmer Rouge had a very sobering experience when the Soviet Union disloyally and treacherously recognized and supported the fascist regime of Lon Nol against the will of the people. For the time being, the Khmer rebels said nothing, but once they had seized power on their own, they decided to go their own way. Immediately, an alleged "motherland" would emerge to claim part of the "spoils."

The case of the KD is a lesson that the peoples of the world cannot forget. These notes of ours are a modest contribution to open the eyes of true revolutionaries all over the world to the enemies that arise after the longed-for triumphs.

The situation in occupied Kampuchea in 1980 was very complex. On the one hand, the popular resistance was united, that is, the main forces of the Khmer people, the Khmer Rouge and the patriotic forces supporting Prince Sihanouk, were able to reach an agreement. The agreement was joined by the small guerrilla forces loyal to Son Sen, Sihanouk's former prime minister, with whom a tripartite government was formed. Under the chairmanship of Sihanouk and the vice-chairmanship of Khieu Samphan, the alliance has gained virtually worldwide recognition, the home front has been greatly strengthened, and the Khmer cause has gained prestige throughout the world.

The Vietnamese invaders and their interventionist army are now moving in Kampuchea like all aggressors, amidst the hostility of the popular masses. Nothing and nobody can hide the sad role of the Vietnamese leadership in the Kampuchea adventure. We know that the revolutionary people of Vietnam, who fought so heroically against the US aggression, are resolutely opposed to the predatory actions in Kampuchea. Many Vietnamese who opposed the invasion were punished in Vietnam by the revisionist leadership and the servants of Moscow.

AFTER 1979

At the end of the 1980s, more specifically in 1989, and due to international pressure when the revisionist bloc collapsed, Vietnamese troops left Kampuchea and the puppet Heng Samrin was ignominiously thrown out of power, the "Communist Party" of Cambodia abandoned its name and called itself "Cambodian People", Samrin was replaced by Hun Sen, another ex-Khmer Rouge who, changing tactics, began timid and cautious approaches to the Khmer Rouge.

1998. The story has no end. At the end of the century, the Khmer Rouge movement is still installed in the north of what is now Cambodia, led by a revisionist government headed by Hun Sen. The political factions are the same. A Western-style "democratic" government, elections and all, has come to power through an alliance between revisionist forces and those of Sihanouk's heir, Prince Norodom Rannariddh. The Cambodian army, which has become the arbiter of the political situation and which is structured with Western and Vietnamese aid, staged a military coup (July 6, 1997) that once again forced Rannariddh into hiding.

The same military officers who struck with Lon Nol are now striking on behalf of Vietnam and intend to "finish" the Khmer Rouge. It is said that the Khmer Rouge movement has been greatly weakened, all this may be true, but it cannot be denied that it had greater validity than the Soviet revisionist regime itself, which crumbled like a house of cards before the onslaught of Western ideology alone, while the young detachments of the Khmer Rouge remained undaunted and dominated the north of Kampuchea. with his native leather sandals, his black uniforms, his checkered scarf and his Mao-style calatrava.

To shake off the enormous weight of the new global campaign against the Khmer Rouge, they simulated a trial against Pol Pot and sentenced him to life imprisonment in his jungle hut.

The legend of the THREE MILLION DEAD has returned to the front pages to fight the Khmer Rouge. In the deep jungles of beautiful Kampuchea, the traditional Khmer Red leadership has lost Pol Pot (Saloth Sar), killed in a simple and humble hut in a Khmer base. Other leaders, such as Kieu Samphan or Noum Chea, have reached an agreement with the Hun Sen government, which has received them amicably. We cannot speculate on the nature of this agreement, but the reality is that the revolutionary war in Kampuchea has stopped.

The experience of the Khmer Rouge revolution is unprecedented, and it shows that even small peoples can make great revolutions, and that these are not the legacy of large countries or world leaders. There are also "small" leaders who achieve greatness, even if their victories are to be ignored and, worse, slandered.

Sooner or later there will be light in the wonderful land of the Khmer, and the paradisiacal gardens on the banks of the Mekong will once again show this haughty people building their future with their own hands.