Issue Date: January 12, 1979
Cambodian Rebel-Vietnamese Force Captures Pnompenh; Invaders Near Thai Border; Rebels Form New Government
- Pol Pot Ousted
- Heng Heads New Government
- UN. Hears Pnompenh Appeal
- Sihanouk Issues Plea in Peking
- U.S., China Condemn Vietnam
- Rumania Criticizes Vietnam
- Nonaligned Nations Uncertain
Pol Pot Ousted
A combined force of Cambodian rebels and Vietnamese soldiers captured Pnompenh January 7. [See 1979 China Masses Military Forces on Vietnamese Frontier; Responds to Fighting in Cambodia]
The insurgent Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation announced January 8 the overthrow of the government of Premier Pol Pot and its replacement by a People's Revolutionary Council of Cambodia formed in Pnompenh "to govern the country."
Pnompenh's capture was announced by Hanoi radio, which said "the regime of dictatorial, militarist domination of the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique has completely collapsed." The broadcast and subsequent announcements by Hanoi attributed all military successes to the United Front without acknowledging the presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia. However, political, military and intelligence analysts in Bangkok, Thailand said the burden of battle was being carried by as many as 13 Vietnamese divisions and supporting troops, numbering about 100,000 men.
While the United Front announced January 8 that "Pnompenh and all the provinces of Cambodia were totally liberated," strong Cambodian government resistance was reported continuing in territory claimed captured by the Vietnamese, particularly east of the Mekong River near the Vietnamese border. By January 12, Vietnamese columns were said to have advanced as far west as Battambang, near the Thai border, where heavy combat was in progress.
The Hanoi victory broadcast January 7 also proclaimed the capture of Kompong Som, Cambodia's only seaport (on the Gulf of Siam) and the point of entry for almost all the military equipment China had sent to Cambodia.
Cambodian government forces were reported January 12 to be making their strongest stand in the west at Siem Reap, near the Angkor temple ruins. Heavy government resistance also was centered in the towns of Kompong Speu, Kompong Cham and Svay Rieng, to the south and east of Pnompenh, Bangkok intelligence sources reported.
Deputy Premier Ieng Sary was rescued by a Thai helicopter January 11 and was flown to Bangkok. Denied Thai asylum, he flew to Hong Kong and crossed into China from there January 12.
Premier Pol Pot was believed to have remained in Cambodia, diplomatic sources in Peking disclosed January 10. Some members of the Chinese Embassy in Pnompenh had also stayed in Cambodia and were thought to be with the premier, the sources said.
More than 700 foreign officials and advisers in Cambodia crossed into Thailand January 8 to escape the Vietnamese drive. Among them was the Chinese ambassador to Cambodia. About 650 of the arrivals in the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet were Chinese, described by Thai officials as technicians, possibly military advisers. The other diplomatic corps escapees included North Koreans, Yugoslavs, Rumanians, Burmese and Egyptians.
Heng Heads New Government
The announcement January 8 of the formation of the People's Revolutionary Council said Heng Samrin would serve as its president. He had held the post of president of the United Front's Central Committee.
The Council's other members were Pin Sovan, vice president in charge of national defense; Hun Sen, foreign; Chea Sim, interior; Keo Chanda, information, press and culture; Chan Ven, education; Nu Beng, health and social affairs, and Mok Sakun, economy and well-being of the people.
Like Heng, all the Council members were believed to have defected from the Pol Pot government. Heng had first been identified in December 1978 with the announcement of the formation of the United Front. At the time, he was said to have been a former army division commander and political commissar in the Pol Pot government. [See 1978 Uprising in Cambodia: Hanoi Reports Opposition 'Front'; Other Developments]
A broadcast from Cambodia December 5 said Heng had begun "revolutionary activities" in 1959, commanding first a battalion and then a regiment of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge forces. It said he led the Fourth Division and was its political commissar from 1976 until his defection in May 1978.
The insurgent regime's new policies had been outlined in a broadcast by the United Front January 6. It pledged to abolish in its "liberated zone" the excesses of the previous government, which had organized the entire nation into communes, separated families, emptied the towns and cities and destroyed the Buddhist religion and most of the country's traditional culture. The Front promised to reunite families and allow them to return to their former homes, restore freedom of religion and build and repair destroyed temples.
The Front also said it would abolish the government and administrative bodies of the former government and replace them with elected "people's self-management committees." The committees' members would be those who had suffered under the former government, persons of "meritorious service to the people" and respected elders.
The Front said it would welcome defectors from the previous government and army and said it would not carry out reprisals against prisoners of war. Defectors, however, would be examined for their past record before being given full citizenship, the announcement said.
Advisers to the former government "who oppose the revolution will be duly punished," the statement said.
UN. Hears Pnompenh Appeal
The United Nations Security Council January 11-12 discussed the crisis sparked by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia. [See 1979 China Masses Military Forces on Vietnamese Frontier; Responds to Fighting in Cambodia]
Convening at Cambodia's request, the Council opened its meeting January 11 by defeating, 13-2, a Soviet and Czechoslovakian motion to bar Cambodia from bringing up the matter. The U.N. body then permitted Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia's former head of state, to present the case for the Pol Pot government.
Sihanouk proposed a resolution demanding the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia and the halt to Vietnamese interference in his country's affairs, but did not seek a formal condemnation of Hanoi.
Sihanouk charged that Vietnam had committed "flagrant aggression" against Cambodia. He urged the Council not to recognize the new Cambodian government, that U.N. member nations deny Vietnam any form of aid and that the Council meet again if Vietnam failed to withdraw.
Chinese representative Chen Chu, who formally introduced Sihanouk's resolution, expanded on Sihanouk's charges, saying that Vietnam's Soviet-built tanks and planes had caused enormous losses in life and property and that the Vietnamese troops had systematically looted Cambodian towns.
Chen accused the Soviet Union of having transformed former U.S. military facilities at Cam Ranh Bay and Danang in Vietnam into major Soviet naval bases under terms of the treaty it had signed with Hanoi November 3, 1978. [See 1978 Indochina: Vietnamese-Soviet Friendship Pact]
Vietnamese representative Ha Van Lau declared that the Council was violating the U.N. Charter by permitting Sihanouk to speak, because he represented a government no longer in power. He contended that there was no connection between the "border war" between the "Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique" and Vietnam and the "civil war" inside Cambodia between rival Cambodian factions. The civil strife inside Cambodia was the result of the atrocities committed by the Pol Pot government against its people, Lau said.
Cuban representative Raul Roa attacked Sihanouk, saying he had been a pawn of the late Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung "and his gang." Roa chided Sihanouk for not having spoken out "against family separations, the forced moves to the country, the two million people slain" under the Pol Pot administration.
Debate was expanded January 12 to permit non-Council members to take the floor. Sihanouk again spoke, complaining about "the insults to which I have been subjected" by several delegates.
Sihanouk Issues Plea in Peking
Before arriving in New York January 9 for the U.N. Security Council debate, Prince Sihanouk had stopped off in Peking January 6-8. At a six-hour news conference January 8, he made wide-ranging remarks on the Cambodian-Vietnamese situation and the policies of the Pol Pot government.
Sihanouk spoke publicly for the first time since his house arrest on his return to Pnompenh from Peking in 1975 after the communist Khmer Rouge had seized power that year. Sihanouk had gone into exile in China after he had been deposed in March 1970 and replaced by the pro-U.S. government of General Lon Nol. [See 1976 Cambodia: New Government Formed]
Sihanouk said the Cambodian authorities had released him from house detention January 5 to permit him to travel to New York for the Security Council meeting.
The prince charged that Vietnam was a mere "Soviet satellite" that wanted to transform Cambodia into its "colony."
He thanked the U.S. for condemning the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, saying that Cambodia was willing to "forget" the American military role in Cambodia in the early 1970s and "be good friends." He urged the U.S. and the U.N. to help Cambodia repel the Vietnamese invaders. He suggested that the U.N. use military force to accomplish this.
Sihanouk dealt at great length with the nature of the Pol Pot government. He said he had heard of widespread reports from foreign sources of atrocities in Cambodia. "But I haven't seen the killings; naturally, I could not see them. I was kept in total darkness. I hope the reports are not true."
Sihanouk did confirm accounts of the government's repressive measures, including forced movement of people, the separation of families, the abolition of vital services and the loss of religious freedom. "I don't know why they chose to impose such a terrible policy on the people, but they told me it was genuine communism," Sihanouk said.
Sihanouk said he had lost contact with two of his daughters and their children when they were sent off to a rural cooperative in 1975 after the Khmer Rouge victory. He said he didn't know "whether they are alive or dead."
Sihanouk had arrived in Peking January 6, accompanied by his wife and Penn Nouth, his former premier in exile. He was greeted at the airport by Deputy Premier Teng Hsiao-ping.
U.S., China Condemn Vietnam
The U.S. and China assailed Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in statements January 7 and 8.
A State Department spokesman January 7 said, "Our priority is to bring a local conflict involving Vietnam and Cambodia to a speedy resolution to prevent it from becoming a wider conflict," possibly involving the Soviet Union and China, both of which supported the rival forces. The spokesman urged Vietnam and Cambodia to exercise "restraint" and urged them "to work for the withdrawal of foreign forces" from Cambodia.
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had expressed American concern at a meeting January 5 with Anatoly F. Dobrynin, Soviet ambassador to the U.S. Dobrynin was said to have replied that Moscow also had urged the Vietnamese to be cautious but that they said they were their own masters.
The State Department accused Vietnam January 8 of being "guilty of aggression" and again called for its speedy withdrawal from Cambodia.
In a statement submitted to the U.N. Security Council January 7, China condemned the invasion of Cambodia, accusing the Hanoi government of "towering crimes" and acting as a surrogate for the Soviet Union "in its expanded strategic plan."
Vietnam was attempting to annex Cambodia in order to establish "an 'Indochina Federation' under its control," the note said. This would constitute "a major step in pushing its own regional hegemony and an important part of the Soviet drive for hegemony in Asia and the Far East," the Chinese statement charged.
The Soviet Union January 7 hailed the capture of Pnompenh as an event that would "undoubtedly be received with profound satisfaction and joy by millions of people in different parts of the world." The comment, carried by the Soviet news agency Tass, called the ousted government in Pnompenh a "reactionary dictatorial clique," guilty of "massacres of the peaceful population" of Cambodia.
Rumania Criticizes Vietnam
In disagreement with its allies, Rumania January 10 denounced Vietnam for its intervention in Cambodia. The comments, in the Rumanian Communist Party newspaper Scintea, came one day after the U.S.S.R. and the other Soviet-bloc nations had praised the overthrow of Premier Pol Pot's government.
Scintea said, "No reasons and arguments whatsoever can justify intervention and interference in the affairs of another state...especially when two socialist countries are involved." The newspaper said the ouster of Pol Pot was "a heavy blow for the prestige of socialism" and a threat to East-West detente.
The U.S.S.R. January 9 had sent a congratulatory telegram to the Cambodian rebels on their "remarkable victory." The message, signed by Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Alexei Kosygin, said Moscow would "support the Cambodian people in the construction of a peaceful, independent, democratic, nonaligned Cambodia advancing toward socialism."
In an interview with Time magazine, Brezhnev had added that Pol Pot's government had been "a hateful regime and a tyranny imposed from the outside," a reference to China.
Moscow's Warsaw Pact allies, with the exception of Rumania, had echoed Brezhnev's denunciation of Pol Pot, according to reports January 10. Bulgaria had welcomed the downfall of the Cambodian government as a "blow to Peking's hegemonistic plans in Southeast Asia." Hungary had charged that Pol Pot had "betrayed the people of Cambodia," and a Polish newspaper article had reported that Pol Pot was guilty of "everyday terror" against the Cambodian population.
Nonaligned Nations Uncertain
The nonaligned nations' movement, of which both Cambodia and Vietnam were members, appeared uncertain over how to react to the conflict, according to a report January 11 in the New York Times.
Yugoslavia, which had condemned Vietnam's intervention, summarized the movement's dilemma January 6 in a radio commentary. "Force has won the day over reason. The nonaligned are in a most delicate position, for both Vietnam and Cambodia are members.... The nonaligned countries are not able to adopt a unified position even in the form of an appeal to the parties in the dispute to cease hostilities."
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