The Birth of Kampuchea

FRom its birth Democratic Kampuchea was slandered by the entire Western press, in a barage of lies and deliberate distortions unequalled since the People's Republic of China won its liberation. It is important that these lies be shown for what they are because it is these reports which provide the Soviet Union and Vietnam with the ostensible reason for their actions.

Many scholars and experts in Asian matters have disputed statements made in the press, not surprisingly, their letters are rarely carried. Perhaps the most over-used fabrication has been the 'blood-bath' theory.

Kampuchea has been accused of perpetrating the biggest blood bath in the history of the world. Time confidently assessed the number of people killed "— by execution, starvation and disease —" at least 1 million Most of the wrath of the "civilised world" was turned onto the mass exodus from the Kampuchean cities which followed the victory of the Kymer Rouge. The Kampuchean people were pictures as dying from exhustion and lack of water as they were compelled to traverse the barren countryside in what was shown as a vicious and bizarre move to bring into a being a new agricultural policy.

The truth is somewhat different. Cut off savagely from the American aid that had - kept the inhabitants of the cities alive, the Kampuchean government had only two choices: to let the people starve to death in the cities or to move them to the countryside where the food was. During the period of the fight against the Lon Nol regime (1) and the US invaders, the Kymer Rouge instituted the system of double cropping the underdeveloped rice growing country. The effect was that, with the building of reservoirs and canals, the crop was significantly increased. However with the fierce bombardment that Kampuchea faced during the war, the major systems of transport where destroyed and not able to take the food to the people, the people had to be taken to the food. Western journalists would have preferred the citizens to have died in the comfort; of the cities.

As one commentator on Asian affairs said:

"Perhaps one should not be shocked or even surprised that the Western Press has so slandered the new government of Cambodia by blaming it for drastic actions necessitated by five years of inhumane and senseless American policy towards it. Had America not supported Lon Nol (whose popularity was limited to only the urban middle and upper classes, a miniscule fraction of the population), had America not invaded and then mercilessly bombed Cambodia, had they not provided millions in military aid and food which they cut off abruptly once their client government was defeated — had America not intervened so drastically and diabolically, the present government would not have been faced with the desperate and critical problems it was forced to solve within days of assuming power. Yet it is the new Cambodian government, and not America, that Westerners blame for the drastic revolutionary actions that have taken place in the past two years." (The Cambodian Revolution by Bill Willmott, Monthly Review June 1977).

The formation by the Vietnamese of the "Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation" was a response to these lies. It is the "Kampuchean National United Front for National Salvation" lead by dissatisfied Kampucheans who went to Vietnam before the end of the war, that is the puppet regime placed in power by the Vietnamese.