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Salient. Victoria University Students' Association Newspaper. Vol 42 No. 1. February 26 1979

Kampuchea a Nation in Struggle

page 10

Kampuchea a Nation in Struggle

Once the victim of American imperialism, Vietnam has now developed its own imperialism.

On Christmas Day 1978 the Vietnamese leaders dispatched a dozen divisions of regular troops numbering more than 100,000 men, backed by hundreds of tanks, armoured cars, planes and artillery pieces, in a lightening thrust to overthrow the Kampuchean Government. The main towns and cities and much of the countryside was swiftly occupied. Everywhere they went the Vietnamese invaders sowed death and destruction, laying waste to large tracts of land and killing countless innocent Kampucheans.

To many progressive New Zealanders who have watched with growing alarm the escalation of the conflict in South East Asia, this must have seemed the final straw. Most are confused and distressed by what seems to be a betrayal of revolutionary principles by one side or the other, others have turned their minds away from the problems and, embittered, feel that their committment to liberal causes is at an end.

Map of NZ, Australia and Asia

There is an urgent need to explain the situation in South East Asia. Urgent, not only because of the subjective reaction to it, but because it is a harbinger of the future.

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.

Map of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos

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.

Why did it Happen

There are many reasons why Vietnam launched the unprovoked attack on Kampuchea, to adequately understand all the implications for the move the information that is presently available will have to be supplemented from sources inside Vietnam. What can be said is that the major motivation behind the assault came more from the ambitions of the Soviet Union than the Vietnamese

During the war against the American occupation of Vietnam, the Vietnamese people and leadership relied upon assistance from other countries off-set the enormous expenditure that the US was putting into its war effort. They turned, not unnaturally to the Soviet Union, Eastern Block countries, and the People's Republic of China. While the majority of the success of the Vietnamese rested in the hands of the Vietnamese leadership, this help was vital to the eventual victory.

It was during this time, in the final stages of the war, that the Soviet Union began to gain a marked ascendancy in the political forces around the central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party.

While other countries at the end of the war, were content to let the loans of ammunition and money lay for a while, the Soviet Union demanded their loans back in protein, the very thing that war ravaged Vietnam could least afford.

Combined with the drought and floods that struck Vietnam last year, this has led to an intolerable situation. It is significant that when the Vietnamese armywere crossing the border into Kampuchea they were confiscating the crops and the produce of the villages thay they ploughed through.

The Vietnamese Communist Party, has since its formation seen its role as being not only the ideological vanguard of Indochina, but also the territorial leaders. The Vietnamese Communist Party wishes to bring about the formation of an Indochinese Federation, which would be dominated by Vietnam.

The Soviet Ambition

This "Indochinese Federation" would fit very well into the plans of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev, in one of his books deals in some detail with the establishment of regional 'federations' similar to the Vietnamese vision, linked to the Soviet Union by treaties of "Friendship and Co-operation". Recently the Soviet Union signed such treaties with Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Vietnam.

In an attempt to rest control of Asia and encircle China, they have found the perfect ally in Vietnam. The ruthless advance into Kampuchea is part of a wider plan. By taking control of Kampuchea the Soviet Union would also control the important oil route into the Pacific.

Laos has already been transformed into a client state, it is said that of the central organ of the Laotin government, one third is Laotin, one third is Vietnamese and one third is Soviet Union. It no longer has independence in political action, and is reduced to parrotting the statements of both Vietnam and the Soviet Union. But Kampuchea, would not join such a federation. This forms another part of the reason why Vietnam launched the attack.

Having tied itself succesfully to the coat tails of the Soviet Union, not a hard job, as those in Ethiopia and Afganistan can testify, the Vietnamese, whatever their own motivations are, being used in a world wide plan to assure the Soviet Union of ascendancy in the world.

The Kampuchean people are fighting back against the invaders. The lessons that the Vietnamese themselves learned in their long war against America are being used against them. Falling back to what appears to be long prepared defensive positions, the leadership of the Kampuchean Communist Party are prepared for a long war of guerilla tactics and attrition. Commander Roeung of the Kampuchean Army said "Even with just a few people we can be very effective because everyone participates".

No matter how painful and distressing the turn about in thinking necessary to understand the present situation, it has to be undertaken, and from the new thinking must come positive action. Those who found it impossible to keep silent in face of the imperialism of America cannot afford to stand aside now that the Soviet Union accupies the centre stage. Kampuchea is a small nation, against immense odds it has fought for its independence and sovereignity, and it is still struggling. As Vietnam once" held hopes of oppressed peoples, Kampuchea hold these same hopes, the support from progressive forces is still vital for them to win.