Free Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor Page A

sold out his country. His voice rose even higher as he warmed to his subject. ‘Such accusations by these ungrateful, ambitious, power-hungry, money-hungry cowards, who didn’t hesitate
to stab me in the back,’ Sihanouk shouted, ‘are unimportant! My personal indignation cannot be compared with the magnitude of my concern for the sad fate of our country!
    ‘These traitors have thrown the country – which had a good reputation as an island of peace – into the furnace of the Americans’ war! The freedom and solidarity of the
nation have been completely destroyed. Millions of our fellow countrymen will rise up to liquidate the reactionary group of Lon Nol and Sirik Matak and their American masters!’ he shouted.
‘And they will build, after their final victory, a new Cambodia with the power vested in the people’s hands!’
    Sihanouk announced he was setting up a government-in-exile:
    ‘I call on all my children, both military and civilian, who cannot stand to remain under the traitors’ power, and who are courageous and determined to liberate the fatherland, to
fight our enemy. If the children already have weapons, I will bring the ammunition and even new weapons to strengthen them. If the children have no weapons and want to undergo training, I will take
measures to help them leave for the military school, deep in the jungle to avoid enemy detection. For those children who are in Europe and wish to serve, come to Moscow or Peking to see me. Long
live Cambodia!’
    Sihanouk had always called the citizens of Cambodia his ‘children’. He had been saying it for so many years that I took it for granted. But the jargon he used now, like
‘reactionary’ and ‘liberate’, rang new and strange to my ears. Sihanouk had always leaned to the left. Now he had joined the left, and not just the powers of Moscow and
Peking. Far more remarkable, he had joined forces with his former enemies, the Cambodian communists. For years he had persecuted them relentlessly, throwing them in jail, having them tortured,
driving them out into the forests. He had shown them no mercy. He had given them their nickname, the ‘red Khmers’, or in French,
les Khmers Rouges.
    Like the coup itself, Sihanouk’s announcement was a sudden about-face and one that could bring no possible good to the country. For him to go over to the communists, even as a figurehead,
would give the Khmer Rouge instant credibility. If he said to go to the jungle and join the communists, many Cambodians would obey, particularly the rural people who had worshipped him. They would
do anything he asked. Perhaps even more than the coup itself, the date that Sihanouk joined his old enemies marked a turning point for Cambodia. It was the day when the country began its long,
ruinous slide into civil war.
    But there were at most a few thousand Khmer Rouge in early 1970. They were nowhere near Phnom Penh, and there weren’t enough of them to be a serious threat to the new Lon Nol regime. The
threat came from the North Vietnamese, whose soldiers were as tough as any in the world.
    Until the coup, the North Vietnamese had about forty thousand troops in Cambodia, mostly in the eastern part of the country, near the border. Usually they stayed away from the forces of the
Cambodian government, so as not to cause trouble. The overthrow and the brief American invasion along the border changed everything. Pushed back from their border sanctuaries by the Americans, the
North Vietnamese spread into territory where they had never been before. When they met units of the Phnom Penh government’s military, they attacked. And they almost always won. Within a few
months they controlled half the nation.
    Until the coup, Lon Nol had been Sihanouk’s commander-in-chief. Sam Kwil, the newspaper reporter, told me, ‘The only reason Lon Nol was promoted was that Sihanouk knew he was stupid.
Sihanouk didn’t see him as a rival. And it really is true that Lon Nol is