Remembrance of 50 Years Ago Today

[PeterRS]

Most of us grew up with it. For some it had been a long drawn out ghastly struggle. For many it would result in even longer bitter memories of the death of colleagues and loved ones. For others it was a mere tangent to history in a part of the world we knew precious little about. For 3 million Vietnamese, they had died where they fought or lived, victims of an illegal war waged as we now know on the mere pretence of enemy action against a US warship.

Although the Vietnam War officially ended with a Peace Deal between Vietnam and the USA in January 1973, one party broke the deal. North Vietnam kept up its activities in the South until it fully united the country. Liberation Day was April 30 1975.

For Americans it had all started in 1954 with the humiliating defeat of the France colonial army at Điện Biên Phủ. The French general in charge committed suicide and France finally pulled out of its Indo-Chinese colonies quickly thereafter. President Truman had tried to stop the French from returning after WWII only to be met with a firm "Non!" by French leader General De Gaulle. De Gaulle then tried to persuade America to enter the war on its side. This time it was President Eisenhower who said "No". On April 27 he wrote to his good friend Edward ‘Swede’ Hazlett, “Any nation that intervenes in a civil war can scarcely expect to win unless the side in whose favor it intervenes possesses a high morale based upon a war purpose or cause in which it believes. The French have used weasel words in promising independence and through this one reason, as much as anything else, have suffered reverses that have been really inexcusable.”

Yet despite Eisenhower's reluctance, with the French finally out of South East Asia the spectre of the "domino theory" had started to raise its ugly head in the corridors of Washington. At the end of his administration in January 1961, Eisenhower’s thoughts about Vietnam being a "civil war" had evaporated and the "domino theory" had gained the upper hand. By this time the United States was providing unwavering support and power to the unstable, utterly corrupt and unpredictable anti-communist government of South Vietnam led by the President Ngô Đình Diệm. Virtually no-one in the USA voiced any criticism of the incompetence of the cigar-chomping Diệm. A staunch Catholic, he promoted Catholic values and permitted that Church exemptions in property acquisition. When in protest Buddhist monks started self-immolating the the streets, Diệm's wife virtually encouraged this by saying, "If Budhists want to have another barbecue, I will be gad to supply the gasoline!" 

By this time, though, he United States had begun its long effort to prop up the south by financing an increase in the South Vietnam army by over 150,000 troops. Following a coup on November 1 that year, Diệm was deposed. On the following day he was assassinated. The coup had been backed by America’s CIA, the first of the CIA’s many actions during the ensuing Vietnam War, although far from the first of such operations in the region - as the peoples of Laos were well aware.

What happened thereafter is less important for we now know so many of the facts. None have been more revealing than those written by Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of Defense and one of the primary architects of the Vietnam War. In 1995 he wrote an astonishing mea culpa in his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." He writes, " We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated on the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

[vinapu]

13 hours ago, PeterRS said:

- as the peoples of Laos were well aware.

 

too bad that American people weren't 

[PeterRS]

With its wars in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the United States murdered amost 5 million Asians and left generations and countries scarred for life. And all one Secretary of Defense can say is, "We were wrong, terribly wrong." Is that an apology? If so, it is a disgrace! What has the USA done to clear up the unexploded bombs it rained down over officially neutra Laos every 8 minutes of every single day for 9 whole years? The cost to the US Treasury? Around US$44 billion. Let's never forget: this was an illegal war, one kept secret from Congress and never approved by Congress. That war is still not taught in American schools! Is that because the war was against the law in the United States? Were any US officials held to account, court martialed, jailed? Not that I know of. And Laos still suffers today from the estimated 80 million unexploded US ordinance which stil today kills mostly children. A bomb that cost $3 to manufacture now costs $1,000 to locate and destroy.

The view in Washington is eerily similar to some other of its other secret wars (i.e. Cambodia): Sorry guys, we bombed the hell out of you with cluster-fuck bombs for 9 years and now you can clear up all the mess we left behind. From 1993 the US has contributed a paltry $200 million towards that clearance in Laos (set against the $44 billion that secret war cost, this is more than a disgrace - it is evil). Now Trump and his acolyte Musk have even halted this aid.

As of today, only 1 percent of the uneploded bombs have been cleared. And McNamara has the gall to write, "we acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation." War should never be undertaken on the basis of "thought". Had the USA power brokers had any real clue about South East Asia, had they any experts with real knowledge of the desires of nations to run their own affairs, the wars in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia would probably never have happened - certainly to the extent they did. As Washington continues to shirk from its responsibility for the weapons it rained over Laos, the USA has never been called to account for these disasters.

Yet quite a few US Lao vets are doing their thing in helping make amends. When one named Super realised the enormity of what the US had done, he claimed, "I am appalled. I was ashamed." At least that was more than McNamara had admitted.

https://whyy.org/segments/vietnam-veteran-reflects-on-cia-bombing-campaign-in-laos/

[vinapu]

I'd add that cold war politics contributed to another fuck-up w e in the West should be forever ashamed for. Even if Khmer  Rouge atrocities become well known and proven,  their government of so called Democratic Kampuchea kept UN seat for many years thanks to Western support. 

[PeterRS]

Let's also not forget that Hun Sen, the long time Prime Minister of Cambodia following the Vietnam invasion of 1979 had been a member of the Khmer Rouge fighting under its banner for 7 years. It was only in 1977 during internal purges in the Khmer Rouge leadership and long after the atrocites had resulted in the murder of well over a million of its own citizens that Hun Sen defected to the Vietnamese. After the success of the invasion 2 years later, he was appointed Foreign Minister, later becoming Prime Minister in 1985. Refusing to accept the result of the UN backed elections in 1993 in which the opposition party won the majorty of seats, the coalition he out together finally broke down after he orchestrated a coup in 1997. After rigged election followed rigged election he only resigned in 2023 - putting his son in his place. Through violence and corruption he gained considerable wealth and retained power.

I suppose that at least he brought the country a degree of stability after the ghastly Pol Pot years. In the year 2000, Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew described him as "utterly merciless and ruthless, and without humane feelings."

[vinapu]

18 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I suppose that at least he brought the country a degree of stability after the ghastly Pol Pot years. In the year 2000, Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew described him as "utterly merciless and ruthless, and without humane feelings."

that Hun Sen was stabilizing force can't be denied and it was not easy task  because foreign support for  Khmer  Rouge leftovers as well as  some support they retained in the countryside. It's hard to believe but Ta Mok's house  , one of chief KR butchers ,  is still preserved and can be viewed in Anlong Veng. The same with cremation site of Pot Pot.

In early 80-ties I attended lecture of diplomat and  scholar in the SE Asia history and politics.  Two things he told us about the source of KR sort of popularity I memorized  to this day - bone breaking work in he fields  people  chased out from the cities were forced to do,  for majority of rural population was what they did day after day anyways.  And second - that  beneficial side effect of mass murder and extermination was that finally peasants did not need to work to pay off debts their grandparents took to finance their own wedding.

World often marvels as why Cambodia did not bring to the justice those who subjected her population to such horrors from own hands. This may be,  in some part , reason. At end of day there was no justice for victims but at least peace and some form of prosperity for survivors. 

as for Lee, I'd be interested what Hun Sen had to say about him , just to keep things even handed

 

[PeterRS]

I arrived in Hong Kong just as the boat people were fleeing in large numbers from Vietnam and a few from Cambodia. From my apartment window I could see one of the first Vietnamese boats grounded off Lamma island to the west of Hong Kong. No one wanted to go near it until some aid agencies took relief supplies to these poor people who had suffered so much. From then on the Hong Kong government opened its doors to those fleeing these countries, initially in pretty awful refugee camps but later allowing the inhabitants out to work in the Hong Kong community. 

1979 was also the first year that the world became aware of the horrors that Pol Pot's government of now renamed Kampuchea had inflicted on its own people. A book I bought that year remains on my shelves and I still refer to it - William Shawcross' shocking and horrific "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia." For to the power brokers in Washington, Camdodia had been just that - a sideshow to the main war in Vietnam. Just as in Laos, authority from Congress had never been sought or approved, and so it was an illegal series of masive bombings in that blighted country. These so destablised the country and left a power vacuum that Pol Pot's small group and his growing numbers of executioners were quick to fill. 

Not that Cambodia had been a haven of peace before the American bombers destroyed a good part of it. It was a faction riven country with Prince Norodom Sihanouk as its titular head. What went on prior to the Pol Pot years (my guide always referred to them as such, never to the "war") is of less consquence in this thread; more, as @vinapu writes, it should be about what happened thereafter.

Under Sihanouk, Cambodia had been a member of the United Nations since 1955, two years after gaining independence from France. To become a member, a vote of two thirds of the General Assenbly is needed. As its legal government during the Pol Pot years, it retained membership. But being kicked out of a UN seat is no easy matter. It requires a vote of at least 9 out of the 15 members of the Security Council. Perhaps (and this is my guess) because its government following Pol Pot's regime was technically one obtained by an illegal incursion by the Vietnamese, Security Council voting never reached 9 against. In 1979 India did table a proposal that Cambodia's seat should remain vacant. This was voted down.Thus the stain on the United Nations that it retained the Khmer Rouge as the UN representative until 1989. No doubt Mao and China played a role in the machinations of the Security Council as it had backed the Khmer Rouge.

But we must remember the United Nations role in stabilising the country. On March 15 1992 it became the first body ever to become the ruler of a UN sovereign territory. From that date, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)  became the sovereign government of Cambodia. Its achievements during that time were more than significant. 46  UN countries contributed 22,000 personnel incuding 16,000 soldiers to demilitarise the various factions and set in motion the apparatus to enable the country to operate as a nation state. One group that refused to disarm was the Khmer Rouge. The UN also put constraints on the Vietnamese. Strangely perhaps, the ruler of the country during these next 18 months was a Japanese diplomat!

Cambodians as a whole were traditionally monarchists and nothing that had happened in their recent history changed that. So in the general election in 1993 with a 90% turnout a new government involving Hun Sen's party and the royalists formed a coalition. The Khmer Rouge had refusd to take part. It was the last free election the country experienced. in 1998 the royalists mounted a coup. They were defeated. Thereafter nothing was left to hinder power-grabbing Hun Sen from taking over 100%. The UN had vertainly failed to tackle corruption with the result that it has become rampant. In 2010 Hun Sen's government passed a law making whistleblowers illegal. He calls a free press "anarchy" and civil society "an agent iof US-backed change".

[PeterRS]

6 hours ago, vinapu said:

Two things he told us about the source of KR sort of popularity I memorized  to this day - bone breaking work in he fields  people  chased out from the cities were forced to do,  for majority of rural population was what they did day after day anyways.  And second - that  beneficial side effect of mass murder and extermination was that finally peasants did not need to work to pay off debts their grandparents took to finance their own wedding.

With all respect, I think those reasons are absolute nonsense! They represent propaganda of the worst kind by someone who knew little about what actually happened!

I thoroughly recommend you read the harrowing and horrific book "The Gate" by a French ethnologist Francois Bizot who was taken prisoner by the Khmer Rouge. Apart from describing the evils of the Khmer Rouge activities in the fields - would you consider peasants having to murder their babies by battering them against a tree an activity peasants did every day of the week? - he manages to befriend one of his KR captors, a man named Duch. He had been a teacher before joining the KR. Soon he became Chairman of the Tuol Sleng prison camp and was thus responsible for up to 20,000 murders of men, women and children. It is said that only 12 emerged from that prison alive. Mercifully he was unable to destroy the prison's records before fleeing from the advancing Vietnamese. Anyone visiting that former school can now see photos of many of those executed for no reason. Duch was the first member of the KR to be tried and sentenced to 30 years in jail, a term later extended. But he died in 2020.

John Le Carre wrote the briliant forward to "The Gate". This short book is indeed worthy of any Le Carre novel and a true picture of what really happened in the killing fields - not someone's guess.

Photos of the Tuol Sleng Prison formerly a school and now a museum to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge

[Raposa]

1 hour ago, PeterRS said:

Anyone visiting that former school can now see photos of many of those executed for no reason. Duch was the first member of the KR to be tried and sentenced to 30 years in jail, a term later extended. But he died in 2020.

What the museum is not so explicit about is the fact that the Tuol Sleng prison was created to purge the KR of enemies within the party itself. The majority of prisoners were KR cadres. This adds a moral complication to the pictures you see in the museum. It is not simply all completely innocent victims but guards and interrogators who found their roles reversed during one of the many purges of the angka. 

[vinapu]

21 hours ago, PeterRS said:

1979 was also the first year that the world became aware of the horrors that Pol Pot's government of now renamed Kampuchea had inflicted on its own people.

world was aware well before Vietnamese invasion, we just did not believe it's true and thought scare news are just blood soaked anecdotes.

[vinapu]

21 hours ago, PeterRS said:

With all respect, I think those reasons are absolute nonsense! They represent propaganda of the worst kind by someone who knew little about what actually happened!

 

 

It's what you think. I tend  to trust better people who  visited country soon after nightmare was over. Don't even try to pretend  you know better because inevitably question may follow ; " how come ? " . Those who know  moved on with their lives leaving brutal past behind it' that's at all possible. As Raposa pointed out ,  butchers become victims.

Murdering quarter of population takes a lot of both willing and forced to participants. Cambodia is country which chose to forget and move on, it's why most of perpetrators,  including Pol Pot himself,  died in their own beds. Never had own Nurnberg even if had plenty of own Auschvitzes and Dachaus. That seem to be nonsense  but helped to avoid spiral of revenge. 

Case of friendship of Bizot and Duch is one of those never explained mysteries. How they managed to survive in such paranoid regime, one being foreigner and another befriending him ?

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, vinapu said:

It's what you think. I tend  to trust better people who  visited country soon after nightmare was over. Don't even try to pretend  you know better because inevitably question may follow ; " how come ? " . . .

It is fact! It is not what I think! I am not sure if you read my post correctly. I did not think or pretend what I wrote! Bizot was a teacher in the country and became caught up in the Khmer Rouge monstrosity. He was actually there, he witnessed the events in the countryside as they happened. He was not someone who just happened to visit the country after the end of the KR regime, like someone you believe knows better! I trust completely what Bizot writes (as did a whole bunch of reviewers and other non-Cambodians like Bizot who eventually managed to escape from Cambodia during the KR evil only because they were not Cambodians.)

"Breathtaking memoir by a young French scholar who twice managed to escape from the clutches of the Khmer Rouge as the Cambodian genocide was unfolding."

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/francois-bizot/the-gate/

Have you read the book? Have you actually read any books about what the KR murderers got up to in the country? I certainly was not there and so my comments are not personal - they are quoting from the book, just one of several factual books on the Cambodian genocide that I have read. Was the academic you mention involved directly during the genocide? No! So he commented merely on hearsay after the event - hearsay that was perhaps fashionable with a certain group of intellectuals but which was totally and factually wrong.

This is from a CBS Report. Please read it.

Khmer Rouge guards killed babies by battering them against trees under an official policy to ensure the children of the brutal Cambodian regime's victims could never take revenge for their parents' deaths, the group's chief jailer testified Monday.

Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, said he was to blame for the brutal killing of infants as the commander of the Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh during the 1970s. As many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been tortured there before being sent to their deaths.

"I am criminally responsible for killing babies, young children and teenagers," Duch, 66, told a U.N.-assisted tribunal . . .

"The horrendous images of the babies being smashed against the trees, I didn't recognize it at first," said Duch. But he admitted that after also seeing photographic portraits of children who had been held at the facility, he recalled that such things had happened.

Duch said official Khmer Rouge policy dictated that the detained offspring of prisoners at S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng, must be killed to prevent retaliatory action.

"There is no gain to keep them, and they might take revenge on you," Duch said, reciting the policy that he said he learned from the regime's former defense minister, Son Sen . . .

Duch denied one of the grisly allegations in the prosecutor's indictment: that children of S-21 prisoners were taken from their parents and dropped from third-floor windows to break their necks. Duch told the tribunal that hurling children from windows would have panicked other prisoners, which would have run contrary to his orders. He said prisoners were supposed to be kept in the dark of their destiny to be killed.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/khmer-rouge-baby-killing-recalled-in-court/

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, vinapu said:

Murdering quarter of population takes a lot of both willing and forced to participants.

Also totally incorrect. The numbers of Khmer Rouge were tiny in comparison to the population of the country as a whole. Depending on reports between 1.5 and 3 milion Cambodians were killed. Not all by Khmer Rouge soldiers but also as a result of the frightful famines which resulted from their mad agricultural policies. The population of Cambodia in 1975 was approx, 6.5-7 million. So we can reasonably say that between one fifth and one third were murdered in the genocide. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the US reckoned the number of Khmer Rouge forces ranged from 30,000 to 70,000 in 1975. This tallies with the number of 60,000 quoted in William Shawcross superb and chilling book, "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia." An investigative reporter, Shawcross had visited Cambodia and talked to many survivors earlier than @vinapu's "expert".

Sorry, but the fact that approx. 60,000 -70,000 mad KR forces could commit such genocide gives the lie to there being "both willing and forced to" participants.

[vinapu]

10 hours ago, PeterRS said:

 Depending on reports between 1.5 and 3 milion Cambodians were killed.

...........

An investigative reporter, Shawcross had visited Cambodia and talked to many survivors earlier than @vinapu's "expert".

 

Your first statement confirms how little we know about  what was going on behind the sealed borders of  blood soaked paranoid regime.

I we don't know how many people died  to a margin of 1.5 million , what really we know?

As for Bizot  testimony , nobody questions it but we should remember , even if he survived inside of regime he was not in position to travel freely and  talk to whomever he wanted. He saw what he saw. Guys spending their days in Nana plaza no doubt are in Thailand but will they know how to get to Grand Palace ? 

.............

I don't see reason why your cited experts are experts and mine  are merely " experts " other than fragile ego seeking some boost . At least mine tried to answer question what was source of Khmer Rouge rise, hold on power and after their removal , still lingering semblance of popularity in countryside as Ta Mok house and Pol Pot creamation sites turned now into  kind of shrines certify.

I'm glad you share my lifelong interest in Cambodia but let me tell you , for reasons I rather not discuss in open forum  I have strong feeling I'm bit better positioned to understand whole debacle as at certain  time Cambodia's door were opened wider for some than the others. 

[PeterRS]

I'm sorry but I can find no post of yours which explains the source [!] of the Khmer Rouge. There is one about the "results" of the Khmer Years which were not accurate. If I missed something about the rise, I apologise. As for your comment

I suggest you need to read the Willliam Shawcross book. He makes all the history and facts perfectly clear. Until the US started bombing the hell out of Cambodia the Khmer Rouge was a small bunch of Marxist rebels. That illegal bombing led to massive insecurity in the country, created a political vacuum and directly led to the Khmer Rouge filling it.

To offer a more detailed account, no one would argue that Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge was a stable society. The departure of the French had left the country in a state of flux. On the one hand it offered a considerable number of the elite and middle-class Cambodians the opportunity to study in France where indirectly they learned about nationalism and modern society. On the other, within Cambodia there was virtually no formal education of any sort. When the French left there was precisely one school in the whole of the country!

This group that studied in France included Saloth Sar, a young man from a land-owning family later to become known as the butcher Pol Pot and other leaders of what first became the Communist Party of Cambodia which, as we know, they renamed Kampuchea. Khmer Rouge basically means red/communist Khmer. In addition to what the French hoped they would learn, as earlier with Mao and his Chinese colleagues as well as Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnamese colleagues, they were able to study the ideals of Marx and Lenin. By this time, the teachings of Mao were also being studied. These were what shaped Khmer Rouge philosophy in its early years.

After their return to Cambodia, the Cold War was under way. In 1953 the nation gained independence. The king abdicated to make way for his son, Prince Sihanouk. Although impressionable, he did much to modernise the country, especially Phnom Penh, and expand the provision of education. But the Prince was inflexible. He chose to spend more time and money on the cities, doing little for those in the countryside where the vast majority remained desperately poor. 

Then came the Vietnam War. Sihanouk's attempts to maintain neutrality led him to break off relations with the USA and permit the North Vietnamese to use a small part of Cambodia to establish bases and what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This infuriated the Americans. But Sihanouk switched sides again by re-establishing relations with the USA in early 1970. Within two months in a bloodless coup when Sihanouk was out of the country, he was deposed. Whether this occurred with CIA assistance remains open to question, but Lon Nol was installed as the pro-American de facto head of state of a military dictatorship. His rule was a disaster. Then came the illegal bombing campaign. Whereas the US was to drop approx. 180,000 tons of bombs on Japan during WWII, in one 7-month period in 1973 they dropped an estimated 250,000 tons on poor Cambodia. In total 2.7 million tons of bombs had rained down on 113,000 sites within the country in the previous four years. Not surprisingly, many land owners and farmers fled the countryside for what they assumed would be the safety of the capital city.

By this time a number of Cambodian rebel groups had formed in addition to the Khmer Rouge. All were allied against the Vietnamese. Equally, the people in the countryside were utterly terrified as a result of the bombing. So why did the Khmer Rouge gain the upper hand? For the very simple reason that Prince Sihanouk from his base in Beijing had not only himself joined the faction, in a radio broadcast he urged his fellow cpountrymen to support them.

The American bombing also drastically disrupted the amount of rice being cultivated. Within Phnom Penh food became more and more scarce. Having been welcomed to take over much of the countryside, the small number of Khmer rebels soon put their leadership's mad ideals into practice. They formed farming communities into communes which became increasingly inefficient. They blocked the shipment of rice to Phnom Penh. These mostly teenage 'solders' were then ordered to march on Phnom Penh to take over the government. This they succeeded in doing in April 1975, five days after Lon Nol had fled the city.

We know that thereafter the cities were emptied. In one short excerpt from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site, we know too that prior to the genocide -

The Khmer Rouge aimed to abolish the traditional family. Meals were often taken communally. Many children were separated from their parents and put into labor brigades that traveled from place to place to join in work projects. People were often forbidden to show the slightest affection, humor, or pity, and were encouraged to inform on each other . . . As Khmer Rouge rule lengthened, mismanagement created increasing shortages of food, drugs, and basic medical care. In a country that had killed off many of its doctors and took pride in extreme self-reliance, countless people succumbed to diseases that could have been easily cured. Hunger likely caused a bigger toll: By some estimates, between 500,000 and 1.5 million of the lives lost between 1975 and 1979 were due to Khmer Rouge–induced famine.

https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/cambodia/khmer-rouge-revolution

Finally, let's recall that Tuol Sleng was far from the only prison used by the Khmer Rouge. This map (taken from the above website) illustrates many of the almost 200 they operated around the country, in each torturing and executing their prisoners.  

All this only partly explains the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Sorry again @vinapu but I saw nothing about this in your previous post. If you know more than I, then please post it. I know I have been somewhat dismissive of your comments. I am perfectly happy if I have got anything wrong in my posts for these to be pointed out and criticised.

[PeterRS]

11 hours ago, vinapu said:

Your first statement confirms how little we know about  what was going on behind the sealed borders of  blood soaked paranoid regime.

I we don't know how many people died  to a margin of 1.5 million , what really we know?

As for Bizot  testimony , nobody questions it but we should remember , even if he survived inside of regime he was not in position to travel freely and  talk to whomever he wanted. He saw what he saw. Guys spending their days in Nana plaza no doubt are in Thailand but will they know how to get to Grand Palace ? 

Sadly yet another couple of non sequiturs! You query the margin of deaths variously quoted as between 1.5 and 3 million, suggesting that because an exact figure can not be given this inevitably results in my knowing litte about what went on in Cambodia. That, sir, is stretching belief to unbelievable ends. Can you find anywhere a definite figure of Cambodians murdered by the Khmer Rouge? Not even the Cambodians themselves know! Wikipedia suggests "up to 3 million." Britannica also claims "3 million". Facts assembled by Yale University suggest "1.7 million" but perceptively add, "Estimates of the number of people who perished under the Khmer Rouge vary tremendously."

https://factsanddetails.com/southeast-asia/Cambodia/sub5_2b/entry-2860.html

Under a headline UCLA demographer produces best estimate yet of Cambodia’s death toll under Pol Pot Meg Sullivan wrote in 2015, "The death toll in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was most likely between 1.2 million and 2.8 million"

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ucla-demographer-produces-best-estimate-yet-of-cambodias-death-toll-under-pol-pot

As for Bizot, you have no idea if he was or was not "in a position to travel freely and talk to whomever he wanted." Are you aware that he was married to a Cambodian woman and had a daughter Helene with her? You have not read the book (as far as I know). So you merely make a supposition. In fact he talked to a lot of Cambodians about the Khmer Rouge both before and after his capture.

[Tomtravel]

So what happened after the communists won the Vietnam war?  „Re-education camps“ were introduced, which followed the horrible Soviet GULAG and German concentration camp traditions; torture and death were common. Hundreds of thousands were arrested without a trial and sent to those camps, many died. 

And Vietnam today?

„Vietnam’s human rights record remains dire in virtually all areas. The ruling Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political power and allows no challenge to its leadership. Basic rights are severely restricted, including freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and religion. Rights activists and bloggers face police intimidation, harassment, restricted movement, arbitrary arrest, and detention. Farmers lose land to development projects without adequate compensation, and workers are not allowed to form independent unions. The police regularly use torture and beatings to extract confessions. The criminal justice system, including the judiciary, lacks independence. Political dissidents and civil society activists are frequently sentenced to long prison terms on bogus national security charges.“

[vinapu]

21 minutes ago, Tomtravel said:

 

And Vietnam today?

„Vietnam’s human rights record remains dire in virtually all areas. The ruling Communist Party maintains a monopoly on political power and allows no challenge to its leadership. Basic rights are severely restricted, including freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association, and religion. Rights activists and bloggers face police intimidation, harassment, restricted movement, arbitrary arrest, and detention. Farmers lose land to development projects without adequate compensation, and workers are not allowed to form independent unions. The police regularly use torture and beatings to extract confessions. The criminal justice system, including the judiciary, lacks independence. Political dissidents and civil society activists are frequently sentenced to long prison terms on bogus national security charges.“

not to defend those despicable practices but it needs to be said that sadly sounds like most of the world , or at least what we used to call  Third World. If those practices happen in countries we don't like we hear about them loudly , if those happen in countries we consider allies our free media chose to look other way. It was Roosevelt who said about Trujillo ' he is son of the bitch but OUR son of the  bitch".

There's certain country , I forgot the name,  where people were given sentences for speaking unfavourably  about ruler's dog

[Tomtravel]

Only stating the fact that after the horrible civil war, people were subject to the red terror which ended only fairly recently (at least in a large scale; Vietnam still has political prisoners).

At least 150 re-education prisons were built after Saigon fell.

One in three South Vietnamese families had a relative in a re-education camp.

These traumas were created after the war and the current Vietnam government, until today, has not condemned those practices.

[bkkmfj2648]

31 minutes ago, Tomtravel said:

One in three South Vietnamese families had a relative in a re-education camp.

Last year when I was visiting Da Nang, a local Vietnam guy told me that his entire family was put on a "black list" because his father had worked for the USA, when they were running military operations here in Da Nang. Consequently, none of them are allowed to have any government jobs.

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, Tomtravel said:

Only stating the fact that after the horrible civil war, people were subject to the red terror which ended only fairly recently (at least in a large scale; Vietnam still has political prisoners).

At least 150 re-education prisons were built after Saigon fell.

One in three South Vietnamese families had a relative in a re-education camp.

You can state it. But then you have to expand that statement and explain why you omit to mention the reason for their being established in the first place. Had the USA not created two separate countries and then, as it so often did, backed the one which was most insecure, the most rotten and the most corrupt, destablized it by assassinating its Prime Minister, then invaded much of the country and over years bombed the hell out of it with napalm and murdered around 3 million citizens mostly from the North, all before quickly evacuating all its forces when it lost, Vietnam might have been unified much more peacefully without the need for all that carnage, death and destruction. And without the need for the vast majority of the re-education camps. 

The fact is that both Roosevelt and Truman had failed to agree to Ho Chi Minh's written overtures to keep the French out of Vietnam and to permit a new Vietnam born of nationalism - not colonialism - to develop. Ho was no saint and after the strongly anti-colonial USA had actually given in to General De Gaulle's demands by allowing the French to return, some of the excesses of his regime in the north were certainy brutal. But he was forging a nation when fighting a guerrilla war against French invaders and colonists and then a separate country backed by the United States. 

Amd when you talk about political prisoners, you also omit to mention that the two countries with the most political prisoners in 2025 are Saudi Arabia and the United States! Vietnam does not even feature in the first 21 countries! What provide absolutely no sources for your comments?

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/political-prisoners-by-country

2 hours ago, Tomtravel said:

These traumas were created after the war and the current Vietnam government, until today, has not condemned those practices.

If you think the idea of re-education was born in Vietnam, you are sadly mistaken. And before you expect Vietnam, after all the  many years of death and destruction rained down in it by a major world power, to condemn or apologise for anything, you must first have the aggressor and invader - the United States - pay reparations both to the country and the families of the 3 million it murdered. The USA caused the war. Not the North Vietnamese. Has the USA paid reparations? Not one cent, as per this clip dated Aprl 29 2025 -

Nor will the world forget that after signing a peace treaty that promised reparations for the irreparable lingering harm caused by the U.S. government and its military, the U.S. reneged.

Not only does the U.S. continue to deny billions of dollars in reparations, but it had the unmitigated gall to demand that Vietnam pay the U.S. $140 million in war debts borrowed by the puppet regime of South Vietnam in exchange for normalizing trade relations.

https://iacenter.org/2025/05/04/u-s-still-owes-vietnam-reparations/

[Tomtravel]

Refering to International Action Center - Marxist-Leninist organization - in the context of Vietnam post?

I think you miss my point, Vietnam government is now souvereign in its decisions and how it treats his past (nothing to do with US, the victim is his own nation).

[Moses]

6 hours ago, Tomtravel said:

These traumas were created after the war and the current Vietnam government, until today, has not condemned those practices.

7 hours ago, vinapu said:

what we used to call  Third World

This is written with such pathos, as if Guantanamo Bay prison was not founded in 2002, as if every "democratic" president - Obama and Biden - did not promise to close it, as if there were no UN and Amnesty International reports on torture in the CIA, as if the prison does not exist today...

[Tomtravel]

I am not American, discussions about human rights, crimes of communism (everywhere), political prisoners (ca 170 in Vietnam) must be conducted irrespective of what is happening with US, Guantanamo, CIA. Otherwise we continue the colonialistic treatment and ignore the nations who suffer.

 

[Keithambrose]

43 minutes ago, Moses said:

This is written with such pathos, as if Guantanamo Bay prison was not founded in 2002, as if every "democratic" president - Obama and Biden - did not promise to close it, as if there were no UN and Amnesty International reports on torture in the CIA, as if the prison does not exist today...

I'm sur the the gulags are more comfortable