Radical communism at staggering cost to Khmer

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34138, 27 April 1976, Page 9

Radical communism at staggering cost to Khmer

(.'• Z Press Assn—Copyright/ NEW YORK. Cambodia is creating the most radically communistic society in the world. Its population of eight million has been mobilised to dig irrigation canals or to cultivate rice. No-one gets paid in money. Cities and towns have been virtually abandoned and are likely to remain so.

The human cost of this transformation is staggering. Food shortages, non-existent medical care, and forced labour have caused about 250,000 deaths (750 a day) since the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists, came to power, according to estimates by diplomats, refugees. and international relief workers. Some estimates go higher. One recently in the •Time” magazine put the toll at 500,000 to 600,000.

On Saturday, Cambodia’s new President, Khieu Samphan. said in a radio address on the anniversary of the Khmer Rouge victory that the war which ended last April had cost a million Cambodian lives, and he blamed the deaths on United States imperialism and its lackeys. But, he said, the nation had since produced enough grain “to fundamentally solve the problem of our people's needs.” Kaj Bjork, the Swedish Ambassador to Peking, who was the first Westerner to tour Cambodia since the takeover, said that the country is under tight military control and is led by idealistic nationalist Marxists. Mr Bjork, with some Communist bloc and Third World diplomats, was invited to see damage in the northwestern town of Siem Reap that the Khmer Rouge claim was bombed by American aircraft on February 25. The United States denied the charge, saying it had withdrawn all its combat aircraft from South-East Asia. Sources in neighbouring Thailand say they suspect the town may have been attacked by anti-Communist guerrillas. Checkpoints In interviews with Westerners after his trip, Mr Bjork said that wherever he went he saw enormous numbers of young people with machine-guns or other guns. They were checking the streets of the capital, Phnom Penh, and numerous checkpoints in the countryside.

Information from various other sources gives this further picture : Cambodia now has no money, markets, telephones, telegraph system, shops, private land, or paid labour. The people, under the gaze of armed teenagers, work from dawn to dusk.

The Khmer Rouge are trying to build a giant agricultural State, based on water control, to bring selfsufficiency through three crops a year. Such a State, based on irrigation, existed 1000 years ago under the Khmer kingdom at Angkor Wat. Rations

Today the average food ration is a coffee cup full of rice a day, two cups in fertile areas'. Salt, sugar, meat, and fish are rationed by each commune’s revolutionary committee. People scavenge for roots, fruit, and edible insects, or trap rice paddy fish with wicker baskets. The diet lacks vitamins and protein. Neighbouring Laos is undergoing a mild food shortage while Thailand has ample food. The three Buddhist countries once had similar cultures but since the Communist victories they could not be more different. Only Thailand retains a king. Cambodia's Prince Norodcm Sihanouk resigned this month as the nominal Chief of State, and Khieu moved

up from deputy Prime; Minister. Cambodia has banned the practice of religion, suspended marriage, and, at least until Khieu's elevation, was run by seldom-seen leaders. Refugees The new Lao Government is attempting to build a puritan, self-sufficient Socialist State. It has close political ties to North Vietnam but Laotians are culturally akin to the Thais. Western experts in SouthEast Asia say Cambodia is ruled through intimidation. About 100 refugees a week slip into Thailand, others go to South Vietnam. The Thais, worried about the political impact of 60,000 Indo-Chinese refugees in their country, give the newcomers a cool reception. Although refugee accounts must be viewed with some scepticism, the conditions they relate are told by so many and in so much detail that a picture develops of life in Cambodia. Anti-Communist resistance forces are reported active in Indo-China but only in Cam-

bodia do they appear to be growing. A number of resistance groups, the largest being the Black Cobra, are based near the jungled Thai boarder. Lack of food, weapons, and medicine prevent rapid growth, sources say. About 70,000 relatively young Khmer Rouge control the population. Refugees say that only a handful of armed soldiers are in each village. Villagers do not overpower their guards because they were told if one soldier dies, everyone in the village will be killed, the refugee accounts say. Few people report actually seeing executions but many claim to have seen the results. Early on, the Khmer Rouge launched a campaign to eliminate former soldiers and civil servants of the defeated Lon Nol Government. Thousands of people are said to have disappeared. The Swedish ambassador, Mr Bjork said that he saw large groups of marching youths in Phnom Penh, each with a gun in one hand and a hoe in the other. “I got the strange impression the regime has the active support of this kind of person,” he said. Unlike Vietnam and Laos, where an attempt is made at re-education, short political meetings are held in Cambodia about one a week. People are urged to work harder and the United States is assailed.

Diseases Last year hunger, hungerrelated diseases, and exhaustion took a heavy death toll among children, the aged and sick, various sources say, but the opening of several Communist bloc embassies in Phnom Penh seems to indicate the leaders are becoming more confident and organised.

Under the economic planning of the French-educated Khieu, the Cambodians are creating an agrarian soci tv with small industry scattered in the countryside. His 1959 doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne in Paris contained the broad outline of Cambodia’s new society. Cities may not exist but small support centres may grow. Urbanisation, according to Khmer Rouge thinking, fosters feudalism and corruption.

Although some observers liken Cambodia to a Stalinist prison camp, others feel the eventual completion of irrigation projects will enable Cambodia to have a food surplus. In a year or so it is expected the country will be able to feed itself, giving the leaders confidence, and possibly leading to a relaxation of internal control and an opening of the country to Westerners.

When the Communists won the civil war in Cambodia on April 17, 1975, the nation cut itself off from the world, but information leaked out in various ways. MATT FRANJO LA. an Associated Press correspondent who was in Cambodia until its fall, brings together such information in this article.