Reporters’ doubt over fate of Cambodia’s middle classes

Press, 28 December 1978, Page 6

Reporters’ doubt over fate of Cambodia’s middle classes

NZPA-Reuter New York; Two weeks of questions and observations has produced no clear evidence that the communist Government has exterminated Cambodia’s middle-class and upper-class city dwellers, one of the first two journalists to visit the country since the communist takeover writes in an article published yesterday. Richard Dudman, of the “St Louis Dispatch-Post,” re-1 turned with Elizabeth Beck-! er, of the “Washington! Post,” from Cambodia at the! week-end after they survived, a terrorist attack that ■ claimed the life of a British! professor, Malcolm Caldwell, •

the third member of their party. “In 11 of the country’s 19 provinces we sought an answer to the central question being asked by much of the outside world: what has happened to the middle and upper-class city dwellers since the communist takeover of April 17, 1975?” Dudman writes in his third article. “Repeated interrogation on this point produced no clear answer to the question of ‘auto-genocide,’ the term used by some critics for an alleged methodical execution of much of the entire class of former professionals, tradesmen, civil servants, !and soldiers,” he writes.

The journalists were able to interview only two former residents of Phnom Penh, in the presence of several Cambodian officials, one! of w’hom acted as inter-j preter, Dudman writes. One former resident said he had left the capital the day after “liberation,” having heard life was better, under the revolutionaries. The other, a soldier under the old Government, who was interviewed with his family, said he was “a fullyfledged member of the new society.” Both now worked I in agricultural co-oper-atives. i Otherwise, managers of co-operatives told the jourinalists that half their mem-

ibers had come from f capital, but were bringing i the harvest in the rice pad- • dies and thus unavailable for ] questioning, Dudman writes. •| The Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister (Mr I Teng Sary) told him that some killing could not be avoided, he writes. But considering the “com- . plicated situation” after the ■ war, the Communist Party iof Kampuchea (Cambodia) had “solved the problem in • a good condition” and had ' avoided “many more kill--1 ings,” the Deputy Prime ■ Minister said. “Today there are probably ' more chickens than people in Phnom Penh,” Dudmaif ■ writes.