‘Pol Pot plan to exterminate’

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 9

‘Pol Pot plan to exterminate’

NZPA-Reuter Bangkok A witness at the trial in absentia of the toppled Kampuchean leaders, Pol Pot and leng Sary, has accused their Khmer Rouge Government of planning to wipe out all the country’s ethnic minorities except the Chinese, Radio Phnom Penh has said. It said Mr Kan Morn, who was not identified further, had presented to the court a 'report he had written after visiting several provinces to in’ estigate the fate of the Thai, Vietnameae, Laotian, Chinese, and hill-tribe minorities. He concluded that, with the exception of the Chinese the Khmer Rouge Government had planned to kill all those minority' peoples, it said.

One of the charges brought against Mr Pol Pot and Mr leng Sary by the new Vietnamese-backed Administration accuses them

of causing thousands of (deaths when they moved [urban populations into the [country to begi" their ultraradical, agriculture-based revolution.

Other witnesses at the trial, which will move into its third day today, described massacres of surrendered soldiers, summary executions, and torture.

Mr Pol Pot and Mr leng Sary are charged with responsibility for the deaths of some three million people while they were in power. They are also accused of seeking to eliminate Kampuchean culture, and of destroying the country’s economy.

Another witness told the court, according to Hanoi radio, that he had seen about 2500 soldiers of the Lon Nol regime massacred after they had surrendered.

Lon Nol was overthrown by Mr Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge after a bloody fiveyear war.