Vietnam suspected of ‘colonising’ Kampuchea

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 29

Vietnam suspected of ‘colonising’ Kampuchea

By

Francis Deron,

of Agence France-Presse, through NZPA Bangkok Ten years after the United States’ defeat in Indo-China, battered Kampuchea is still at war, its economy is depressed, and there is no real sign of a solution to the crisis, analysts say. A significant settlement by Vietnamese civilians may also be in the offing. The anniversary of the Communist victory in Kampuchea has far less impact each year there than in neighbouring Vietnam. The pro-Vietnamese Government in Phnom Penh commemorates the event modestly, the celebrations concentrating on what Phnom Penh considers the “treason” committed by the Communist Khmer Rouge after their entry into the city on the morning of April 17, 1975. The Government installed on January 7, 1979, by the Vietnamese Army, chasing out the Khmer Rouge who had killed hundreds of thousands of their own countrymen, only partly controls the country. The 35,000-strong Kampuchean Army is still shaky, and so the regime relies mainly on a Vietnamese expeditionary force of be-

tween 150,000 and 170,000 men.

Most Indo-China-watchers in Bangkok think that the Government of the Communist Party chief, Heng Samrin, could not stand up to the resistance forces, comprising about 50,000 Khmer Rouge and other guerrillas, if the Vietnamese troops were to withdraw tomorrow. Officials in Phnom Penh have also let their concern about this be known. Since their bases on the Thai border were overrun in the last few months, the resistance forces have said they will strike back even harder in the interior of the country. Western diplomats in Bangkok say the Khmer Rouge already seem to be setting about doing so.

Phnom Penh lacks the manpower to run the country. The Communist Party has no more than 3000 members and in spite of its political watchfulness the Government can count on the co-operation only of a much-reduced section of the Kampuchean elite.

Most intellectuals and technicians who survived the radical upheavals under the Khmer Rouge are now in exile.

The ruined country the Government took over in

1979 needed a huge dose of foreign economic assistance, but the diplomatic isolation caused by the Vietnamese military presence prevented the necessary aid from materialising. Apart from Vietnam, only the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies have given aid to Kampuchea, and the amount provided by these countries is a closely guarded secret. One key element of this assistance is the training of new cadres, administrators and technicians, but that is a process that will take years. The darkest cloud on Kampuchea’s horizon is the stagnation of agricultural E reduction, which a recent United Nations evaluation described as worrying. The problem is far from being as bad as during the famine of 1979-80, the result of failure to maintain rice paddies during the Khmer Rouge years. Recent visitors to Phnom Penh said that the markets were well stocked with food, and also smuggled goods, mostly from Thailand. However, the country’s food supply has not escaped natural disasters.

Last year Phnom Penh appealed for international relief in view of shortages it thought likely to occur. The authorities said that last year’s floods and droughts had prevented production of rice on a third of the 1.3 million hectares given over to the crop.

The area cultivated was 2.5 million hectares in 1967, when Kampuchea was one of Asia’s principal rice exporters. As for the fishing industry, the annual catch is now hardly a quarter of what is was before the war.

Improvements in agriculture are lacking because the Government does not have the means to invest in them. The Kampuchean Government has been accused of exaggerating the seriousness of the food problem by inflating population estimates. According to Phnom Penh, the population should reach 7.4 million this year. Singapore, one of the South-East Asian nations opposed to Western aid to Kampuchea because it thinks such aid would prolong the Vietnamese presence there, estimates the population there as no more than five million.

This year Kampuchea also faces a large influx of Vietnamese civilians, who, the Khmer Rouge have said, are being sent to “colonise” the country. Onlookers have reported seeing convoys of military vehicles loaded with Vietnamese civilians in the Phnom Penh area recently. The civilians, it seemed, were coming to stay.

Resistance forces have put various figures, some as high as a million, on the number of new Vietnamese residents. Hanoi and Phnom Penh have formally denied the settlement accusations.