Vietnamese troops will test new Khmer Rouge leader

Press, 2 December 1985, Page 45

Vietnamese troops will test new Khmer Rouge leader

NZPA-Reuter Bangkok As the dry season approaches in Kampuchea, Vietnamese troops are expected to launch another big offensive against guerrillas fighting the Hanci-installed Phnom Penh Government This year the drive by the Vietnamese is expected to be a test of Son Sen. the new commander of the Khmer Rouge forces, strongest of the three guerrilla groups. The Khmer Rouge said Son Sen took over in September as head of its 30,000strong irregular army from Pol Pot, the man widely blamed for a nightmare of killing and deprivation in Kampuchea. However many diplomats in Bangkok say they believe the change is only cosmetic, an attempt to give the Khmer Rouge a more acceptable international image. According to the Pekingbacked Khmer Rouge, Son Sen was appointed to its top military post because Pol Pot had reached the mandatory retirement age of 60. An Asian diplomat, however, commented: “Communist leaders don’t retire. They’re either purged or rule" through puppets. In Pol Pot’s case there is no sign he has been purged.” Like most Khmer Rouge leaders, little is known of Son Sen and opinion about him is divided. The Thai

Foreign Minister, Siddhi Savetsila, describes him as “a very good man” who can help non-Communist Kampucheans rid their nation of Vietnamese occupation. However, Professor Ben Kiernan, professor of SouthEast Asian affairs at Monash University in Australia, wrote in a recent article that even if Pol Pot had retired, his replacement by Son Sen was “hardly grounds for confidence about Kampuchea’s future”. Son Sen has been described by supporters as moderate," patient and quiet, an assessment with which leaders of the non-Commun-ist factions allied with the Khmer Rouge in the guerrilla Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (C.G.D.K.) disagree. Although allies in name, the two non-Communist C.GDJC. groups admit there is hardly any co-operation with the Khmer Rouge. The only thing uniting them is a common hatred of the Vietnamese. The non-Communist groups say Son Sen, as Kampuchean Defence Minister, headed the State security apparatus. Son Sen’s background is hazy. An ethnic Khmer, he was born in southern Vietnam in 1930. Like Pol Pot, he studied in Paris in the early 19505, but lost his scholarship for rallying Kampuchean students against Prince Norodom Sihanouk who then ruled

Kampuchea and now heads . the CGDJL i Son Sen entered teaching after returning to Kampuchea and in 1963 was one of a group of 34 teachers i sacked or transferred for • being extreme Leftists. They were the core of the Communist movement that Sihanouk labelled “Khmer Rouge” (Red Khmers). Son Sen, along with Pol Pot and the future Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister, leng Sary, dropped out of sight He re-emerged in 1972 as Chief of the General Staff of the Kampuchean People’s Liberation Forces which fought against the rightist General Lon Not who had overthrown Sihanouk two years earlier. Lon Nol fled in 1975 as the guerrillas approached Phnom Penh. Son Sen became a member of the Communist Party Politburo i and Deputy Premier with responsibility for defence in the new Khmer Rouge Government Then began the Khmer Rouge revolution, involving ; mass deportations from towns, forced labour and executions of intellectuals. According to conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of people were killed or died of deprivation. During the Indochina war, the Khmer Rouge had been allies of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam, but less than three years after the Communist victories in

1975, historical and cultural divisions surfaced. The conflict came to a head in late 1978 when Vietnamese troops invaded Kampuchea and the Khmer Rouge Government was quickly overthown. The Khmer Rouge has carried on its fight against the Vietnamese from the countryside. Linked with it and with Sihanouk’s forces in the United Nations-recog-nised C.GD.K. is Son Sen's Khmer People’s National Liberation Front Last year Hanoi’s troops overran all of the main C.GDFL bases along Kampuchea’s border with Thailand, forcing the guerrillas to break into smaller groups and operate deeper in the interior of Kampuchea According to senior Thai military officers, Vietnam has now sent fresh troops and supplies to bolster its estimated 180,000 strong forces in Kampuchea in preparation for another push against the guerrillas as floods recede and muddy roads dry out Political and military analysts will watch the offensive in the dry season — usually from November to May — to see whether one leader has really replaced another in the shadowy world of the Khmer Rouge. “It’s hard to know what’s going on with Pol Pot but I think we have to be sceptical that Son Sen has ultimate military authority,” said a Western diplomat