(The following was published as a letter to the editor in the October 14 issue of the British Manchester Guardian Weekly. John Pilger's series of articles on famine-stricken Kampuchea has appeared in the London Daily Mirror, Boston Globe, and New York Post. Extensive excerpts from it were printed in last week's issue of Intercontinental Press/Inprecor.]
I am one of the few journalists to have travelled extensively in Cambodia for a long time, I realise that small nations are expendable under the rules of the game of power politics, and that official lying is part of the game.
However, to witness the enormity of the human tragedy in Cambodia and then to return to London and read of craven attempts, on both sides of the Atlantic, to deceive on the question of aid, is to be consumed by a sense of helplessness and anger.
The people of Cambodia, who are mostly starving children, are being allowed to die because Western governments, and especially the United States, do not wish to be seen giving even de facto recognition to the Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh. This was made clear at the United Nations a fortnight ago when America orchestrated the charade of support for a Chinese motion to continue recogni tion of the Pol Pot regime, which no longer exists and which was responsi ble for the deaths of more than two million people.
Britain, to its lasting shame, voted to support perhaps the most thorough mass murderers since Hitler. China, the principal backers of the monstrous Pol Pot, is of course the current trade and strategic darling of the West and must not be displeased.
Both the International Red Cross and UNICEF have bent to these politics, whose aim is, as the Guardian outlined (Leader [editorial], September 30), "to structure aid to Cambodia in such a way as to give minimum legitimacy to Heng Samrin and maximum help to Pol Pot." While its relief people have done virtually nothing, the public relations men of the International Red Cross have been hard at work. On September 27 the Guardian reported a Red Cross announcement that the "deadlock" over aid had been broken. This is untrue.
The Red Cross announcement (which embarassed its partner, UNICEF) was merely kite-flying; the Red Cross is putting only six officials into Phnom Penh and it remains as intransigent as ever on the political strings attached to its proposed relief "programme." The PR men in Geneva no doubt hoped to create the illusion that the International Red Cross was at last doing its job.
Since the Phnom Penh government appealed for specific quantities of food and drugs three months ago, the International Red Cross, by its own admigsion, has sent only 100 tons of relief: in effect, almost nothing.
All those who connive in the denial of relief to Cambodia, including those who write the lies in Foreign Office handouts about "political obstruction," when the obstruction is theirs, and those American syndicated columnists who knowingly publish State Department propaganda on the same baseless theme, will bear some of the responsibil. ity for the death by starvation and related diseases of at least a million people by Christmas.
The cries of fleshless children are unrelenting in Cambodia today; I have heard them; unfortunately, they cannot be heard in Geneva, Washington, and Whitehall [British Foreign Office]. John Pilger, Daily Mirror, London EC1.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk-who hopes to march back to power as a "third force" over the starved bodies of the Kampuchean people-also opposes sending aid to those living under Heng Samrin on the phony grounds that "it will all be stolen by the Vietnamese for their soldiers."
According to a dispatch from Peking in the October 12 New York Times, the Prince disclosed that he had sent a cablegram to Washington urging President Carter not to send relief supplies to the Heng Samrin government.
In an effort to clean up the image of the Pol Pot forces before world opinion, Khmer Rouge leader leng Sary-now living in New York as Pol Pot's representative to the United Nations-has admitted some crimes of the ousted regime.
According to the October 8 issue of the pro-Peking U.S. weekly the Call, he cited "cases where peasants in the cooperatives were told to work at night in order to meet production levels, without the leadership taking into account the need for sufficient rest and relaxation. He has also spoken of situations in which contradictions among the people were perceived as contradictions with the enemy, the result being that purges and executions replaced political solutions to problems."
Reporters who have visited enclaves controlled by the Khmer Rouge near the Thai border find that they haven't changed their spots.
Denis D. Gray wrote in a recent Associated Press dispatch that the Khmer
"makes no concessions to those Rouge under its control. ... despite a recent Pol Pot declaration promising many freedoms to those who join a united front."
Recent refugees from Pol Pot's zones.
Recent refugees from Pol Pot's zones, Gray reported, say that "the penalty for attempted escape was to be beaten to death with staves 'in order to save bullets.
Instead of providing massive food aid for Kampuchea, the U.S. imperialists and their allies are moving to escalate the bloodshed. The October 5 Far Eastern Economic Review, reporting an interview with Singapore's senior minister for foreign affairs, S. Dhanabalan, said that, in the view of the U.S.-dominated Association of Southeast Asian Nations, "some kind of peacekeeping force, such as the UN forces, may be necessary (in Kampuchea) to ensure law and order....
Dhanabalan, they said, agreed with "China's point of view" that "the only way to force Vietnam to talk ... is to keep the Pol Pot forces going. If the Vietnamese offensive against Pol Pot looks successful, China is not likely to stand idle and watch it happen."
Washington is certainly not standing idle. Massive U.S. arms shipments and U.S. "advisers" are pouring into Thailand. The Kriangsak military dictatorship is building up the Thai army for further action to help save the remnants of Pol Pot's murder gouade.
Pot's murder squads.
FEATURES
NICARAGUA
1035 USA 1010
GRENADA
NEW ZEALAND
NEWS ANALYSIS
DOCUMENTS
STATEMENT OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
1023 1033
SELECTIONS FROM THE LEFT
AROUND THE WORLD
DRAWINGS
Closing News Date: October 15, 1979
Castro Voices Demands of 'Immense Majority of Humanity'-by Steve Clark Fourth International Urges Worldwide
Campaign for Aid FSLN Strengthens Unions, Militias, Defense
Committees-by Fred Murphy "We Are Going to Have a Militia of 300,000"
1,000 Demonstrators Greet Castro in New York
-by David Frankel Carter Steps Up Threat in Caribbean
-by David Frankel Bishop Demands U.S. Withdrawal from
Caribbean-by Ernest Harsch General Strike Challenges Muldoon
Government-by Philip Ferguson Trotskyist Paper Well Received Feed the Starving Kampuchean People!
-by Fred Feldman Pilger: 'U.S., Britain Are Starving
Cambodia' Full Text of Castro's Speech at UN
Nicaragua-Revolution on the March Statement on Simón Bolivar Brigade
Assessments of Nonaligned Conference Rudolf Bahro Freed Augusto César Sandino-by Copain
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