Testimony of Veteran Foreign Correspondent Captivates Hearing

Elizabeth Becker, an ‘old school’ journalist and author who believes in going to original sources for the truth of what she covers, was the star witness at the ECCC today.

President Nil Nonn graciously thanked Ms. Becker for attending, acknowledging that her day in court had been postponed on several occasions. In expressing his appreciation, he made a particular point that her testimony was “crucial for the trial and for the Cambodian people.”

The judge then asked her to review her academic qualifications, her experience as a journalist and how she had come by her knowledge base of Cambodia during the period 1972 to 1978.

Born in 1947, Elizabeth Becker is a national of the United States of America, presently residing in Washington, D.C. She has a degree in South Asia Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she also went to graduate school. She took language training in Agra, India.

(She said she used to speak Khmer but “years ago.” She was never able to read it). She was a journalist for 40 years, mostly with the Washington Post. From 1972-1974, she worked for the Far East Economic Review and the Washington Post. She did stints as Senior Foreign Editor with National Public Radio and as a correspondent with the New York Times. The author of two books about Cambodia (When the War Was Over and Pophana) began her career covering the war in Cambodia from 1972-1974. She interviewed Cambodian “common people,” foreign diplomats and leadership figures such as Ieng Sary, Pol Pot and Ieng Thirith. She worked with other researchers such as Ben Kiernan, Stephen Heder, David Hawk, David Chandler and various UN personnel regarding issues along the border. Ms. Becker said her collaborators had included “a dozen people…we all cooperated because it was such a difficult story.” In December, 1978, she was invited, along with another journalist, to confirm for herself the ‘progress’ the government had claimed to be making. Ms. Becker made several trips back to Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion.

Judge Lavergne outlined that the framework of the bench’s questions would be about her 1978 trip to Cambodia with Richard Dudman and Malcolm Caldwell; her interviews with leaders such as Ieng Sary and Pol Pot; what the refugees had told her; and what she had learned about the allegations of mass violations of human rights. He began with asking her what leaders she had interviewed, where and when.

Ms. Becker said it was her habit to attend the United Nations General Assembly (held usually in October) of every year. She would go to the press conferences and receptions to talk with Ieng Sary and Kiet Chhun. The topic of her first interview (in September, 1975), with Ieng Sary was about the US ship that had been captured offshore in the Gulf of Thailand, its crew released after a US bombing. In October, 1976, Ms. Becker said that Ieng Sary had been “less forthcoming” in explaining what had happened to the missing intellectuals of Cambodia. In October, 1977, they had discussed Cambodia’s relationship with Vietnam.

By 1978, Ms. Becker said “the conversations changed” as “the problems with Vietnam became more prominent.” The problem “had elevated” and was now part of the Sino-Soviet split. Not only Vietnam but Democratic Kampuchea was concerned about it. There were complaints of massive violation of human rights with the USA submitting one of the largest files. This was a parallel concern as threat of war built up between Democratic Kampuchea and Vietnam.

Ms. Becker did not know under what circumstances representation at the UN was transferred from Lon Nol to GRUNK or from GRUNK to Democratic Kampuchea. She knew that Prince Sihanouk (whom she first met at the UN in 1979) had tried to remove GRUNK but that the attempt had failed. The new foreign minister was Ieng Sary. She does not remember who represented GRUNK. These were the only times when Ms. Becker met with officials of Democratic Kampuchea in New York.

Ms. Becker remembered meeting with Heng Sa Khum, a Cambodian living in the USA, later listed as a S-21 prisoner, in Washington, but he was not with an official delegation. There had been a big concern at the time, a “red flag,” about the total lack of communications between Cambodians who had returned to Cambodia and their families left in the US.

In 1978, Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the United Nations, declined (on the advice of Russia) to accept an invitation to visit Cambodia. Alternatively, Ms. Becker, Malcolm Caldwell and Richard Dudman were invited. Ms. Becker “presumed” they had received the invitation because the government wanted foreign witnesses who were not just delegations and, “perhaps, to postpone an imminent invasion” (from Vietnam). She was concerned about the latter but a diplomat had told her that, at worst, Vietnam would not go past the eastern bank of the Mekong if they did invade. He called it “a piece of cake” and told her to “enjoy” herself. She had met Richard Dudman when he had called on the Washington Post to try and convince them to use his articles rather than hers. Malcolm Caldwell she met in Beijing en route. The only way into Cambodia at the time was through Beijing.

Prior to her trip, Ms. Becker had researched the experiences of others who had visited Democratic Kampuchea and knew what their hosts’ standard scheduling would be, who would program what they would see. She had intended to go beyond the set agenda. She felt that the only other reporters who had done this were a group from Yugoslavia who had written an “eye opening report” from which “reading between the lines, (she) could ‘hear’ what was going on.” They had looked critically and seen such things as child labour in factories. She found that the Japanese, French, Danish and Belgian delegations among others were “friendly” and simply “had reflected what they were told.”

Judge Lavergne asked Ms. Becker what she knew about the other delegations. She had met Daniel Bernstein but not until the 1980’s when he “had stopped being a Marxist-Leninist and was writing financial reports.” She felt it was a sign that Democratic Kampuchea was opening up when they allowed Bernstein’s US delegation to visit. The Judge brought up that Bernstein had claimed that there was no forced labour or genocide, and that he had been impressed with the strong will of the people to build Cambodia. On the other side, Judge Lavergne said Gunnar Bergstrom wrote a “remarkably different report” in Living Hell: Democratic Kampuchea. Ms. Becker said that more propaganda followed and noted that a Swedish group “repeated propaganda in complete opposite to what the refugees were saying.” The Vietnamese had invited three journalists to go to the front line, though.

Ms. Becker was asked by the court to fill in the context vis-a-vis the consequences of the Vietnamese war. The judge wanted to know how the US public reacted to what was going on in Cambodia. She pointed out that the Vietnamese war was the first American military defeat. The public was concerned with the Vietnamese refugees and there was some concern with the much smaller Cambodian refugee community but that “Cambodia wasn’t much on the radar except for official Washington.” The Sino-Soviet split was “of huge concern” to the Carter administration.

Vietnam had signed a Soviet Friendship Treaty; the US was leaning towards China. The latter presented a problem to the US because Democratic Kampuchea was China’s ally and the human rights violations in Cambodia were growing. The situation was so bad that the State Department bureau covering Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was called “the desk of lost causes.” Ms. Becker emphasized that there was “a universal repugnance to get involved in either country” and a push for mediation as a solution to the looming conflict. She remembered how Senator McGovern was ridiculed when he suggested US intervention to stop human rights violations because he had wanted the US out of Vietnam.

Judge Lavergne asked what the difference was between herself and Richard Dudman and Malcolm Caldwell. Ms. Becker said that she and Dudman were journalists who would ask critical questions whilst Caldwell was invited as a “friend,” someone who was supportive of the regime. As such, Caldwell was treated differently at times. For example, he would be transported in a different car.

Ms. Becker had been asked to inform her handlers which places she wanted to visit, topics she wanted to discuss and the people she wanted to meet, all of which she did in some detail to no avail. Sihanouk declined to be interviewed; all of the others were “unavailable.” (She was not told that two on her list, Nim and Yuon, were dead). She barely remembered Ne Khan but did recall Mut, cadres who were with the group at different intervals. Judge Lavergne identified Mut as His Excellency Kiet Chhun. Ms. Becker disagreed and thought she must have known a different Mut, that Kiet Chhun was not there.

The correspondent said that what little they were shown of the real Cambodia was rather like being under house arrest. They were always accompanied; they talked only through a translator. She had gone out alone on occasion but would be brought back and reprimanded. Eventually, they were locked in, every move controlled, seeing only what their handlers wanted them to see. She termed the “glimpses” rather like defining “what an elephant is if you can only touch the trunk or the tail.” Ms. Becker gave as an example that when they arrived they had been driven down Monivong and Norodom which were immaculate avenues. (They were only ever allowed to travel by car). When she escaped for a solo walk, she found that the side streets were filthy, filled with garbage, over-grown; the inside of the Le Royal Hotel was a mess although beautiful outside. She was eventually tracked down, bundled into a Mercedes by a comrade who ‘read her the riot act.’ But what, she said, “turned her stomach was what (she) didn’t see”: all the life had gone out of the streets. The streets were empty; there were only “regimented clumps of people.” And during her trip, she met none of the people she had known when she lived in Cambodia during 1973-1774.

Ms. Becker was quizzed about Thiounn Prasith who was one of the main handlers for the 1978 trip. She had first met him in New York. They had many disagreements during the 1978 tour. For example, when she arrived in Phnom Penh, she was given another copy of “the Black Paper” which she had first seen at the UN. This document laid out the reasoning of Democratic Kampuchea for saying that Vietnam was the aggressor in war and wanted to recreate the Indo-China federation. It “used very severe language and caused concerns over how quickly old allies had become enemies.” Prasith called her questions about the paper “bourgeois” and said she was “overly concerned with what happened to the people who had lived in Phnom Penh and not the peasantry.” She had “irritated him” by replying that “it would behoove him and the government to show that the stories about the Phnom Penh people, the “new people,” were not true.”

Her group met no one except Angkar’s people; they ate separately, were lodged separately and Prasith would always translate.“The objective was to show that everything was going well.” Prasith had been charged with giving the group the sanctioned history and putting it in context. He termed the abolishing of money and the mass evacuation of Phnom Penh as measures required by the devastating war. Prasith talked of “socialist struggles and revolution,” and pushed the theory that “if the party had not taken the radical measures, then Cambodia would have lost its independence and sovereignty.” When Judge Lavergne asked her if the measures were then taken “to avoid a Vietnamese invasion,” Ms. Becker thought to “the contrary.” Prasith had emphasized the threat of American bombing. She had argued with him that the US had stopped bombing in 1973 and that they were unlikely to restart a bombing campaign. Avoiding a Vietnamese invasion was not mentioned.

Ms. Becker met Prasith’s brother on visit to a training institute/factory (which she recognized as one shown in the Yugoslavian film). There she saw children standing on boxes working at machines. When she asked Prasith why he was avoiding his brother, she learned of the artificial separation between “Number 1’s,” the party people, and “Number 2’s,” the intellectuals.

The training the children received was supposed to be “revolutionary,” as in learning in six months what would be taught in four years at a French school. She was also taken to a military headquarters and then up to the frontline of the fighting in order to snap photographs proving that the regime was in full control of the country even though Pol Pot was in discussions about abandoning Phnom Penh at the time. Ms. Becker asked what had happened to captured Lon Nol soldiers and was told that “those who were capable had been reintegrated”. The Vietnamese officers “were eliminated.” A visit to a Potemkin-style cooperative she knew was a “friendly spot” on other delegations’ tours was also on the schedule. It “was remarkably handsome” compared to what she had seen along the roads they had travelled. She said the people were very “nervous” in the presence of her group. Next was a stop at a dam, an alternative to the visit to a cooperative in the northwest that she had requested. There they were introduced to a soldier who at one time had lived in Phnom Penh but whom Ms. Becker considered just a trusted cadre not an average ex-city resident whom she had asked to interview. Ms. Becker had really wanted to go to Battambang as it was the last refuge of the Khmer Republic and the place that refugees who had escaped had gone. She had tried to convince Prasith that it would be good to let them in there as they could disprove the stories of large evacuations from that area if they went. Prasith stopped talking to her for awhile over this conflict.

Ms. Becker identified a document from Ben Kiernan’s book, The Pol Pot Regime: Power and Genocide in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. It described “more or less” that the authorities were “happy with Malcolm Caldwell, least happy with (her).” She had been stopped several timesfrom taking photographs.

Judge Lavergne had Ms. Becker confirm her reporting of long ago that Ieng Sary had told her that, on the issue of human rights, there were no prisons. Justice was done by “people’s courts” in the provinces. He claimed that they could not prevent the massacres; that Vietnam was “a matter of life or death”; and that Vietnam’s “scheming included potential political assassinations.”

After lunch, Judge Lavergne questioned Ms. Becker if she had seen “anything peculiar” regarding pagodas or Buddhism. And Ms. Becker had, indeed. The pagodas were often full of grain. Thirith had told her that “it was a reactionary faith and the people had given it up.”

She saw no monks, no worship and “no ability to worship.”

Family relationships had also suffered. Children then lived in “children’s units,” teenagers in “children’s brigades.” Married couples only co-habited infrequently and lived the rest of the time in unisex dormitories. The only family groupings left were in the older cooperatives.

“Working was their major resource.” Ms. Becker had been told in interviews that the regime wanted to increase the population. She had pointed out to them that, to the contrary, rules such as conjugal visits only three days a month meant the theory was not practiced.

There was more propaganda including Kampuchea Krom telling Ms. Becker that they were starving in Vietnam so they “came to Cambodia for a better life.” Refugees related that they had fled because authorities in Vietnam were against capitalism. As she did not understand how they were going to make money in Cambodia as there was no money in Cambodia, she wanted to follow up on these statements but it was not allowed.

The group very much wanted to interview Pol Pot. They had handed in prepared questions but thought they had been denied the opportunity. On the last day of their visit, Ms. Becker and Mr. Dudman were driven in a plush Mercedes to the magnificent former mansion of the French Governor over on the riverside. In a reception hall, they found Pol Pot ensconced on “a throne-like chair.” But they were not allowed to question him. Instead, they were treated to a two-hour extemporaneous lecture on the impending war with Vietnam. It was Pol Pot’s thesis that Cambodia and NATO would stop Vietnam and its Warsaw Pact allies in Cambodia. Ms. Becker thought this was “bizarre,” and that “the biggest crisis in the world would threaten even more cold war problems.” When she and Dudman were returned to their temporary residence, the “friendly” Malcolm Caldwell was taken for a private interview. When Caldwell returned, he reported that he had actually had a discussion with Pol Pot. Caldwell was well known to not be pleased that Vietnam and Cambodia were fighting so they had discussed revolutionary economics instead.

Shortly after the journalists returned, they were given written answers to their prepared questions. These included: How was the government able to give statistics on births and deaths with so much assurance? Answer: The cooperatives regularly reported the figures and the Central Administration simply had to assemble them. On the court system, the “popular courts” held regular meetings for criticism and self-criticism; the Tribunals only ratified the will of the people. Most importantly, she wanted to know the organizational structure: Who was what?

She had taken a US government chart of the Standing Committee and the Party. Prasith did not want to answer but, tellingly, he did not say it was wrong, either. Her question about who was Vice-President of the Presidium was left unanswered.

Judge Lavergne kept his most dramatic question for the last. He asked Ms. Becker to review the circumstances of the last night of the tour when Malcolm Caldwell had been murdered. Ms. Becker said they had all gone to bed. Until she smelled cordite, she had not realized that she had been woken by gunshots. On leaving her room, she ran into a young man with a gun and a strange cap. She screamed “no” at him in Khmer and dashed back into her room and into the bathtub. She explained that “foreign correspondent survival techniques” held that the bathtub was the safest place in such circumstances. From her hiding place, she heard a lot of gunshots and then someone running away. It was quiet for several hours. She first thought it was an invasion; then that it was a coup; then an uprising; then she “just stopped thinking.” She heard something being dragged, doors opened and closed. A guard came into her room and told her to stay put, that everyone was fine. Eventually, Prasith came and told her that Dudman was fine but that Caldwell had been killed. She was to pack up and go, to get out of the house. She and Dudman were taken down the road and interviewed by “a high-ranking security-type.” Afterwards, they returned to the house in which they had been staying to attend a funeral ceremony for Caldwell which was led by Ieng Sary. The authorities blamed the Vietnamese for Caldwell’s death. Ms. Becker was “paralyzed with fright.” She asked for messages to be sent to both her newspaper and her family that she was all right but they were never sent. Prasith accompanied the reporters to Beijing where the US ambassador, Mr. Woodcock, “was fabulous.” She just “could not believe it had happened.” The day after she got home to the USA, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia.

 

Ms. Becker said that blaming the Vietnamese made no sense, although she added that “nothing about killing Malcolm Caldwell made sense.” Documents that Ben Kiernan sourced from Toul Sleng accused the stewards that looked after her group of the murder, and at least one person was executed for it at S-21. But internal documents do not blame Vietnam. They blame it on a CIA plot. Ms. Becker posits that the reporters were saved “to write the story.” Judge Lavergne contributed that the alleged plotters were among the last persons killed before the Vietnamese arrived.

National Co-Prosecutor Seng Leang began his session by asking Ms. Becker why she was chosen for the trip. The journalist felt that it was because she was known for writing about the war, because she kept asking the regime, and because she kept writing letters to their Beijing Embassy. Richard Dudman was probably chosen because he was a well-known Washington correspondent who had written articles critical of the Vietnam War and the war in Cambodia.

Ms. Becker spoke rudimentary Khmer at the time but not the others. They always depended on interpreters. They had wanted to take along their own interpreter, but that had not been allowed. She said she was lucky just to get her visa. Thiounn Prasith did all the interpreting. The reporters had the same purpose: to find out what was really going on in Cambodia, a closed-off society in self-isolation, with no communications. Ms. Becker said it was “a big question.” And, no, she did not feel she got to see what she had wanted to see due to the “house arrest” conditions. But she “saw enough to get an idea” of what was going on.

Mr. Seng wanted to know if the group saw a hospital or health center. They had not except for a small clinic in a medical factory and an old Chinese hospital Ms. Becker had “snuck into” on one of her escapes. Neither did she interview any victims of human rights violations. All the interviews were “arranged…nothing was by coincidence.”

Judge Lavergne requested Ms. Becker define some of the terms that had cropped up in her testimony. Firstly, to explain to the court the term “Dickensian waif” in connection with the child labour that she had seen at the factory. She painted a picture of how Charles Dickens’ stories of child labour during the Industrial Revolution had helped to change the labour laws so children went to school not to work. The judge was curious about the “free will” of the Cambodians she had interviewed. Ms. Becker said she saw lots of “low level cadres…but doubted that (they) interviewed any normal people. All were arranged.” They could not answer “of their own free will.” They were very guarded; mostly men, few women; “nothing relaxed, casual or interesting within the narrow band they had to ask questions.”Any deviations and they were cut off. She presumed that skinny children (“new people”) versus well-fed people at the granary (“trusted people”) represented the opposite ends of “a kind of caste system.” The jurist particularly wanted to know what a Potemkin village was. Ms. Becker explained that in the early Soviet Union, visitors were shown a model village, Potemkin, “a splendid model that a hide a grim reality.” She knew that senior leaders of the party led the cooperatives because in the 1980’s she had returned to Cambodia several times and had cross-checked party documents and done interviews working with two other researchers. She replied: “absolutely not” to the judge’s question of whether there was freedom to choose the leaders the people wanted.

Ms. Becker recounted that she had no reason to believe anything that the handlers were telling her and gave as an example, an “opportunity that had been prepared” for them: On a drive, peasants were spied working in the fields and singing revolutionary songs. Their escorts expressed surprise and stopped the car so they could take pictures. She said that “Prasith was the bureaucrat charged with lying to (them).” When Prasith lied, he got a bad twitch and dropped his head. A dead giveaway was that he would contradict himself. She felt she “never got a straight answer.” Prasith was told what image they were to see of Democratic Kampuchea. For example, they never were taken to a cooperative in the northwest as had been promised. She doubted that they ever intended to do so. There was a lot of wasted time, “long days on the highway for 30 minutes of reporting time.”

Ieng Sary was interviewed over dinner. He denied that there was a human rights problem. He asserted that justice was administered through the cooperatives, through the people. Ms. Becker never saw a people’s court while she was in Cambodia. When she asked how those who opposed the Khmer Rouge were treated, she was inevitably cut off. She was told there were no prisons. All human rights questions were cut off. She was told human rights were not a problem and she “was either bourgeois or a CIA agent” for asking such things.

Judge Lavergne wanted an explanation of a quote in her book about “a face that could not smile.” Ms. Becker described a woman who was so guarded that she would not allow any emotion to show in her face. Ms. Becker said that she otherwise always been able to form a rapport even with refugees but not with this woman.

Post the afternoon break, International Co-Prosecutor Koumjian explored the context behind the US-Vietnamese relations at the time of her visit. He inquired as to whether Ms. Becker had spoken to US officials after April, 1975, about their relations with Vietnam. She had and she had also spoken with American Veterans of the Vietnam War, Families of those Missing in Action, and Quaker peace groups. The first defeat of the US military in Vietnam, was still affecting US-Vietnam relations. Ms. Becker said it showed when President Ford pardoned the draft dodgers, and it showed with President Carter was trying to figure out if he could renew relations with Vietnam. No one wanted to talk about the defeat. The alliance of the Soviet Union and Vietnam had an effect on the Cold War. “There were problems with defeat on top of the US siding with China which became acute after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.” She opined that “the biggest thing” was Vietnam signing the Friendship Agreement with the Soviets. “That was the end of the US relationship with Vietnam.” She went on to say that there was initially a window during Carter’s “honeymoon period.” Vietnam wanted reparations but, as that “was not going to happen,” the US “pulled the plug” and the relationship “soured” to the point that there was no formal relationship between the two countries for decades. From 1975-79, there definitely was no military cooperation. Eventually, there was cooperation on searching for MIA’s.

Ms. Becker interviewed Ieng Thirith in 1980, in New York. She had expressed to the reporter that she had been so dismayed at seeing the homeless rice farmers living in their fields, all ill with malaria and diarrhoea, that she reported it to the Prime Minister. Interestingly, Pol Pot had also confirmed to Ms. Becker that he had received regular reports from the regions. And S-21 records show they sent reports to the center about such things as supplies needed. Ieng Thirith had explained to Ms. Becker that the children worked half a day and went to school half a day. But, during her 1978 visit, Ms. Becker did not see any children in schools. They were in the fields working. Thirith also claimed that the Vietnamese were behind the American bombing of Cambodia. She had told Ms. Becker that “the US worked by proxy against Cambodia.” Ms. Becker though this made no sense, that this was “irrational.” She had been in Cambodia in 1973. The Vietnam War was still raging. Ms. Becker said that, particularly in the last two years of Democratic Kampuchea, “officially Vietnam was behind all sorts of problems.”

The journalist defined the Principle of Democratic Kampuchea as a Communist idea. There was one centralized authority. Calling it “democratic” was a way to say it was “popular.” It was not “democratic” as in elected. It had top down decision making.

In her 1978, interview with Ieng Sary, Sary had told Ms. Becker that they “did what they could to avoid the killings.” Sary said “three or four top leaders discussed the reports on security and then they reported to the Standing Committee.” Pol Pt, Nuon Chea, Sol Pim and Son Sen comprised this rarified group. Son Sen was in charge of security and he relied on the regional reports. She added that the distinction between the police and the military “was not always clear.” Sary had complained that they had difficulty finding cadres to do the work. For example, he had asked 100 people to open the university and all said no. Ms. Becker had shown Sary a New Statesman article illustrated with documents from Toul Sleng including photographs and confessions. Sary verified the authenticity of documents to Ms. Becker and told her he had learned about it when he was in New York. He knew it was headquarters of security and that agents had been taken there. He had been told that agents were sent out to the cooperatives to be re-educated. Hu Nim’s confession was one of those printed in the article. Sary claimed he only knew that Hu Nim had been arrested for conspiracy. Ms. Becker clarified that Hu Nim (who headed the Ministry of Information) was one of the “three ghosts,” the other two being Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon. These intellectuals had been in Sihanouk’s government and in GRUNK. Khieu Samphan had been the titular head of GRUNK. Only Khieu Samphan lasted in Democratic Kampuchea. The others were killed.

Mr. Koumjian asked if Pol Pot was aware of what had happened? Ms. Becker said that Sary told her “maybe not the details, not that the family was killed also.” At first, the rule was that if three people accused someone, they were killed. By 1978, Pol Pot had changed this requirement to five accusers.

Ms. Becker still has the written answers to her questions to Pol Pot but not with her now. She would be willing to provide them to the court via the protocol of American journalists which dictates that she give them to a library and then the prosecutors could obtain them from the library. She does not know if Caldwell received answers to his questions.

The Co-Prosecutor inquired as to what was Malcolm Caldwell’s view of communist parties and revolutions. Ms. Becker said he was sympathetic, but not in a naive way. She called him a “sophisticated man.” He had been to North Korea and China, too. But, she felt he was so opposed to capitalism that it blinded him to the communist system. She could not recall Caldwell responding to any discussion about Pol Pot’s theory of a fight between the Warsaw Pact and NATO in Cambodia. All of her group made enquiries to various officials about what had happened to those Cambodians who had returned after April, 1975. She did not know if Caldwell specifically asked Pol Pot.

At 4:02 P.M. court adjourned.