Expert Testifies on Vietnamese Foreign Policy
Anonymous witness 2-TCW-1037 concluded his testimony on purges of the Northwest Zone as well as plans to topple the government. In the afternoon, expert Stephen Morris took his stance and gave information regarding Vietnamese ambitions to establish an Indochinese federation.
Ta Ham and other Cadres
International Assistant Prosecutor Andrew Boyle asked when he left the fishing unit. He replied that he left it in 1978. This was because the upper level “dismantled my unit”. There were four or five boats to send them to different sectors. Seven or eight families were told to live in Ta On Commune in Anlong Tradok village. It was in Sala Ta On. He observed that living conditions in the cooperatives became worse compared to when he was in the army. They only had gruel in the morning and evening and two or three cans of rice were given to ten people. “A large number of people” were sent to Koh Kos Prison for refashioning. At this point, Khieu Samphan Defense Counsel Anta Guissé interjected and said that the prison seemed to not relate to the Closing Order. Mr. Boyle replied that it related to the general policy of purges of Northwest Zone cadres. The objection was overruled. He said that it was not a prison, but a refashioning location for minor prisoners. Other prisoners were placed elsewhere, he had heard from other soldiers. He did not know where high-level cadres were sent to, but he had heard from Northwest Zone soldiers that they were sent to Phnom Penh.
Mr. Boyle then inquired about Ta Ham. The witness denied that Ta Ham was the chief of the zone of logistics and economics. He said Ta Ham was part of the staff office in charge of logistics. Ta Suom was in charge of it. He did not know Ta Ham’s full name. “He was linked to the cadres of the Zone, and it was allegedly said that he was linked to the KTB.” He was accused by the upper Angkar. He did not witness his arrest. Those who worked with Ta Ham told the witness that he was called for a study session. He estimated that this took place in 1977. Mr. Boyle showed several documents – including notes, telegrams and prisoner lists – that showed that Ta Ham, chief of economics and logistic, was arrested in 1977.[1] The witness said that he did not know the name.
Mr. Boyle said, since the Nuon Chea Defense Team had alleged that the Ta Ham that had testified in front of the Chamber was not the person they thought he was, that there seemed to be several Ta Hams.[2] Mr. Koppe rebutted by saying that there seemed to be evidence that they had mistaken him for another Ham.[3]
Mr. Boyle then inquired whether it was correct that Ta Kleng was the chief of the zone military. He replied that he was in the general military staff of Division 1 and 2 and that he did not know whether he was the chief. Those who were linked to the zone military were all accused of being traitors. Mr. Boyle read an excerpt of his interview in which he had said that he was probably sent to Phnom Penh and asked how he had this knowledge.[4] He replied that Ta Ham and Ta Kleng were arrested on different days. He replied that they were from different villages in the same commune and that he therefore did not know their full names.
Mr. Boyle pointed to an S-21 Prisoner List that showed a Lim Chuon alias Kleng.[5] The witness did not know this name. He then proceeded to ask about Ta Varn. The witness also did not know his original name and said that Ta Varn was in the “struggling force” long before the 1970s. He did not know when he was in charge of controlling Sector 2. The person was already a member of the sector committee in 1972. When he did not know when Ta Varn was arrested, Mr. Boyle referred to the S-21 Prisoner List, which indicated that he was arrested in June 1977.[6] He replied that he could not recall it, since he was already assigned to the Tonlé Sap area in 1977 and rarely came to Battambang Provincial Town. He heard from other people that Ta Varn concealed weapons illegally.[7] He did not know whether the accusations were true. He heard this from Chea Suom. He never met him.
Mr. Boyle read an excerpt of an interview, which indicated that the cadres shouted “Long Live the Party of Democratic Kampuchea” when they were arrested.[8] The witness had not heard of this. He once saw Ta Tith. He confirmed that he met Ruos Nhim at a study session in late 1975. He had known him prior to that already. There was another study session in March. The persons who gave the lectures included the committee, including Ta Sen, Ta Kleng and Ta Ren. The study session was about strengthening their revolutionary stance against capitalism and feudalism.
Plans for Rebellion
Mr. Boyle then asked whether they were accused of something when they were arrested or dispersed. He replied that his unit was supervised before Ta Suom’s arrest. They made accusations that the witness’s men stole fuel. They were accused of sabotaging the interests of the revolution. When Ta Suom had been arrested, they gathered up all people in the fishing unit and separated them. “In fact, there were no rebellions”. When they transported fuels in order to supply the boats, they already had a fuel shortage. “How come we dumped fuel into the river?” There were people from the Southwest Zone who came to his unit.[9] People who worked with him told him that they joined the unit, because the upper Angkar had sent them to help the unit. They never convened them on a meeting regarding instructions by the upper Angkar. Two or three of the economic zone were invited to discuss the work issue and they were told to assist one another and to instruct them. They convened a meeting in a small group in relation to work and food issues. Upon his first arrival at Sala Ta On, they told the villagers to work with other villagers. They had meetings, but not very often.[10] Mr. Boyle inquired about reasons of the arrests and wanted to know who told him about it.[11] He replied that the reasons for the arrests were that they were accused of being traitors. He heard this from the Southwest Zone people. He heard that the people from the Northwest were from the CIA or other agents. Around six or seven villagers remained living at Sala Ta On. He was concealed by villagers. If it had been revealed that he was Ta Suom’s deputy, “I would have no chance of coming here”, he said. If they had found this out, they would have refashioned and deprived him of food and water.
Khmer Sar and Alleged Plots
After the break, Mr. Boyle continued putting questions to the witness. He learned about this from people within his village and the commune. Some of the regiment and battalion ran away and created a group to steal rice from the people. A group of four to ten people was created to look for those people who had run away. Mr. Boyle asked what year the White Khmer movement was created.[12] He replied that it was created in 1978. To his knowledge, only a small number of people were involved. They possessed “only small weapons like AK.” He did not know the number of weapons they held. He did not know the leaders. When they came across the Vietnamese, “they threw away their weapons”. They were then reintegrated as civilians. At that time, he knew ethnic Vietnamese who had lived in his area since the old regime. There were five or six families in his area. They were not sent away in 1975, because the husbands were ethnic Khmer. Other Vietnamese families were sent away. Later, when the situation became “increasingly chaotic”, some people were arrested while others fled to the forest. This took place “probably in July or August” of 1975. People were assigned to collect people from the villages to send them back to Vietnam. Those who did not speak Khmer clearly were identified as ethnic Vietnamese. Some people were born in Cambodia and had lived there all their lives while others were born in Vietnam. Later on, they did not allow them to have relationships with Vietnamese. “They were all swept clean. They were arrested and taken away by boat and killed by the Tonlé Sap”. To his knowledge, this took place in late 1978. He then estimated that it took place perhaps in July of that year. He tried to hide one of them. They asked them whether any Vietnamese were living there. The soldiers said “no, we cannot spare them” and arrested them all. There was “no remarkable action” taken against the Cham compared to the Vietnamese. They were forced to eat pork. Some of them refused to eat pork and they were punished. “Some of them were killed, but I noticed that the majority of Cham people survived the regime. Only those who resisted, those who refused to do what instructed, were killed.”
With this, Mr. Boyle concluded his questioning and the floor was granted to the Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyers.
Arranged Marriages
National Civil Party Lead Co-Lawyer Pich Ang handed the floor to lawyer Lor Chunthy. Mr. Chunthy asked about marriages at the witness’s workplace. He replied that during the regime the marriage was organized differently than nowadays. “Some people loved each other, while others were forced to marry.” The witness himself was arranged to get married on 31 December 1975. Thirty couples were organized to get married on that day. “Some of them wanted to marry, while others did not even know [what] their spouse looked like.” They were required to hold each other’s hands and follow the instructions of Angkar. The weddings were organized by Ta Ham, Ta Kleng and Ta Suom, who also presided over the ceremony. When the Southwest Zone cadres arrived, they started to remove the leadership of the Northwest Zone. For his unit, they did not make any announcements. “They simply made the arrests.” They subsequently dispersed his unit and sent them to various locations.
There were two couples who had proposed to Angkar to get married. In some locations, Angkar forced the couples to get married. The couples would stay together for two or three days before being separated and sent to different worksites. If they wanted to see their spouses, they had to request permission. “Mostly the husbands wanted to go and visit the wives”, he said.
They did not have any personal property.
The floor was granted to Khieu Samphan Defense Counsel Anta Guissé. She asked whether he was still considered a soldier when he was reassigned to a trade unit. He replied that his unit only had four or five weapons, but that they were part of the zone army. He did not give back the weapons.
The mobile unit consisted of youths. They were gathered to carry earth to build a dam. The five or six people were not yet armed. It was alleged that Ta Varn was prepared to arm them. He did not receive further information from Ta Suom about this. As for the arrest of Northwest Zone cadres, he said that initially Northwest people arrested their own members.[13] They heard about the arrests later. When Southwest people arrived extensive arrests took place in early 1978. After Suom had been arrested, the Southwestern people had been removed from his fishing unit. Those who had been working with him concealed the fact that he had been a deputy. At the time, the structure of the leadership was not clear. Seven or eight families were sent away. The Southwest people came to “monitor and try to get the information of the situation, and afterwards they would make the reports.” All Vietnamese families had been arrested, since they could not conceal their identity. He was trying to conceal one mixed family, but he was not successful. First the father was arrested, and then the children and wives. One child survived. The soldier who arrested them was not from the Northwest. He did not know the person’s name. He came to the staff office, which belonged to the zone army that was in charge of Division 1 and 2. At this point, Ms. Guissé concluded her questioning. Trial Chamber President Nil Nonn thanked the witness and dismissed him, before adjourning the hearing for a lunch break.
Expert: Stephen Morris
Stephen Morris was born on January 10, 1949 and is Australian. He is a researcher, writer, and teacher in international politics and history. He received his doctorate in political science from Colombia University, and had been a research fellow at Harvard and Colombia and John’s Hopkins of advanced international studies. He had conducted an in-depth interview with Norodom Sihanouk, visited Cambodian guerilla groups in 1982 and had conducted research in the archives of the Russian Federation. He authored Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia and his PhD thesis was entitled The Origins of the Soviet-Vietnamese Allegiance that he had started in 1979 or 1980. He had visited Vietnam in 1970 and 1972 and received training in Soviet Studies at Columbia University, which was why he was interested in the Soviet-Vietnamese relationship. He said that the Vietnamese had alternated between pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet Unit and maintained a neutral relationship in the 1960s for a brief period of time. He therefore wanted to investigate the political culture and the causes of war. He obtained his PhD in 1987 and started his book in 1988. It was published in 1999 by the Stanford University Press. Next to his interview with Prince Norodom Sihanouk in Thailand in 1985, he had interviewed Ieng Sary in Western Cambodia in September 1983 in his assignment for CVS News of the US in Cambodia.
He used work from other researchers to provided background for his own work. He wanted to know why these two former allies came into a military conflict, in particular when it seemed not to be in the interest of either side to engage into war. The Cambodian communists came to regard the Vietnamese communists as their main enemy. He alleged that the Vietnamese communists never “fully understood” the situation in Cambodia and misunderstood who was in favor of them and who was not. The Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese communists “all misunderstood the situation.”
The floor was then granted to the Nuon Chea Defense Team. Mr. Koppe first explained how his questioning was structured:
- Sources and methodology
- Imperial ambitions of the Vietnamese and the Indochinese Federation
- Vietnamese behavior toward Cambodians during negotiations
- Vietnamese communist ideology and its relation to the soviet communist
- The way in which the imperial ambitions to establish a Indochinese federations were implemented in Democratic Kampuchea
- Democratic Kampuchea reactions to the Vietnamese attempts towards Democratic Kampuchea (paranoia, irrational behavior)
- Vietnamese foreign policy vs. China
- Nuon Chea
- Opinions towards Vietnam
- Miscellaneous subjects (diplomatic relations of Democratic Kampuchea with other countries; Vietnamese attempts to kidnap former King-Father Norodom Sihanouk)
Sources and methodology
He said that sources for his dissertation were used for his book, but that the focus was different. Mr. Koppe asked who Douglas Pike was and how Mr. Morris used his sources. He replied that he was a former state department official who specialized in Vietnam and who was in Vietnam during the war. He gathered a “large amount of documentary material” while being in service of the US military. He placed this into the archive of the University of Berkeley. Mr. Morris used this archives. Mr. Koppe asked why the US Congress asked Pike why they asked him to appear. He replied that “they were searching for every possible source of information available on the growing crisis between Indochina and Cambodia”. Mr. Koppe then asked about Professor William Duiker that the expert had used as a source for his book. Mr. Koppe then wanted to know whether it was “fair to say” that he was “not a fan” of Ben Kiernan, which Mr. Morris confirmed. Mr. Morris put forward that Kiernan a “politicized person” who had a “strong political agenda”. Kiernan, he said, had been in favor of Democratic Kampuchea and became critical only afterwards.
Mr. Morris said that half a million dollars and then one million dollars to the department that Kiernan led was a “tragic mistake” and that there had been other more qualified persons who were more objective and were not carrying a political agenda. Mr. Koppe asked about the review by David Chandler.[14] Mr. Morris replied that the review specified that there were some good things about the book and some “not so good things”, but that Chandler had not specified.
Truong Nhu Tang was a former senior figure in the National Liberation Front. He was a member of the Front Organisation and an intellectual. He became disillusioned with the Vietnamese communists and defected to France. He did not have notes anymore, since he did not always take some.
As for his research of the Soviet archives, he explained that Boris Yeltsin had pushed for investigations. Various scholarly organizations requested access as well. He went to Moscow by himself without knowing about this and was part of the program thanks to the help of an individual. “I was the only person that was involved in researching Vietnam and Cambodia.” He could only recall very few documents that he was denied access to. He did not have the Politbureau documents. Since he came to the project very late, he was granted only a small number of copy pages he was allowed to make. As for a document in which Le Duan said to the Soviet Ambassador that he was friends with Nuon Chea. He was assisted by a Russian in his research. The archives were open from late 1991 until April 1993; but reopened briefly and now closed for relocation; will reopen next year
Mr. Koppe quoted Mr. Morris’s thesis. “According to a major from the national army of Democratic Kampuchea who had defected to Thailand in September, Heng Samrin had attempted a coup against the government in Phnom Penh in previous April.”[15] Asked about this quote, the expert said that he could not remember this.
Contemporaneous Documents
He had not gone over contemporaneous Khmer documents, since he did not read or write Khmer. Neither had he gone over Chinese contemporaneous documents. “Almost everything I say finds its foundation in my book and my publications.”
“The whole concept of the Indo-Chinese Federation […] was a guiding impulse and motivating factor” for the Vietnamese behavior. The aim was to create one space with one ethnicity. He thought the Vietnamese originally had founded the Vietnamese Communist Party of January 1930. Ho Chi Minh’s decision was overruled by Comintern, however.
Mr. Koppe said that the “factor of Vietnamese imperialism” was deeply rooted in the Vietnamese elite.[16] “Most educated Vietnamese whom I know have a condescending view of the Cambodians,” he said. He explained that during the era of both Ho Chi Minh, there had been an imperialist notion.[17]
Mr. Koppe asked what Late King-Father Sihanouk’s views were on the Vietnamese ambitions toward Cambodia in the late 1960s and 1970s. Mr. Morris said he was “very pragmatic” and turned against the United States in the beginning of the 1960s and more strongly mid-1960s. Later, he became more critical and distant of the Vietnamese communist ambitions and tried to reconcile Cambodia with the United States. “I think he was someone who acted very rationally […] as to what was in the best interest of Cambodian independence.”[18] Mr. Koppe quoted an excerpt of speeches given by Sihanouk and wanted to know whether this was Sihanouk’s continuous position that the Vietnamese had imperial ambitions. He said that it seemed to him that this was his ambitions. Lon Nol had a “resentment toward the Vietnamese”, he said, but a “very unrealistic view of what Cambodia could do about it.” “I think Lon Nol was not a very rational man and was not a pragmatist like Late King Father.” He said he was not sufficiently an expert on answering questions about Lon Nol’s thinking.
He said that the Chinese developed a concern about the Vietnamese ambitions after the outbreak of the dispute. Thus, any territorial advances by Vietnam, he said, was seen critically by China, since this would be to the advantage of the Soviet Union. It seemed, Mr. Koppe said, that China was quite worried of Vietnam’s full mastery of Indochina.[19] Mr. Morris said that this oculd be one interpretation of Chinese behavior in Geneva.
Mr. Koppe asked whether he was aware of conversations between Ford and Kissinger in November 1975 with General Suharto in relation to Vietnamese ambitions. Mr. Morris said he was not familiar.
Mr. Koppe referred to Ambassador Cherbakow and asked what it was told to Soviet officials regarding Vietnamese ambitions to establish Indochina.[20] Mr. Koppe quoted part of the book, in which he had talked about Vietnamese ambitions. He replied that Le Xuan had said that talked about the conflict between the Vietnamese communists and the Democratic Kampuchea communists. Mr. Koppe then quoted a foreign ambassador to Vietnam, who had said that “the program of Vietnamese comrades in Indochina is to replace reactionary regimes in Saigon, Vientiane and Phnom Penh with progressive ones. Mr. Koppe asked whether this jogged his memory, which the expert confirmed. Mr. Koppe wanted to know whether the Soviet ambassadors were accurate in their descriptions. Mr. Morris said that he could not remember this particular quote. However, Soviet intelligence services had reported on conversations. He said that he did not doubt the veracity of what was said. Mr. Koppe asked about his interview with Truong Nhu Tang and wanted to know whether they discussed Indochina Federation ambitions with him. The expert replied that he could not recall discussing this with him. “He felt he was used by the communist party leadership to give more sense of popular support than existed,” he said. He could not recall the testimony Truong Nhu Tang gave in 1981 before the committee on foreign affairs in front of the US Congress. The expert could not remember.
He confirmed that Hanoi also supported a project of an Indochina Federation, as did Ho Chi Minh. He said that it was carried forth by two principal figures: Le Xuan and Le Duc Tho.
Mr. Koppe then wanted to know what Huang Wen Huan’s position was and what his ambitions were once he defected to China. Mr. Morris replied that he was a senior member of the Vietnamese communist party, but that he could not remember how he had quoted him in his book. He did agree that he had “unparalleled insight into workings of the Vietnamese communist party.” Lastly, Mr. Koppe asked whether he agreed with Douglas Pike’s assessment that the aspiration for an Indochinese federation was a proper strategic configuration.
The expert’s testimony will continue tomorrow, October 19, 2016, at 9 am.
[1] E3/8707, at 00052760 (KH); E3/100; 00784613 (EN); E3/10003; E3/1208.
[2] 2-TCW-1036.
[3] E3/9610, at answer 31.
[4] E3/9580, at answer 5.
[5] E3/10604.
[6] E3/10604, at 913.
[7] E3/10666, at 01330557, 01326340 (KH).
[8] E3/413, at 00357531 (KH), 00405456 (FR).
[9] E3/9580, at answer 36.
[10] E3/9580, at answer 37.
[11] E3/10666, at 01330560, 41 (EN), 01326341, 30 (KH).
[12] E3/9580, at answer 12.
[13] E3/5890, at answer 36.
[14] 01033287
[15] At 01335197.
[16] At 01001714.
[17] At 01335046.
[18] At 01335073.
[19] E3/2676, 00192311 (EN).
[20] 01001733.
Featured Image: Expert Stephen Morris (ECCC: Flickr).