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ing was over. “Bodies were turning up all over the place,” recalled one UN investigator. 70
In a report issued a few weeks later, the UN Centre for Human Rights documented 41
politically motivated executions following the coup. 71 Most of the victims were senior
Funcinpec military officers. Ho Sok, the head of Ranariddh's personal bodyguard unit,
was tortured and executed in the ministry grounds on July 7. The following day, General
Chao Sambath, whose home had been the scene of fierce fighting, was shot along with
Kroch Yoeum, another senior commander.
The CPP forces acted with calculated brutality. UN investigators found the victims
stripped of most of their clothes, handcuffed and blindfolded, with one or two bullets in
the head. Other prisoners were tortured until they confessed to having links to the Khmer
Rouge and other “charges.” Some of the worst tortures were carried out by members of
Brigade 911, an elite RCAF paratroop unit trained by the Indonesian special forces. Ac-
cording to the UN's report, around 33 Funcinpec officers were taken to the Brigade 911
headquarters outside Phnom Penh, where they were subject to harsh interrogations. “The
torture involved beatings with a belt, the wooden leg of a table, a wooden plank, kicking
with combat boots and the knees, punches in the face and the body and blows to the blade
of the upper part of the nose with the edge of the hand. … An iron vice was also used on
several detainees, to squeeze their fingers or hands until they responded satisfactorily.” 72
One Funcinpec general who escaped the CPP's dragnet was Nhek Bun Chhay, who
made for the old royalist strongholds in the west and established an “army of resistance.”
By August, Bun Chhay's forces were holed up at O'Smach on the Thai border, grimly
struggling to repel government forces.
The UN, most journalists, and international observers denounced the violence of July
5-6 as a coup d'état. From Bangkok, where the opposition had regrouped, Ranariddh lob-
bied the UN to withhold recognition of the new status quo in Cambodia. Back in Phnom
Penh, the CPP followed up its military offensive with a public relations blitz. On July 9 it
released a 27-page “White Paper,” likely prepared ahead of time, arguing that Ranariddh
had pursued a “strategy of provocation” by bringing Khmer Rouge soldiers into the city
and scheming to overthrow Hun Sen. In this context, the violent removal of Ranariddh
was a simple law enforcement operation, a pre-emptive assault undertaken in the interests
of national stability. 73 During a news conference, a triumphant Hun Sen compared Ranar-
iddh to the boxer Mike Tyson, who would resort to biting when he couldn't win: “He
failed, and his only choice was to flee and cry 'coup!'” 74 If there had really been a coup,
Hun Sen later said in a televised address, “the name Funcinpec would not exist and there
would be no other parties.” 75
Hun Sen was hardly a victim, of course. Eyewitnesses reported that his troops were on
the move at dawn on July 5 and had struck their Funcinpec targets with an efficiency and
coordination that suggested careful preparation. In the weeks prior to the clashes, Hun
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