Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
inefficiency that resulted, this traditional system played a vital role in entrenching the re-
gime's power.
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Given the regime's anti-Pol Pot stance, this reliance on recycled DK officials posed an
awkward contradiction. The PRK squared the circle by heaping responsibility for Khmer
Rouge atrocities onto “the reactionary Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique,” a code-phrase that ex-
onerated the ex-Khmer Rouge in the new government. The authorities also held out an
olive branch to potential defectors, promising that “reformed” Khmer Rouge would be
treated humanely and welcomed into government. The PRK and its Vietnamese backers
were focused squarely on winning the civil war and gaining diplomatic recognition. In the
shadow of these challenges, they were less concerned about the past crimes of its leader-
ship than about whether they were loyal to the new government.
Those who failed to toe the official line faced excommunication. At the end of 1981
Prime Minister Pen Sovan was purged from the leadership and arrested. During his short
time in power, he had grown uncomfortable with the PRK's smothering alliance with Vi-
etnam. Sovan has since claimed Le Duc Tho reneged on a promise to respect the new gov-
ernment's independence. “Vietnam didn't come here to liberate us,” he told me. “They
just came to take our land. I didn't want to be subordinate to Vietnam.” But unlike many
other PRK officials, Sovan lacked the protection of a local power-base. On December 2,
he was arrested, blindfolded, flown to Vietnam, and imprisoned at Dong Ha Prison out-
side Hanoi. There he was kept in a dark cell until January 1992, surviving on a daily ra-
tion of thin rice gruel and a single boiled egg. “Nobody could see me,” Sovan said. “There
was nothing at all. No sunlight, nothing, for eleven years.” Inside Cambodia the official
story was that Sovan had “left the ranks of the revolution.”
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Sovan's purge was an early signal that the old band of Hanoi revolutionaries could no
longer count on their backgrounds to get them ahead. The Fifth Party Congress of Octo-
ber 1985 marked a decisive turn against the Khmer Viet Minh. Four were dropped from
an expanded, 31-member Central Committee, leaving just five as full members, while
others were removed from key government posts, including the defense and planning
ministries. For the dwindling core of Hanoi veterans, the best hope was to lie low and
retain ceremonial positions in the party.
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One of the main beneficiaries of this development was Hun Sen. With the backing of the
Vietnamese, the rugged rebel had enjoyed a rapid rise through the PRK's tangled state
and party bureaucracy. He quickly stacked his ministry with young loyalists and, after
his appointment as deputy prime minister in 1981, extended his realm of influence into
the Council of Ministers, as the Cambodian cabinet was known. As foreign minister, Hun
Sen had come to represent the public face of the PRK, communicating the government's
positions in friendly foreign capitals and denouncing Western policy in bursts of colorful
