The Wages of Peace - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 61

“virus” spreading “seeds of war.” Chea Sim accused the opposition parties of wanting to
“kill their own citizens by leading them to the death pit of the genocidal regime.” 61
The CPP, backed by the full force of the SOC state apparatus, also waged an aggressive
campaign of intimidation. As Funcinpec and the BLDP opened their first party branches
in the provinces—some no more than shacks with a party sign erected outside—they
came under immediate attack by attack squads known as “A-Teams,” operating covertly
under the Ministry of National Security. Opposition activists, emboldened by the hope
of UNTAC protection, were subject to intimidation, violent threats, and assassination
attempts. Ninety-six activists from the two parties were suspected killed by SOC/CPP
death squads between November 1992 and January 1993; another 114 lost their lives
between March and May. 62 UNTAC, relying on the SOC to maintain a semblance of order
throughout the country, was powerless to stem the violence. Its Human Rights Compon-
ent worked tirelessly to document killings and other violent crimes, but lacked the power
to arrest and punish those responsible.
In the face of the onslaught, Funcinpec riffed on the theme of the civil war years, por-
traying itself as the party of Sihanouk and the monarchy. Though the use of the returned
monarch's image was banned during the election campaign—as head of the SNC, Si-
hanouk was technically a neutral figure—Ranariddh campaigned wearing a T-shirt with
Sihanouk's face, leaving people in little doubt as to who they were voting for. 63 He
also aped his father's political style, arriving in villages by helicopter accompanied by a
30-piece marching band, at least until his choppers were grounded by the SOC aviation
authorities. 64 The weaker BLDP, like its Lon Nol-era forebears, piled on the anti-Viet-
namese polemics. Its party propaganda was filled with conspiracy theories about Viet-
namese plans for “swallowing Khmer territory and committing genocide against the Kh-
mers.” One virulent November 1992 bulletin declared that “the yuon are an infectious
invading germ … poisonous to all living things, both plant and human.” 65
This toxic fantasy, shared to varying degrees by every faction bar the CPP, was to have
tragic results. Thousands of Vietnamese had migrated to Cambodia since 1992, drawn by
the opportunities of the UNTAC boom. Most took up menial jobs as construction workers
and prostitutes, but among the migrants were many whose families had fished on the Ton-
lé Sap lake for generations before being expelled or killed in the 1970s. Overall, the total
number of ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia probably remained lower than the pre-1975
population—one observer put it at 200,000 66 —but the PDK continued to claim the pres-
ence of “millions” of illegal migrants, including Vietnamese soldiers who had remained
behind in mufti in order to aid the CPP. For UNTAC, tasked with verifying the withdraw-
al of all “foreign forces”—which the Khmer Rouge took to mean all ethnic Vietnamese,
including civilians—these claims were impossible to refute. When UNTAC failed to turn
up hordes of phantom “yuon” colonialists, the Khmer Rouge again denounced it as an