Abstract
Between the beginning of January 1976 and the end of March 1977, the new Cambodian regime continued to consolidate its power and eliminate its perceived enemies, albeit increasingly from within its own ranks. The regime’s paranoia, fuelled by ideology and historical animosity, also caused relations between Cambodia and its neighbours to remain strained. Nevertheless, interstate tensions were generally played down by all sides during this period. The divisions that would later determine Western and international responses to events in Cambodia were not yet so sharply drawn at this time. For this reason, Western governments could consider the human rights situation in Cambodia separate from the larger geopolitical interests which would be of primary importance soon after. As Western journalists and Cambodia watchers attempted to peer through the “Khmer curtain”, a certain consensus slowly began to emerge regarding allegations of human rights abuses in Cambodia. This increase in attention to human rights began to exert pressure on Western governments, which started to consider preliminary responses.
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Notes
Phnom Penh Domestic Service, 5 January 1976, FBIS, 6 January 1976, pp. h2–h5.
Phnom Penh Domestic Service, 5 January 1976, FBIS, 6 January 1976, pp. h3, h5.
Phnom Penh Domestic Service, 4 April 1976, FBIS, 5 April 1976, p. h1. By this time Sihanouk had been forced to step down as head of state.
Vickery, Cambodia, pp. 82–138; Michael Vickery, “Democratic Kampuchea — Themes and Variations”, in David P. Chandler, Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua (eds), Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea: Eight Essays (New Haven, CT, 1983), pp. 11–131
Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua (eds), Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea, 1942–1981 (London, 1982), pp. 295–6; Burgler, Eyes, pp. 90–3; Chandler, Tragedy, pp. 265–72. Since 1979 the debate over conditions in the Eastern zone during the DK period has taken on political overtones. The regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979 was headed by former DK officers from that zone who disassociated themselves with the policies of the centre and their disastrous results.
Washington Post, 2 September 1978, cited in King C. Chen, China’s War with Vietnam, 1979 (Stanford, CA, 1987), p. 33.
William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy (New York, 1984), p. 59.
Bangkok Post, 30 January 1977, 1 March 1977; see also Information Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Royal Thai Government, The Massacre on 28 January 1977: Relations Between Thailand and Democratic Kampuchea (Bangkok, 1977).
See Douglas Allen, “Scholars of Asia and the War”, in Douglas Allen and Ngô Vinh Long (eds), Coming to Terms: Indo-China, the United States, and the War (Boulder, 1991), p. 212.
Laura Summers, “Defining the Revolutionary State in Cambodia”, Current History (December 1976), p. 217. See also Ben Kiernan, “Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia”, Australian Outlook, vol. 30, no. 3, (December 1976), p. 371.
Bangkok Post, 19 April 1976; Washington Post, 8 April 1976, 9 April 1976; Kieman, “Cambodia and News”, p. 8; US/Indo-China Report, vol. 1, no. 7, (July 1976).
Jerome Steinbach and Jocelyn Steinbach, Phnom Penh Libérée (Paris, 1976), passim.
“The Early Stages of Liberation: Peang Sophi”, in Kiernan and Boua, Peasants, pp. 318–29; see also Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indo-China and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology (Nottingham, 1979), p. 211.
George Hildebrand and Gareth Porter, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution (London, 1976), pp. 47–9, 56.
Gareth Porter, “The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam’s Land Reform Reconsidered”, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 5, no. 2, (September 1973), pp. 2–15.
François Ponchaud, Cambodia Year Zero, Nancy Allen, trans. (London, 1978), p. 38. These citations are taken from the 1978 British version, which is essentially the same as the French version.
Bernard Hamel, De Sang et de Larmes: La Grande Déportation du Cambodge (Paris, 1977), passim.
John Barron and Anthony Paul, Peace with Horror: The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia (London, 1977).
Michael Vickery, “Democratic Kampuchea — CIA to the Rescue”, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 14, no. 4, 1982, pp. 52–3. See also St Louis Post-Dispatch, 25 April 1976.
Edward S. Herman, Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities (Philadelphia, 1970)
Noam Chomsky, Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda (Andover, 1973).
American Embassy, Bangkok to Department of State, Department of State Airgram, 26 October 1976, FOIA no. 10023, released 24 June 1992. See also Kenneth Quinn, “Cambodia 1976: Internal Consolidation and External Expansion”, Asian Survey, vol. XVII, no. 1, (January 1977), pp. 43–54.
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© 1996 Jamie Frederic Metzl
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Metzl, J.F. (1996). January 1976–March 1977. In: Western Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975–80. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24717-2_3
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