A-t-on LU Chomsky (2) ? Chomsky aux prises avec le tissu de mensonges sur le Kampuchéa révolutionnaire

 

—     Noam Chomsky à François Ponchaud, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, October 19, 1977

 

Dear Father Ponchaud

 

 

I was very pleased to receive your interesting and informative letter, transmitted to me a few days ago by Robert Silvers.  I would have preferred to have the French original, to avoid possible errors in translation, but I will assume that the translation is indeed accurate.  Thank you also for sending me the article from Prachachat and the translation.  In fact, I had already received that article and a full translation from a Southeast Asian scholar at Cornell, where a number of people are working on the material covered in your book and similar matters.

 

I am sorry that you felt that some of my comments were misleading, and am happy for the additional background material supplied in your letter. I intend to be writing about these matters in considerably more detail, and will certainly want to take into account the new information you supplied. I will turn to your specific comments about our review and my personal letters to Mr. Silvers, which I understand that you have seen, but before doing so I would like to present some general background, both because I think it is important, and because it will enable you to understand better the grounds from which I am approaching these questions.

 

You emphasize in your letter the importance of the critical mind and the search for the truth.  With that I naturally agree.  You also express your hope that an era of freedom and happiness will come to the Khmer people, sentiments that one can only applaud.  Perhaps we can find common ground with these sentiments and commitments.

 

I would add, however, that still more is at stake.  Material concerning current affairs in Cambodia that appears in the United States, or France, has a rather special status, for obvious reasons. France and the United States are guilty of massive atrocities, which you know much better than I, of which the people of Indochina have been the victims.  Furthermore, this is not a matter of ancient history.  The United States remains a world­dominant power, despite its setback in Indochina. The institutional factors that have led to repeated counterrevolutionary intervention in many bloody and disgraceful episodes since World War II (indeed, long before) have not in the slightest degree been modified, though the ideology that has supported such intervention was bruised by the horrendous events in Indochina.  There are now substantial efforts underway to reconstitute a system of beliefs that will induce the population once again to support counterrevolutionary intervention.  Our article "Distortions at Fourth Hand", which you have read, was primarily concerned with this phenomenon, and both Herman and I have written extensively on it elsewhere.  What is believed in the United States (and to a lesser though not insignificant degree in France, or elsewhere in the industrial democracies) may prove to have considerable human consequences, for the people of Cambodia, as elsewhere.  Specifically, if the current machinations of the American propaganda system succeed in restoring the beliefs that served as the underpinning for intervention in Indochina and elsewhere, and even more, in transferring the moral onus of American aggression to its victims, then the basis will be firmly laid for new atrocities of the sort we have witnessed, not only in Indochina.

 

It does not follow from these facts that we should try to hide or obscure what is happening in Cambodia, Vietnam, or anywhere.  It does follow that we should be extremely scrupulous with regard to fact, and careful to consider the impact of what we write, say and do – or fail to do. At least that is the case if we are willing to accept normal standards : in particular, the principle that a person is responsible for the foreseeable human consequences of his acts. Specifically, such care and scrupulousness is of extraordinary importance if we are concerned, as you are, with the fate of the Khmer people.

 

Perhaps the point is obvious, but I would like to dwell on it for a moment, and I hope you will not mind if I explain why I feel that you are not doing what you should in this regard, given your concern, which I do not question, for the fate of the Khmer people.  Perhaps I can best explain my point with a concrete example, one of many that might be cited.  In your letter you mention that you "know for certain" that the interview in Famiglia Cristiana with Khieu Samphan never took place. That is a fact of quite considerable importance.  Naturally, it does not corne as a great surprise to me.  It never seemed plausible to me that Khieu Samphan should have chosen to give an interview to the journal of the Pauline Sisters (I have a copy of the journal, which exists in no library in the United States, though it is now widely quoted here in reference to this alleged interview).  In the book by Barron and Paul this interview is cited with great seriousness, and they draw from it the conclusion that Khieu Samphan was responsible for the murder of a million Cambodians. The inf erence is absurd, even on internal grounds -- that is, even if we were to assume that the interview took place and was accurately recorded.  But they make the inference and give it great weight.

 

To my knowledge, none of the reviews of their book (Lacouture, Leifer, etc.) raise any question about this -- or for that matter, about any of the easily documented falsehoods in their book. Furthermore, their conclusion has been widely quoted. To mention one case, which we noted in our article, Robert Moss of the Economist intelligence unit, in an article in the influential New York Times Magazine, claims that Khieu Samphan admitted that the policies of his government had resulted in the slaughter of a million people.  This "fact" Moss offers in support of his thesis that the West has no responsibility to the Third World but should look out for its own interests. An inquiry to Moss elicited the information that he was relying on the Barron Paul rendition of the "interview" -- which you now inform us, never took place, as you "know for certain."  To cite a still more significant example, in the hearings on "Human Rights in Cambodia" held before a Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives (May 3 1977), Representative Solarz repeatedly recommended that the U.S. consider initiating an « international police action » in Cambodia -- that is, an invasion of Cambodia -- to prevent human rights violation. I have no doubt that you are as appalled by this proposal as were the State Department specialists who were testifying.  Mr. Solarz reaches his conclusion, so the proceedings indicate, largely on the basis of the Famiglia Cristiana interview:  he states that Khieu Samphan "acknowledged" in this interview that 1 million people "had been killed since the war," and goes on to draw parallels to the Nazis and recommend an invasion.  No one taking part in the ensuing debate (including Gareth Porter, david Chandler, and peter poole) was able to point out that the interview was afraud – a fact that you know to be true. I might easily cite other examples.

 

I trust the conclusion is now obvious, and I hope you will pardon me for drawing it explicitly.  Anyone who cares for the fate of the Khmer people, an who knows for certain that that interview never took place, has a moral duty of the highest order to make htat fact known. The responsibility is particularly incumbent upon you personally, for one additional reason. In the Barron-Paul book, you are cited as the sole independent authority, the only non-government expert acknowledged.  In the House hearings, Barron continually referred to you as his authority.  Therefore, like it or not, you have a responsibility conferred on you for what appears in their book.  As matters now stand, through no choice of your own, you are implicated in a chain of inference that leads readers of the American press to conclude that Khieu Samphan has adrnitted murdering a million people, and that leads a Congressman to recornmend that the U.S. invade Cambodia. Furthermore, you have the information that is relevant to exposing the lies repeated by Barron and Paul, on which this chain of inference rests.

 

This example is only one of many to illustrate the general point I am making.  Under the existing conditions in the real world, what is said (or withheld) by specialists on Cambodia may have very significant human consequences. Therefore one who accepts your initial premises -- concern for truth, and for the Khmer people -- has particularly heavy responsibilities to ensure a scrupulous regard for truth, specifically, as concerns material that appears in the United States.

 

Let me now turn more explicitly to Lacouture 's review of your book, and our discussion of that review and your book itself.  Again, I want to sketch some relevant context. Lacouture' s review appeared in the New York Review of Books.  Years ago, that journal was open to representatives of the American peace movement and the American left, but that has not been true for some tirne. The fact is important, for reasons that will appear immediately.  Early this year, the NY Review published several articles purporting to deal with the American war and its consequences.  To mention three:  (1) a review of Gloria Emerson's book on Vietnam which castigated her for failing to understand the irony and complexity of the American war, a typical stance of "sophisticated" apologists for the violence of the American state; (2) an article by Father André Gelinas on postwar Vietnam which claimed, inter alia, that before April 75 South Vietnam was a land of freedom and wealth, but now, under North Vietnamese occupation, it is a land of misery and horror (Gelinas claimed to have spent 28 years – it was actually 13 -- in Vietnarn, and never found any occasion to criticize the U.S. intervention and its effects during that period); (3) Lacouture' s review of your book.

 

Now the editorial policy of the NY Review is their own business, but let me point out what happens in the real world.  The Gelinas article was picked up by journals throughout the world : the London Daily Telegraph, The Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and Mail, etc. In most cases, it was explicitly noted that the article was reprinted from the NY Review -- which is remembered as a journal open to the peace movement. The article evoked sanctimonious editorial comment In the Wall St. Journal, the NY Times, and other major journals that had supported American aggression.  These editorials made much of the "fact" that even the NY Review which had always (they hypocritically claimed) "celebrated" communist actions, now conceded ... etc.  By letting these claims stand, the Review is making a most notable contribution to the propaganda system.

 

Meanwhile, other testimony is suppressed by the press.  For example, several Mennonite missionaries with backgrounds comparable to Gelinas have reported before Congress and elsewhere, giving a very different picture of the situation there.  Silence in the press.  One even wrote a letter published in the NY Review, in response to Gelinas, but of course it was completely ignored by the press.  Jean Lacouture wrote a book, which undoubtedly you know, on his experiences in Vietnarn in 1976.  While critical, it also was radically different in tone and content from Gelinas.  It is not reviewed in the NY Review.  In fact, Lacouture informs me that he has been unable to obtain an American publisher.  The NY Times, which regularly publishes lying articles stating that refugee reports are the sole source of information about Vietnam -- the Times has refused to publish articles it has commissioned from American visitors to Vietnam, and has even blocked their publication elsewhere, obviously because the conclusions were unacceptable -- chooses Lacouture to review Barron and Paul on Cambodia, but denies his existence in the case of Vietnam (claiming that no western reporters have bee able to visit). And so on. It is in this context that one must consider the Lacouture review, appearing where it did.

 

Lacouture's review of your book, like the Gelinas article, evoked wide comment in the liberal press, with editorials and articles praising his insight, courage and honesty, and emphasizing that even former "supporters of the Khmer Rouge cause" (why Lacouture chooses to describe himself in this way, I cannot comprehend; surely neither he, nor I any of our associates were supporters of the Khmer Rouge cause, ever), and once again, that even journals such as the NY Review (which celebrated communism), now concede ... etc.  When I read Lacouture's review, I was surprised by its content, and immediately obtained a copy of your book from France.  I found very quickly that his references, which were restricted to three pages of the book in fact, were severely distorted, and that the conclusions widely repeated in the liberal press (e.g., that the Cambodians, as he asserted, "boasted" of having "killed" 2 million people since the war) were gross falsehoods.

 

Lacouture later corrected some of the serious errors that I had privately pointed out to him ; since you have my letters to Silvers, you know the true facts.

 

I also attempted to elicit corrections in the NY Times and elsewhere, but to no significant effect; the press, for its own quite obvious reasons, prefers the fabrications to the truth, in this matter.  To this day, long after Lacouture' s "corrections" have appeared, all that remains of the incident so far as the press is concerned is his original article. Thus Martin Woollacott, Southeast Asian specialist of the London-Manchester Guardian, recently lauded Lacouture for his integrity and courage, in revealing the truth about Cambodia -- ­referring only to his article and never to his corrections.  The impact of his review, within the American propaganda system, was exactly as we depicted it in our article.  These are crucial facts, which no one who shares your concern for the truth and for the Khmer people -- or for other potential victims of counterrevolutionary intervention -- will ignore.

 

If you do not mind my unsolicited opinion, you are the person who should have responded to Lacouture's review of your book. You could have done that with real authority, both in France and in the United States.  Such an action might, conceivably, have had an impact in controlling the subsequent fabrications of the propaganda system which so eagerly exploited Lacouture’s review appearing in the NY Review of Books, always described, falsely, as virtually an organ of the peace movement and the American left. Evidently you thought otherwise, quite mistakenly, in my opinion. I gather that you did not even communicate your "chagrin" on reading Lacouture' s review to him personally.  At least, when I wrote him he responded to me that he was previously unaware of the gross errors that I pointed out to him.  Frankly, I cannot comprehend your reticence in this regard, given your concern for truth and for the fate of the Khmer people.  I sense a striking inconsistency.

 

Let me stress again the situation in the United States.  An American president can appear on television, as Carter recently did, saying that we owe the Vietnarnese "no debt" because "the destruction was mutual," and there is literally not one word of protest or even comment in the American press.  The editor of the New Republic, virtually the official organ of American liberalism, can write that the failure of the United States in Vietnam will go dowri in history as "one of the ugliest of national crimes" -- not what we did, but our failure to persist. Senator Edward Kennedy, one of the very few Senators who showed genuine compassion for victims of war made, a public speech after the Mayaguez incident saying that the renewed bombing of Cambodia at that time "gave an undeniable and needed lift to the nation’s spirit." A Congressman calls for the re-invasion based on the Khieu Samphan "interview." And so on. That, I ernphasize, is the real worId. This is the context in which we are discussing the need for care and scrupulousness about facts.

 

Let me now turn to your specific comments.  I will consider each of thern, in turn.

 

1.  You state that the journalist in Prachachat quoted an unnamed official of the new government.  Let me first add a correction, based on parts of the text omitted in the French translation you supplied.  The Thai journalist was not quoting an official of the Cambodian government, but rather a "neutral" individual who was reporting his interview with such an off icial. Thus the chai~f transmission is even longer – hence more dubious -- than we wrote, not having access to the original at that time.  Furthermore, now that the context is clear, I discover that the Khmer official, according to this third-hand report was saying that the vietnamese methods were "too slow" -- not in killing people, as assumed by Lacouture in his comments comparing the Vietnamese to the Nazis on the basis of this "telling article" in a "Cambodian government journal," but in returning "certains rnédecins, instituteurs, professeurs, et même cerains soldats de l’ancien gouvernement » to productive lives in the new society. The text continues (this too is omitted in the French translation you supplied) with a claim that the Khmer government is working for deprived and needy people and that the accusations of ruthlessness come for the most part from the upper classes and wealthy.  The Thai reporter evidently felt that the interview serves to counter the atrocity stories being circulated in the Western press.  You reported none of this in you book.

 

Now one can draw what inferences one likes from the actual material, but I think it is now transparent that Lacouture’s conclusions about Beria, Hitler, and Nazi Gauleiters, are very far from the mark, and that your reference to the article is also quite misleading. Of course it is only Lacouture’s conclusions that have entered he historical record, as I have already noted, not the true facts on which they are allegedly based.

 

You say that it doesn't matter who used the "evocative illustration" of the overturned fruit-basket and that you do not understand our comment atout the lengthy chain of transmission, which in fact included an additional link that we did not then know about.  I should think it is obvious that the actual context is quite crucial in this case, and had it been available to the reader of the NY Review or your book, very different conclusions would have been drawn than those that have "entered history."

 

I might add that Lacouture, in his « corrections, » felt, like you, that it did not matter much who uttered an inhuman phrase (as he put it), a Cambodian government official or a Thai reporter quoting a neutral observer who allegedly interviewed an unnamed Khmer Rouge official. I someone were to argue in this fashion about some alleged American atrocity, no one would take it seriously. I do not see why the situation is different in the present case.  I do not know how to make the point more obvious, and hope that you now agree with it.

 

I should perhaps add further that Lacouture’s "corrections," in this and other respects, provoked some acid correspondence, which the NY Review refused to print. For example, my friend Salvador Luria, a Nobel laureate in biology who was probably the only other person in the United States to have actually read your book at that time, wrote that in his field, when someone publishes conclusions based on certain evidence and then discovers that the evidence was false, he does not then publish "corrections" in which he withdraws the evidence and reiterates the conclusions -- but evidently things are different in the field of journalism, as indeed they are.

 

2.  I arn interested in the background of your thinking with regard to the Khmer Rouge "boutade."  I have reread our passage on this subject, and find nothing that I would want to change in it.  Evidently, you and I disagree with regard to the nature of quotation.  When material appears in quotes, and is attributed to some person, I assume that that person is alleged to have made the remark in question. I so interpreted your statement in Le Monde, and so, evidently, did Lacouture, though he falsified both the attribution and the numbers. Given the actual facts as explained in your letter, the version in the book (« redoutable boutade ») is closer to accuracy, but I would still question your practice of placing the remark cited (with still different numbers) in quotes, as you did.  It would have been more appropriate, in my opinion, to outîme the actual background as you did in your letter, noting that the earlier reference in Le Monde no longer conformed to your understanding. I agree that the change in your book was « in a spirit of truth, » as you write in your letter, though Lacouture's rendition went well beyond the original in the opposite direction.  The discussion in our article seems entirely accurate, so far as I can see.

 

3.  I don't quite understand your objection.  We stated that the slogans cited by Lacouture from pp. 72-3 « appear to be slogans remembered by refugees » rather than « texts distributed in Phnom Penh, » as he falsely stated. The difference is obviously significant. You state that in fact these were slogans repeated to you by refugees, exactly as we surmised.  You add that the slogan "totally crush the enemy" appears on the radio, which is interesting, though I do not see the relevance. Your book did not so indicate, and since you often did give radio sources, we could only conclude, particularly in the context of refugee memories, that this was another such example. Furthermore, I see no particularly significance in the difference in this case.  Of course, if one interprets "enemy" as you do, then the slogan is blood-curdling -- and in fact, comparable to standard expressions of American propaganda with regard to the people of Japan and Gerrnany, at the time of the air massacres in 1944-5. Your statement that one "rnust" interpret "enerny" in your way seems to go beyond any facts that you present, though I personally would not be surprised if this were the correct interpretation. In any event, I see no bearing on what we wrote. Your comments are interesting, but do not by any stretch of the imagination show that what we wrote about your book was misleading, as you state.

 

As for the letter you cite from Mongkolborey, it seems to accord with reports of refugees. I have recently received a letter from Michael Vickery, to which I will return later, that has some useful relevant inform. As you know, he is one of the very few serious Western Cambodian scholars and is fluent in Khmer.  He reports atrocities against peasants in that region going back to 1952-54, including such pleasant pastimes as tearing infants in half for sport (as reported to him by participants in the government armies), and concludes that the reports of bitter and brutal vengeance are not at all implausible. This does not justify the brutality, but may well  help to explain it. No Frenchman should be surprised. I will return later to the horrendous massacres perpetrated by the resistance at the end of World War II, which you do not seem to appreciate accurately.  As you yourself report, comparable brutality took place both before and during the war on the government as well as the Khmer Rouge side, and we need not dwell on the atrocities committed by the Americans, or the French before them. The latter, incidentally, are generally suppressed in Western literature, but with regard to Vietnam, at least, they are well studied, for example, in a book by the Vietnamese scholar Ngo Vinh Long published by MIT Press in 1973. Again, I agree with you in feeling horror at the contemporary events, adn the events that led up to them, but that was certainly clear enough from our review.

 

As to whether the government or local chief s were responsible, it seerns to me an open question.  Your conclusions may prove to be correct, but others, as you know, have drawn quite different conclusions:  e.g., David Chandler and his student Ben Kiernan, both of whom note the preponderance of stories from Western Cambodia, where Khmer Rouge influence was slight and there was a long history of atrocities such as those cited above.  I return to this matter directly.  We left the question open in our article, and it still remains open, so far as I can see. I might note, incidentally, that there is evidence directly counter to your assumption, for example, in the interview with Peang Sophi published by David Chandler, where Sophi claims that « angkar had ordered these executions stopped. » Admittedly, evidence is sparse, but I know of nothing to resolve the issue, and little basis for your conclusion.

 

4.  Your remarks in the first paragraph indicate, as I surmised, that the estimates of dead cited were quite worthless.  Anyone who has followed affairs in Indochina, or who uses his common sense, will understand that French diplornats, the American Embassy in Bangkok, or Catholic charitable services, are not reliable sources, with regard to such matters. For many years, American and French sources (e.g., Bernard Fall, who in this case was deluded by the propaganda system), were citing numbers ranging from 50,000 to 700, 000 as casulies of the North Vietnamese land reform. It was finally demonstrated, in the early 197Os, that the whole story, including the numbers, was a fabrication of American and Saigon intelligence, and recent careful studies (e.g., a dissertation by E.Moise at the University of Michigan) indicate that the number killed may have been on the order of a few thousand. There are a great many similar examples.  Surely this dismal record must inspire caution.  I would not cite a Russian diplomat or the Albanian Embassy for estimates of American victims in Indochina.  Exactly the same standards of rationality and objectivity apply in this case.  I have already discussed the Famiglia Cristiana matter.

 

With regard to the number 200,000 killed by American bombs, Porter and Hildebrand, whose documentation is, to my knowledge, quite accurate, cite the Phnom Penh Domestic Service, May 9 1975, which gave 200,000 as the figure including "killed, wounded, and crippled for life." Kiernan gives the same reference.  If indeed you are correct in your memory that the radio on some other occasion spoke of 200,000 killed, this should only reinforce our natural skepticism about relying on such estimates. The figures of 800,000 dead and 240,000 wounded seem to me "implausbile," whether cited by Khieu Samphan on the radio or not, for obvious reasons; such ratios of dead to wounded seem quite inconsistent with what is known from other sources.

 

You then state categorically that Sampson's statement that the number executed is in hundreds or thousands rather than hundreds of thousands is false. Later in your letter you say that you are flattered to be compared with Nayan Chanda, whose conclusions you say seem close to yours. However, Nayan Chanda cites Sampson’s letter in support of his skepticism regarding the numbers killed (Le Monde diplomatique, Mai 1977).  Elsewhere he, like others, have cited the figures of probable killed as in the thousands, which is no doubt why he regarded Sampson’s letter as plausible.  Vickery and others who have tried to sort out the grim statistics also speak of wildly exaggerated claims.  It is not at all surprising that estimates should vary so. In the case of the liberation of France, for example, the numbers massacred by the resistance are estimated at 30-40,000 by Robert Aron in his authoritative history of the resistance, and at 7 million by a collaborator whom he cites. Had the Nazis remained a major world power, the latter figure would be the one that would prevail in their domains, no doubt.

 

From where I stand, amidst the welter of unsupported claims, I feel that I can only echo Nayan Chanda, whom at least we agree in regarding as a serlous observer:  that the number killed is probably in the thousands, perhaps more, and that probably no one will ever know. As for the claims of Barron and Paul, Lacouture, or the American government, I see no reason to give them the slightest credence. Our remarks in the article on this subject seem to me entirely accurate, so far as I can judge.

 

I am not sure why you "painfully smile" at Sampson’s remark that "one cause of depopulation was emigration"; he does not say that it was an "important cause," as you state, but that it was « one cause », nor did he imply that it had assumed « catastrophic proportions » (our term). I see no inconsistency between his statement and what you and others have reported about this matter.

 

5.  Here, I am afraid, your remarks become extremely careless.  I did not say or imply that « the refugees are not credible ! » (with or without the exclamation mark). As you yourself concede in the next sentence, contradicting yourself, I said that their evidence must be taken seriously. I did not take any "a priori" stand on the matter, but merely asserted what every serious observer knows to be true; that refugee reports are often extremely unreliable and must be treated with great caution, as I and others have emphasized (citing my discussion of this point in At War with Asia).  My further comments in this regard are in no way different than those of Nayan Chanda, for example (op.cit.). I have no interest in writing history on the basis of preconceived ideas, but I do insist that one show the normal caution in dealing with refugee reports, specifically, under conditions such as those of the Thai-controlled refugee camps. Some people (e.g., Chanda) have taken such caution.  There is little evidence in your book that you have taken comparable caution.  You refer me to p.223 of your book where you state that the refugees report what they have seen or heard with their imagination and nostalgia tending to exagerrate and distort the facts. That is hardly adequate.  There is direct evidence (e.g., Kiernan) that refugees have also invented facts, understandably enough, under pressures from the Thai police. Others have also reported examples of changed stories (e.g., patrice de Beer).  Furthermore, anyone who has interviewed refugees under such conditions is familiar with the problem, to which I return in a moment, since I want to respond to your comments in turn.

 

You object to my statement that "Ponchaud’s book lacks the documentation" of Porter and Hildebrand and that "his account is at best second-hand." Both statements, however, are obviously true.  A simple check of references confirms the first; as for the second, are you really saying that your account of what happened in Cambodia after you left is first-hand ?  Surely not. Thus your objections are groundless.

 

You then ask how many Khmer refugees I have interviewed.  The answer, of course, is:  None.  The question seems irrelevant, however, since I claimed nothing else.  I did say that I had interviewed refugees from American bombing in Laos, and as I was very careful to point out in articles on the subject, had discovered a great variety of stories and attitudes, and had observed that very careful questioning was necessary if one wanted to sort out what might be the basic truth, amidst the massive superficial contradictions. Any careful observer would insist on the same point, particularly under the conditions of refugee camps.  You say that Laos was another country with another mentality, but I’m afraid that I cannot accept the implicit claim that somehow comparable factors are not operative in the Cambodian case, particularly, when virtually all serious observers (I exclude Barron and Paul) agree with my conclusion on this score.  You add that neither I nor anyone else has shown the reports you cited to have been falsified, which is of course true, but hardly relevant.  Since no one has access to those reports, it is impossible to show anything about them.  Nor has anyone, to my knowledge, claimed them to have been falsified; certainly I have not.  May I remind you that we wrote that your book "is serious and worth reading, as distinct from much of the commentary it has elicited" and noted your "grisly account of what refugees have reported to [you] about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge."  The point that I and others have made is that there is no internal evidence in the book of much care with analysis of these reports, and virtually nothing is said in the book about the obvious problems that such reports pose, something that I nd others have discussed at length.

 

I am familiar with your remarks in the footnote on p. 10 to which you refer me. Indeed, that footnote raised skepticl doubts in my mind, though I did not express them in the review. Thus it is dubious practice to rely so heavily on written reports of refugees ; careful questioning is always necessary, in such cases, as you yourself emphasize in your letter (see below). Furthermore, it is striking that reports are overwhelmingly from middle class refugees, and in fact from literate refugees. As I and many others have discovered, and as anyone would know simply using his common sense, such reports are often by no means typical.  As far as I can see, then, our

comments in this regard were quite accurate, perhaps even understated.

 

You say in your letter that you "could have added" that you relied on oral testimonies, but naturally, in reviewing your book I could only make use of what was there, not what you could have added. I am much interested to learn, however, that you have further evidence, and do hope that you will present it, as I did in the case of Laos, and as others have done, repeatedly. I arn pleased to learn of the precautions you describe in your letter.  Surely these are necessary, and it is unfortunate that you did no also detail them in the book ; again, it was the book which was, necessarily, the source of my comments. Let me stress again that, as we said, these refugee reports must be taken seriously, but as always with refugee reports, with considerable caution.  Since your comments in your letter (though not in the book) indicate that you agree, I fail to see any basis for your criticism of my remarks.

 

I appreciate your kindness in offering to let me see your documents, but since unfortunately I know no Khmer, I am afraid that I cannot take you up on your offer.  Perhaps you might want to make them available to qualified scholars.  Once again, I stress that you have quite rnisread what I clearly wrote about the credibility of these reports.  I have no "a priori" position on the matter, no preconceptions to which I adhere, and no initial unwillingness to question conclusions based on careful analysis.

 

You then state that I am "wrong" in giving the impression that refugee accounts come "alrnost exclusively" from the North West.  In your « Cambodge Libéré » you made exactly the point that I mentioned, if I recall correctly, denying that there was evidence of "massive purges" outside of Battambang-Siem ­Reap.  The sarne point has been made quite explicitly by David Chandler and others. It may be that the story is the same throughout, but as I am sure you will agree, the reports froern refugees do very largely come from refugees from the Battamban-Siem Reap region, where Khmer Rouge influence was generally weak, and where there was quite a history of brutality and ample reason to expect the vengeance described by Peang Sophi and others. I see no reason to qualify my actual rernarks, in this respect.

 

I have already commented on your reference to p. 223.  I am interested to note that you yourself report that af ter two hours of discussion with a refugee, you were « able to expose him as false, » which supports my conclusion, noted above, that interrogation is quite important, as compared with written records. It would have been good to have mentioned this fact in the book.

 

In the letter from Michael Vickery, which I mentioned, he reports that when he visited refugee camps in Thailand, without an interpreter since he is fluent in Khmer, he quickly discovered in many conversations that refugee reports varied very greatly, and that there were many disputes among refugees as to what they had experienced. The apparent consistency of refugee reports, he writes, is an illusion. Furthermore, he was told by refugees that the camp directors singled out specific refugees who had brutal tales to tell for the benefit of Western visitors, thus creating an illusion of consistency. As an outside observer, I see no reason to doubt his credibility, which I know, on other grounds, to be substantial. I assume that you would agree.

 

You say that "now the refugees are forbidden to speak to strangers, contrary to what [I] wrote."  I have no idea to what you are referring.

 

You deny the assertion that you "have not based [your] work on any serious documentation."  But I made no such claim.  Rather, I said something quite different, and quite correct:  that your book lacks the documentation of Porter and Hildebrand.  You report rnany facts (e.g., about the rice supplies), but with very few references.  That is what is meant by "lack of documentation." As to the documentation on which you based your work, obviously I had no idea.  I can rely only on the printed record.

 

You then say that Patrice de Beer’s report of the fall of Phnom penh was a "scandal" and that he was called back to Paris in view of its serious failings. I find that claim surprising. In the first place, I note no striking difference between his report and those of schanberg and others. Furthermore, I had been informed that he had returned to Paris to take on a more responsible position at Le Monde.  I am interested, of course, in your account of how the Le Monde story was distorted, and if there is any record, would be happy to see it, and to inquire with de Beer as to his side of the story.

 

I am not sure that I follow your remarks about Kiernan. You refer sarcastically to his receiving a refugee in a "flat in Bangkok," implying that he did not interview refugees incamps.   He states (Australian Outlook) that his reports are based "on my interviews with refugees from Cambodia in the Lumphouk and Aranyaprathet refugee camps in Thailand, and in Bangkok," and in Australia.  Are you asserting that his statement is false?  If so, that is a serious charge, and I would be interested in your evidence.  Are you saying that there is something wrong with his also interviewing refugees outside of camps ?  If so, how do you justify your own practice in doing exactly the same thing, as indicated in your letter ? You then write that Kiernan’s comments are interesting, but have generally been said before.  I take it, then, that you regard these familiar comments as credible.  He concludes that most of the violence has taken place in northwest Cambodia, where Khmer Rouge organization and influence was slight. He cites evidence that at the end of May 1975 « the revolutionary government in phnom penh ordered an end to reprisals. » He reports that « the great majority of the refugees can be divided into three groups : former Lon Nol soldiers, former urban dwellers, an farmers from Battambang and Siem Reap provinces, »  citing Western and Thai journalists and American officials. He reports that over a third of the refugees at Aranyaprathet are former Lon Nol soldiers and many of the refugees are former Khmer Serei commandos, and that « very few peasants, if any, have fled to Thailand from other parts of Cambodia. » He quotes a refugee as saying that in Battambang the rich were being "persecuted" while the poor were better off than before, and cites corroboratory letters from Cambodia. And so on. If all of this is, as you say, interesting and familiar (and presumably credible; at least, you do not challenge the credibility), then the factual situation is plainly quite different, radically so, frorn what Lacouture portrayed, and considerably more complex than what you conveyed.

 

I quite agree with you that one should maintain a highly critical attitude towards statements by the Cambodian governrnent, but fail to see how this comment relates to an