Vol. IX, No. 1, WINTER 1995

by Sophal EAR*

This was apparent to anyone listening closely to his [Pol Pot's] speeches and press conferences in 1977 and 1978 and to the unsettling propaganda broadcast everyday over Radio Phnom Penh by the Kampuchean Communist Party (meaning Pol Pot himself) from 1975 until January 7, 1979, when Vo Nguyen Giap's blitzkrieg brought down Phnom Penh. Never in the human memory has a leader (be he an emperor or dictator), government, or a political party in power sung its own praises in such a dithyrambic, insolent, de ceitful, shameless, and immodest way as the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime did. As Radio Hanoi has since stated, Messers. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary outstripped even their guru, the late Joseph Goebbels, when it came to propaganda!

-- King Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope (1983)

Now you're telling me you're not nostalgic,/

then give me another word for it./

You were so good with words,/

and at keeping things vague./

Cause I need some of that vagueness now/

it's come back too clearly./

Yes I loved you dearly,/

and if you're offering me diamonds and rust,/

I've already paid.

-- Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust (1975)

Ben Kiernan, noted academic and author of the serious and worth reading book How Pol Pot Came to Power and co-editor with David Chandler of such other notable works as Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea, will lead the U.S. State Departmen t funded Yale University program that will create a database documenting Khmer Rouge genocidal crimes. Currently Dr. Kiernan is under consideration for a tenure-track Professorship in the history department at the University of California at Berkeley. As in most instances, there is another story to Dr. Kiernan, the story of a young, idealistic graduate student, mesmerized by the idea of a people's revolution, and humanitarian socialist ideals. Ben Kiernan was a leading Khmer Rouge defender while they were in power. With all due respect to him and the studied work he has done since 1979, he must still be canonized in the "Khmer Rouge Canon" for accepting the Standard Total Academic View, that supported revolutions and revolutionaries, i.e. the Khmer Rouge. (See, for instance, Kiernan, "Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia," Australian Outlook, December 1976. Kiernan, "Revolution and Social Cohesion in Cambodia," ASEAN Seminar, Sydney, 1-4 September 1977, and News from Kampuchea 1977-1978 .)

After he cared to interview 500 refugees in Thailand around 1978 or 1979, he realized that they were telling the truth and abruptly changed course. But this was, mind you, in the final minutes of Democratic Kampuchea. You see, he was among the few, the brave, the naive who thought that one could make an omelet without breaking eggs. In other words, to have oneself a radical and complete revolution without mass murder, forced labor, genocide, and so forth and so on.

Then came one side of a two-sided-switch.

Ben Kiernan did his half of what Gunn and Lee (1991) call a "two-sided switch" when he realized in 1979 that he was on the wrong side of history. (See Gunn and Lee, Cambodia Watching Down Under, 1991)

In what amounted to a mea culpa in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (October-December 1979) titled "Vietnam and the Governments and People of Kampuchea," he writes, "I was wrong about ... the brutal authoritarian trend within the revolut ionary movement after 1973 was not simply a grass-roots reaction, and expression of popular outrage at the killing and destruction of the countryside by U.S. bombs, although that helped it along decisively. There can be no doubting that the evidence also points clearly to a systematic use of violence against the population by that chauvinist section of the revolutionary movement that was led by

Pol Pot. In my opinion this violence was employed in the service of a NATIONALIST REVIVALISM that had little concern for the living conditions of the Khmer people, or the HUMANITARIAN SOCIALIST IDEALS that had INSPIRED the broader KAMPUCHEAN REVOLUTION ARY movement. [Emphasis added.]" (p. 19)

I am reminded of what Malcolm Caldwell told a colleague at a conference he attended before leaving for Phnom Penh (where he was murdered by the Khmer Rouge) "If it is true that Pol Pot has also killed Khmer Peasants, I have to make a different evaluati on of Kampuchea's development-mode l [from that of being its leading academic supporter]. Killing an innocent peasant is a token of fascism." (As quoted in Hering, ed., Malcolm Caldwell's South-East Asia, p. 8). "In fact, attempts to commit sensele ss acts of historical revisionism o n Cambodia's contemporary history have succeeded. The defunked Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime, it is now said, was more of a fascist cum Nazi regime than a Communist cum Maoist one! Truth may yet be stranger than fiction."

Getting back to the issue of Kiernan's support for the Khmer Rouge, he will readily admit to it. In April 1977, Kiernan and Chanthou Boua among many others, published News from Kampuchea. The goal of the publication, according to Gunn and Lee wa s "to keep Kampucheans in Australia informed of developments in their native country" and "to develop and foster close ties between the peoples of Australia and Kampuchea." By November/December 1978, its goal had changed to "also [lending] support to all progressive movements in the world trying to rid themselves of all forms of domination" and to refute the "imperialist media" (which had concocted all sorts of falsehoods about "alleged atrocities" in Democratic Kampuchea, faked photos, etc.) According to Gunn and Lee, by November 1979, when News from Kampuchea was renamed News of Democratic Kampuchea, "In the third phase and from the first issue ... [it] revealed itself exclusively an Australian mouthpiece of Democratic Kampuchea." By that time, however, Kiernan and Chanthou Boua had been expelled from News from Kampuchea, "and aligned themselves more closely with the Australian Vietnam Society." (See Gunn and Lee, Chapter 2)

It should be noted that Gunn and Lee present a curiously uncritical view of this disturbing record, when, in other instances, they write ever so matter of fact, "Whatever else, the Tarr's description of the events surrounding the evacuation of foreigne rs from the French Embassy compound stands in STUDIED CONTRAST to the BANALIZED "killing fields" which has since become the "definitive media interpretation . . . The "Killing Fields" was made in Thailand on a budget of fifteen million dollars around the theme of the sentimental rendezvous between a New York Times correspondent and his Cambodian offsider, a "miraculous" survivor of Democratic Kampuchea. [Emphasis added.]" (Gunn and Lee, p. 64). "Granted the "Killing Fields" became a cinematic symbol of de spair and hope for many Cambodians, but that fact need not be mocked. Surely, nothing of the sort would be contemplated of "Schindler's List", for instance."

So, where on the spectrum is Ben Kiernan now? He switched sides in what amounted to a 90 degree angle (not a 180, mind you) in 1979. From the Khmer Rouge to the formerly Khmer Rouge oriented now PRK/SOC/Hun Sen/formerly Heng Samrin regime/pro-Hanoi Cam bodian strategy. But can he shake his past support for the DK regime? More to the point, can he shake his current and past support for Marxism-Leninism (or in his words "humanitarian Socialist ideals"), revolutions and revolutionaries (Socialism a la Hano i cum CPP) in general?

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," a Frenchman once said. Indeed, for Ben Kiernan, the more things change, the more they really do stay the same.

Adapting Milton Osborne's finale (to Sihanouk: Prince of Light, Prince of Darkness) to further obfuscate our current dilemma, "No-one can be sure if Kiernan has changed too."

*The author signs his name to this wor k with the understanding that he, and he alone, should be held accountable for what he writes. As all those individuals who proudly signed off the pro-Khmer Rouge articles and books they published, while the autho r and his family were enslaved in the name of Socialism, so too will this author accept responsibility for his published material. The author wishes to add, furthermore, that he means no disrespect whatsoever to Prof. Kiernan and that he looks forward to working together with him in the future if opportunities avail themselves. Everyone makes mistakes," says the author, adding, "they just don't always help cause the death of 1.5 million people."

Prof. Ben Kiernan was asked to comment on this article but he did not respond to our e-mail to him.