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p I asked Kom whether there were any Chinese emigrants in their “commune”.

p “About fifty of them,” he replied. “Then no one was left. They were all killed—accused of plotting and burned. Two managed to escape with us.”

p I wrote down word for word the story told me by a Huaqiao—a Chinese emigrant who managed to escape to Vietnam.

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p “My name is Lam Tkhan. I used to live in Kampong Som in the west of Kampuchea. In our part of the town there were mainly Chinese. One night, straight after the coup, soldiers burst in on us. They claimed to be searching for weapons, but in fact beat up anyone they came across. Not just beat them, either. Tfiey threw one woman out of a window before my very eyes. And raped my neighbour’s daughter, a schoolgirl. When her father ran to help her, the soldiers shot him. It was a terrible night. The most terrible in my whole life.

p “In the morning we were thrown out of our homes and lined up in columns. We weren’t allowed to take anything with us because, they said, everything now belonged to the state. In the mountains we were divided into several groups. Those who had previously worked for the government or been in the army were taken aside and stoned. They did the same to doctors, students and engineers. The third group included those who had had their own businesses, who had been in trade. First they were undressed and searched. If any gold or money was found, the whole family was killed. My friend, the Chinese Tet Suk and his children had nails driven into the back of their heads.

p “That day I lost yet another old friend, Khia Pkhet. Everyone who was in no condition to work was put into a separate group: old people, the sick and disabled. Khia Pkhet was strong and healthy. It was Pol Pot’s soldiers who broke his leg, so he limped, and was dealt with like the rest.

p “Those who survived were sent to build a canal. We carted earth in enormous, heavy baskets. The overseers beat us with bamboo sticks and kept shouting: ’Get a move on, you idle devils!’ If a moan should escape you at that moment, they killed you on the spot. In fact they really preferred to kill rather than beat: it was less trouble!

p “I managed to escape and cross the frontier. Now I am in Vietnam, in the province of Dong Thap.”

p The way the Huaqiao were treated is further evidence of the glaring hypocrisy of the Maoists. In the spring of 1978, Peking initiated operation nan’tsiao. The idea was to encourage the Chinese living in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to leave the country. The PRC put everything into the pursuit 55 of this “great goal"! They bribed. They threatened. They made fantastic promises of a virtual heaven waiting for people at “home”.

p While putting open pressure on Vietnamese citizens, bewailing the non-existent persecution of them, endlessly repeating “China is everywhere where there are Chinese”, Peking said not a word when, in another neighbouring state, people of the same nationality were dealt with by the most brutal methods.

Why exactly? Because, for Peking, the 500,000 Huaqiao living in Kampuchea (how many remain alive is not known) were a trifle compared with its “global plans" with respect to the Pnom Penh regime.