p The Pol Pot authorities are pursuing a Peking-style foreign policy. One of Peking’s traditional methods is to unleash border conflicts with its neighbours. In an attempt to subordinate the countries of South-East Asia, and to implement Mao Zedong’s slogan: “Only by the rifle can the whole world be transformed”, the Chinese leadership initiated a campaign of provocation with respect to Vietnam and turned Kampuchea against it. According to The Observer, Chinese means of transportation deliver a regular supply of jets, tanks, artillery and other armaments to the port of Kamfong Som. The number of Chinese advisors in Kampuchea has risen to 6,000, while there are up to about 10,000 Chinese soldiers of the “railway forces”.
p “The reactionary forces of Peking ruling circles,” Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong has declared, “found Pol Pot’s counter-revolutionary clique a very convenient instrument for implementing their great-power, expansionist plans, directed primarily against Vietnam. This clique has unleashed an aggressive war against our country, destroying villages and settlements, plundering the Vietnamese people’s property, killing them in the most cruel and unprecedented ways.”
p During the Kampuchean armed forces’ incursions into the Vietnamese territory, they committed glaring crimes. On Vietnamese celebration days, they mercilessly shelled the territory, causing many deaths, mostly women and chidren. They raped women, burned homes and schools, looted foodstuffs and property, led off the cattle and damaged production. The Kampuchean armed forces carried out unbelievably barbaric murders. They used hand grenades and artillery, knives, sabres, and axes on their victims, they tortured Vietnamese citizens 71 to make them suffer most horribly before death. They even split their victims’ stomachs open, cut out their livers, cut off their noses and threw their bodies into fires.
p These Kampuchean actions since early May 1975 inflicted considerable human and tremendous material losses on the Vietnamese people and seriously undermined their peaceful work. Along the entire frontier, more than 10,000 hectares of Vietnamese land had to be left uncultivated.
p Every time the Kampuchean side violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Vietnam, the Vietnamese side immediately informed the Kampuchean side of this and did everything possible to bring the incident to a close as rapidly as possible. Their proposals met with no response, however.
p From documents of the press and information department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
p The frontier zone on the Vietnamese side of the Kampuchean border is a picture of deserted villages, ruined homes, and forlorn rice paddies. The tactics of the Kampuchean army include night sorties through virtually impenetrable jungle, lightening attacks, murder, and then a rapid retreat before the arrival of the superior Vietnamese forces.
p “It was dark. Suddenly I heard groans. I didn’t know what was happening, but then saw people running. I ran too,” tells one young woman from the small village of Ba Lai, two miles from the border. At three o’clock in the morning the Kampucheans had attacked the village. They killed all the inhabitants with truncheons, sticks and knives.
p “Twenty-one bodies lay in the garden, some without heads or legs, with sharp pointed wooden stakes stuck into their chests or stomachs. A mile down the road there was a hut with six bodies, including three children. The women’s stomachs had been ripped open. Nearby lay a dog without a head. On the wall, written in Khmer, were the words ’This is our land!’.”
From, the Boston Globe
Notes