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p Granma, January 30, 1979

p Slavery? Not only. Slavery and extermination, slavery and expansionism. The evil experiment in Kampuchea is not even similar to the slavery we know from history as the socioeconomic system that existed in colonial Cuba. In Kampuchea, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, who are of Chinese origin and educated in France, and their staff, followed the instructions of the Chinese leadership and established a new type of colonial yoke: it might be called “primitive” nazism, for this is an unnatural form not fitting into any of the traditional social models. In Cuba, for example, the slaves could find spiritual release in religion, could seek some hope in one sect, church or another, while in Kampuchea all religions were forbidden and all monks and priests were killed. In colonial Cuba, the slaves could buy themselves and their children freedom, although they had to work all their lives to do this and suffer the most incredible humiliation; in Kampuchea even money was abolished, and nothing, neither cards nor cheques, were issued to replace it. Even barter was forbidden. In Cuba, the children of slaves did not have to serve in the Spanish army, fight against their own brothers, or attack neighbouring countries; in Kampuchea, they were forced to do this from the age of ten. The system of slavery we know from books, in spite of all its horrors, retained a certain tolerance.

p At a time when the miracles of science and technology, guided by human hand, have made it possible to conquer space and the Arctic wastes, to irrigate the desert, and to communicate between continents in fractions of a second, 76 some false or mad ideology doomed the country to three years and eight months of dark misery, throwing the country back to the stage of the primitive communal society. The unique goal was apparently to destroy the population of this country in order to provide Lebensraum for others. Expansionism both by the authorities and people was evidently the collapsed Chinese plan in Kampuchea, which they saw as a springboard for further jumps into neighbouring countries of the region. On January 7, 1979, the day of the revolution’s victory, the huge enslaved commune of Kampuchea began to gradually restore its culture and normal life.

p At the Olympic Stadium in Pnom Penh, where a mass meeting was held on January 25, the revolutionary government formed of members of the Kampuchea United Front for National Salvation was presented to the whole world. At this meeting, journalists in their hundreds from America, Europe, Asia and Africa saw the Kampucheans dancing, singing and weeping with joy. The smiles once more appeared on their faces. The smiles that had disappeared on the morning of April 17, 1975, at 9.25 a.m., when the regime of terror engendered by the so-called Chinese “cultural revolution" was established in the country. The power had then been seized with the support of armed divisions that had routed the imperialist Yankees withdrawing from the country. These divisions were, with the tragic irony of history, called Khmer Rouges or Communists.

p The tyrants ordered the clocks at the stadium and those in other major buildings in the capital to be stopped at precisely that moment. We saw those clocks on January 25, when the Kampuchean people celebrated its great victory.

p After the meeting organised by the United Front, the only genuine representative of the people of Kampuchea, its leaders, almost all the young people, amazed, confused by emotion and wearing clothes much too big for their emaciated bodies, together with us journalists who were in Pnom Penh for the first time on January 20, travelled round the empty and still silent city that had already started to come back to life: the water and electricity supplies had been turned on.

p Personal observations and interviews with the former 77 inhabitants of camps and with refugees returning to Pnom Penh brought to light unheard-of horrors:

p a) in Kampuchea only the very strongest children up to the age of ten had managed to survive. In the concentration camps and forced labour “communes”, people could only stay alive by chance, or natural selection took place, with only those who could adapt to the conditions managing to survive; almost all the children evacuated from the towns had died within the first year. Only those that had escaped to Vietnam are now alive;

p b) women who were pregnant when they were sent to the “communes” lost their babies or died before giving birth, unable to endure the inhuman treatment, or as a result of “ natural causes”, the Pol Pot euphemism for back-breaking toil;

p c) a handful of intellectuals managed to survive only because, while in the “communes”, they concealed who they really were, which was not easy. Also those who succeeded in escaping to Vietnam are still alive;

p d) all boys above ten years of age were forced into the army; the physically weaker died from the excessive burden;

p e) in rural areas virtually all the wells supplying drinking water and all the houses were filled with debris and rubbish, stones, earth and dead animals to prevent people from preparing food for themselves.

p According to the model of the commune for a subsequent Chinese expansion there should be a single common well and one common kitchen for preparing everyday food: a bowl of rice or rice soup without salt per person; \

p f) in the forced labour camps the most common diseases were cholera, yellow fever, beri-beri, tuberculosis, and there were cases of madness;

p g) in the forty-four months not one of the enslaved labourers received a piece of soap or saw any sugar, and none of the children went to school;

p h) men, women and children alike were provided with one set of clothing a year, made of black cotton that soon fell into tatters, the only possible replacement being clothes taken from those who died;

p i) it has already been mentioned that this 20th century 78 slave commune had no medicines and that Pnom Penh and other towns, district and regional centres, as well as residential buildings close to roads were emptied of their inhabitants;

p j) the nazis built a huge number of extermination camps, where people were subjected to refined torture and killed. At the Nuremburg trials, this brutality and sadism was condemned and the war criminals executed. But even they, though this in no way justifies their crimes, did not exterminate the people of their own nation. The developments in Kampuchea are unprecedented.

During the meeting at the stadium I spoke to a Kampuchean peasant woman. Looking at the waving flags of the new republic in the people’s hands, she was weeping bitterly. I asked what was the matter with her. This was not so much a question as an attempt to comfort her, and the woman’s brief and bitter reply was: “Our tears are so plentiful they could fill an ocean.”