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p The creation of the KUFNS was no accident: it was the natural response of the Kampuchean people to the extremely cruel oppression. From February 1977 to May 1978, six major armed uprisings against Pol Pot took place in various populated areas. The biggest one began on May 28, 1978. Several units from the Pnom Penh 280th and 290th divisions revolted and liberated an area of 15,000 square kilometres in the eastern provinces. The revolt was carried out by 30 battalions, joined 106 by numerous deserters from Pol Pot’s army and many of the 400,000 Kampucheans who had found refuge in Vietnam.

p Neither is it surprising that the majority of the members of the KUFNS Central Committee are former top political or military leaders of the Khmer Rouge, who believed that Pol Pot and Ieng Sary had betrayed the revolution. Among them are Heng Samrin, Chairman of the KUFNS Central Committee and a former member of the executive committee of the Kampuchean Communist Party in Zone 203; Roh Samay, General Secretary of the KUFNS Central Committee and a former officer of Pol Pot’s headquarters; and Chea Sim, Deputy Chairman of the KUFNS Central Committee and former regional secretary of the Kampuchean Communist Party and a former deputy to the Assembly of People’s Representatives.

p The role of the Vietnamese in the Kampuchean events is sometimes called an “invasion”, if not a “conquest”. First, no one in Hanoi had ever tried to conceal Vietnam’s support for the KUFNS and readiness to do a great deal to assist it. Moreover, irrespective of Vietnam’s actions, the opposition movement would have emerged in Kampuchea, and done everything possible to overthrow the terrorist regime. Finally, the “free world’s" memory is obviously very short.

p Let us give one example. Several months ago, Senator McGovern, a former presidential candidate, called on the UN to initiate military action to overthrow the regime that James Carter and others justifiably called “barbaric”. If McGovern’s words had been heeded and if UN troops had ousted Pol Pot, the “free world" would have claimed the credit for liberating Kampuchea.

p However, since the Kampuchean people’s revolt and overthrow of this odious regime, all in a matter of days, Vietnam has been branded as an aggressor. An objective analysis of Vietnamese-Kampuchean relations over the last few years shows quite clearly which was the aggressor and which the victim.

p Let us recall the photographs showing the bodies of hundreds of Vietnamese residents in Kampuchea floating in the (Mekong: this was in March 1970, a few days after Lon 107 Nol came to power. The Vietnamese never accused the Kampuchean people of these crimes even though they, who had been fighting for the freedom of their own country which involved a tremendous loss of life, aided the Kampuchean revolutionaries in their struggle against Lon Nol and his American protectors. It was at this time that, at Sihanouk’s request, Vietnam sent two thousand of its top experts to train Kampuchean resistance fighters.

p After Lon Nol was overthrown, Pol Pot continued killing Vietnamese people living in Kampuchea. From April 17, 1975 to Ocrober 30, 1978, 268,000 Vietnamese fled Kampuchea for Vietnam to escape persecution. Add on those who were killed by Lon Nol, and later by Pol Pot, and it becomes clear that almost the entire Vietnamese community in Kampuchea (500-600 thousand persons) fell victim to the two regimes.

p The Vietnamese, however, never resorted to repressions of any sort against the hundreds of thousands of Kampucheans living in the Mekong Delta. On the contrary, the 131,000 Kampucheans who fled from Pol Pot and found refuge in Vietnam were treated in a friendly manner.

p In fact, it was the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime that was the aggressor. In December 1978, while on Vietnamese territory, I often came under fire from Pol Pot’s artillery. With my own eyes I saw Vietnamese villages wiped off the face of the earth. The cutthroats carried out night raids into Vietnamese territory. Huynh Van Luan, a member of the People’s Provincial Committee in Tay Ninh, told me at the time: “Since September 1977, 1,180 people have been killed in our border villages and approximately the same number was wounded. We are evacuating people from areas subjected to bombings and commando attacks. We have abandoned 15,000 hectares of land and have resettled 71,000 people"—and all this in just one province. I learned afterwards that 200,000 hectares of land were abandoned and 1,250,000 people evacuated from the Vietnamese-Kampuchean border area.

p Pol Pot stated in an interview on December 23, 1978: “We are attacking them [the Vietnamese] in order to stop them penetrating into several regions of our territory. But if they 108 were to manage to penetrate, it would be hard for them to get out.” Is this not an admission that, in December 1978, there were no Vietnamese troops to be found on Kampuchean territory and that, on the contrary, it was the Pol Pot regime that was mounting “preventive” attacks?

Today there is a truly popular government in power in Pnom Penh, and genuine supporters of peace cannot but welcome the KUFNS and the Vietnamese people who came to their aid.