p New Times, No. 6, 1979

p Heng Samrin, Chairman of the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Council, was born in a poor peasant family in the south-eastern province of Preyveng in 1934.

p He joined the revolutionary movement in 1959. In the first half of the 1970s, he fought against the pro-American regime, commanding first a battalion and then a regiment. 114 In 1976, he became political commissar and commander of the Fourth Division in Kampong Cham. After that he was Deputy Chief of Staff of the Eastern Military Zone and a member of its Party Committee.

p In May 1978, Heng Samrin assumed command of the insurgent forces fighting against the tyrannical Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique and co-operated with other patriotic forces in the struggle to overthrow the bloody regime. In November, he called upon the population of the Eastern Zone and the whole country to rise against the treacherous militarist regime in Pnom Penh.

At their congress early in December, the patriots set up the Kampuchea United Front for National Salvation and elected Heng Samrin Chairman of its Central Committee. On January 8 of this year, Pnom Penh was liberated by the revolutionary forces and the People’s Revolutionary Council, the supreme body of executive power (government) of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, was formed.