Interview With Nuon Chea, Brother Number Two of the Khmer Rouge Regime- part five

picture: (right-left) Nuon Chea (second), Ieng Sary and Son Sen.

This is the fifth of an eight-part interview with Nuon Chea, Brother Number Two of the Khmer Rouge regime, which was conducted and recorded by Mr. Sam Borin of Radio Free Asia about one year ago but was re-broadcast again in September 2007.

Translated from Khmer by Khmerization
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Borin: The other day you have owed me some answers. You mentioned that to understand everything I must understand about the political parties first.
Chea: I wanted to explain to you too because there are different kinds of political parties. Some parties were formed just to serve some individuals’ political ambitions and some parties were formed to serve the interests of the country. The Revolutionary Party of Cambodia was formed to serve the interests of the country because its aim was important. Anyone who joined it must be willing to sacrifice for the Party because this Party was not created for the purpose of fighting for power or any political interests but for the true interests of the nation. So I am very proud of this Party even though we have committed some mistakes because making mistakes are normal things for any leaders.
Borin: In your opinion what were the main reasons why mistakes were made by your Party?
Chea: I will tell you at a later time because it has its special characteristics. You must know about its special characteristics in order to know about its political platforms. I wanted the people to take those mistakes as a lesson for the future political aspirants to learn about past mistakes. But we have to talk face to face in order for us to debate the issue in a sincere and frank manner because Radio Free Asia is a very popular radio which, in the past, has broadcast very controversial programs about land disputes, about family disputes and about teachers’ disputes with the government. But as a politician I think that those disputes are normal things that we must face and solve everyday.
I have prepared myself that if one day I will see you face to face I will tell you about the birth of our party, about how it has transformed itself, about how it liberated itself from the influence of our neighbour. About its struggle, about how we Khmers was able to build ourselves, about whether this party was formed by itself or was it born out of other political parties. I can only tell you some aspects of it because all the party’s memberships came from different sources. Some came from France, some came from Thailand, some came from Indochina and some came from Vietnam combining together like we are making salad. I don’t want to compare ourselves to salad but that’s the real truth about the different influences brought to our party from different people.
So the agreements in policies are the problems because people from Europe were influenced by European ways of thinking, people from Asia were influenced by Asian ways of thinking and Vietnam has spread its influences to us as well. So past political unity and political agreements are a problem and very difficult to achieve. So all the leaders have to really compromise for the interests of solidarity and our nation. And the Communist Party of Cambodia was not a universal party. It was a true nationalist party but was not an internationalist or a universal party as was considered by some sections of the people.
We were an internationalist in the sense that we build up our party in order to contribute to the progress of the world. This is my view. We did not need an outside help. We can do things by ourselves so we must do it by ourselves in order to strengthen the quality and the capacity of our party.
This was the goal in the creation of our party and we have committed some mistakes. But why did we commit those mistakes? Because our party was a young party which has just been created not long ago. It’s true that it was formed in 1951 but it was not a pure party. It has only become a true independent party from 1960. So since 1960 it has become a true Khmer party which I really admired because it was not a satellite party to any other party anymore.
This is the reasons why I wanted to write about the party as a separate history. I can write it with accuracies because I can remember most of it. But I will write it as a national history. This is a very important issue. The party is a core. If it leads us toward the wrong directions we will face defeat. If it leads us toward the right directions we will achieve victory. The reasons the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Party of Vietnam were strong because the Chinese Communist Party was formed since 1920 and the Communist Party of Vietnam was formed since 1930. And why did other big political parties like the Indonesian party collapse? This is what I wanted to experiment because other political parties, such as the Thai (Communist?) Party, the Burmese (Communist?) Party and the Philippines (Communist?) Party, have not thrived. And our Communist Party of Cambodia was different because it has just been formed for only 5 years but has defeated the Americans.
So if we wanted to know the truth we have to leave it to the next generations to judge us. We don’t want them to learn from us but we wanted them to judge us by themselves. This is my wish. So as you can see the Party is a core. So if the Party does not know how to lead us then we would face problems. But in the past we have tried hard to lead, both in the wrong and right directions, with compromise and with patience. Unlike the European political parties where they debate each other by banging the tables. We have made compromises by following the Buddha’s teachings of Dharma in order to build our nation.
I have to combine modernisation and Buddhism but I take Buddhism as a base. As for modernisation it will have to be done according to the situation. This is what I wanted to write a long time ago but I cannot do it by myself. I need someone to help me do this because I cannot remember everything that happened. Leading the party and the country since 1950 to present time is not an easy task. If we want the country to progress we have to make our population reform their ways of thinking in order to survive peacefully and prosperously. But I think that at the present time there are people who still have the ancient and the primitive ways of thinking.
So how can our nation progress? Even though we have not progressed materialistically, our thoughts and ideas must be progressive. Nature cannot be changed easily. We need 50 to 60 or even 100 years to change our ways of thinking. New thoughts and ideas help society to move forward because thoughts are the bases of modernisation and our intelligence is the master of everything. So I am still thinking whether to write a book or not because of my poor health and also my mind is not as active as before. What I have just told you are the truths. One day if you can endure the lifestyle I live you can come and stay at my house for one or two days, we have lunches and dinners together and we can start to discuss things. But you have to put up with us because our house has lots of cats and dogs and young kids. You are welcomed any time.//(To be continued in parts 6, 7 and 8..). To read part six click here.

To listen to part four click here:http://www.rfa.org/service/audio_popup.html?file=http://www.rfa.org/khmer/audio/2007/10/04/hbs0926-nc4.mp3