Julio A. Jeldres vs. Gilles Cayatte about “The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk”

A Commentary about the film

“The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk” produced and directed by Gilles Cayatte and Christine Camdessus

By Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres

In late May 2008, I was contacted by a trusted friend who informed me that a Mr. Gilles Cayatte, a French film producer was making a film about King Father Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and wanted to interview me about my years as Private Secretary to the King in the 1980s.

My friend suggested that the interview could take place in either Bangkok or Phnom Penh but I replied that I had no plan to visit either city in the near future and that, therefore, unless the film producer flew me to Bangkok, it would be difficult to have the interview. My friend then advised me that Mr Cayatte himself and a cameraman would travel to Australia to interview Dr David Chandler and me.

There the matter rested for one month, until I was contacted again from Paris by the producers’ staff suggesting a date for a joint interview of Dr Chandler and myself. I declined and insisted on separate interviews because I know only too well that Chandler has nothing positive to say about Norodom Sihanouk and has written mostly negative judgements of the Sihanouk years in Cambodia ever since he served as Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh.

On 1^st July 2008, I spent approximately six hours with Mr Cayatte and his cameraman. I even had to send away some workers that were repairing the roof of my house in order that the noise they were making was not heard on the film. During those six hours, I gave ample explanations to Mr Cayatte about King Sihanouk’s actions, his unique relationships with China’s Zhou Enlai and North Korea’s Kim IL Sung. I explained to him how His Majesty had put together in 1981 the Peace Plan to end through diplomatic negotiations and UN involvement the occupation of Cambodia by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This draft Peace Plan, His Majesty had entrusted to US Congressman Stephen Solarz in early 1981, who in turn passed on to US and ASEAN authorities with whom it languished without major reaction, until Solarz communicated it to the then Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gareth Evans, who saw its merits and adapted it for everybody’s taste and eventual acceptance. It was indeed, the most wide ranging interview I have ever given!

Yet, in the film, screened in France on the evening of 23 February 2009, none of the substantial explanations about Norodom Sihanouk I gave to Mr. Cayatte was shown.

Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood here, it is Mr Cayatte’s right to use or not to use the material I provided him during the extensive interview but, by the same token, Mr Cayatte cannot expect those of us, who are familiar with the record of Norodom Sihanouk to accept his “documentary” as a balanced, objective or impartial film!

Indeed as the thrust of this commentary shall demonstrate, I believe that “The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk” is a crude exercise to paint as black as possible a picture of Norodom Sihanouk and that the historical record of Cambodia provided in the narrative of this film was seriously misleading and, at times, demonstrably untrue.

There can be little doubt that the subject matter, the many inaccuracies tendered by some of the interviewees and the timing of its broadcast – to coincide with the media circus descending over Phnom Penh for the first audition of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal assured that the film would be controversial.

But what really “impressed” me about this “documentary” was its archetypal qualities; its comprehensive awfulness and great arrogance which elevated it to the status of an agitprop classic unworthy of further screening.

In this commentary, I shall quote from some of the extensive documentation I have gathered for my biography of Norodom Sihanouk from sources in Australia, Canada, Cambodia, Czech Republic, China, France, Germany, Israel, Sweden, New Zealand and the United States.

JEAN LACOUTURE

The “documentary” begins with an interview of Jean Lacouture, a discredited guru of what the French call “La Gauche Caviar” or “The Left that eats Caviar”, insulting King Sihanouk by dismissing him as “a King of Operetta”! Viewers of the film are immediately stunned by this neo-colonial arrogance showed by Lacouture and also the film’s narrative.

Naturally, and in accordance with his deliberate agenda Mr Cayatte does not inform the viewer, who might not be familiar with Cambodian history, that the same King Sihanouk was behind the promulgation, on 6 May 1947, that is six years before achieving total independence for Cambodia from France, of a Constitution which transformed this ancient absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. Not bad for a so-called “King of Operetta”!

SIHANOUK’S NEUTRALISM AND ANTI-AMERICANISM?

Then the narrative of the film tells us that at Bandung (Indonesia) in 1955, during the Afro-Asian Conference which led to the formation, years later, of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) “Sihanouk was introduced to neutralism and Anti-Americanism by the leaders of the Third World”, while pictures of Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai are shown and the narrative and comments by David Chandler suggest that the above-mentioned leaders made him (Sihanouk) feel “important”.

Here, it should be pointed out that what Nehru and Zhou Enlai did was to simply treat Norodom Sihanouk, the leader of small country, with due respect and on an equal footing, something which the Americans and others never did.

Furthermore, Cambodia, as a small and scarcely inhabited country, squeezed between big, powerful and rapacious neighbours, only too willing to take over her territory, could not afford other policy than neutrality and national unity to preserve and defend her independence, peace and territorial integrity while steadily improving the living conditions of her people. This is precisely what Norodom Sihanouk tried very hard to achieve. With an army of only 30,000 badly armed and equipped effectives, Cambodia was expected to take control of three frontiers with three different countries, when the United States with almost half a million extremely well armed men and all the necessary equipment to fight from the air and on land, it was unable to seal the frontier between South Vietnam and Cambodia.

In fact, Norodom Sihanouk has never been “anti-American” but he was anti-US policies that were counter-productive. Indeed, he condemned the policies successive American government followed in South East Asia during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which basically consisted of supporting unpopular, undemocratic and dictatorial regimes in what amounted to a “holy war” against Asian Communism and which had the opposite effect of increasing support for Communist insurgencies in the region.

In December 1969 in a commentary entitled: “The United States and us”, Norodom Sihanouk wrote that “the efforts put forth by the United States to fight Communism have never been directed in the right direction, despite my many warnings. The latter, which were severe, made me, appear in the eyes of Uncle Sam as a spoilsport, since these were the opposite of the flattery which they were used to hearing from their Asian “clients”. Furthermore, these sacrifices were agreed to by the United States in Southeast Asia only to serve their interests as a great power and not to “defend the liberty” of the peoples of our region. If it were otherwise how could it be that we should see dictatorial, anti-popular governments in Taipei, Seoul and, especially, in Saigon and Bangkok”.¹

The Cambodian Head of State added that “The armed, badly inspired, badly conceived interventions, and even the sacrifices – of the US have finally favoured the advance of Communism in the minds and on the ground – which brings Communism to the frontiers and even to the interior of Cambodia much more rapidly than would have occurred normally. The so-called war “against communism” carried on by the Americans has resulted in damaging or destroying a sizable part of the economic potential of Cambodia (plantations, cattle, buildings, fields and rice paddies). It has ruined numbers of our peasants and placed more than 400 of their families in mourning”.²

Subsequent events have amply corroborated that what Norodom Sihanouk wrote regarding the United States in Southeast Asia, and more particularly, in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was eminently right.

In fact, at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, prior to the break of diplomatic relations between Cambodian and the United Sates in May 1965, diplomats were often reminded that in the larger framework of American objectives “Cambodia was of no importance”.³

Some US diplomats in Cambodia behaved poorly towards Sihanouk, always belittling his actions to preserve his country’s neutrality and territorial integrity. Robert McClintock, the first US Ambassador resident in Phnom Penh (Oct. 1954-Oct. 1956), showed no respect at all for the Cambodian Head of State. It was McClintock who invented the nickname “Snooky” to refer to the Head of State of the country to which he was accredited as Ambassador. His arrogance and contempt for Cambodians was well known and forms part of the historical record of the two countries difficult relationship. Many in the United States blamed McClintock for the parlous state of the relationship with Cambodia.⁴

Curtis C. Cutter, a US foreign service officer posted to Cambodia from 1957 to 1959 has described vividly the way the US Embassy operated and how the attempts by Norodom Sihanouk to keep his country neutral were belittled, I request my readers’ indulgence but I feel that here I need to reproduce extensively what Mr Cutter has said about his posting in Cambodia in the years 1957-59⁵:

“Question: Well, you were in Phnom Penh from 1957 to 1959. What was the situation there at that time?

Cutter: I felt that in many ways the U. S. position there was questionable. We had sent an ambassador named Carl Strom to Phnom Penh. He was a very fine, honourable gentleman, but he was an officer at the end of his career. He was a mathematician, a very precise sort of person. He had been mainly an administrative officer most of his career in the Foreign Service. He had absolutely zero rapport with Prince Sihanouk, who was, as you probably know, an entirely different kind of character, very open, outgoing, and very spontaneous. Strom was almost the direct opposite. He was almost introverted and a very serious, point by point kind of person. There was very little personal relationship between the two men, at a time when Prince Sihanouk was Cambodia.

Strom, I think, was also somewhat intimidated by both the Department and our Vietnamese policies at the time. He seemed to feel that in some way what he was doing in Cambodia was meant to support what was happening in Vietnam. He felt he could not take a different line than was being taken there.

Question: He was somewhat deferential?

Cutter: Deferential yes. I can give you an example. Carl Strom and I played a lot of bridge together. We even won the worldwide bridge tournament. So as a junior officer he gave me a lot of access which I would not have had otherwise. Even though, after a year, I had moved to be the consular officer, he let me sit in on lots of meetings of one kind or another and all of his staff meetings. So I had an interesting view of what was happening at the post, although, of course, as a junior officer, I wasn't in any way able to have much influence on what was happening.

But one incident occurred in, it must have been 1958. The Vietnamese were rather aggressively trying to realign the frontier between Cambodia and South Vietnam. There was an incident where they had moved some border posts five or six kilometres into Cambodia and then put them in again. Sihanouk wanted the missions in Phnom Penh to send representatives to see what had happened, because, obviously, the Vietnamese were encroaching on his territory. He wanted to document this for the international community.

When this request came to our Embassy, the Ambassador met with his staff, especially the military attachés, to decide what should be done about it. There were some strong opinions--mine amongst them--that if this were true, then Sihanouk had a legitimate case, and that we ought to go there and take a look. If there were real evidence that this had happened, obviously, the position that the U. S. ought to take was that this was unacceptable, and we should talk to our Vietnamese friends about rectifying the situation.⁶

But after some correspondence back and forth between the Embassy in Saigon and the Embassy in Phnom Penh, it was decided that, in fact, it would be very bad if we went down, if we made our presence at this event. The Ambassador refused to send anybody along. A number of missions did send people, and it was fairly clearly established that the Vietnamese were moving these border posts. This was the kind of thing we did. Actions in favour of the Vietnamese, which began to alienate Sihanouk⁷.

Question: Well, you said that you felt rather strongly. Obviously, you were a junior officer and carried little weight. But did others at the Embassy feel that way, too? I mean, was this sort of thing where maybe we should get out and be a little more active for "our" country, you might say?

Cutter: Well, at least it seemed that there was a question of equity involved here. There was a great possibility that the Cambodians, in fact, were the injured party. Of course, the whole pressure of U. S. policy at that time on Cambodia was to get them out of their neutral stance. The harder Sihanouk resisted that, which he did, the more pressure was exerted on him to do it, and the more entrenched our attitude became that Sihanouk's policy was really unacceptable. There were people in the Embassy who took a different line--for example, the political officer, Bob Barrett, subsequently an ambassador in Africa. Bob was, I think, one of the people in favour of our taking at least a more neutral position on this and trying to see where the facts lay. But the military and Agency [CIA] representations there didn't feel that this was in the US interest.

Question: They were trying to keep the Vietnamese content, I suppose.

Cutter: That's right. And Durbrow [Elbridge Durbrow], who was our Ambassador in Saigon at the time, was very strongly opposed to our doing anything that would upset his clients”⁸.

Lloyd Mike Rives, a US Foreign Service officer, who, in August 1969, re-opened the US Embassy in Phnom Penh after a break of four years and became for a year the United States Charge d’affaires in Cambodia. Regarding Norodom Sihanouk he says: “I just want to make one point clear here: Sihanouk was an interesting person, and I think we had misunderstood him for many years. He was a patriot. What he did was for Cambodia, not for himself and there were no real ulterior motives except for that”.⁹

In order to pursue and preserve Cambodia’s neutrality, it was essential for Norodom Sihanouk to be flexible and to zigzag when necessary and to change emphasis. He became a master tactician and used unpredictability as a weapon to disarm his foreign detractors. While there was much talk and discussion about the use of Cambodia as a sanctuary for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, for sixteen years, until 18 March 1970, Cambodia had been a sanctuary in another sense, quite remarkably preserving its neutrality and keeping the Indochina war beyond its borders. Sihanouk was able to contain a Communist presence in his country while working to remove it by diplomatic means, while at the same time ensuring a reasonable prosperity and gradual progress for the Cambodian people.

The former Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, the late Noel Deschamps, once told me that he felt that American policy towards Cambodia in the 1950-1970 period was heavily influenced by what Cambodia’s neighbours thought of Cambodia itself and, more importantly, of the policies and actions taken by Norodom Sihanouk to protect and keep his country and people out of the war ravaging Vietnam and parts of Laos.¹⁰

It is into this “anti-Sihanouk” ambience which existed among certain US diplomats in Cambodia that David Chandler settled, in 1960, to be the Second Secretary of the US Embassy in Phnom Penh. For reasons that until this day, I am unable to comprehend he became a determined critic of Norodom Sihanouk: nothing that the former King did was good, everything was bad, Sihanouk never had good intentions, his intentions were always bad. All the positive things that other US diplomats have recognized about Norodom Sihanouk have been dismissed disdainfully by David Chandler.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Gilles Cayatte uses Dr. Chandler ad nauseam to advance his “anti-Sihanouk” thesis in his “documentary”. As it progresses so do the misinterpretations and falsehoods about Norodom Sihanouk’s so-called “Nine Lives”. For instance, General De Gaulle of France, another statesman, who understood what Norodom Sihanouk was trying to do in Cambodia and who offered his hand of friendship and respect to the former King, is also dismissed as a friend of no consequence.

The impression is falsely conveyed by the “documentary” that the sole aim behind Norodom Sihanouk’s friendship with Charles De Gaulle and Zhou Enlai was of a financial nature, i.e., to obtain assistance for the development of Cambodia.

Such an aim, in itself was not ignoble for a Head of State that really cared for his country and his people but the opposite. But there was more to it, faced with so much antagonism from the United States and attempts to subvert his regime by its rapacious neighbours, the friendship of these two statesmen, representatives of great powers, gave a certain assurance to Cambodia for its survival as a nation of its own, with its territorial integrity and independence protected.

A question that the Cayatte “documentary” did not raise and that it should have is: Did the United States have sufficient interests in Cambodia per se to treat it as a separate issue?

The answer is provided by Ambassador Robert V. Keeley, a former US Ambassador to Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Greece, who served at the American Embassy in Phnom Penh as Deputy Chief of Mission for approximately a year from 1974 until the closure of the US mission on 12 April 1975, he states:

“It was not a question of seeing it as a separate issue; it was a matter of dealing with it differently, in our opinion, and being handled on its own terms. That is, it should not have been viewed as something that is a bother because it affects Vietnam. There were different forces fighting in Cambodia than there were in Vietnam. There were indigenous forces in Cambodia on both sides; there were no Vietnamese involved at the time. The opposing sides had different interests from the Vietnamese and the war itself had a different history. In fact, there should never have been a war in Cambodia, but we had something to do with that. We should have done everything in our power to avoid this ‘spill-over’ effect.

In order to do that, we would have had, from the beginning, to respect Cambodian neutrality, which is what Prince Sihanouk had done throughout his career to the best of his ability until he was overthrown in 1970… We really brought the war to Cambodia. The overthrow of Sihanouk, which voided his policy of neutrality, also contributed to the war coming to Cambodia”.¹¹

SIHANOUK, THE VIETCONG AND THE SECRET BOMBING OF CAMBODIA

The most outrageous allegation made in the film comes from Father Francois Ponchaud, a Jesuit missionary who had lived in Cambodia prior to 1975 and returned again to live in Phnom Penh after the 1991 Paris Agreements.

In the Cayatte “documentary” Ponchaud alleges that: “At that moment he changed camp and asked the American Army to bomb the Vietcong sanctuaries along the Cambodia-Vietnam border. Of course, on the radio he screamed as much as he could against this American Army that bombed Cambodia, but hold on, bombed on his orders”.

This allegation of Ponchaud is false and highly misleading but is immediately accepted by Cayatte, who adds “And there you have, Sihanouk in the untenable position of being the one who authorizes the Americans to secretly bomb the North Vietnamese positions which he had secretly authorized to establish”.

The question of the infiltration of Cambodia by North Vietnamese/Viet cong forces has been used and misused to justify the carpet bombing of Cambodia which took place from March 1968 to August 1973. It is, therefore, important to give here the historical background to this controversial issue.

In the early 1960s, Norodom Sihanouk saw the growing Communist insurgency in South Vietnam and the increasing US involvement with serious concern. Cambodia had declared its neutrality in 1953, thus Sihanouk saw in the growing conflict in Vietnam the possibility of Cambodia being caught in a squeeze between its two long-standing rapacious neighbours –Thailand and Vietnam. Consequently, Sihanouk became even more dedicated to protecting his country’s neutrality but, as explained above, with a small poorly armed army, in relation to the much modern, better equipped South Vietnamese and American armies, it was indeed a Herculean task.

On two separate occasions in early 1964, South Vietnamese forces shelled Cambodian villages, killing several Cambodians, wounding many others and destroying houses, a dispensary, animals and property. On 2 March 1964 during the second shelling incident, US advisors accompanied the South Vietnamese troops.

Norodom Sihanouk brought the matter to the United Nations Security Council, charging the US and South Vietnam with repeated acts of aggression against Cambodia. Both countries apologized but the United States assured the Council of its respect for Cambodian neutrality, adding that there was evidence of Cambodian collusion in provision of aid and safe haven to the Viet Cong.¹²

The former King stated on several occasions that even though Cambodia was neutral, as a signatory of the Geneva Accords of 1954 and the Bandung Summit Meeting of Afro-Asian Countries in 1955, “Cambodia had the duty to support the just struggle of the Vietnamese people for the liberation of South Vietnam” adding that “such support did not violate in any way the neutrality of our country, because it is not a military support but rather political, diplomatic and humanitarian”.¹³

Sihanouk also pointed out that certain facilities which were extended by Cambodia to the South Vietnamese resistance against US aggression and the dictatorial regime of Saigon, were given “on behalf of the Khmer people in order that future generations of Cambodians could avail themselves of the great appreciation and the respect of tomorrow’s Vietnam which surely will be unified and socialist and consequently very powerful. It would be pure folly for our country to confront militarily this neighbour which is capable of vanquishing the biggest and richest military power of all times, but our Cambodia could gain the respect of this neighbour”.¹⁴

But even the evidence about the presence of North Vietnamese/Viet Cong forces inside Cambodia was not clear cut. US officials still doubted the importance of the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong sanctuaries to neutral Cambodia. On 16 April 1964, the State Department’s Intelligence and Research Unit summarized the official position towards South Vietnamese claims that NV/VC forces were massing in Cambodia’s border region as follows:

“…there still no firm evidence to substantiate numerous official GVN (South Vietnamese Government) charges and reports the Viet Cong make extensive use of Cambodian territory as a base for operations in Vietnam; there is, nevertheless, no doubt that the Viet Cong make limited use of Cambodian territory as a safe haven for infiltrating cadres, supplies and funds”.¹⁵

The above statement was also shared by the Australian Foreign Minister, Sir Paul Hasluck, who in a highly classified telegram to the Australian Ambassador in Washington DC, stated:

“I was very interested in Rusk’s remarks on Cambodia. I am doubtful whether allegations of extensive Viet Cong use of Cambodia and of Cambodian complicity have been clearly established in the information at present available to us, or proved to the point when we can openly disregard official Cambodian denials. Our own intelligence assessments, although based on more limited sources than those available to the United States, generally accord with the State Department’s views described in your telegram No. 4332.

You reported the State Department views as saying that Cambodia has been used as a short term sanctuary and perhaps also as part of base or headquarters area, and as a minor infiltration route. You also reported the view of the intelligence community that the evidence was insufficiently conclusive to justify military action (even leaving aside political considerations)”.¹⁶

Even after the break of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and the USA, on 3 May 1965, the misunderstanding between the USA and Cambodia over the issue of NV/Viet Cong use of Cambodian territory continued for most the period of the Johnson administration, with the President, to his credit, resisting frequent requests by the US Army and the US Ambassador in Saigon, for military intervention in Cambodia. The Joint Chiefs wanted authority for both hot pursuit and cross border operations by the Vietnamese forces in order to pursue and destroy enemy elements fleeing into Cambodia.¹⁷

But in the years that followed Vietnamese Communist presence in Cambodia increased. Sihanouk was not happy about this and asked the great sponsors of the Communist forces, China and the Soviet Union, to help him by inducing the Communists to leave Cambodia’s territory and respect her territorial integrity.

At about this time Joint Chiefs obtained approval for the launching of a so-called “clandestine intelligence collection program” in North Eastern Cambodia. Nicknamed “Daniel Boone” then “Salem House” and later, “Thot Not”, the operations consisted of small teams of indigenous agents, mostly Khmer Serei elements operating from South Vietnam with the aim of overthrowing Norodom Sihanouk. They were led by US Special Forces personnel and infiltrated inside Cambodia to a depth of 20 kilometres with the help of helicopters and forward air control aircraft.¹⁸

With the active involvement of the Australian Ambassador in Cambodia, who had been charged by his government to also represent American interests in Cambodia, following a request by the US government, Norodom Sihanouk agreed in late 1967 to receive a US Presidential Envoy to discuss all these issues troubling the relations between the two countries. The task was given to the US Ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, who was known to Sihanouk from a previous visit to Cambodia.

On 31 December 1967, Sihanouk told the Australian Ambassador that he would welcome the visit by Ambassador Bowles to discuss Cambodian-American problems. He asked the Ambassador “how could he convey to Americans and the outside world the extent of Cambodian dislike and fear of all Vietnamese? The Communists more than the others, since the Communists were disciplined, organised and single minded”.¹⁹

Sihanouk added that “The United States would eventually withdraw its troops from Indo China but the Vietnamese threat would remain, probably in an accentuated form. Therefore aid or comfort given by Cambodia to North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, for moral or political reasons could under no circumstances extend to military assistance or toleration of a presence on Cambodian territory”. And that the Ambassador would know that “he based his action on a series of firm principles, among which Cambodian sovereignty was of primary importance”.²⁰

Ambassador Chester Bowles visited Cambodia from 8 to 12 January 1968. At a meeting with Norodom Sihanouk, the question of hot pursuit by American troops based in Vietnam on Viet Cong elements infiltrating into Cambodia was discussed at length. There was no discussion about B-52s bombing Cambodia. Sihanouk agreed that he would “close his eyes” to American hot pursuit of Viet Cong forces, as long as this action took place in areas of the Cambodia-Vietnam border inhabited by Cambodians. He warned Ambassador Bowles that the moment a single Cambodian was killed he would scream and bring the matter up to the United Nations Security Council.²¹

Here again, I would like to emphasize that there was never any discussion, consultation or suggestion about the bombing of Cambodia during the discussions Ambassador Bowles had with Norodom Sihanouk or Prime Minister Son Sann. Australian Ambassador Noel Deschamps who attended all the meetings of the Bowles mission in Phnom Penh confirmed this to me in April 2005, just prior to his death.²²

Furthermore, in his outstanding study of the US-Cambodia troubled relationship, Professor Kenton Clymer reaches the conclusion that:

“In sum, Sihanouk was never asked to approve the B-52 bombings, and he never gave his approval. He steadfastly insisted on respect for Cambodia’s integrity and sovereignty. He strongly protested American and South Vietnamese border incidents that resulted in injury to Cambodians and Cambodian property. He sought the American border declaration in part to limit border raids and attacks”.²³

I should add that in his round-up telegram to the State Department on his mission to Cambodia, sent upon his return to New Delhi, Ambassador Bowles summarized:

“I came away deeply convinced, as on previous visits to Cambodia, that Sihanouk’s decisions and attitudes, however bizarre, are shaped by intense and deeply rooted nationalism in which ideology has little or no part. The Prince stressed again and again that his is a small country caught in the middle of an unpredictable international conflict and that Cambodia must strive to maintain maximum degree of goodwill not only towards its neighbours, but particularly towards great powers, USSR, China and USA”.²⁴

SIHANOUK AND THE PEOPLE

In this “documentary” the most outrageous criticism of Norodom Sihanouk’s is by foreign “experts” on Cambodia, while the few Cambodians interviewed for the film are much more perceptive of what their former King did for their country and people. As Chak Sarik, a Cambodian of great resilience and wisdom, points out “For the first time, we had the feeling that a leader took care of the people and the country. And the people were happy”.

But this is not good enough for a hostile David Chandler who is given carte blanche to distort the unique relationship between Norodom Sihanouk and the Cambodian people. “He did not want to wake up the conscience of the small Khmer citizenry, because he knew that with US$ 200 per year, the people were poor!”

The “documentary” makes no mention of the numerous ‘’people’s audiences” given by Norodom Sihanouk every time he travelled in the provinces of Cambodia, which consumed a greater part of Norodom Sihanouk’s working schedule, or of his reports to the people every time he travelled on a mission outside Cambodia, made over the radio.

One of the most eminent attributes of Sihanouk, during the years he ruled Cambodia, was that he kept the Cambodian people informed of what was going on in all fields of Cambodian contemporary history, thus he made them feel involved, participating in the country’s national construction, even if they did not always understand the complexities of foreign affairs, they could differentiate which countries were helping Cambodia from those that were not.

Furthermore, there existed the National Congress which was established in 1958. Held twice a year in an open site next to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh and chaired by the Cambodian Head of State, it lasted several days at each session. Thousands of people from all provinces of the country participated in the Congress and listened to government reports, presented by Ministers and senior officials, on domestic affairs. The people were encouraged to participate in the proceedings of the National Congress and to make suggestions for solving diverse problems. On several occasions, government officials that behaved badly towards the people lost their jobs, after their actions were reported by ordinary citizens to the National Congress.

SIHANOUK AND THE KHMERS ROUGES

On this issue the message that came through the narrative, with varying degrees of ham-fistedness, went something like this: Sihanouk allied himself with the Khmers Rouges after the 18 March 1970, he invited all Cambodian patriots “to join the Khmers Rouges to fight Lon Nol and his American allies”, Sihanouk was in competition with the Khmers Rouges, “by entering the Khmers Rouges’ unknown, Sihanouk definitively joined the conspiracy of silence”, “Sihanouk was jealous of Pol Pot and his capacity to draw such absolute loyalty”. I would submit that every one of those claims is either wrong or seriously misleading.

After the 18 March 1970, Norodom Sihanouk did not ally himself with the Khmers Rouges. Indeed it was the then public voices of the Khmers Rouges, Khieu Samphan, Hun Nim and Hou Youn, (also known as the “three ghosts” because according to certain “experts” on Cambodia, they had been executed on Sihanouk’s instructions) who conveyed a message to the former King through the North Vietnamese Embassy in Beijing, pledging their loyalty and support for Sihanouk’s struggle against Lon Nol and the Americans.²⁵

Regarding the call by Norodom Sihanouk to “all Cambodian patriots to join the Khmers Rouges to fight Lon Nol and the Americans”, this is patently untrue. The message of 23 March 1970 does not mention the Khmers Rouges at all but calls on Cambodians to raise against the coup makers and its American sponsors.²⁶

In his book “Will the Cambodian people survive!”, Jean Lacouture suggests that when on 26 March 1970 the Khmers Rouges (Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn) proclaimed their solidarity and support for Norodom Sihanouk against the coup makers of Phnom Penh they turned upside down the basics of Cambodian politics and compares the alliance to the one that joined General De Gaulle with the French Communist Party between 1941 and 1945., because the country was in mortal danger”.²⁷

With reference to the visit Norodom Sihanouk paid to the liberated zone of Cambodia in March-April 1973, the way the “documentary” portraits the visit induces the viewer to believe that Norodom Sihanouk was involved in a what the narrative suggests was “a silent conspiracy” with the Khmers Rouges. Such reading of Cambodian contemporary history is a somewhat misleading and tendentious one, construed in such a way as to blacken as much as possible Sihanouk’s image, to coincide, as I said before, with the beginning of the trials of certain Khmer Rouge leaders in Phnom Penh.

The facts are that throughout the period 1970-1977, hardly anyone, with the exception of the leaderships of the Communist parties of China and Vietnam, knew of the existence of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader responsible of the massacres that took place in Cambodia between 1975 and 1978. For all intents and purposes, the acknowledged leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement were Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn. Later on, upon his arrival in Peking in 1971, Ieng Sary became known also as one of the leaders. During Sihanouk’s visit to the liberated zone of Cambodia, Saloth Sar (later to be known as Pol Pot), played a self-effacing role, leaving the leading role always to Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn.

Here I would like to quote what David Chandler wrote regarding Sihanouk’s visit to the liberated zone in his political biography of Pol Pot: “At the Lao-Cambodian border the prince was greeted by the Three Ghosts –Khieu Samphan, Hou Youn and Hu Nim. They told him that they were in charge of the resistance. Two days later, at the party’s headquarters in the northern zone, Sihanouk also encountered Khieu Ponnary; Son Sen; the secretary of the northern zone, Koy Thuon and Saloth Sar, who mingled genially with his colleagues, giving the prince no hint of his high status. The charade probably amused Sar. He may also have been eager to observe Sihanouk at close range without being questioned or evaluated himself. He was probably beguiled by observing his subordinates and forcing them to act as if he were unimportant”.²⁸

Yet in the “documentary” Chandler gives a completely different version of events, even though he was not present at the meetings between Norodom Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge leadership, Chandler suggests that Norodom Sihanouk was “terrified” during his visit and that he “behaved like Louis XVI, following the motions and did not understand anything about the Khmers Rouges”.

Chandler goes on to say that “regarding Pol Pot, Sihanouk was jealous of his capacity to inspire such absolute loyalty, absolute religion”. Thus, while in his biography of Pol Pot, published initially in 1992, Chandler tells how Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) self effaced himself and allowed Khieu Samphan and the others to play a charade of leadership with the visiting Norodom Sihanouk, in 2008 when he was interviewed for the Cayatte “documentary” the whole story has changed and Norodom Sihanouk “is jealous of Pol Pot’s capacity to inspire absolute loyalty…”.

What really disappoints me about the producers of this “documentary” is that they seem to put some notion of “academic expertise” above the commitment to objectivity, not to mention the crucial importance, of historical accuracy. Surely aren’t they, by their actions, forfeiting any claim to be taken seriously?

It is also, I believe, intellectually dishonest for the producer and director of this “documentary” not to present others views that are not anti-Sihanouk. But, again, it seems that the film’s main purpose was to tarnish as much as possible the image of Norodom Sihanouk, for whom the people of Cambodia, even today after years of savage bombings by the US Air Force, the corrupt Lon Nol regime, the murderous Pol Pot regime and the invasion and occupation of Cambodia, followed by a Potemkin democracy, have not changed their feelings of loyalty and love.

SIHANOUK AND CHINA

The “documentary” tries to convince the audience that China’s friendship was ideological and that Norodom Sihanouk “was a prince whom the Chinese Communists believed had been won to their cause” and that “the Chinese felt they had converted him to the virtues of Maoism”. Again, each of these allegations is demonstrably untrue. Norodom Sihanouk never became a Communist nor was he interested by Maoism.

Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution, hardliners at the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh tried to bring the Cultural Revolution to Cambodia but Norodom Sihanouk would have none of it and it was only the personal intervention of Zhou Enlai that prevented a break of diplomatic relations.

Norodom Sihanouk said, back in 1963, that Cambodia’s relationship with China was based on two actions resolutely taken by China:

“First, it has recognized and guaranteed our neutrality and territorial integrity. Moreover, it has appealed to other countries to approve our request to recognize our neutrality and territorial integrity – while other countries have declined to do so. Second, if imperialism’s satellites dare attack Cambodia, they will be destroyed because China and its 700 million people will be with us”.²⁹

It seems that Gilles Cayatte and his team were not interested in the favourable aspects of the Cambodia- China relationship, as I recall spending a great deal of time explaining the same to him. I did point out to him that Zhou Enlai was worried by the Khmer Rouge policies to be implemented in Cambodia were they to win the war against Lon Nol and the USA. I also told him in great detail, I recall, how the late Chinese Prime Minister had contacted the Ambassadors in Peking from Australia, France, New Zealand, among others, to ask them to encourage the USA to entertain discussing the issue with Norodom Sihanouk in order to expeditiously put an end to the conflict ravaging Cambodia. All his attempts were rejected by Henry Kissinger.

SIHANOUK AND THE CGDK

One of the most bizarre assertions of the “documentary” takes place when the narrative takes the viewer to the formation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK). To begin with the narrative says very little about the reasons that prompted Norodom Sihanouk to join the CGDK in June 1982.

The CGDK which had three components –the Party of Democratic Kampuchea led by Mr. Khieu Samphan, the Khmer’s People National Liberation Front led by former Prime Minister (in the Sihanouk years) Samdech Son Sann and FUNCINPEC led by Samdech Norodom Sihanouk. It was formally established in Kuala Lumpur in June 1982, following strong pressure from ASEAN, China and the United States on the three leaders of the above named Cambodian resistance movements against Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia.

Between February 1979 and June 1982, Norodom Sihanouk refused to join any government in exile with the Khmer Rouge. He agreed to join the CGDK only after it was made clear to him that the thousands of Cambodian refugees at the Thai-Cambodian border who declared allegiance to him would not get any assistance unless he joined such coalition. At that time, FUNCINPEC, was the smallest component of the CGDK with few armed forces, while the PDK was composed of the remnants of the Khmer Rouge army and the KPNLF had also established an army which has attracted several of the leading generals of the fallen Khmer Republic of Lon Nol.

Once again, David Chandler, is asked to comment by Gilles Cayatte about the formation of the CGDK and here, sadly, Chandler seems to throw away all the years of research he had conducted about Cambodia’s history by asserting that in the CGDK “you had the Khmers Rouges who had condemned Lon Nol to death, you had Son Sann heir of Lon Nol, who had condemned Sihanouk to death and, you had Sihanouk who had condemned all the others to death. Every body among them had condemned their predecessor to death it was difficult to make a coalition”.

I have always respected David Chandler’s work documenting the history of Cambodia, even though we have strongly disagreed on Norodom Sihanouk’s actions and aims, but on this opportunity I cannot see what possessed him to make such an erroneous, even defamatory statement.

Yes, Lon Nol was condemned to death by the Khmers Rouges but with US assistance, and cash, he managed to retire to the serenity of Hawaii.

Son Sann, was never the heir of Lon Nol, in fact, he stayed away from joining the Lon Nol group and lived most of the time in Paris where he tried to put an end to the conflict ravaging Cambodia by urging dialogue between Lon Nol and Norodom Sihanouk. Yes, there were former Generals and officials from the Khmer Republic joining his KPNLF just as there some Republicans who joined Sihanouk’s FUNCINPEC, like In Tam, who had been one of the key conspirators in the 18 March 1970 coup d’etat in Cambodia against Norodom Sihanouk.

Certainly, Son Sann was never condemned to death by Sihanouk. This I have had verified with other historians and they all tell me they have never heard of such incident. I also checked it with Son Sann’s heir, Son Soubert, presently a member of the Constitutional Council of Cambodia, who expressed dismay by this “fabrication and groundless allegation about which I have never heard of nor did my late father ever mention it to me”.³⁰

As for the allegation that Norodom Sihanouk had also condemned Khieu Samphan to death, there is no demonstrable evidence available to that effect.

It is true that Norodom Sihanouk had hinted, in one of his speeches over Cambodia National Radio that he may order the arrest of three left-wing deputies in the Cambodian National Assembly –Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn over the growing insurgency problem in Battambang province, but in the event the three deputies disappeared from Phnom Penh in 1967.

In his book of memoirs of his political career, Khieu Samphan never mentions that he was condemned to death by Norodom Sihanouk and relates that he and the other two deputies decided to leave Phnom Penh for the jungle because at that time “there were many rumours circulating in Phnom Penh that a coup d’etat Indonesian style was about to take place with a Cambodian Soeharto or a Nasution taking over the leadership of the country”.³¹

All these facts were known to the producers of this “documentary” yet they choose not to provide their audience with the other side of the story, in so doing, they abandoned all the principles of objective, unprejudiced and accurate journalism.

My concluding remark is directed to an allegation made by Patrice de Beer, a former correspondent in Southeast Asia for the French newspaper Le Monde. According to Mr de Beer: “In December 1969, I was in Phnom Penh and called at the Embassy of France where I was told that Sihanouk is finished, he is a Communist, there will be a coup d’etat, he will get kicked out!”. This is an extraordinary allegation which should be replied to by the appropriate services of the French government.

After I watched the “documentary” for the first time, I was taken back in time to June 1995 when, in Paris, I interviewed the former French Ambassador to Cambodia, Mr. Louis Dauge, he was not very forthcoming with me but insisted, several times during the interview, that I inform King Sihanouk that “the French Embassy was not aware of the plot being organized against him in March 1970”. I was very surprised because in my almost 12 years working with Norodom Sihanouk I never heard him say anything about French complicity in the 18^th March 1970 coup of Lon Nol.

But now in 2009, after watching the Cayatte “documentary”, I remembered also that the late Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai had suggested, at his first ever meeting with Henry Kissinger, that may be the French had been involved in the coup, after Kissinger had denied any US involvement.³²

In conclusion, I would suggest that this “documentary” has done nothing to increase the general public’s knowledge about the personality of Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, which is sad, because the producers had access to more interviewees than previous documentaries on Cambodia and obviously had the financial means to produce an equitable film about Norodom Sihanouk.

Poor Cambodia! It seems to possess the unenviable distinction of all the countries of the former French Indo-China to bring out the worst prevarications of Western journalism and certain intellectual circles.

From Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres
Official Biographer to H.M. the King Father, Samdech Preah Upayuvareach Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia
Tel/Fax: 61-3-98887950
E-mail:Royal Biographer@gmail.com

* Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Asia Institute of Monash University and the Official Biographer of His Majesty the King Father Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.