Khmer Rouge [Hun Sen's involvement in] Suppression of Cham Unrest, September-October 1975

Khmer Rouge Suppression of Cham Unrest, September-October 1975

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Extract from '30 Years of Hun Sen: Violence, Repression, and Corruption in Cambodia'

After April 17, 1975, but while still in the hospital, Hun Sen was appointed as chief of staff of an autonomous special regiment in the East Zone,[103] one of three such units in various parts of the zone.[104] As per CPK practice, in this structure the CPK sector secretary exercised authority over the sector military.[105] Created out of the wartime Sector 21 regiment,[106] it comprised Battalions 55, 59, and 75.[107] Hun Sen was concurrently a deputy commander of the regiment, so he held positions giving him authority over all of the regiment’s 2,000 men.[108] By May 1975, Hun Sen was well enough to attend meetings,[109] and shortly thereafter he joined his regiment, which had been deployed to the border with Vietnam in Me Mut district of Sector 21.[110]

In the ensuing months, Cambodia’s Islamic Cham minority communities began to oppose the new order. Unrest grew in Krauch Chhmar district of Sector 21, especially on the island of Koh Phal (directly south across the Mekong from Peam Koh Sna commune) and further downriver in the Krauch Chhmar commune of Svay Khleang along the south bank of the Mekong. CPK suppression of uprisings in September-October 1975 in the villages of Koh Phal and Svay Khleang ended the most serious of such unrest.[111] As early as 1996, a history of the CPK reported that Sector 21 forces were involved in the suppression of the unrest.[112] However, Hun Sen has repeatedly denied any forces of his regiment were involved. He says that once in Me Mut, he began resisting CPK orders, the first instance being his refusal in September 1975 to send troops to kill Cham civilians. He says he told his superiors that 60 to 70 percent of his troops were ill with malaria and therefore not fit to put down the Cham revolt. The unrest, he says, was instead suppressed by forces from Krauch Chhmar district itself.[113]

Other accounts contradict Hun Sen’s version, indicating that although Krauch Chhmar district forces may have dealt on their own with Koh Phal village, Battalion 55 of the Sector 21 Regiment was directly involved in the subsequent attack on Svay Khleang. According to one testimony by a former Sector 21 regiment combatant, after the unrest broke out and had already spread to Svay Khleang, Battalion 55 was dispatched from the border to suppress it. This is corroborated by the account of a Krauch Chhmar resident who observed Sector 21 troops moving into battle, saying that the units that suppressed the Cham unrest in 1975 were Krauch Chhmar District Military forces, based at the district seat on the Mekong, and Battalion 55, which came up into Krauch Chhmar from rubber plantations to the south, thus arriving from further away and therefore later than Krauch Chhmar forces.[114] This is consistent with a Svay Khleang villager’s account that after Krauch Chhmar district troops appeared from the west, hundreds of other troops in a different type of uniform and carrying heavy weapons arrived.[115] A fourth source, who also lived in the Svay Khleang village during the attack declared that there were four attack prongs, including Krauch Chhmar district forces who dug in as a blocking force west of Svay Khleang and forces belonging to the Sector 2 regiment from the border, which carried out assaults from the east, the south, and from on boats in the Mekong. This source specified that the attackers bombarded the village with 60 and 82 millimeter mortar rounds, while also firing on villagers with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, killing hundreds of villagers. He also said the Sector troops came up through rubber plantations in, or to the south of, Krauch Chhmar.[116]

This Khmer Rouge violence is alleged to constitute crimes against humanity in the ECCC investigating judges’ indictment of CPK-era leaders for targeting specific ethnic or religious groups, including the Cham, to expunge their particular identities. [117]

Hun Sen asserts that he had increasing disagreements with certain CPK policies and practices in 1976 and especially in the first half of 1977, as a result of which he decided to leave Cambodia for Vietnam.[118] He crossed the border on June 20, 1977, although the exact circumstances are disputed.[119]