Chea Sim: Saint or Sinner?

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NB: additional note added.

Op-Ed by School of Vice 

Inevitably, history will always be told by victors and not vanquished. 'Victors' also include those who stand to benefit by way of extended social-economic patronage from the victors proper as such who seek to sustain and strengthen their respective or collective political legacy, at times by outright violent means and at other times through amicable arrangements, as these are actively and surreptitiously affected and mediated via social patronage networks. If Mr Hun Sen's crude and brute persona has enabled him to affect such a legacy then the late Chea Sim's more subtle yet effective networking as a means to doing and achieving the same goal can be said to be just as dynamic and effective a method in political dynasty building. In some way the two personas above complement each other 'well' despite the differences in their respective leadership style. Hun Sen to Chea Sim is what Ta Mok [notorious former KR military commander] would have been to Pol Pot. Between the former couple it was not a political alliance forged on mutual trust or harmony but more of a marriage of convenience rooted in the most basic need: political self-preservation. 

Within the CPP hierarchy Chea Sim is seen as the elder patriarch and a stabilizing figure; one that was not necessarily feared or loved but obeyed nevertheless. And there is a reason to this weight of influence held by him. One of Sim's noted characteristics is his penchant for building personal political networks through appointments to key administrative posts and political offices of his supporters and clans; a pattern thought to have began back during his time as party district secretary in the KR's eastern zone, gaining further momentum following the overthrow of the Pol Pot regime. The same tendency is believed to have alarmed the Vietnamese, and this being one reason why he had endured so long politically. Pen Sovan [first Premier appointed by Vietnam] may have been Hanoi's preferred and most 'trusted' candidate to rule the country on their behalf, yet unlike Sim his recalcitrant demeanour towards his Vietnamese bosses and his lack of personal patronage support base had been his most obvious cause of downfall once he was deemed to have outlived his political usefulness by his Vietnamese patrons.

It is in this light of political maneuvering and network building that Chea Sim's true extent of influence and legacy should now be judged. In deed, Sim's relatively humble position as district party cadre or secretary does not fully reflect the true extent of his power or influence at all under the DK regime or since. Observers and writers have talked much of the Eastern Zone's relatively less harsh rule during DK's [Democratic Kampuchea's] years. Yet if this was the case then it was less a reflection of the perceived 'moderate' governing system and leadership style of those former KR cadres, of whom Sim himself was one, and more the internal dynamics and circumstances shaping events throughout the party and the country at the time. 

As in other parts of the country the organised killings and enslavement of those classed as instruments and backbones of the old regime began with defeated former military and police personnel of all ranks without exception as well as skilled or semi-skilled professionals. These include those groups with professional past or skills that could have been crucial to the new society that the regime was attempting to rebuild or give form to such as people with medical credentials and training, civil engineers, teachers, civil servants, artists and entertainers as well as those peasants and their families who had sought safety and refuge from the random US bombings and cross-fire violence of opposing armed camps within the now overcrowded capital of Phnom Penh and its vicinity due partly to the availability of US food aid and the proximity of the capital to the Eastern zone itself. [It took a traveler on foot just over half a day to reach Phnom Penh from the district of Pea Reing in Prey Veng province on the other side of the Mekong]. Once these targets had been 'eliminated' the executions then turned towards the country's specific ethnic populations, namely the Chams and Chinese, male youths whose fathers had already been executed as mentioned above, people with even light skin complexion etc. 

All these killings had lasted for about two years prior to the internal purges ordered against party cadres and soldiers defecting from the fighting along the border with Vietnam and even prior to the arrest of So Phim who was head of the Eastern Zone military command. Such was the scale and intensity of the horror and fear occurring in the region that civilians would tremble at the sight of the teenage KR soldiers with an AK-47, the young village chief who had prior to the revolution won everyone's respect and affection for having accepted the Khmers' customary monastic life for a given time in his youth, a village idiot turned informer ... let alone a district chief! 

Sitting under the tree shade out in the rice field far from the preying eyes and curious ears of gossiping villagers a kamapibal [cadre] would engage in a quiet chat with an old man [himself lost his former military police son to the new regime] looking to obtain more tips and intelligence on who else Angka [the Party] have missed out on in the village. This is where the kindly looking old man [not unlike the late Chea Sim] seized his opportunity to give vent to his envy or settle long-held grievances with his next-door neighbour: 'Let it be known that the son-in-law of my neighbour is a former Lon Nol soldier', a disclosure to which the kamapibal lowered his gaze rather than nodding his head in appreciative acknowledgement. Job done and account settled? Well, not quite. 

A young boy who loved nothing more than eavesdropping on grown-up conversation and story-telling was also present at the meeting. He heard it all, and for a brief chat it was not at all hard to remember and to relay it to the impending victim and his family. Why was the little boy allowed to be party to the conversation that afternoon? Well, one possible reason is that both men probably felt the boy was too young to make sense of their conversation? Why did the boy decide to report the incident even though it had nothing or little to do with him and his family - and at a risk? Because he knew the old man was telling a lie; a vicious gossip that played its part in the countless killings and disappearances of so many innocent people during that era of darkness and horror. He would have indeed been too young to know the meaning and power of paranoid, of adults's world of schemes and ruses, but there was something about false reports that he found revolting! 

The identified former soldier was not a soldier at all, nor had he ever been one - he was very much a struggling student for most of his adult life! So what happened next? Well, all hell broke loose after that. The poor man's spouse was a picture of rage and hysteria - as one could imagine. She set about marching up and down the entire length of the village screaming to all that would listen that the gossip was a lie; that her husband had never worn a uniform in his life and so on and so forth until her fury subsided from her exhausted body! The young man was later arrested and sent to a 're-education camp' at the local district HQ of the new regime where hundreds and thousands would never have any chance of returning from; a place of torture, hard-labour and death that could have been overseen by none other than the late Chea Sim himself. 

The distraught wife would not give up her fight for her husband's life and innocence and would walk for miles to reach the district where her man was detained and 'lobbied' his release. About a few months had passed before news reached the village of her husband's release. He returned - miraculously - looking gaunt and low in spirit, but everyone was relieved for him - the boy included! The wife's brother [who was a district military cadre on the other side] must have intervened on his brother-in-law's behalf. Following So Phim's arrest he too [a KR military officer of some rank and influence] would be arrested along with his young wife and son and executed at a location not far from his birth village.       

One thing is clear: Sim and other former KR cadres had been deeply involved in, or instrumental to, the killings and executions of thousands of people classed as "enemies" of the party and revolution, and there is no evidence or basis for suggesting their defections to Vietnam is somehow a confirmation of their own sanity or liberality in relations to DK's overall policy and rule. Their defections are believed to have come after they had co-operated fully in implanting those atrocities, in many instances in the Eastern Zone, as elsewhere, involving their own party comrades and fellow cadres, including entire military personnel units and their civilian family members. 

One of the effects of these internal purges was to drive defections en masse of Pol Pot's once obedient party cadres and soldiers into exile in neighbouring countries to form a rebel force that would subsequently plot their return to power with the active military assistance and 'guidance' of rival states. This has been a well worn pattern in the changing fortunes in Cambodia's politics historically, and certainly, not something unforeseen by those men in Hanoi from Ho Chi Minh to Le Duc Tho, and before them, their Annamese imperial forebears such as Ming Mang and others.