Searching for the truth Issues 21 - Documentation Center of Cambodia

Searching for the truth ⎯ Public Debate
Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam)
Number 21, September 2001
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF KHIEU SAMPHAN
Vannak Huy
Khieu Samphan’s revolutionary name was comrade
Hem; he was also known as Ta Chhun and Ta Hong. He
was born to Khmer-Chinese parents in 1929 (the year of
the snake) in Koh Sotin District, Kampong Cham
Province, Region 22, Eastern Zone. Khieu Samphan
completed his coursework for a doctorate degree in
political economy in Paris and obtained his degree in 1959
after he had returned to Cambodia.
In Cambodia, Khieu Samphan served as a minister
in King Norodom Sihanouk’s government from 1950 to
1960. During this period, he also took a job as a French
language teacher, and in 1954, established a newspaper
called Observateur. In mid-1960, he made a declaration
provoking a struggle for the restitution of the land known
as Kampuchea Kroam from Vietnam, and in August of that
year, was arrested for being a “Khmer Rouge.” In the 1966
national elections, he became a people’s representative
from Kandal Province.
After the Sihanouk government issued a warrant for
his arrest on April 24, 1967, Khieu Samphan escaped to
the jungle together with Hou Yuon and Hu Nim. All three
were wanted for their association with left-leaning groups.
Khieu Samphan chaired a two-week meeting held
in July 1971 at Pol Pot’s head office in the Northern Zone.
The main item on the meeting’s agenda was to discuss
whether “King Norodom Sihanouk should be permitted to
join the struggle movement.” At a party meeting in 1974,
Khieu Samphan expressed his support for the idea of
evacuating the residents of Phnom Penh. On October 9,
1975, he attended the “Meeting of the Standing
Committee,” which discussed “task assignments.” At the
meeting he was appointed to be responsible for the fronts
and for the commercial sector areas of inventory and the
fixed pricing of produce. Khieu Samphan participated in
another meeting, the “Local Tasks Meeting,” on March 8,
1976, where the March 20, 1976 election and the situations
in “106 and 103, Northern [Zone]” were discussed.
On March 30, 1976, the Central Committee made a
decision to appoint Khieu Samphan as the president of the
state presidium. He was then appointed as a member of the
Standing Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea
in mid-1976.
According to a speech given by Ieng Sary in 1977,
Khieu Samphan was appointed to replace comrade Doeun
as the chief of Office 870. This office was under the
direction of the CPK’s Central Committee.
THE KHMER ROUGE AND THE VIETNAMESE
COMMUNISTS: HISTORY OF THEIR RELATIONS AS
TOLD IN THE SOVIET ARCHIVES
It appears from the archival documents that in the
first half of 1976, Hanoi seriously expected positive
changes in its relations with the Khmer Rouge. In
February 1976, apparently on the eve of the summit,
Xuan Thuy⎯one of the most prominent party leaders of
Vietnam⎯told the Soviet ambassador that “the relations
of Vietnam and Cambodia are slowly improving”
(RSAMH, Fund 5, inventory 69, file 2314. Conversations
of the Soviet ambassador with Xuan Thuy, February 16,
1976, p. 16). A little later, in July 1976, in a conversation
with the Soviet ambassador, the Deputy Minister of
Dmitry Mosyakov
Foreign Affairs of the DRV, Hoanh Van Loi, declared that
the Vietnamese leadership “deems it necessity to have
patience and work towards gradually strengthening its
influence in Cambodia” (RSAMH, Fund 5, inventory 69,
file 2312, conversation of the Soviet ambassador with the
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DRV, Hoanh
Van Loi, July 1976, p. 90).
Apparently the Vietnamese leaders considered the
well-known Pol Pot interview, which he had given in
1976 to the deputy director-general of the Vietnamese
Information Agency, Tran Thanh Xuan, as a proof of
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