Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 11:19:51 +0200 (MET DST)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: M-G: 2/2 H.I., '97: In Defence of Saloth Sar


2/2 H.I., '97: In Defence of Saloth Sar
[Posted: 18.04.98]

[Continued from part 1/2 (17.04)]


Those informations which exist are to a large extent based on
such information as, during the first weeks of the Vietnamese
invasion of Kampuchea in 1979, were cabled out over the world as
part of a war propaganda - i.e., a source that under normal con-
ditions would never have been accepted. As early as some months
after the invasion, the invasion army and its tributary regime
in the presence of the international press in Phnom Penh were
building impressive pyramids out of death's heads, purportedly
all of them victims of Pol Pot. This so-called need for documen-
tation quite clearly was one that served the interests of war 
propaganda and in part was percieved as such by observers at 
that time too.

The fact that univocally our news media, professor Rummel and
Per Ahlmark under those circumstances related above have arrived
at the conclusion that 2,035,000 people "were murdered" during
the time '75-'79, no more and no less, points at almost clair-
voyant powers of theirs. The last census before the war, you 
see, was in 1962 (5.9 million people). In a speech in 1979, De-
mocratic Kampuchea stated its population as being 8 million.
In between the two are 15 years of constant war, civil war, mas-
ssive US bombings and severe hardships. An impartial demographic
assessment, which might confirm the accusation of massive geno-
cide, there is not. But where there is a political interest,
a critical treatment of the sources plays a lesser role.

Some more sober commentators at least are admitting that Pol Pot
perhaps cannot be personally blamed for every single death. Usu-
ally, instead the regime of Democratic Kampuchea is being ac-
cused of genocide on the ground of its politics having contribu-
ted to the succumbing of one to two million people to hardship,
to the extent that they were not wilfully killed.

This is a new and widened definition of genocide. And it presup-
poses that the civil war, the US invasion and bombings, the war
of liberation and the Vietnamese invasion had been of no impor-
tance for the deaths, which is a bold supposition.

That definition also is foolhardy, inasmuch it ought to rebound
onto those who are setting it up. If every day 40,000 children
die quite unnecessarily on account of an unreasonable economic
and political system, the architects and profiters of that sys-
tem rightly can be considered to be perpetrators of genocide.

If the new ruling class in Russia [unclear how new the author
means by "new" here, but obviously the class referred to is the
bourgeoisie - Tr], zealously cheered on by our democratic Wes-
tern states, by its economic policies within only a few years
are reducing the life expectancy of the population by some 7-10
years, this means millions of unnecessary deaths annually out 
of, if you wish, "hardship".

But the two last-mentioned examples are *invisible* examples of
genocide. Invisible, since they are so normal in our world and
since we today are not being stimulated to reflect on them. In-
visible to all who consider World Bank capitalism to be not one
but *the* natural state of things. Defined away out of all res-
ponsible historical and social sciences that have any aspira-
tions for sponsor money.

Abnormal and well visible, however, was the desperate and 
failed attempt by Pol Pot and Democratic Kampuchea to change 
these conditions.

Therefore, it is Pol Pot who is going to stand trial, not Yelt-
sin or the World Bank. The main witness in this trial will be
the state and party leadership of Vietnam, who thereby will ob-
tain a further footing in respectable circles. They already
have clearly shown their ambition to achieve this.

For in Hanoi, once again reign the companies from the USA, from 
Great Britain, Japan with additions from the new robber-knights 
Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Marlboro and Dunhill are fighting 
out poster wars in the streets of the city. The dollar has 
taken over as against the dong, whereby the USA is controlling 
the currency flow, Japan the lending to the consumers, Singa-
pore the real-estate market, Taiwan and Korea the tax-free as-
sembly industries.

Vietnam has joined the program of the World Bank and has under-
taken to guarantee that a society is created in which a safe ex-
ploitation of labour power is assured, in which the economic
gaps are widening and social progress is not given priority as
against capital. That is, guaranteeing that the thirty-years-
long liberation struggle of the Vietnamese was really for no-
thing. 

It thus remains to prove that the leaders of Democratic Kampu-
chea in any reasonable sense did commit genocide. Even if such
is the case, this in the final instance is not why the West is
conducting such a vehement hate campaign against that regime
whose last remains now seem to be crumbling in the djungles of
Kampuchea. It is the impudence, the total revolt against world
capitalism that must be punished, "as a punishment to himself
and a warning to others". This hate is the same as that which
once Martin Luther directed against the rebellious German 
peasants:

"Is there anything more devilish than a rebellious person? 
Therefore, these thou may sting, strangle and strike down. And
shouldst thou by this become dead - well for thee, for thou
shalst then have eternal life."

[So far the translated article by Hans Isaksson]

[This posting measured by me at 5.6 kB]



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