The population of Pnompenh gave a tumultuous welcome to the victorious Khmer Rouge troops when they entered the Cambodian capital on April 17.

“Three hours after the surrender,” said an April 18 Associated Press dispatch, “thousands of students paraded along the main boulevards, waving banners to greet the Communist forces.”

Crowds lined the streets, and from windows and roofs people “cheered and waved white strips of cloth as the black-clad troops walked triumphantly through the streets in groups of three or four.” After five years of agonizing war, the only sounds of shooting came from the jubilant soldiers firing into the air.

“Communist troops reportedly embraced Government soldiers and lifted them aboard personnel carriers for a victory parade along the waterfront.

“A1 Rockoff, a freelance American photographer, climbed on the hood of a jeep loaded with Communist-led soldiers, and the jeep drove up and down the streets.”

“The popular enthusiasm is evident,” said Le Monde correspondent Patrice de Beer in a dispatch from Pnompenh. “Groups form around the insurgents, who often carry American weapons. They are young, happy, surprised by their easy success. The republican soldiers quickly put up white flags. Processions form in the street and the refugees are starting to go home.”

Scattered fighting was reported in a few enclaves held by the puppet forces, but most of them rapidly came under the control of the Khmer Rouge forces. In Poipet, on the border with Thailand, about 500 Khmer Rouge troops rode into town on captured jeeps. Many of them were girls and young boys, the April 20 Washington Post reported.

“From the border, 300 yards away, the reporters observed a Khmer Rouge leader addressing a large crowd and heard loud applause.” About twenty soldiers later approached the border and shook hands with Thai civilians across the barbed wire barriers.

Washington Hauls Down Its Flag

The final collapse of the puppet forces came just five days after Washington grudgingly admitted defeat and airlifted its remaining officials out of Pnompenh.

U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean had instructed his staff that he wanted the embassy “to go out in style, with dignity – not in panic like losers.” The exit was anything but dignified, however.

The American officials had to scurry out by helicopter; their farewell committee consisted of a hundred or so staring children; Ambassador Dean left carrying the embassy flag in a plastic bag; and as soon as the helicopters lifted off, Cambodian military police ransacked the embassy and homes of the Americans.

In the final weeks of the puppet regime, the feelings of the populace became more and more overt.

First students and then teachers demonstrated in Pnompenh demanding an end to U.S. aid. Leaflets calling for peace circulated.

The Last Days of Pnompenh

The morale of the puppet troops had never been high, but it sank lower and lower, until toward the end the soldiers were resorting to cannibalism. The eating of slain Khmer Rouge soldiers apparently became a common practice. A dispatch by Jacques Leslie in the April 6 Los Angeles Times reported that mutinous troops had killed and eaten their paymaster after not getting paid for four months. The soldiers accused their officers of pocketing their pay.

“Our commander had wine and pork and chicken while we ate grasshoppers,” a soldier said. “The commander could use wine to wash his face. He had three or four girls with him. But if a soldier was sick and wanted to go to the hospital in Phnom Penh, he had to pay a 10,000 to 20,000 riels ($5 to $10) bribe to get a helicopter ride.”

Right up to the final day the Pnompenh regime tried to squeeze the last dollar from the suffering of the people under its control. After the liberation of Pnompenh, an official of the United Nations Children’s Fund revealed that the regime had compelled UN authorities to pay costly air freight charges to fly powdered milk for starving children into the country aboard the government-owned airline rather than permit the relief supplies to be flown in free. One report said that UNICEF had been charged as much as $1,000 a ton.

President Lon Nol skipped the country with his plunder April 1. After a ten-day holiday in Indonesia, he arrived in Hawaii for “medical treatment,” and was met by Admiral Noel Gayler, the American Pacific commander. The U.S. government is footing the bill for his stay in Hawaii.

However, Washington’s puppet ran into difficulties with some of his baggage. Events were moving too rapidly in both Cambodia and South Vietnam, and he apparently overestimated the stability of the fiefdom of his crony in Saigon. In late March, South Vietnamese officials asked a charter airline affiliated with Swissair to ferry out “some personal belongings” of the Thieu family as well as some personal effects of Lon Nol. The airline declined after it discovered the baggage included sixteen tons of gold, worth $73 million.

As the end neared in Pnompenh, Lon Nol concentrated on other personal problems. New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg reported that two days before the liberation of Pnompenh, “the National Bank of Cambodia sent a cablegram to the Irving Trust Company in New York, asking the American bank, where it presumably has dollar credits, to confirm that it was carrying out an earlier order to pay $1-million to Marshal Lon Nol.” The earlier order had been sent on April 1.

“Perhaps the marshal was worried that if Phnom Penh fell to the insurgents before the transaction was confirmed, he would never get the money,” said Schanberg.

Saukam Khoy, the acting president left behind by Lon Nol, put on a bizarre show of bravado and vowed there would be “no surrender,” before he also fled with the last of the Americans.

The insurgents were too weak to break into the city, he said in an interview reported by Sydney Schanberg in the April 8 New York Times. But if they do, he said, “We will stand on the top floors of houses and fire down on them and kill them all.”

He also said that the insurgent troops were peasant boys and therefore “don’t know how to find their way in the city.”

“We will kill their leaders and then they will get lost,” he added.

The committee of generals that took over when Saukam Khoy and the U.S. embassy left also vowed to fight to the last. “There will be no surrender,” said Premier Long Boret on April 13.

But with the Americans gone, everyone recognized the fall of the puppet regime would only be a matter of days or hours. The government radio continued to broadcast military music, nostalgically interspersed with tunes such as “Marching Through Georgia” and “Old Folks at Home.”

Whose Bloodbath?

After five years of war in Cambodia, Sydney Schanberg reported in the April 13 New York Times, there are “a million Cambodians killed or wounded (one seventh of the population), hundreds of thousands of refugees living in shanties, a devastated countryside, children dying of starvation and carpenters turning out a steady stream of coffins made from ammunition crates.”

Having bequeathed this legacy to the people of Cambodia, any talk from Washington about a “bloodbath” following the rebel victory sounds like Hitlerite propaganda.

The actual liberation of Pnompenh itself belied such White House handouts to the press.

But reports of the mass of the population of Pnompenh cheering the Khmer Rouge as they entered the city is very dangerous news for Washington’s propaganda machine, especially for its last-ditch maneuver to retain a toehold in Saigon by raising an alarm about a “bloodbath” of hundreds of thousands of “loyal” supporters there if the marines are not allowed to go in to rescue them.

So after the early reports from Pnompenh of the warm welcome given the Khmer Rouge and the rapid restoration of peace and order, the Western press began carrying stories about executions and beheadings, allegedly announced by the Khmer Rouge radio. However, the April 20 Washington Post reported that the broadcast was not over the regular frequencies of either the Khmer Rouge radio or Pnompenh radio.

According to Agence France-Presse, the Washington Post continued, “some observers believe the station, which calls itself the Voice of the Future Nation, is manned by a psychological warfare unit trying to sway local and international opinion against the new Cambodian government.” Such operations are known to be carried out by the American Central Intelligence Agency.

In fact, soon after they set up headquarters in Pnompenh, the Khmer Rouge invited all ministers and generals of the former regime “who have not run away” to meet and help formulate measures to restore order. The Khmer Rouge had previously listed “seven traitors” whom they advised to flee, but said they were willing to work with anyone else – feudal elements, landlords, and comprador capitalists included.

Le Monde correspondent Patrice de Beer reported that he had seen the prisoners held by the Khmer Rouge at their headquarters in the former Ministry of Information.

“The atmosphere was relaxed,” he said. “The prisoners – Lon Non [brother of Lon Nol], many generals, some ministers – were laughing and chatting with soldiers. There was one ‘super traitor,’ former Premier Long Boret, who had given himself up and had been well received.”

Although Norodom Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge leaders stated repeatedly they would never negotiate with the Pnompenh regime, Joseph Kraft reported in the April 8 Washington Post that a feeler for negotiations had been rejected by Washington early in the summer of 1974.

“According to the highest French officials...,” said Kraft, “at that time the rebels were pressing hard on the capital, Phnom Penh. But they were experiencing supply difficulties which promoted internal bickering. The Chinese hinted to the French that something might be arranged, provided the Lon Nol government was ready to step down.

“Paris conveyed the hint to Washington. Washington, according to the French, turned a deaf ear,” said Kraft.

The reason Nixon and Kissinger rejected negotiations and banked everything on a military victory, according to Kraft’s French source, was that “they did not understand that a soft, neutralist regime with a broad political base could both cover up an American defeat and thwart a Communist victory.

“This year, when further soundings were made, the Chinese were unwilling to play a role. As the very high official said: ‘You cannot ask Peking to stop Communists from winning when they are on the verge of victory.’“

During the last days of the Pnompenh regime, various desperate proposals for a deal were made by Washington and its puppets.

George Bush, the head of the U.S. liaison office in Peking, delivered a note to Sihanouk during the night of April 11-12 inviting him to return to Pnompenh to take power, an April 12 dispatch in the Washington Post reported. Sihanouk said the Pnompenh regime had tried to contact him directly but eventually resorted to “a note from the U.S.

government which informed me, last night, that everyone in Phnom Penh wanted my immediate return to our capital, my takeover of power in Phnom Penh and my aid to get a cease-fire.”

“I replied by a note to the U.S.A. that I would remain until the end at the side of the red Khmers, my allies whom I would never betray, and that there must be absolutely no frustrating of so deserved a victory,” said Sihanouk.

A last-ditch proposal for conditional surrender from the Pnompenh regime was delivered to Sihanouk by the International Red Cross on April 16. In rejecting the offer, Sihanouk said “that if second-rank traitors wish to save their lives, they should immediately lay down their arms, raise the white flag and rally unconditionally....

“As to the first-rank traitors, forming what they call the ‘Supreme Council,’ we advise them to flee Cambodia if they can, instead of wasting time digging bunkers.”

The new government in Pnompenh would be “nonaligned, democratic and progressive,” but not Communist, said Sihanouk in a statement issued April 15. During an interview broadcast the day before, Sihanouk defined his own future role as that of a “public relations officer for international affairs.”

Representatives of the Cambodian Communists in Paris said their government would follow a policy of neutrality and nonalignment.

“This is not a tactical or temporary policy,” said Chau Seng, a special representative of Sihanouk and Politburo member of the National United Front of Cambodia, at a news conference on April 17. “It is a fundamental and strategic position.” He also said that Buddhism would remain the state religion.

Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1975/IP1316.pdf#page=8&view=FitV,3