CHAPTER 3

AD 1975- Cambodia

Seventeen-year-old Chu Peng excitedly squirmed as the plane coasted into Phenom Penh airport. This was the first time he was being allowed to accompany his aunt Jiang on a diplomatic mission. They were on their way to meet Prime Minister Saloth Sar (also known as Pol Pot) to secretly negotiate a treaty funneling Chinese and Soviet aid through Cambodia to communist freedom fighters in Vietnam.

Although relations were currently strained between Russia and China, both nations were in ideological agreement that the capitalist West must not be allowed to retain their foothold in Vietnam and had agreed to grant mutual aid to the struggling Vietnamese. Orphaned as a baby, ever since his grandfather had been publicly stripped of power in 1959 and exiled (Chu was barely two at the time), Aunt Jiang had raised him.

Aunt Jiang had trained him from an early age to use his stance, his manner, his demeanor and his speech to inspire the other youth in the Red Scarf movement to communist ideals. A former actor, his aunt had put her talents to good use promoting Revolutionary ideals first to the public, and later as the wife of their leader, Chairman Mao.

As young as five years old, Chu had gained approval from Aunt Jiang by encouraging his fellow Red Scarf youth members to report unauthorized bourgeois sentiments expressed by their teachers, neighbors or parents to the Party leaders. Aunt Jiang taught him to dispassionately watch as the names of collaborators were tortured out of the traitors.

Chu mulled over the satisfaction he had gained by watching his youth group members gain the upper hand as their families, their parents, teachers, and neighbors quaking in terror at the prospect of their own children betraying their most secret sentiments to the Red Guard. Depending upon the severity of the sentiment and number of collaborators, bourgeous sentiments were punishable by a range of punishments ranging from jail and torture to exile and death, but the children who informed were elevated to positions of importance and often praised by the most glorious party leaders themselves. Li Na may have been Aung Jiang and Uncle Mao's biological daughter, but Chu had made it a point to become their spiritual son in every way that mattered.

Chu Peng was a living example of the benefits of being an informant. His grandfather's insistence that Chairman Mao's five-year plans were causing great suffering amongst the peasants was causing great difficulties for the Party. Not just any dissenter, but a staunch proponent of the agrarian communism ideal Chairman Mao purportedly supported and also a decorated general who had won countless battles for the Revolution, his grandfather's increasing levels of public dissent on behalf of the ordinary comrade angered Uncle Mao. It was Aunt Jiang's idea. At eight years old, she had sent Chu to visit the old man, Peng Dehuai, to prison.

When his grandfather warned him Chairman Mao was inflicting great harm upon the nation with his pro-industrial planning, Chu had done exactly what his aunt requested and reported the traitorous sentiments to the Red Guard. Although television was a new medium in the world, he had sat there and dispassionately watched both on television and on camera as they tortured his grandfather 130 times, crushing his internal organs. Still … his grandfather never did break, insisting he was loyal to the Revolution. To Chu's enormous disappointment, the Red Guard did not put him to death. Being the grandson of a traitor to the Revolution was a black mark on Chu's otherwise spotless record which he would just assume have erased. Unfortunately, even disgraced, his grandfather still had too much support amongst the ordinary soldiers to risk murdering without a signed confession, so the broken old man was being allowed to finish out his remaining years in exile.

Chu drew his thoughts back to why he was being brought to Cambodia. In one more year, he would be old enough to join the Red Army as a junior officer. It was important that Chu eradicate the stigma of having Peng Dehuai, traitor of the Cultural Revolution, as a grandfather in order to gain favor with the Party. As there was no active "official" theater of war occurring in China at the moment, his Aunt thought studying under the tutelage of his hero, Prime Minister Sar (Pol Pot) would teach him important lessons.

A fly buzzed inside the waiting limousine. Chu hastily grabbed the fly and pulled off its wings, watching the disgusting creature crawl up the window before his aunt complained. Without a thought, he reached out and crushed the filthy insect, smearing its guts with his finger on the translucent window. "Do you think Prime Minister Sar will consent to my education?" he asked.

Aunt Jiang fondly gripped his chin and stated, "make sure you wash your hands before you shake hands. You wouldn't want to defile a hero like the Prime Minister."

"Of course, aunt Jiang," Chu replied. He looked out the window at countless peasants peacefully toiling in the rice paddies and wondered how Cambodia had been so successful at quelling the protestations of the masses and promoting an agrarian Utopia when the bourgeois in China was stirring up discontent. "Do you think the Prime Minister will agree to an internship?"

"The Prime Minister will do what I ask him to do," Jiang Qing stated cryptically, "or Chairman Mao will cut off aid."

Six hours later, Chu watched his aunt pull away in the limousine while the Prime Minister reassuringly gripped his shoulder. Having grown up with both his parents and then his grandfather missing, Chu enjoyed the male attention. "My closest friends call me Pol Pot," the Prime Minister had proudly stated, "so the nephew of Chairman Mao must call me that too.

"Thank you, sir," Chu politely replied. "I am looking forward to learning as much as I can. I am especially interested in learning how you've been so successful in achieving your goal of agrarian utopia while China is riddled with dissidents?"

"Ahhh," Pol Pot nodded, pleased. "I meet with my senior generals several times each week and arbitrate some of the more difficult cases where a citizen has been accused of bourgeois sympathies. The only good bourgeois is a dead bourgeois!" he laughed, with Chu laughing along with him.

"I wish uncle Mao had that attitude, although I suspect Aunt Jiang will have her way with him eventually and get him to crack down on the dissidents," Chu replied.

"Ahhh … we think alike, young Chu," Pol Pot stated. "Perhaps it would be wise for your uncle to, shall we say, look the other way while your aunt and her colleagues to attend to business? A wise leader avoids that which makes him contemptible and hated, but will allow others to act on his behalf to do that which is necessary and then deny all knowledge."

Several days later, Chu's new mentor and hero held court for his generals in a simple village shed in a remote area of Cambodia. Around them numerous peasants toiled contentedly in the fields, their dou li (conical straw hats) shielding their bodies from the tropical sun. Pol Pot was dressed in simple garb, not very different from that worn by the peasants, and sat on a straw mat. He clapped his hands and two Khmer Rouge soldiers dragged in a field worker. The field hand prostrated himself at the feet of Pol Pot, begging for mercy.

"What are the charges against this man?" Pol Pot asked. Chu sat silently behind him, watching and learning.

"Great leader," stated the Khmer Rouge soldier, beckoning a second field hand to come into the room, "this man has been accused of harboring bourgeois ideas and perpetrating dissent amongst the workers."

"What is the evidence?" Pol Pot asked.

The second field hand came in, trembling. "Great and powerful leader, I witnessed myself this man complaining to the other workers that you have enslaved the Cambodian people and then wrote those ideas down in this journal." The field hand proffered a small bound journal to Pol Pot.

"Please, comrade," Pol Pot smiled at him, "I am quite modest. I would prefer people not call me leader. If he believes in the cause, a cook could run Cambodia." Pol Pot thumbed through the journal, grunted, and handed the book to Chu. "Chu, what do you think?"

"I think these are the same type of sentiments that Chairman Mao has failed to stamp out in China, Sir," Chu observed.

"What is your verdict?" the Khmer Rouge soldier asked.

Pol Pot looked to Chu and smiled. "Young man, what would you say the verdict is?"

"Guilty, Sir," Chu replied. "This man is a traitor to the revolution."

"Then guilty it is," Pol Pot stated. The prisoner began to wail.

"What, Sir, shall the sentence be?" the second Khmer Rouge soldier inquired.

"Does he have any use to the Revolution other than field work?" Pol Pot inquired.

"No, sir, formerly he was a teacher at the university. Cambodia has no use for such bourgeois ideas."

"Well, then," Pol Pot replied, "since he is of no use to us anymore, then there is no gain if he lives and no loss if he dies. Death it is," he stated impassionately as though he were ordering his dinner.

Chu watched with admiration as one of the Khmer Rouge soldiers grabbed a piano wire from his pocket and, like a cobra strike, wrapped it around the prisoners' throat and pulled until it cut the prisoners neck all the way to the spine, nearly decapitating him. The second Khmer Rouge soldier grabbed the feet of the still-twitching body and unceremoniously dragged it outside where several other soldiers tossed the prisoner upon a cart like a sack of grain.

"Bullets are expensive," Pol Pot coldly noted to no one in particular. "Traitors don't deserve such luxuries."

The field hand who had reported the incident cowed and tried to back out the door. "Come, friend," Pol Pot coaxed, holding out his hand, "we need more believers such as yourself to help Cambodia achieve her agrarian utopian ideal. Please, shake my hand in friendship." Turning to the Khmer Rouge soldiers, who had returned, he asked them, "tell me, comrade, what position does this hero of the revolution hold?"

"He is a field worker, sir," answered one of the guards.

"Give this man and his entire family an extra ration of rice every day," stated Pol Pot, "and make him the overseer of the other workers in his camp. Loyalty must be rewarded."

Chu watched and observed the next several cases as Pol Pot repeated the ritual. Occasionally, Pol Pot would randomly grant clemency and only order torture, but most of the time the sentence was death. By the end of the session, the ox cart was piled high with the bodies of traitors and the Khmer Rouge hauled them off to be dumped in a local field to be used as fertilizer.

"A great leader cannot simply use the carrot of ideals or the love of his people to unroll his great plan," Pol Pot explained to him. "He must simultaneously use the stick of punishment for those who would betray him. All betrayal, no matter how small, must be eliminated and cut off at the root. If you allow evil, any evil, to flourish, soon your rice paddy will be full of weeds and your crop will wilt on the vine."

"We have this problem in China," Chu Peng stated. "How do you draw the line between those ideas that have merit and those that betray?"

"You surround yourself with trusted advisors," Pol Pot stated, "wise men who will whisper their doubts in your ear and then, no matter what you decide, back you. As for the rest, they may not speak out against you. Only those you trust can speak, and then only privately. Everything else is treason."

"My grandfather was once Chairman Maos advisor," Chu Peng said, "but then he betrayed him. He went to the public and began to complain about Chairman Mao's tactics."

"What, young Chu, do you think the punishment should be in such a case?" Pol Pot asked.

"Death, of course," Chu replied. "I have seen today that you have the courage to do what is needed that my uncle lacks."

"You are a wise boy," Pol Pot replied, wrapping his arm around one shoulder and giving him an affectionate hug. "It is very important that a leader be consistent in his treatment of traitors, all traitors, even those that were formerly close to him. It is not the promise of punishment that inspires your people to trust you, but also the certainty that if they betray you, the sentence will be carried out."

Over the next 6 weeks, Chu observed how, by dressing as an ordinary citizen and pretending to promote the rights of the lowliest worker, combined with a reputation for terror against traitors, Pol Pot inspired his minions to absolute loyalty. This was a most fruitful internship, Chu mused. He couldn't wait to report what he had learned to Aunt Jiang.